Tips to Growing Self- Confidence

Do you feel doubtful and inadequate at times? Do you concentrate on your failures, mistakes, and limitations? Do you feel like you are going nowhere, lack confidence, are drifting through life with no purpose?

If you do not perceive your own self-worth, you cannot achieve total self-confidence. But the good news is you can break the bonds of limitations that have been holding you back. To make the necessary changes in our life to become more confident and to feel we are in control over taking our life in the direction of our choosing, will require us to free ourselves from our inner fears and false beliefs about our limitations. 

In order to be totally free from our insecurities, we will need the intellectual understanding as to how to make the necessary changes in our lives.

Dr. Robert Anthony, a specialist in behavioral therapy, helps us explore the reasons we underestimate ourselves in his book The Ultimate Secrets of Total self-Confidence. The following is a brief review of his thoughts:

First, you must understand you are the result of what you have been taught by your parents and others throughout your life. You are the sum total of your experiences, what you have been sold and what you have bought to be true. All of these ideas we have accepted to be true about ourselves and the world around us affect our every thought and action.

You must also come to the realization that what you believe to be true is, in fact, not really the truth; it is only true in your own mind. Because of the false realities we believe about ourselves, the average person never comes close to reaching their fullest potential. It is impossible to reach our fullest potential if we do not attempt to disprove our perceived limitations.

When you accept your beliefs about yourself to be true, you can never explore your potential because you only live inside your walls of beliefs – where you feel safe; like any wall, your walls of belief imprison you. 

You refuse to deal with anything outside your walls of belief because they threaten you. As a result, it is very difficult to change and improve ourselves because:

The beliefs in our mind we hold to be true control our every action and thought.

• It is easier and safer to give reasons why it is not possible to change our beliefs than to change them.
• We have programmed our mind over a long period of time with our present beliefs; our responses and actions have become habit to our well established programming.

If you are going to successfully improve your life, to build self-confidence and success, you must be willing to challenge your false beliefs and misconceptions about yourself. It is the false realities you believe about yourself that are holding you back. In order to achieve self-confidence and your unlimited potential, you must acknowledge your present level of awareness is distorted. You can expand your awareness by:

Being willing to reassess your beliefs, ideals, values, goals, and compulsions.

• Striving to improve your awareness of your distorted thoughts about yourself.
• Providing yourself with the motivation to change.
• Being willing to identify your misconceptions and past mistakes and attempt to correct them going forward.
• Learning to listen with an open mind for a true understanding of the limitations of your walls of belief; without prejudging your conclusions, venture outside your wall of safety.
• Ceasing to defend your viewpoints and beliefs as right or wrong.
• Ceasing to block the acceptance of new ideas.
• Being willing to reorganize your needs and motivations.

Our greatest problem is underestimating our own capabilities. A distorted self-image keeps us from reaching our full potential. 

Our misconceptions prevent us from understanding how worthy, capable and unique we are. We must start by challenging everything we do not like about our life right now. 

To change we must transform our beliefs that have been limiting our success and self-confidence. By changing our inner thoughts, we can change how we think about ourselves. Once we change from within, an outward change of action will follow.