How To Be Confident

Self confidence comes from feeling good about yourself and believing in your abilities, it is basically a state of mind, but it doesn't come naturally to everyone! Confident thinking and behaviour can be practised over time and will eventually become a habit: here are 8 essential tips for both understanding and gaining confidence.

Understanding Confidence:

The first step to improving your own self confidence is to understand how a lack of it affects you and others around you. No one feels confident in every aspect of their life so one must recognise when and where they feel their most confident and when they do not. Keep a diary or journal and write down when you feel at your most or least confident, this way you'll be able to recognise and understand the aspects of your life that you need to change or adapt to in order to progress your personal confidence.

Know Your Triggers:

After keeping a diary for a while you'll begin to recognise patterns, this could a be certain situation, a conversational topic or friend that knocks your confidence, these are known as triggers. The simplest thing you can do once you realise what your triggers are is to break the cycle, leave that place, change the topic, lose that friend! None of these suggestions will be easy but over time will have a positive effect on your life and your confidence.

Meditation:

Everybody underestimates the power of their own mind, the art of meditation gives people the power to completely change their lives, this practise can relate to your own confidence and have extraordinary effects. Sit comfortably, on the floor or in a chair, close your eyes and focus on your breathing, start to build a picture in your head of a more confident you, how you would look, how you would feel. Use this mental image as an aspiration of the person you want to be.

Would You Say That To Your Best Friend?:

Most insecurities come from the messages you send to yourself, a lack of confidence often comes from your own negative thoughts and the nasty things you say to yourself such as; "I look ugly today" "I've put on so much weight" "I don't look as pretty as other girls". Now think, would you say these things to your little sister or your best friend? I can imagine the answer is no. If someone said these things aloud to your best friend you'd be outraged that a person could be so disrespectful, so why say it to yourself? Allow yourself the same consideration you would another person...be kind to yourself.

No Need To Compare:

Being a perfectionist can be a positive thing...but striving for a societal version of perfection in unattainable. As hard as it can be, NEVER COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS, you are YOU, YOU are beautiful, YOU are intelligent, YOU are successful. Inspiration is healthy, comparison is not!

Unwind:

From experience, a lack of confidence can come from a cluttered mind/life, stress has a direct correlation to self destruction, in the form of insecurity. Stress can't always be avoided, work will always be hard, school will always challenge you and relationships will never be easy, the best thing you can do is adapt to stress well. Learn to unwind, take a bath...feel the warm water on your skin, relax your tense muscles and inhale beautiful smells.

Beauty Regime:

Most people associate confidence with looking pretty...or not. In this generation both girls and boys are constantly told they need to be thinner, blonder or more tanned, not being able to achieve society's version of beautiful will lead to a lack of confidence, anxiety and depression, especially among young people. For those wishing to increase their levels of confidence they must feel as beautiful as they can within themselves. This is easily done with a little bit of self care, use a face mask or hair treatment, paint your nails a pretty colour or try that hairstyle you thought you couldn't pull off - spend a designated night every week to look after yourself and your body and make yourself feel beautiful.

Cherish Compliments:

As a person with low confidence or self esteem it can be difficult to accept compliments, we tend to just brush them off, but compliments can boost our self esteem - so learn to love them. When a person pays you a compliment - thank them, even if you struggle to believe it, attempt to save complimentary messages by saving them or writing them down, that way you can look back on them when you're feeling down and remember that you are loved and cared for and there are people that want to build you up!

Written By Chloe Scott- Pike