I picked ‘how to gain confidence’ as a topic for this edition of Holistic Living Magazine because confidence can encompass so many areas in your life and without it, you can miss out on so many beautiful experiences.

Many people let their lack of confidence get in their way and that makes any fear they have much worse. In fact, many are paralysed with this fear, and never achieve their goals.

Confidence comes from a Latin word ‘fidere’ which means “to trust or have faith in”. Therefore, having self-confidence is having trust in your own ability.

Also, having confidence can mean having confidence in something outside of yourself too.

Confidence Synonym

* Trust in self
* Level of confidence
* Sure of himself/herself
* Positive attitude
* Belief in self

When you are looking to change areas of your life, you need to have confidence that you have the ability to change and succeed (self-confidence). You need the confidence you can find the right help to change. Also, you need the confidence that the universe will support your change.

Confidence is a state of mind that comes from feelings of well-being, through accepting the messages from your body and mind. Also, having a belief in your own ability to take action.

To succeed in life, you need confidence to face and overcome your fears. You need to believe in yourself. This can also mean to have enough confidence to do something and knowing it’s OK if you fail. (That is where we learn and grow).

Confident people do not take on unnecessary or inappropriate work or obligations, or get taken advantage of by ‘friends’ and family as they have learned to say NO. It is only when we are not confident or we have not yet overcome our fears of pleasing others, that we self-sacrifice and say YES when we mean NO.

Confidence is not something we are born with in all areas of our life. Some of us have more than others but it is an ability that can be learned and improved over time. There are steps we can take. For example; social confidence can be developed by practising in social settings.

If being confident in a social setting is something you need to work on, you can prepare questions or topics to talk about ahead of time, get a feeling of the flow of the conversation and then speak when you are ready. It feels so amazing when you can learn how to gain confidence quickly!

If having the confidence to do public speaking is the thing you need most. You can start small and build your way to the goal you want to achieve. You can start by practising with a friend in your living room. Once you have confidence to do that. Invite 5 friends.

Then keep growing your audience. The more you do something and the more you practise your skills, the better you get. How great will you feel when you KNOW HOW to gain confidence and self-esteem?

These tips are simple but you need to start somewhere. I am sure you can see that there are some simple steps you can take towards being more confident.

Confidence covers: self-empowerment, belief systems, breaking habits and embracing a ‘shift’ in perception. Having confidence to heal. Confidence to be your true self, knowing how to build confidence at work, and so much more.

As you can see this is a huge topic that our experts will help you with. You may ask, how to gain confidence quickly? How to gain confidence and self-esteem? How to build confidence at work? What are some good confidence tips? What are some confidence building exercises? To answer these and more read on.

When you have finished reading this magazine you will know how to find the tools to find your inner confidence through some amazing self-confidence tips.

Then you can empower yourself to live the life you want and know how to gain confidence to be your true self. Live your best life and cruise with confidence.

Enjoy.

Confidence is such an odd thing isn’t it; this edition has lots of great info about how to gain confidence in self, how it works and so on. But how is it that you get confidence?

What do you do to keep it, strengthen it? How how to gain confidence back if you have lost it? Hopefully after you’ve read these few words you will have some ideas for yourselves on how to do just that.

Many years ago, I was doing a course and it involved a lot of public speaking, and as part of the course we were coached on just that task.

The Professor taking the course went through the usual platitudes about speaking and how it is one of the most fearful things in life, but he balanced it with some advice. He asked if anyone could ride a bike and asked how did people feel when they started? Fear was a common emotion.

Pain shortly after starting (for me it was crashing into a car!!) But then you got better, you could ride, and quickly.

His point was that everything starts off terrible, even if you have done something similar, you won’t be very good. With time and practice it will get better.

A couple of years ago I did a refresher course on public speaking with Toastmasters, even though I got pretty good many years ago, I was approaching this course with a lot of trepidation.

I’d not presented much in the intervening years; a bad experience left me somewhat scared of doing it again.

But along I went, and much like the Professor said, it was like riding a bike, I just needed to get back to it, and remember how to not um, and how to not stumble over my lines. Within no time I was back to being comfortable and enjoying the experience.

This isn’t all about me though. A few years ago, in one of the Gymnastic Olympic trials, Laurie Hernandez, was caught on video saying “I got this.”

