how to be more confident

7 Best Ways To Gain Confidence in 2011

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Barbara Jolie | CATEGORIES: confidence, self improvement

Confidence is a characteristic that allows us to take risks in our lives. It is often through risk, we achieve great success in many aspects of our lives. It makes sense, therefore, to try to develop our own self-confidence as best we can in order to be successful and happy. Here are 7 best ways to do just that:

Create a Life Philosophy

The basis of your self-confidence will come from your having developed and followed a life philosophy.  This life philosophy can grow out of a great thinker whom you admire, a convergence of ideas you’ve picked up in your education, or something unique to yourself that you’ve developed. The point is that you should have a philosophy that will guide your every action. If you have a solid philosophy on life, and it’s one that you’ve developed smartly, then you’ll always know how to act and think. That’s something you can be confident in.

Be Aware of Yourself

Always strive to be aware of yourself: your body and your mind and your emotional state. Self-awareness will allow you to monitor how you are currently following your life philosophy. If you are always aware of your actions, then you can be confident that they are true to who you are; however, if you lack self-awareness, you might sometimes act in ways that contradict your life philosophy, thus harming your self-confidence.

Keep Good Company

Surround yourself with friends, family members, and a romantic partner who can help you become a better person. Ideally, these people will fit into your life philosophy in some manner, though they need not share that life philosophy directly. By surrounding yourself with good people, you can be confident in your relationships.

Pursue Your Passions

Confidence comes from doing a job that you know you’re good at. Confidence comes from doing a job that you love. Too often people work jobs they hate in order to do the things they love off the clock. Why not try to combine your passions with your job? You’ll have no reason to doubt yourself throughout the day if your job is to pursue your passions.

Understand Failure

In order to be confident in yourself, you must understand and have experienced the nature of failure. For without failure, you cannot understand what it means to succeed. Without knowing the difference between the two, what’s the point of being confident in yourself? Confidence is what helps you succeed, but there’s no need to succeed if you don’t mind failure.

Practice Self-Discipline

Self-discipline will help you become confident in yourself because it will force you to control your impulses. By controlling your impulses you can understand how your subconscious functions. By practicing self-discipline you can develop the confidence in your ability to control the whims and desires that do not necessarily connect with your life philosophy.

Reflect

Finally, you must reflect often on your day, on your weeks and months, on your year, and on your life. Reflect on how you handled a stressful situation. Reflect on your memories. Use reflection to understand how you have made your way through the world so far. Learn from self-reflection, for by learning, you can figure out how to handle yourself in the future, thus giving yourself the confidence to be a better person.

This guest post is contributed by Barbara Jolie, who writes on the topics of online classes.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: barbara.jolie876@gmail.com.

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  • avornyo patrick

    encourage words indeed

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  • http://www.thereflectiveself.com Dandy

    Hi Barbara,
    This is a lovely post. I love the idea of creating a life philosophy! When I was growing up there was nothing or nobody I admired. I had no role model. But when I got older I found there were some attributes I admired in characters I read in books. I held onto these attributes and it got me through rough times. It did help my confidence. Thanks for these great tips Barbara! Have a Happy New Year!

    ~Dandy

  • http://www.bestihave.com Marion Youngblood

    I really like the power of your words regarding a life philosophy, “then you’ll always know how to act and think.” I honestly cannot think of anything more important than having that point of reference as we live our lives.

    Enjoyed the post and your perspective. Thanks.

  • http://www.fredtracy.com Fred Tracy

    I think this is some great advice. I’ve really started doing these in the past few months and I’ve had more than just financial success – I’m actually happier. I especially liked the part about self awareness. I think that one may rank as #1 for me. Thank you for the article. :)

  • http://www.anthonybasich.com/ Anthony Basich

    Practicing self discipline is an awesome way to skyrocket your confidence. Self confidence is built on winning and every time you control your impulses you have indeed won a small personal battle. The more self discipline you have, the greater your confidence will be.

    Keeping in good company is another great point. Hanging around people who empower you by offering encouragement will lead to greater belief in yourself.

    Awesome points Barbara ;)

  • http://hanofharmony.com The Vizier

    Hi Barbara,

    I love your 7 ways on how to gain confidence! :D Here are my thoughts on the points that stood out for me.

    Create a Life Philosophy

    This is the most important and powerful point for me about having confidence. I firmly believe that we should have some guidelines about how to manage our lives and a life philosophy is the best way. By knowing how to think and act in any situation, we are in a better position to deal with any change in life. And since change is the only constant in life, our philosophy should be able to manage this.

    One of the mottos I have is to always focus on the solution and not the problem. This helps me to keep on moving forward through or around the obstacles I face. As we go through life, we may find that certain parts of our philosophy are not adequate. That is ok. Life is a learning process and it is through our experiences that we learn the best way to live.

    Understand Failure

    Failure are lessons that life gives us to help us to grow and become better people. The only path to lasting success is through failure. We must fail and make mistakes to succeed. These powerful lessons show us what we are doing wrong so that we can learn to do things right. When you learn anything new, you are bound to make mistakes, but it is ok because you know it is part of the learning process. In time, you know you will become better at something because of practice. This mindset should also be applied to failure and life in general. If we realize that failures are lessons, we will have an easier time learning them.

    Practice Self-Discipline

    Unless we can learn to master our selves and passions, we can never be truly free. It may seem contradicting at first, how can we be free if we stop ourselves from doing whatever we want to do whenever we want to do? Even though we have endless choices in life, we must remember that not all choices are beneficial for us in the long run. Having self-control enables us to make the right choices even when we do not feel like it. It helps us to persevere and see things through when it is easier to give up. And the more we success we have because of this, the more confident we will become.

    Thank you for sharing this wonderful article!

    Irving the Vizier

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  • http://flawlessconfidence.com Martin

    I don’t agree with this whole “pursue your passion in your job” concept but I agree that it’s important to be able to do something that you do love on a daily basis. It’s hard to be confident if you’re unhappy. Keeping good company is also a great tip – especially when it comes to spending more time with confident and supportive people.