This article was last updated on December 30, 2015
“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” – Dalai Lama
Everybody has the ability to reach and accomplish their dreams, but most of us don’t. The reason for this lack of achievement and accomplishment is directly related to a lack of self-confidence.
Self-Confidence has a wealth of benefits that will benefit in your life today. Self-Confidence is a tool that is used to manage your fears, maintain a positive attitude on life, and will allow you to be more productive and have better performance throughout the day. Self Confidence is a lifestyle that needs to flow in your brain at all times if you want to maximize your potential. Self-Confidence allowed for the first person to land on the moon, self-confidence allowed The Wright Brothers to fly the first plane, self-confidence allowed Martin Luther King Jr. give a speech that changed the lives of the world.
Self-Confidence is a very important aspect that you need to apply in your life if you want to reach your full potential. We live in a society, a culture where we all have to please others and we worry about everyone else’s opinions. We worry too much on external motivations. Life is not about how much money you make, or the house you have, or the cars you drive. Life is about reaching your full potential while changing lives along the way.
Below are 4 steps that you need to master if you want more self-confidence in your life:
4 Steps to Gain Self-Confidence
1. Set Your Intentions to Be Confident
Just make the decision to be confident. You don’t need reasons or someone else’s opinion to be more confident. Confidence is a choice. Decide today and every day that you need to be more confident. Your intentions have to be “I’m going to wake up today, keep my head up high, and I’m going to be confident.” It’s that simple, you don’t need to base your mood and your attitude on other people’s comments, or your past experiences.
All you can control and all you can do is to have the intention to be more confident. You’re allowed to be happy for no reason at all. You don’t need a reason to be happy. Everyone thinks you need a psychological build up or have success to be more confident, but you don’t. Confidence is a choice, attitude is a choice. YOU choose what you are thinking about, you choose what your attitude is. Confidence is just being who you are for no reason at all.
You don’t need to jump over tall buildings, have super powers, and make a lot of money to be confident. You just need to have the intention and the desire to be confident and to be happy. Believing in yourself and believing where you are going, that is confidence. You don’t need reasons, permission, or past experiences to prevent you from becoming confident.
2. Be more Productive
Have you ever had a day where you just absolutely crushed it and you got so much accomplished? How did you feel that day? Were you angry and frustrated when you were productive or were you confident and happy? I’m guessing you were confident and happy because you felt accomplished and successful. The more productive you are, the happier you will be. And the happier you are, the more productive you will be. You will be more productive if you plan out your day the night before and develop a routine that works for you.
The importance of setting your routine the night before is to benefit your next day acting instead of reacting, to shut your subconscious mind off all day while you sleep. Acting instead of reacting is the essential for a wonderful routine. When you don’t set your daily routine the night before, you react to everything like emails, texts, phone calls, the news, family obligations responsibilities, etc. When you react instead of act, you lose track of what needs to be done that day and you spend half or more than half of your time working on things that provide no progress to your personal career. Progress = Confidence.
The more progress you create throughout your day, the more confident you will become. Force yourself every night to write down a routine and a plan for the day ahead. You will be more productive and more confident.
3. Community
Surround yourself around positive people. When you surround yourself around negative people, they will most likely bring you down. I talked about ignoring these people and getting away from them before and you have the choice to be confident. But, when negative voices are getting pounded in your head, it is extremely hard and basically impossible to ignore them.
Surround yourself with positive people who believe in you and then you will become more confident yourself. Jim Rohn once said, “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” Choose carefully who you are spending your time with because this could affect your attitude for the rest of your life. Another thing you need to do to be more confident is to root for others and wanting others to succeed. The most successful people in the world understand that life is not about them, life is about others.
When I say successful I am not talking about their money, their car, their house; I am talking about legacy and destiny. When you think of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Steve Jobs you usually don’t talk about how much money they have or what kind of house they had. You talk about what legacy they had and how they impacted the world. They did as much as they could to help others and grow others. They wanted others to be more accomplished instead of them.
4. Attitude of Gratitude
People are inclined to focus on all the different things that have not happened in their life, or all the disappointments they have in their life instead of the gifts they received. When there is a barrier or an obstacle in front of you, everyone tends to focus on the barrier instead of trying to break through the barrier. During failure we are always complaining about the failure and how it’s not fair. Why do we do this? Why do we focus on the negatives instead of the positives?
Because we lack perspective and we lack an attitude of gratitude. Gratitude is the key to happiness; it turns what we have into being enough. Gratitude is a feeling, it’s a choice that we all have to master. The phrase “Compared to What” is one of my favorites and it will help you and me to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Your circumstance is hard compared to what? Compared to a child going through cancer, compared to not being able to walk and talk, compared to not having water?
Start cultivating an attitude of gratitude and be thankful of the gifts you do have instead of the ones you don’t. Doing this will provide you confidence and happiness in your life.
Photo credit: Chris & Karen Highland