While watching her saying to herself that she got this is rather wonderful to watch, it also goes to the heart of what confidence really is. It is something ephemeral, fleeting and quite fragile. One day you can be confident, then next right down in the dumps.

It needs constant reinforcement, through words and deeds. Just like a wonderful garden, entropy will creep in unless it is tended and nurtured.

You need to do things constantly to reinforce your abilities, you need to take yourself out of that comfort zone, do things that you are scared of.

In recent years I’ve done painting (terrible at it), acting, also terrible, but enjoyed it so much I’m going to do stand-up classes, all in the name of pushing myself and reinforcing my core confidence.

So, I suggest you all go out and find something that scares you silly, not necessarily something like base jumping, but something that is a challenge and you wouldn’t normally do it. And go do it. Then one day you might cruise with confidence and find how to gain confidence in yourself!

Who do you want to be? Someone who is confident in your ability and able to reach your goals, or someone who is not confident and never even tries because you know you will fail?

Do you think you need confidence to have a successful life and achieve the goals you set yourself? Confident people achieve much more than people who are not confident.

Only YOU can make you more confident, and the good news is, once you have made the choice, you can learn HOW to find confidence and use it in your everyday life. The choice is yours and yours alone.

Confidence is the cornerstone of leadership. If you don’t believe in yourself, how can others believe in you?

It is good to understand why you have low confidence. For many it is an accumulation of negative life experiences, thoughts and beliefs and for many it actually starts way back in childhood.

You can change these beliefs and thoughts with NLP and hypnotherapy. It’s not something that can change overnight. You have to learn how to rewire your brain and how you see yourself, but it is possible. This is something else for you to look into but we will not cover it is this article. Right now, we are looking at your confidence strategy.

Confidence helps you achieve the goals you set yourself internally, for example: having the confidence to exercise to get to the weight you want. Confidence to eat healthy foods, so you can live a healthier lifestyle. Confidence to speak your mind and set your boundaries.

It can also help you achieve the goals you set yourself externally, for example: having confidence to go and ask your boss for the raise you know you deserve. Confidence to believe in yourself enough to set up your own business. Confidence to lead people in business.

You will see that there are many reasons for you to feel confident. Maybe you already have enough confidence to do some things, but you don’t yet realise there is a strategy you use to have confidence. Your subconscious mind knows and you do it unconsciously, but you don’t yet consciously know the strategy you use.

In NLP strategy is a term that describes any internal and external set of experiences which consistently produce a specific outcome. This is the process happening in your mind while achieving a goal. When you do this sequence of behaviour over and over it becomes a strategy.

If you know that you are confident in some areas of your life, and not others, you already have a strategy for confidence that you can now apply to the goal you want. If you feel you don’t yet have the confidence to reach your goals, you need to find your strategy.

So, we know that, a strategy is a mental sequence used to achieve a goal. So, we need to bring your strategy for feeling confident into your conscious mind.

Strategy For Finding Confidence

We all have a strategy for confidence in us. You may not feel confident right now to achieve the big goal you have, by the end of this article, you will see you are close to getting it.

Here is a very simplified example of a strategy. I know you are confident that you can put a fork in your mouth when you are eating. You have enough confidence to be able to feed yourself.

So, let’s break this down….

If you were going to teach a small child how to eat, how would you teach them?

In NLP this is the same. To teach someone a new strategy, you need to start at the basics until the strategy is part of the behaviour or beliefs of the person.

Before you start explaining to the child HOW you eat. Read this:

So, when you are explaining HOW to eat, make sure you think about the words you are telling yourself. What you are seeing? Are there any sounds involved? What feelings are involved? Are there any smells involved? Is there a taste?

Document everything you see, hear, feel, taste, smell. Document the process and sequence of these events happening. Once this has happened you have a strategy that you can explain to the child how to eat just like you.

