01 Dec Discover science-based strategies to boost your confidence.
At the risk of oversimplifying, confidence allows us to do what we want or need to do to live the lives we want to live and therefore, to be happier and more successful.
Happiness and life satisfaction, therefore, depend (at least in part) on confidence.
The good news is we can build more confidence; and in doing so, not surprisingly, we can enjoy more happiness and more positivity in all it’s forms …
via Psychology Today by Tchiki Davis
KEY POINTS
- The higher our self-confidence, the higher our motivation to act.
- When we expect to fail, we are more likely to do so.
- Using positive affirmations can be a good way to retrain your brain to believe you have worth.
Source: Jonathan Borba/Unsplash
Most of us want self-confidence because we want to feel good about ourselves. But, self-confidence is also important for other things. The higher our self-confidence, the higher our motivation to act. Plus, self-confidence helps increase the chances of success when we do act. That’s because when we expect to fail, we are more likely to do so (Bénabou & Tirole, 2002). For all these reasons, it makes sense that we would want to increase our self-confidence. Here are some tips and techniques to do it:
1. Know Your Worth
Perhaps the most important part of being confident is knowing your worth (Owens, 1993). We are all worthy. Yet, some of us have a deeply rooted belief that we’re worthless. Maybe we feel like we’re disposable, unlovable, or just not good in some way. But that’s not true.
If this sounds like you, you may have been taught to believe these things about yourself. Perhaps you learned this from overly critical parents, from bullying kids at school, or from a culture that suggested that your gender, race, or other features made you less worthy than others.
Early messages about our worth are internalized and become the basis for our beliefs about ourselves. So, the longer we’ve had negative self-beliefs, the harder they are to override. It may require ongoing efforts to replace internal monologues of “I’m not worthy” with “I am worthy” or “I have just as much worth as anyone else.” Using positive affirmations like these can be a good way to retrain your brain to believe you have worth.
2. Know Your Positive Qualities
Another important aspect of confidence is knowing that you have good qualities (Owens, 1993). This goes beyond simply having worth and involves recognizing that there are things about you that are good, maybe even great.
Indeed, we all have good qualities. But if we spend our mental energy thinking about the qualities that we lack, we often have little time left to think about the good qualities that we have. If this is something you struggle with, you might benefit from making a list of all your positive qualities (things like humor, determination, creativity, etc.) Then it’s just a matter of shifting your mindset to try to focus on these good qualities…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE