Friday, February 16, 2007

What is Confidence?

It is well worth discussing what self-confidence is, before talking about how you can transform yourself from a person with low self confidence into a super-confident human being.

We as human beings are able to perform many actions and tasks without much thinking, almost automatically as if we were robots, like riding a bike or a car. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to forget how to drive? You can drive as well you originally did with a little practice even after years of not driving. The reason is that everything related to driving is now a part of your subconscious mind and doesn't need any conscious input. When you have achieved this level in any skill, you are then 'very confident' about it. It's now automatic and you are able to make it happen easier than you can blink your eye...wait, isn't that just another skill?

Doing something so well that you know it like the back of your hand produces a result called 'self-confidence'.

When you think or believe that you have low confidence, you need to be a little more specific rather than encompassing your entire life with the label of low confidence. You may have abundance of confidence in your ability to perform a particular task, but not in another area.

Have you ever heard someone saying, "I never have any confidence in myself"? The more they say this, the more they come to believe it. This label becomes more and more prominent gradually and in the end turns into an excruciating pain. It becomes one's reality and everything else is then filtered through those limited lenses of false reality.

This false reality also destroys one's ability to successfully accomplish many other things which otherwise could be easily done. The 'but' factor creeps in everything. Even if he or she achieves some success, it will be labeled as being 'lucky' ('Oh, I was just lucky'). Talk about digging one's own grave and jumping into it. It's almost a pity to see people doing this to their own lives, so comfortably.

It's almost startling how easily someone can say the above words and then 5 minutes later you can find them doing things only

It can be quite startling how someone will say they have no confidence and yet 5 minutes later you may just be amazed with a new challenging project they have just undertaken or their next adventure trip. They may just seem to do tasks anyone can wreck their nerves upon and still feel they don't have enough confidence.

So self-confidence or the lack of it has a lot to do with how you choose to view yourself. In short, it's nothing more than a perception. It's not necessary for perceptions to be the true reflection of reality. Often these perceptions, even between just a few people, can be amazingly different even though all these people go through the same kind of experience in reality.

Perceptions are filters which we use to process what happens around us all the time. Our perceptions can easily make us feel good, bad or totally indifferent. They can provide us a great boost of never-ending energy or deflate us into an anxious and fearful mass. Our perceptions have some real power we need to get in control of.

Our perceptions are mostly based on our past experiences, both conscious and subconscious. They help us analyze what is happening around us all the time and also enable us to decide their implications. Our mind has the capability to compare quickly any current experience with a past experience and decide and perform the present reaction almost in a blink of an eye. Any good or bad experience therefore, simply helps us decide our
future events, unless the experience is changed consciously.

So now you have a clear clue about the way you can turn yourself into a super-confident human being. Wrong perceptions formed in childhood or during adoscent age can run the rest of the life with feelings of inadequacy and failure. When changed to empowering ones, the same perceptions can raise an individual from the pit of failure to the pinnacle of success.

Any situation may be read in many different ways. We have all had experience completely misreading a situation and then finding it to be totally opposite.

Your first step towards a lasting self-confidence begins by accepting that you may have wrong perceptions in certain matters of your life and about yourself and that a change is required. Many people live their lives trying to display a false confidence and they fail to realize that the terrible fears and limitations they hold inside and never show to others can be dissolved once accepted and then changed consciously.

Have you ever dismissed a positive compliment? From now onwards, never do it again. Always accept a compliment with a sincere 'thank you', never with phrases like 'Oh, it was nothing' or 'Well, it wasn't that good'.

Learn to highlight your achievements first in your own mind and then in front of others through your actions. Let others find how confident you really are with the new you who knows no defeat, no limitation and goes towards success with an unstoppable momentum. That's whom we call a confident human being.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

well u said that if anyone comments u jst take it with a positive response but i'm thanking u from the bottom of my heart sir to have enlightened in me the immense belief of self confidence. i'm speechless nd happy to be a member of this success mantra.