For Example: My Strategy For Eating Is:

⦁ I decide to eat something
⦁ I walk to the fridge
⦁ I open the fridge door
⦁ I look on the shelf to see what I want to eat
⦁ I look and I see the vegetables look delicious
⦁ I say, yes, I want to eat those vegetables
⦁ I take the vegetables out of the fridge
⦁ I open the container the vegetables are sitting in
⦁ I get out the saucepan
⦁ I heat them on the oven top
⦁ I place the vegetables on a plate
⦁ I place the plate on the table
⦁ I place the knife on the RHS and the fork on the LHS
⦁ I look at the plate
⦁ I think, this looks delicious
⦁ I pick up the fork
⦁ I pick up the knife
⦁ I cut the vegetable in quarters
⦁ I pick up a piece with my fork by using a stabbing motion
⦁ I put the fork in my mouth
⦁ I chew my food 25 times
⦁ I swallow

That is MY strategy for eating. Yours may be different. You may include smell. You might have a mantra you say to yourself before you eat. All of us are different. Regardless, you will see there is a step by step process of how I eat.

Now you know HOW to find a strategy for eating. You can do the same for confidence. Think of an area in your life where you are already confident. It might be getting out of bed and getting to work on time. It might be you feel confident to talk to others. It might be you feel confident to know when it is time to go to the toilet.

So, To Begin. Think Of A Time You Felt Totally Confident

⦁ Can you remember a time when you were totally confident? Can you recall a specific time? As you go back to that time now, what was the very first thing that caused you to be totally confident? Was it something that you saw, was it something that you heard, or the touch of someone or something else? (RECORD THIS STEP)

⦁ Get the very next thing that caused you to be totally confident? (RECORD THIS STEP)

⦁ Did you picture something in your mind? Say something to yourself or have a certain feeling or emotion? (RECORD THIS STEP)

⦁ What was the very next thing that caused you to be totally confident? (RECORD THIS STEP)

⦁ After you, (take a look at the list you have made. Look at the last thing you mentioned) did you know that you were totally confident? (RECORD THIS STEP)

You may have already found your strategy. Keep asking questions until your answer is yes. I knew I was totally confident! Then you have your strategy.

If you have not yet found your full strategy keep asking questions.

⦁ Did you picture something in your mind? Did you say something to yourself? Do you hear someone else saying something? Do you have a feeling? (RECORD THIS STEP)

⦁ Keep going through this process until you KNOW you have confidence.

You will now have a list – a step by step process – of how YOU find confidence.

Now you have your strategy for having confidence. You need to rewire your subconscious mind and keep practising your strategy. The more you practise, or rehearse, the easier your subconscious mind will make that your new strategy.

You can use this strategy in all areas of your life where you are not yet totally confident. The secret is to keep practising.

What a great topic for an article – and what a great challenge to write something about it.

To begin with, I have to delve into a bit of my own inner confidence to be able to start writing on the topic of confidence. The first question that comes to mind – and which has the potential to shake my confidence – is; ‘What do I know about confidence? – Do I know enough to be able to write a worthy article on this topic?’

This last paragraph sums up quite nicely how confidence is either solid or shaky. One either has confidence to do something or one does not. The deeper question is why? Why is it either there or not there?

Generally speaking, confidence comes from our experience in having done something well; having achieved something with a successful outcome. If we have tried and failed, tried and got it wrong, then our confidence can be lost, even shattered.

The word ‘confidence’ comes from the late Middle English: from Latin ‘confidentia’, from ‘confidere’ ‘have full trust’.

Trusting in oneself is the real key to having (self) confidence. It is about trusting one’s ability to do a task; to complete something with success. In situations where the trust is lacking there is often that voice of ‘doubt’ that creeps in. The voice that knows that there has been a previous, similar situation where the outcome was not satisfactory or had a negative impact in some way.

Confidence building starts at a very young age. Our first steps, our first interactions and our first time in school is where we start this journey. Depending on how our efforts and actions are received and accepted, judged, rejected or ignored will determine if we gather and build our confidence or not. Once broken, confidence is often difficult to rebuild. Old stories, old memories and old saboteurs can play havoc with our mind if we have had our confidence broken.

In truth, writing this article is actually quite a challenge for me. My confidence in getting all of my punctuation, grammar and sentence structure right plays on my mind. The reason for this is, I did not get the correct education in English class when I was at school. I have had to teach myself and get others to help me improve my writing throughout my adult life. I have had to find some self-belief; some confidence from within, to be able to call myself ‘a writer’.

Interestingly, I have published several books and am about to get my first novel published. It has taken a lot of confidence building to do this and there are still moments when I have to breathe deeply to hold that confidence. That inner voice of ‘the critic’ can be very loud sometimes!

