Believing Confidence is Possible
22 December 2006[Words: 919, Reading time: 4-5 Minutes]Â
In my previous post we learnt that there are stages of belief and assurance, and why we’ll reject some ideas whereas others will manifest with relative ease. So armed with this knowledge, how do we use it?
Firstly, they can help you with your affirmations. If saying “I’m perfectly confident in every situation†raises too much internal resistance within you then you can look at the stages of believing something is possible and see which one feels most appropriate and true for you.
• “It’s possible to develop your confidence.â€
• “It’s possible for me to develop my self confidence to the level I want it to be.â€
• “I believe I can become more confident.â€
• “I can see myself being more confident, I’m becoming more confident.â€
• “I am confident.â€
• “I’m completely confident in every situation.â€
I personally think that you should pick an affirmation that still is a bit of a stretch for you. It’s also not a bad idea to say all the ones ‘underneath’ your curent level, so as you go through your affirmations leading up to the level of where you want to be and can realistically see yourself being the affirmations are completely true and unquestionable; becoming more and more true; you want to be true of you.
In fact by going through the affirmations in this way, from the ones that are unquestionably true to your dreams and ideals you open yourself up to more possibilities as you become more “susceptable†to the suggestions after agreeing with the earlier statements.
Another benefit is you can actually feel the resistance build inside you as you go through your affirmations. Or, you reach a point where you just flat out reject the statement – the warning light comes on. You can use this to help you recognise your interanl resistance in other situations.
If you really can’t believe that it’s possible to become confident (what are you doing on this blog!?) here’s an exercise for you to try: Write down all the things that would make someone feel confident. From the smallest victories to the biggest ones: It doesn’t matter how ‘stupid’ they seem when written out coldly in black and white, it only matters that they could conceivably make someone feel more confident, however slightly.
Overly simple: Sure, but we don’t need to overcomplicate things. The more simple and direct you can make it the better.
I know this exercise concentrates on confidence from the outside in, i.e. confidence that’s dependent on something external to you, the point is we’re convincing ourselves that greater levels of confidence are possible than the one you’re currently on.
If after that exercise, you still don’t feel like you could conceivably be more confident, look at everyone you know or have known in your lifetime: There’s a few exercises we can do with the people we know/have known.
1. Rank ten of them in order of confidence. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, or what criteria to use – if you want criteria use The 8 Components of True Inner Confidence and score them 1-10 in each of the 8 areas.
2. Now put yourself in (my educated guess would say you’re somewhere in the middle)
3. Imagine that you all started out the same level (which, by the way, you all did as children), now considering you have already developed your confidence to a level where you’re above some other people – you can see that you don’t have the hang ups that some people do – isn’t it now possible to develop that confidence further. You got so far already without putting any effort in, imagine how confident you could be if you took control fo this area of your life.
With your more confident friends, even by consciously watching their behaviour when you’re around them – how they relate to people, how they speak to themselves and everyone around them, how they see and interpret certain things – you can learn the attitudes that lead to higher self confidence.
(An interesting note: After a while of watching people you think are confident, you’ll notice that there’s room for improvement and they’ll still have some negative thought patterns. This actually serves as an indicator of how aware of confidence and how confident you’re becoming because you can see levels above what you once considered the top of the tops.)
A major block to believing something is possible could be that it’s ill defined. Have a look at what confidence means to you. The clearer you are the easier it is to believe it’s possible.
If you can’t believe something’s possible perhaps you’re looking at too big a jump. You might be a white belt and thinking there’s no way you can get a black belt. But there’s intermediary stages – Blue, Purple, Brown – which all represent a step in the direction you want to go. Piecemealing your development, rather than trying to go from zero to hero in one fell swoop, makes it way more achievable. I know that it would be great if there was some magic line that would instantly make all our problems vanish and our ideal life materialise without any effort. But, in the same way that if something isn’t believable, it’s not achievable, if something isn’t achievable it’s not believable. (I didn’t intend for that to come out as a feel good slogan, it just came out that way!)
Some ideas to get you believing you can be more confident, enjoy!
One Response to “Believing Confidence is Possible”
January 10th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I’ve always thought of confidence as knowing that you know, and knowing why you know. If you think you know something that you don’t, and you don’t know why you know, then you’re being conceited. (of course if you don’t know you wouldn’t think of yourself as conceited either!)
This is a good article though, thanks for taking the time to write it!
Josh