Confidence building
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009It seems, from responses to the blog and newsletter, that confidence building is high on everyone’s list of priorities. I’m right there with you. I think confidence is something we’re born with, and it grows and diminishes with different events/cycles in our lives. If you’re lucky you’ve had confidence boosting parents and siblings, teachers, church leaders, friends, classmates, colleagues, bosses etc. (you get the picture - the list is endless). So with such a list, I’m guessing most of us have had knocks to our natural confidence.
Inside our heads we all have an idea, or picture, of how we look as confident people. Otherwise we would have nothing to measure our lack of confidence against. When I ask someone to visualise themselves as a confident person and they say they can’t see it - it’s not true! Sounds harsh maybe, and I would not come right out and say “You’re not telling the Truth. You Are Confident!” But pause for a second and listen.
First of all how do you know you lack confidence? Somewhere inside your head you do have a picture of what confidence is, what it means, and how it would feel to be like that. Otherwise you wouldn’t know that you don’t have it. See? To know you’re missing it, you have to know what it is and what it looks/feels/acts like.
That’s a fantastic start. So you DO know what confidence is/feels like/looks like. Great! Now you know what you’re working towards. Maybe you just haven’t connected with it for a long time. It’s time to start.
Listen to what Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, The Success Principles and many more inspiring books) has to say about it. What do you think?