There are many areas of life where we have to find our confidence to do something. Public speaking is another good example. It is actually one of the top ten fears. Standing in front of people and speaking from a stage can be terrifying for many people. Thankfully, with some training, confidence can be built up to support people to do public speaking and many other things if their confidence is lacking.

Oftentimes the words ‘fake it until you make it’ are used. This can be a good strategy at times, as the mind will eventually get the message that it is ‘safe’ to do the thing that was deemed ‘unsafe’ to begin with. Safety is often the key aspect that is missing in situations where confidence is void. As I have shared already, our childhood experiences play a big part in our confidence development and, if, as a child, we felt unsafe, unsupported or misunderstood, then that old story stays in the sub-conscious mind and pops up whenever the ‘memory’ (or soul feeling) is triggered.

Giving children positive messages (but be cautious of false hope) is great for confidence building. Fear and doubt are not good, and it is often the case that one, or both of these things get embedded into our being from a very early age. This, of course, then stops or lessens one’s confidence.

I like to use the phrase ‘Name ‘IT’ and Tame ‘IT’’ when working with people with confidence building. Naming the ‘thing’ that is in the way is a good place to begin. The work can then be done to tame ‘it’. This is where some good holistic psychotherapy can help. One area where this is useful is with ‘Anxiety’. Meditation, breathing and being still helps to build confidence with one’s control of the mind and body, and helps to lessen anxiety. And, once again, there is generally a story that caused the anxiety, so naming and taming ‘it’ is the way to start dealing with it.

Reading through this now, before sending it off to be published, has caused a minor flare up of anxiety (fear) in me, as I have now exposed my vulnerability in some way by writing about my own (lack of) confidence. However, by continually naming and facing and working on my fears and doubts and old stories, I lessen them and build up my self- confidence. I trust that this article has also helped you to look at and build up your confidence in some way too.

“We can try and look confident dressed in designer clothes or driving a flashy car but real confidence glows from within.” Anne McKeown

Did you know that you were not born lacking confidence? I’ve had clients tell me that they have been shy, awkward and lacking confidence forever.

Let me remind you that you screamed when you were hungry, you pushed yourself to stand up tall, and talked out loud when you were a toddler until, at some point you were told to sit down and be quiet, or were embarrassed by something or someone, or made an unconscious decision to protect yourself from external influences.

The good news is that the real confident you is still there inside, you just need to open the door and let him/her out. Allow that child to once again stand tall, speak up and feel free.

Self-confidence is the belief and affirmation that you are valuable, worthwhile and capable, with some optimism added to help you ascertain your abilities and act courageously.

Confidence isn’t just a character trait it is something that dwells within. Your entire world will change when you acknowledge your inner confidence. Only you can allow the flow of more confidence in your life and through your body. Only you can remove the negative blocks in your mind that prevent you from feeling confident and appearing confident.

At the moment you may not even be aware of the unconscious thoughts or behaviour that you are sending out. Negative or shy signals to the world may be keeping you stuck. You can start feeling more confident by doing something simple like smiling.

A smile helps you look relaxed, confident and comfortable in your own skin. A smile is attractive and welcomes others openly. And it’s not just about perception – when we smile the brain releases endorphins (positive hormones) so we naturally FEEL more confident and secure.

Others pick up on this confidence and approach a confident person in a different manner to someone who is shy. It is hard work to create conversation with someone who is reserved and lacking confidence. Rather than being more supportive, it makes people more judgemental and frustrated with you.

Confidence comes from repetition and effort. Like any other skill it is something we can learn and develop, and it needs regular practice. You might start with smiling at people, then focus on holding your head high when you walk, then make an effort to look people in the eye, give a strong handshake etc.

You may have noticed that each of these suggestions involves your body language. This is important because people ‘see’ you before they ‘hear’ you and they judge you in that first few seconds based on your posture and emotional energy.

The second benefit of this is that the body affects the mind (and vice versa), so when you adopt a confident stance, the mind is aware of this change and adapts accordingly, creating positive thoughts and uplifting self-talk to match this positive body language and now you are in an upward growing spiral of confidence inside and out.

What NLP has taught us is that everything starts with a thought – often an unconscious one! When you are aware of your thoughts you can take a step back, question if they are helping or hindering you and then choose to change them for the better.

