Unleash your inner confidence by identifying and eliminating detrimental habits. Discover the ten common practices that might be sabotaging your self-assurance and learn how to let them go for a more confident you.
Confidence is about what you remove, not what you add
Most of the time people don’t lack confidence in an absolute sense.
- Their natural, good-enough level of confidence is being blocked or interfered with by inner obstacles like chronic worry and anxiety, negative self-talk, and compulsive avoidance
- If you can learn to identify and eliminate these habits, you will start to feel more confident
Quit hiding from what you really want
If you become so good at denying your own wants and needs in order to accommodate other people, eventually you are going to believe that you and your wants are just not as important as other people’s theirs
- This will interfere with your confidence
- A great way to re-discover your confidence is to tone down the self-denial and deference to others, and start expressing yourself and your genuine wants & needs more assertively
Second-guessing yourself
When you constantly second-guess yourself, you’re effectively communicating to your own mind that you’re not reliable or trustworthy-that your decisions and instincts should not be relied on.
- Confidence and humility are not mutually exclusive. If you want to feel more confident and stay humble, make time to reflect and think critically but don’t let yourself fall into mindless and reflexive second-Guessing.
Dwelling on past mistakes
If you’re constantly reliving past mistakes in your head, it’s going to be tough to feel confident about yourself in the present.
- Give yourself permission to let it go. And then work like hell to keep letting it go, each time it comes up.
Avoid reassurance-seeking
If you always outsource your emotional struggles to others, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to be confident
- A big part of emotional maturity-and the confidence that results from-comes from taking responsibility for your own feelings
- Yes, your feelings of inadequacy or insecurity are difficult. But they’re your feelings. And ultimately, managing them is your responsibility
Trusting your feelings
Your feelings will lead you in the wrong direction at least as often as the right one
- Listen to your emotions, but don’t trust them blindly
- Treat your emotions like a friend – be aware of your anger and curious about it
- Similarly, listening to your sadness and being willing to experience it is likely a much better idea than criticizing yourself for it
Put the breaks on catastrophizing
It’s hard to feel confident when you’re constantly telling yourself the world is about to end
- Even if you know intellectually that the worst-case scenario is unlikely to happen, if you constantly tell yourself it is, that’s how you will feel
- Contraception is like turbo-charged worry which means it’s even harder for confidence to shine through
Let go of things you can’t control
Try validating their struggles rather than trying to fix or solve them
- Give them space rather than peppering them with questions
- Reflect on what emotions are stirred up in you as a result of them struggling
- You can succeed in being validating regardless of whether their mood improves or not
All You Need to Know
Think about what habits you have that are interfering with your confidence, then work to remove them
- Coping with anxiety
- Reassurance-seeking
- Catastrophizing
- Not asking for what you really want
- Trying to control things you can’t control
- Second-guessing yourself
- Criticizing yourself after mistakes
- Dwelling on past mistakes
Stop trying to cope with anxiety
When you immediately try and get rid of your anxiety by applying coping skills to make it go away, you teach your brain to view anxiety as dangerous.
- Stop coping with your anxiety and learn to accept it. Anxiety may feel bad but it’s not dangerous.
Compromising on your boundaries
Boundaries are an expression of self-respect.
- When you set and enforce healthy boundaries, you’re communicating to the world (and yourself) that you matter-that your values, wants, needs, and opinions are important and worth honoring and protecting.
- Confidence rests on the foundation of Self-respect, which comes from setting (and enforcing!) healthy boundaries that protect your wants and needs.
Criticizing yourself after mistakes
You can be critical without criticizing
- For example, when you criticize yourself in response to a mistake, you create an unrealistic view of yourself that’s almost always too negative
- The second option is more realistic, more compassionate, AND more productive
- It acknowledges the mistake was made, validates the mistake and helps put things in perspective
- Finally, it’s constructive
