In this short article you will learn about 'self confidence boosters' that work within five minutes, but first let's define just what 'Self Confidence' actually is. The online Cambridge Dictionary defines Self Confidence as, "behaving calmly because you have no doubts about your ability or knowledge." So it's clear from this that in some situations we can act in a self confident manner because we're familiar with it and have capabilities and knowledge.
It's the inevitable situations that arise on a regular basis with which we are not familiar, that trip us up thought
isn't it! New experiences which we have little knowledge about can cause us to doubt our capabilities. So what
exactly is this experience of 'doubting our capabilities' anyway?
All the feelings we ever experience from fear, doubt and confusion to inspiration and love are all derived from the pictures and self talk we continuously create in our 'mind stream.' These patterns of thought are often deeply ingrained habits and therefore function unconsciously out of our awareness, yet have a very powerful effect on our experience of life.
When we find ourselves in an un-resourceful state of mind such as self doubt, we are stuck in a thought pattern. A common one for self doubt would be internal self talk, ragging on you: "You're such a stupid so and so!" Or it could be that you're unconsciously seeing an image of yourself, in your minds-eye, when you made a mistake and felt really small back in childhood.
Here's an essential point though: It doesn't matter what or where this thought pattern came from. We're not interested in perverse Freudian 'personal history' archaeology are we?! No, what we want to learn is how to change our thought structures with simple self confidence boosters that we can do within five minutes, right?
So how can we re-program our habits of thought, overcome our
fears and doubts and increase our self confidence? Well for
starters what about counter examples. You can often come up
with a counter example. Think about a situation where you
lack self confidence. Now ask yourself, "Has there ever been
a time when I've felt more self confidence in a similar
situation?" Just allow yourself to access a memory of this.
Chances are you can find at least one counter example. This
leads us into a very powerful 'operating principle' in mind
programming: "All the resources are already within you." If
you act as if you have the resources you want such as 'self
confidence' very often you can find them within your memory
banks.
Now the other thing about the mind is that it goes in
directions. The fact is the future is full of possibilities.
It is pure potential. That means if we could program our
thought patterns we could create a, "I am learning to become
more self confident," 'unconscious-software-program,'
enabling us to head towards that desired outcome. This is
possible and one of the best ways to do so is through the
power of our 'self image.'
Your self image is simply how you picture yourself in your minds-eye. This happens regularly throughout the day, outside of your awareness. Try this: Remember an occasion when someone gave you a sincere compliment. You know, when you get the warm feeling at the heart. Now in your minds-eye notice what you look like at that instance. Simply picture yourself.
Utilising this 'self image mechanism' we can create a self
image which we are drawn towards enabling us to access more
resourcefulness, capabilities, potentials and possibilities.
Before I finish give this a go: Imagine a you in front of
you. This is a you from the future who has learned how to
become more self confident, more resourceful and has a great
sense of humour. How is that you standing? What is the
breathing like? How does the voice sound? Good, now step
into this new you and allow yourself to experience those
increasing feelings of confidence.
Now, can you imagine, what it would be like if you were to make this self image even more compelling? And what would it be like if you could program this state of being to automatically pop up in just the situations you want to be more self confident and resourceful?
(C) Colin G Smith 2010