Confident thoughts lead to confident words which increase a confident belief system and results in confident behaviour flowing naturally.

As you can see, our perception of ourselves has a huge impact on our confidence. People who BELIEVE themselves to be confident act with confidence and create a self-fulfilling prophecy because they appear confident and feel confident, other people treat them as confident and so their confidence increases.

The picture they create in their mind is of someone capable. What picture do you see of yourself?

If this is not a flattering or confident picture than choose to change it now. Draw a new vision of yourself.

Along with this vision, write the correct definition of yourself, list the value you bring to the world, note your natural skills, your past achievements, your future goals.

Write a definition that empowers you and helps you to develop the necessary grit to push through adversity and achieve your dreams. From this your internal driver and motivation will begin to surface and have the added benefit of inspiring others too.

You no longer need to be the person others think you are, or the person you were yesterday. Today is a new day and you can be whoever you wish to be.

The mind doesn’t know the difference between a real truth and an imagined truth, it just believes what we tell it. So, start telling it that you are confident and watch yourself grow and develop. A mindset shift as small as this can bring huge benefits into your everyday life.

Have you ever watched someone, it might a first-time meeting at a party with a group of complete strangers, or someone that’s standing in front of a large audience speaking at a seminar?

This person is at ease and able to articulate and displays a manner of feeling comfortable and confident. You’ve thought to yourself, “Wow I wish I could be like that, standing there and feeling that confident in myself.” I’m sure we’ve all been that way at some stage in our lives.

How confident do you feel at this moment of your life? Do you feel you lack confidence and struggle to bring that attribute through?

Or are you a very confident person and have no fear, doubts or reservations of who you are? If you can put a number on and rate how you feel now, on a scale from 1 – 10, what would it be?

Confidence can be radiated in various levels and in different ways. You are worthy of feeling confident in your own unique way. As a young child, I grew up believing that whatever I wanted to do I could do it.

I played sports, I was not the best at everything, but I did it and had fun. I had great childhood friends, and I was never a nervous person, or even introverted. I was more of the talkative and full on child. I guess I believed I was worthy of having or doing what I wanted. I had a very confident personality and I guess being around people, which was a reflection of myself, gave me a sense of worth and allowed me to radiate that realisation.

Our Confidence Can Be Shaken

Gradually somewhere over the years, and as I got older, with new experiences, people and events, I struggled with certain aspects of myself.

At times my confidence waned, and I felt discouraged. I started to judge myself and I became more critical of my self-image and how I looked.

I worried about how I may have been seen. I didn’t complete my high school education and I was fearful about what others might think of me.

Yes, there were times when my confidence was sky high and it would plummet just as deep.

Gaining knowledge, skills and learning new and exciting informative courses, such as energy healing, have been so empowering and definitely develops one’s confidence. (When my life opened to Forensic Healing my confidence was really tested, as I would go into doubt about my abilities, and that ego voice in my head would say, you’re not good at this, or that’s not right).

I’ve learnt that if I am open and have that absolute trust and faith, especially if a client experiences great results, I feel into that, and I ground it as my confidence within me, which will help transform the experiences that I create.

Is Confidence About Being Egotistical?

With the amount of social media and reality shows, we are continually being influenced by today’s influencers.

They project strong individual images and we’ve somehow come to a point where we think that if someone is expressing themselves more boldly, overtly and maybe even no holds barred type of character, that they are somehow full of themselves and very egotistical.

Confidence is also about coming from a sense of humility and compassion for others, from a place of authenticity. If you flaunt that to the world by showing up as ‘unapologetic’ or ‘shameless’ then that can be construed as self-centred and egocentric.
Being confident is having the grace and brashness to walk into a room feeling so confident in your skin that you don’t worry about what others think.

Confidence also comes from believing in yourself and knowing that you don’t have to be like everyone else, simply being quietly confident can make a huge difference in the world around you.

Expanding Your Confidence

You may have experienced severe lack of self-confidence as a child due to how you were acknowledged growing up.

It could have been from your parents not truly acknowledging the little steps you made along the way, like riding your bike, drawing or painting pictures, swimming in the school carnival.

Maybe teachers in their ignorance, saying you were stupid, (yep I got that one from my English Teacher) because you didn’t spell that correctly. Or they may have said, “You’d better give up playing the violin because you’re not good at it, or berated for not doing better when playing sport better.

