Having confidence is a tricky thing, and with all the suffering in the world, I can see why some would be lacking in this department. With all the images in the media trying to tell us how we should look, dress, and how we should act, we sometimes set ourselves up to have unrealistic expectations. We end up feeling as if we aren’t measuring up if we don’t wear certain clothes, or if we don’t have the money to go out to clubs, and shower women with money, that we are doing something wrong.
How do you go about instilling confidence in yourself then? Life takes a lot of adversity, how do you keep going through all the good and the bad times?
Well first of all, you have to realize that at some point, everyone has failed. Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team, roughly 3 out of five businesses will fail, and most people will change careers, and have numerous jobs in their lives. We all will fail, or sometimes fall short of our goals.
It happens, and you have to be willing to fail in order to succeed. If we allow ourselves to fail without fear every so often, we allow ourselves to take the risks we need to succeed.
Confidence is all mental, and sometimes even the most confident people will have doubts about themselves. We all have critics and doubters, and since we will all fail sometimes, we all will prove our critics right at least some of the time. Once you realize this, you won’t worry so much about failing, because you know that we can’t be perfect. Just get into the mindset that you tried, and you failed, but we all fail so its OK.
What did we learn from our mistakes? Its ok to fail, but its not ok to do the same things over and over again, and wonder why we aren’t getting anywhere.
It has been said that insanity is doing the same thing twice, and expecting a different result the second time around. If you get fired from your job because you showed up late everyday, that’s fine, it didn’t work out for you, but don’t go to your next job late every day and then wonder why you got fired again. If you learn that being late isn’t acceptable, you won’t do it the next time, and chances are you will have success in your next job.
I remember in 8th grade my mom told me I was going to be a janitor. I was failing, or at least close to failing a lot of my classes, and I didn’t care about school. I didn’t really do my homework, or study much, and for awhile I honestly thought I was going to be a janitor.
In my freshman year of high school though, I had a teacher who really believed I had some talent in me. Whenever I was struggling, she would send me to the teacher to get help, or help me out with my homework herself. If I got a bad grade, she was there to tell my parents why, so that they could help me, instead of just yell at my apparent lack of effort. She would praise the things that I did well, and if I struggled, would remind me of the fact that we can’t be good at everything.
I had a good perspective on things after that. I wasn’t as scared after that to ask for help, and to put in a little extra time on my homework, or with my tests. If I got a bad grade, I would shrug it off, and had the ability to review what I did wrong so that next time I could do better.
My GPA went from a 68 in 8th grade, to a 80 in 9th grade, and went up every year after. I had the confidence that I needed to be good at school, and did get into college luckily. I was never a great student, but I learned how to stop making excuses, and learned to prepare for what I did well in, so that I could focus on that, instead of dwelling on the subjects I was not so good at.
You have to believe that you are going to do well, regardless of the end result. If your not going to give yourself a chance, and visualize a good result, why even bother? Why show up if you don’t think your going to do anything while your there? I see so many people who could get a promotion, or do a really good job with something, but don’t because they say they can’t. If you tell people your no good, why should others think differently? You have to give the appearance that you are competent. If you can even look at people with a sense of pride, others will soon catch on.
Nothing builds confidence like having others praise you, or believe that you can do something when you really have to.
If you want confidence, it starts with you. You have to take a good, hard look at yourself, and then really start changing the things you don’t like about your life. You have to believe in yourself to stay the course when things get hard, and if your fail, you have to be able to dissect the good from the bad. Life is rough sometimes, but its what doesn’t kill you that makes you strong, and helps you build toward a more confident life.
