Do You Need these Six Self Confidence Building Techniques?

Yes, self confidence building is possible, even though there’s no quick fix like flipping a coin. You need specific techniques and the determination to practice them – we’ll detail this in a moment.

But before talking about building self confidence, let’s take a moment to define it.

What exactly is it? Where does low self confidence come from? And how to build self confidence?

Let’s take these questions one by one.

First, you should know that self confidence is a sense of belief in yourself, in your physical, mental and emotional capabilities to handle and solve problems. Different than self esteem, which is about unconditional self-worth, about how much you value WHO YOU ARE as a human being, self confidence is about behaving confidently about your abilities, about WHAT YOU CAN DO.

Self confidence is that intangible trait that separates the winners from the rest of the crowd.

When you’re confident you inspire confidence in others too, and that’s one of the keys of living in abundance and prosperity.

Your level of self confidence shows mainly in your body language, your behavior, and how you speak. This is what powers you out in the world. If you lack it, you definitely need to invest time in self confidence building, as well as in increasing your emotional intelligence.

Do You Need Self Confidence Building Skills?

Low self confidence is self-sabotaging and seen as negativity. What would you say:

• Are you a perfectionist, impeccably planning ahead and over-analyzing to avoid being caught by surprise?
• Regardless of your personal values, are you doing what others think it’s right from fear of being criticized, mocked or not being liked?
• Are you great at your work but wilt when speaking with the boss or stammer and faint when asked to present to colleagues or clients?
• Do you tend to cover up, justify or explain your mistakes rather than openly admitting you’re wrong and correcting your course?
• Do you dismiss appreciative comments with an usual, “oh, it was nothing, anybody could have done it”, instead of accepting praises graciously?
• Are you reluctant to change, doubt your capabilities, feel like a victim of circumstances and experience a lack of passion and difficulty in finding life purpose?

These are just a few examples of low self confidence. But it is not incurable!

Self confidence building starts with changing your state of mind. As Napoleon Hill, the father of the philosophy of achievement and personal success once phrased it, “Fears are nothing more than a state of the mind”. While the fear may ultimately manifest physically, it is present in your mind first.

Yes, your fear may have its roots in a past trauma or negative experience, which of course, you’re not able to change. However, your memory and interpretation of that experience are replayed in the present, over which you have total control. Learning how to overcome fear is the first step to self confidence building.

How to Build Self Confidence: 6 Powerful Techniques

Self confidence can actually be learned – but only if you practice it. Remember your achievements and think of them often. Making a list with various successes throughout your life is a great tool in helping you build self confidence, use it often!

Here are six self confidence building techniques:

• Breathe. Take deep breaths whenever you feel self confidence leaving you. During stress, the body seizes up and the tension in the shoulder and neck muscles deprives the brain of necessary oxygen to come up with creative solutions. Here’s an extremely effective and quick relaxing technique: inhale for 3 seconds, hold your breath for 6 seconds and exhale for 6 seconds; repeat three times.
• Face your fears head-on. Feel the fear and do what you have to do in spite of your fear – this will build your self confidence muscles in no time. For example, if you are afraid of public speaking, enroll in Toastmasters International where you are encouraged to step up to the podium and speak to a crowd of strangers.
• Act “AS IF”. Project being self confident even if you don’t feel like this. If you are over analytical and would like to think faster on your feet, visualize yourself being spontaneous. Enroll in improvisation classes. Extremely helpful, these are affordable and conveniently held at most community colleges.
• Laugh at yourself. If you’re not self confident because you are afraid of making a mistake, allow yourself to make mistakes and laugh when you do. Your peers will laugh with you too and look at you with respect.
• Challenge yourself physically. Take up on a sport that you feel is out of your reach. If you are afraid of heights, sign up for rock climbing in a gym; there, you are physically safe and you are going to feel incredibly better about yourself when you get to the top of the rock.
• Stop thinking about doing it; just do it. Over-thinking stops you in your tracks. But don’t overdo it! Self confidence is a great asset, but overconfidence can be just as destructive as no confidence at all, so make sure you get this balance right.

With self confidence, you are unstoppable. You can go out and touch the stars and if you do fall, you will bounce right back up again. Use powerful self improvement resources and invest in self confidence building – you won’t regret it!