To believe in yourself and be confident in your decisions and actions is central to making positive and sustainable changes in your life.

confidence and self belief

A lot of people suffer greatly with low confidence and self-belief and at times it can be crippling, so much so that you may put off or completely stop yourself from acting on the things that you truly want.

You can be highly skilled in an area or have such a strong desire or longing to do something new to improve and change your life, but a lack of confidence or self-belief can make you quit before you even begin.

Contrary to popular belief, low confidence or self-belief are not qualities or characteristics that you are born with, they are learnt through a multitude of things.

On the odd occasion we can experience a lack of confidence simply due to not having knowledge in an area and an intervention like getting a mentor or studying the area can improve that. More often things like our environment (the way we were raised by our parents), what other people have said or done to us, previous bad experiences or constantly comparing ourselves to others can be at the route of our low confidence or self-belief.

When our lack of self-belief or confidence was induced by someone else it can be very confusing working out how to overcome it and move to a more confident and positive state of mind. This is because when something happens to knock, or in some cases shatter our self-belief and confidence, we can start to fall into a negative state of mind. This can result in overthinking everything we do, rejecting compliments from people, seeking approval from other people, people pleasing, over sacrificing to be liked, having negative thoughts about ourselves and in the worst cases, anxiety and depression.

There is no shortage of people that have suffered with this and it goes without saying that the impact it has on your life, the level of satisfaction you feel and ultimately what you chose to do or not do is huge!

If you can relate to feeling or doing any of the things I have mentioned then, investing in coaching to support you in identifying, challenging and overcoming low confidence could be one of best investments you can make. You can book a free consultation with me to find out exactly how we can work together, just click the link below and we will arrange a date. In the mean-time you can do a few things to help yourself make a start on the journey to increased confidence.

  • Take some time to think back to the initial event that occurred that caused you to lack confidence, you must identify the cause before working on the solution.
  • Write down what holding on to this experience is costing you now! How is it still effecting you? What current relationships is it harming? What things is it limiting you from doing? How will it effect your future?
  • Write down what you would gain if you were to be confident and believe in yourself. What would your life look like? Who would you interact with? What things would you do that you don`t do now? How much more enjoyment would you experience?

Once you have a clear picture of the cause, cost and benefits of gaining your confidence back again, I advise that you start implementing these steps into your life.

  • Surround yourself with positive people, people that make you feel good not people that drain you or put you down.
  • Gain as much knowledge as you can in the area you want to improve your confidence in.
  • Limit things that lead to your comparing yourself to other people, for some people that is social media, for others it is magazines or tv. This is a temporary measure that is only necessary in the beginning as you start to work on taking back control of your thoughts.
  • Replace the time you spend doing things that lead to you comparing yourself with things that will improve your mindset. Watching motivational youtube videos, reading self-help/empowering books.
  • Start saying no to the things that you do not want to do. This can be challenging in the beginning but the it is the start of you becoming more of who you want to be instead of just doing things to win approval from others. You are not a bad person just because you say no!