I always find that confidence is something already there, ingrained within us, we just have different ways of illustrating and portraying this to our audience partially because of the setbacks and challenges we have faced in the past.
"When you are confident, you are in control.
When you are confident, you feel good."
Truth is, we are confident in our own ways and we’ve just forgotten that.
Truth is, we train our minds to think we’re not confident, but we’ve already demonstrated how confident we are in the past and just haven’t given ourselves credit for it.
These are my top 5 tips to take on board every time you feel self doubt towards your confidence
1) Close your eyes and visualise
Think a time when you showed glimpses of confidence.
Whether it was when you were at school or when you got accepted for your job interview. Keep that thought in mind. Visualise that feeling.
What can you see? Who were you with? What did they say? How did you feel?
Remind yourself of when you demonstrated the confidence you maintain. As you visualise I want you to smile as you replay these flashbacks.
2) Look and speak to your reflection
Whether this is in the mirror, looking down at water, or pulling out your phone and turning on the front camera, look at yourself.
When you look back at your reflection and learn to not be afraid of the person in your reflection standing in-front of you, you will no longer need to be afraid of what anyone else thinks.
As long as you are confident with yourself, and what you bring to the table, you'll start to realise, "why should you fear what other people think?"
3) Write down everything that holds you back
This is key, alot of the times we let negative beliefs and emotions hold us back.
Things people have said and they subconsciously stay within our minds and take us back to a dark place.
My tip, get on an emotional instrumental, a lengthy 20-30 minute instrumental and allow yourself to write down everything thats been holding you back.
Everything people have said, write down the names, write down the quotes, write down the feelings you feel about yourself and give yourself time to throw up all of this negativity you’ve held inside of you.
Once its all out on paper. Look at it. Find the triggers/trends that pop up, and turn them into a positive phrase. Every time you feel yourself going down that road bring up that positive phrase. Bit like an affirmation.
4) Look at how far you've come
So often we don't congratulate ourselves for the steps we've taken. Write down everything you’ve accomplished to date. I mean Everything. From making your first cake, to sitting your first exam, to going on your first date.
Take some time out to look back on how far you’ve come. It feels good right. This reminder feels great right. It's bringing a smile right?
Frame this somewhere that will act as a reminder every time you lose confidence. Whether its right next to your bed so its the first thing you see when you wake up or last thing you look at before you call it a night.
Maybe have this reminder as your phone background.
You could go one step further and set the reminders as alarms for you to look at during the day?
Get into that mindset and then finish off with tip number 5.
5) Be brave and take that first step
Once you've implemented the tips above, now its time to take that first step that you know will give you confidence.
Whether its something small as signing up for a gym, or starting a conversation with that one person you've been wanting to date.
Maybe its something smaller than that and that could be launching a social media page, or sending that email to your manager.
Remember it is your time now, you've done the hard work, and now remind yourself to just be you. Continue with this confidence and don't let any setback take you to a place where you aren’t able to be your authentic self.
This is the confident you. Remember that :D