Childhood issues of self-worth, being told they would not amount to anything, quickly deflates one’s self-esteem and can suffocate and shrink the inner essence of their confidence.

Everyone experiences being nervous or anxious about doing something that pushes them past that comfort zone of who they think they are, and what they truly can accomplish, but it’s until we actually push through limiting beliefs that may have been thrown at us, that we truly know our power.

Then you become this optimistic and expanding vessel of positiveness! We all have the ability to be inspired and to inspire others.

If you find that you’re having issues of being self-assured and lacking confidence of who you are and what you want in life, then I know the benefits of Forensic Healing can quickly shift those limiting beliefs.

Have faith that you are a unique individual that is a power source of energetic flow and limitless possibilities.

In The Midst Of Chaos & Devastation – Confidence Comes

Over the last month we have been experiencing devastating fires in our region. Much loss of property, homes, animals and human live. We battled on my sister’s property one day fighting what became overwhelming fires, some were small and just as quickly could flare up and ravage a tree with ferocity that stood 15 feet high.

With the neighbouring people we stood watching as fires swept across the top of each one’s property from east to west. It was scary and in rural areas, we had to wait for a local service to assist.

The noise of fire, trees crackling, and dry grass burning was loud. You feel helpless, you’re at the mercy of mother nature, and things can go from bad to worse in a flash.

The neighbour had two young teenage girls, and we were all (it was only women at that time) fighting what we could with wet hessian bags, and shovels smacking the flames out.

The mother was trying to remain calm and assure her girls all would be ok, but as we all looked at one another and trying to yell above the noise, I felt compelled to say some words about the fire, how it was a symbol of change, the fact this experience was and is part of purging, as fires so often do.

Not only in the physical sense but on a spiritual level. To clear away any dense emotional pain, old habits, conditions that have started to break down in our lives and we need to find the inner strength to let go of what is weighing you down and hidden in the shadows so we can reawaken, rebirth and ultimately bring renewal.

She started crying and confided to me that this was something that she felt she has been going through recently, she had unbeknown to me, been making significant changes to her health and life.

I didn’t know her very well, so what I started to intuitively be guided to share became evident it was a message for her. At that precise moment I was extremely confident I was there to be that spark of courage, in this midst of extreme chaos and terror. She too was confident that I as meant to be there at that time, as she looked at me and said, “You were meant to be here today to tell me this.”

We all experience a certain lack of confidence in stages of our lives, just as much as we can grow with confidence as we learn, become assertive and determine how we can share our unique abilities in a multitude of ways.

The Universe wants you to nurture confidence, especially when you listen and know or feel that you are on the right path, right now and at this precise time.

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I look forward to hopefully meeting you, joining your journey and helping you in any way to ride the waves of growth, new beings and this wonderful life we truly can find inspiring and inspirational!

Many Blessings, Love & Joy to You All

Confidence is the feeling or belief that we can have faith in, or rely on, someone.

Self-confidence is knowing that we can trust our self. We have a belief in our abilities of what we can and can’t do, what we are able to achieve and what we can safely attempt and possibly even master, particularly in social situations.

It is different from expertise; it is a sense that things will work out and that we will do okay.

Self-confident people seem at ease and appropriately assertive. There is a sense of certainty in their actions and speech. For example; the confident person meets a new person with a direct gaze and personal presence. There is little evidence of shyness, withdrawal or hesitation. Confident people are okay with putting themselves ‘out there’.

Is Confidence The Same As Self-Esteem?

Self-confidence can be shored up by self-esteem, but they are not the same. Self-esteem is a value of self, a positive self-regard or self-love. However, you can feel completely valuable as a person but not have much confidence in your ability to master certain tasks in life. Conversely, someone may appear confident in many situations while internally not feeling worthy of the success they have made.

However, you are far more likely to be confident when you have high self-esteem. It’s all about your belief in yourself. If you like yourself you are more likely to have positive self-talk that is encouraging, leading to greater confidence in ability.

Those with high self-esteem and low levels of confidence, may just need to push their boundaries and try more new things because confidence is enhanced by evidence.

