Confidence isn’t something that comes easily to everyone. For some it shows up intermittently, for others confidence is tricky. Confidence in YOU is required to achieve your hopes, dreams and goals. Here are a handful of proven ways to boost your self-confidence and get ahead.
#1 Know your strengths. What are you good at? Everyone is good at something. Grab onto your strengths, write them down where you can see them, and refer to your list often. Whenever you’re lacking confidence, grab your list of strengths and review them. Knowing and appreciating your strengths is a great way to boost your self-confidence.
#2 Celebrate your successes. People tend to spend a whole lot of time focusing on their failures and mistakes and about thirty seconds celebrating something they have done well. That’s backwards. Mistakes happen, and those who are successful spend a few minutes evaluating their mistakes and finding the lesson in them and then they move on.
#3 Visualize Success. Our brains are amazing. When we visualize ourselves being successful and achieving our goals, it actually makes us feel more confident. Olympic and professional athletes know this and spend hours before a competition or performance visualizing their success. They visualize the entire race from the beginning gunfire to what it feels like to cross the finish line and break the ribbon. They hear the crowd screaming, they feel their feet pounding the pavement and they smell the hamburger stand down the street.
You can use this same power of visualization to boost your confidence. Visualize how you feel, what you look like, how you carry yourself and what you do when you are full of confidence.
#4 Get in the habit of being successful. One of the best ways to boost self-confidence and accomplish your goals at the same time is to create a habit of success. This is accomplished by creating smaller, attainable goals. This way you’re taking steps toward your larger goal and at the same time boosting your confidence, giving you more faith in your ability to be successful.
#5 Take Risks. Confident people are able to take risks without fear. If you’re lacking self-confidence, risks feel much more significant and powerful. The result is that the risk is avoided and nothing is accomplished. To boost your self-confidence, take a few risks. Start small, like in the previous tip, and take risks that don’t feel so frightening. As you become accustomed to risks, and success, you’ll be able to dive into bigger risks and opportunities with more confidence.
Of course, you can also take advantage of these for confidence-boosting like smiling, standing up tall, dressing for success and surrounding yourself with supportive people. These are all great ways to boost your self-confidence. However, if you have big dreams and goals, you’re going to want to take bigger steps to boost your self-confidence. Put one or two of these suggestions into practice today and start changing your life.
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