Be Your Fan Number One

Self-confidence is important for your personal development, but also for any type of development, be it your own business or your career. Someone wise said once that not the tools you have are important, but what you do with them is what it counts. Same as, it doesn’t matter what you know, but what you do with what you know is what actually counts. And that is what you can do with self-confidence. Now, as part of my personal development plan, I came across a seminar on how to increase your self-confidence, and I decided to share with you some of the tips that I found interesting, as well as my thoughts on them.

First of all, you have to realize that self confidence it is not something you are born with, but something you develop throughout your childhood, or if not (good news for those of us who had a screwed up childhood), later on in life, through education, such as: meditation, seminars, and mental exercises. Self-confidence is a state of your mind. And it is you who can control your mind, through your thoughts. So, in the end, your thoughts are the ones deciding if you are a self-confident person or not.

Here is a list of 8 tips you can do to boost your self-confidence. Pick one of it and exercises it for a week. See what happens. Write down your progress. Then come back here, and share with us. If you just read this post, but not take action, it will have 0 impact. I suggest you take a pen and a piece of paper and write down which one of those exercises you want to do first.

1. Be aware of the voice inside your head– you know what I mean, right? The one that tells you that you are a failure, that there is no way you can pull that off. You can’t possibly be able to pass that exam. Or get that job, so why even bother to prepare yourself for it? You can never get that girl, she is too good for you, and the list can go on. Be aware of the fact that, every voice inside your head was once an exterior voice. Maybe a parent, a teacher, a neighbor, a family member, or a colleague? Who kept telling you that you are stupid throughout your childhood? Who introduced the fear of failure in you? Take some minutes, an hour, a day, and make a list of all the things that you fear, all the things your interior voice tells you and then try to discover the exterior voice that once told you that. Then try to find your own interior voice and listen to what that says now.
2. Brake the pattern – the way you see yourself determines the self-confidence. Self-confidence will make you become a motivated person. Motivation will then determine you to take action. When you take action you get results. When you see results, you boost your self-confidence. See? It is a closed circle. Once you get in, there is no way of going out 🙂 Take some time and write down 5 areas where you succeed. Then make another list with 5 areas where there is space for improvement. How does the 5 good areas make you feel? How do you feel about the areas where you don’t perform as you wanted to? Do the 5 areas where your performance is good, motivate you to work on the other ones?
3. Remember your victories from the past – That ought to boost your self-confidence for at least few minutes, right? Make a list with your victories, then add a small challenge that you plan to address this week.
4. Get rid of the people who victimize themselves– try to isolate their negative attitude and their negative opinions from your self-confidence. What they think of themselves or of you, it is on them. It has nothing to do with that you should think about yourself. Most of the time, what people think of other people tells more about their own personality, and not so much of the ones they are gossiping about. It is a bit similar to dating: pay attention on how your date talks about his or her exes, because that tells more about him or her than any other things they might say.
5. Listen to your critics – yes, this might be harsh, but if you manage to not take it personal, there is a lot to learn from it. No successful person in this world has managed to go though success without people criticizing them. Listen to what others have to say about your areas of improvement and then pay attention to that behavior. However, it is important to remember that, whatever they say, never put their opinions ahead of your own opinions about yourself.
6. Know what you are worth– that might be a bit harder to do when you are lacking self-confidence, but I suggest trying the first 5 exercises first, and then you will able to actually know what you are worth. Know what you are worth and then don’t let others treat you less than that.
7. Get rid of the idea of self-sabotage– Tony Robbins says that the self-sabotage is just a positive intention of your brain to protect you from something bad. Pay attention to your behavior and ask yourself why are you acting like that, and what are you trying to protect yourself from? Then make a list with the things you will lose in case you go ahead with your self-sabotage idea. See if is worth paying the price.
8. Become your number one fan – that is the advice that I like the best. I have never thought about myself that way. Did you? And it makes sense. If you don’t like yourself, why should anyone else? If you don’t love yourself, why should anyone else? Take 1 minute per day in front of the mirror and encourage yourself, compliment yourself. Congratulate yourself for the good job you are doing. What is it that you like most about yourself? Say it 🙂 Be your fan number one!