Many people who appear to have the gift of confidence may have actually been though a lot of experiences where they simply had to show up no matter what. Perhaps they had to move house or school frequently so even as a child new experiences lost their edge. Or possibly they had to take on responsibilities at an early age, thus learning additional skills.

Many confident people are self-made. These are individuals who wanted to push themselves into new or daring situations for a reason, maybe they wanted a better job position, or to travel, or more relationship opportunities.

Experience is the evidence that fosters confidence proving you can take on a challenge and not crumble, making the next new experience or challenging situation a little less daunting.

Emotions That Inhibit Confidence

There are emotional factors that can block the ability to gain experience and get the evidence needed to develop better confidence, broadly they are fear and shame.

Fear will stop you from stepping out or stepping up to a new challenge. Fear of the unknown, fear that you will be at risk if you step out of your comfort zone, imagining all the terrible things that might happen in as many different scenarios.

People who suffer from anxiety can form catastrophic expectations of the outcome of their attempts, scaring themselves out of opportunities that could prove otherwise. These fears are fantasies of dreadful outcomes. If this is you then it is even more important to try to push your boundaries to disconfirm the worry. Try to take steps that are manageable and not overwhelming, and to prove, incrementally, that things are never as bad as you imagine they will be.

The fear or anxiety that blocks confidence can also be a cover for fear of failure and humiliation. The possibility of feeling shamed is a huge deterrent in trying new things. In human’s shame is possibly one of the most overwhelming and dreaded emotional mood states.

Shame is a crippling sense of being unworthy, it can cause a whole body drop in the nervous system and recovery can take time. Shame creates the feeling of wanting to hide, to disappear, and for those who battle with shame avoiding it can be more important that stepping out.

We all have an inbuilt psychological mechanism that aims to protect us from the dreaded feeling of shame, it’s the inner critic. What Freud first called the superego, the internal voice of judgement and standards. This social checking mechanism tells us when we are getting too much and need to pull things in and, ideally, can also bring us up when we are feeling down. Unfortunately, this ability to self-regulate, lift up out of low-energy emotions, and calm down high arousal levels, doesn’t always work optimally.

When the punishing and frightening aspect of the superego is dominant, anxiety and avoidance of shame ruin self-confidence. An inner voice echoes, ‘why try when I am likely to fail and ruin things?” All the external support and evidence to the contrary will not silence this inner tyrant. This is the voice of limitation.

How Do We Overcome The Voice Of Limitation?

Inscribed on the temple of Delphi were the words “Know Thyself” and this is the best option in understanding one’s inner conflicts.

When the voice of the inner critic is recognized as a destructive or damaging internal dialogue, the person has a chance to change. But, when the voice takes over and scares one into a state of immobility, self-esteem and confidence goes down the tube.

A good idea is to externalise the arguments, speak them out as if you were having a conversation with two parts of your-self (because this is exactly what is happening within you). In this way you get the fear fantasies out in the open so their power is not going around in your head and then you can start to get evidence against them.

Building greater self-confidence is a multi-tiered approach. It includes knowing ones’ self and being relatively okay with who you are, pushing boundaries of behaviour, and dealing with the inner voice of limitation. This entails letting go of perfectionism, or, more importantly, the idealised image we think we should be.

For people with high inner standards, perfectionism can prevent confidence either through resistance to trying anything until you feel you will be perfect, or lapsing into the fear of failure discussed above.

Self-compassion is more important in this case than confidence, and it’s hard to have one without the other. When we have compassion for ourselves we can forgive the mistakes of ourselves and others. Compassion can calm the critical voice replacing the sympathy we may not have got as a child.

Tolerance for the frustration of trying is another significant component of confidence. How can you try if you can’t bear the effort?

Also, gaining awareness of, and letting go of our need to try and make other people happy at the expense of ourselves. Always identify your needs in a situation, then you are far more likely to make sure at least one person is taken care of!

Negative self-talk in any form needs to be uncovered and neutralised. If we don’t have the ability to know ourselves and identify our own inner inhibitory voice then not only can it take over, but it can get projected out and seen as coming from other people. A belief that they are judging you.

Our reality is ours. It is better we know and give ourselves the attention, compassion and encouragement we need. The more we understand about who we truly are, the less we operate on an automatic level. Our confidence then is based in knowing who we are, being okay with failing and succeeding, being able to give it a go and forgive ourselves if we don’t succeed.