How to be more confident in yourself – Insecurity no more

Hello friends!

Lack of confidence in yourself, insecurity, is a serious problem. We can say that it is a common problem because everyone ends up having an area in which they do not feel comfortable working. Thus, some people have an insecurity that is generalized, runs through almost all of their lives in almost all situations, while most of us end up lacking confidence in one or another activity. For example, to approach an interesting person at a party or in assessment situations – such as tests and presentations – or to talk to superiors at work.

With that, the big question arises for us clinical psychologists: “How can I have more confidence in myself? How to end or reduce insecurity?”

The first step to starting to feel more confident is to take responsibility for your actions. You are where you are because of your past choices, not random circumstances or the influence of others. Self-confident people always know that they have the power to make decisions and change the state of affairs. Placing the blame on others, removing responsibility from oneself, is both a cause and a consequence of insecurity, because imagine: if everything is the fault of something I cannot control, how will I feel safe to act?

Therefore, the first step is to say and think: “I am responsible for being here, in this way and in this way”.

Sometimes this can come as a shock and can cause a feeling of anger, sadness or regret. But it’s important to bring the responsibility to yourself. Only then will you be able to begin to be firm in your own behaviors and choices. Only then will you be able to see that in the next five years you could have completely changed your life, starting now!

See also – Where will you be in five years?

Deal with your past

The second step to having more self-confidence is to look into the past and find out why confidence has been diminished. If you would like to have a greater level of confidence in yourself, you must have experienced in your past certain moments or contacts with other people that made you lose a little confidence, right?

But, already taking responsibility for your life, you have to start thinking that there may have been an outside influence, however, it was you who let this influence shake you. As Sarte says: “It doesn’t matter what they did to you, what matters is what you do with what they did to you”.

So here we go: think about which moments in the past were important in shaking your confidence. Write them down on paper with pen or pencil, in detail, the people, moments or facts that affected you.

You can think of this past as an imaginary monster that you’ve been trying to hide, but it’s essential to confront. What could have been different? What could you have done differently? Is this past really important, does it have relevance or a real impact today? Most of the time, the answer will be no.

After you’ve written it, you should get it out even more, talking to a close friend or friend, a relative you trust, or your psychologist. By writing and speaking, you bring these imaginary influences into the present, confront what happened, and become more conscious.

Remove negativity from your life

If we analyze it well, we will see that lack of confidence and insecurity are caused by negative thoughts and feelings.

If you’re at a party and don’t feel confident approaching someone else, you must be thinking deep down that it won’t work out. As well as in situations of public presentations or tests and evaluations. Insecurity is certainly based on internal factors of negativity.

The third step, therefore, is to make a thorough assessment of these thoughts and feelings. Take a paper again and think about the last year. In what situations have you felt the most down, without confidence, motivation or security to accomplish something?

Be honest with yourself because from now on you will start to remove, to fight, to put aside all these thoughts and feelings that are affecting you.

An interesting way to think about the thoughts we have is to imagine them as an internal radio that keeps playing and playing certain “songs”. If you listen carefully, you’ll see that they’re just words, sounds you say to yourself, usually without even realizing it. So, from now on, you will change radio stations and start listening to “music” that will bring you security, confidence and self-esteem.

Continuing the exercise, also think about the past year and remember times when you felt really good about yourself, times when you nailed it and praised yourself. Write down in detail the moments, situations, events in which you felt most confident in the last twelve months.

Comparing the moments of optimism and negativism, you will already be more aware of the two “radio stations” and will be able to easily start choosing which station you want to play.

imagining success

To achieve your goals, goals and projects you have to be able to imagine yourself being successful. Imagination here is extremely important in two ways. First, because by imagining you already start to feel capable, your confidence instantly increases. Second, because by imagining success you are as if telling your brain where you want to go.

The fourth and final step is also very simple: Sit down or lie down comfortably and imagine in every detail, with colors, sensations, ambient sounds, smells (if possible), a film in which you are managing to reach and realize your goal. your objective. Watch the movie several times and you will begin to build and maintain your self-confidence at a high level.

After all, the process is very simple. Self-confident people take responsibility for their actions, know their past, fight negativity where it didn’t work before, and experience success even before they achieve it.

I want to end the text by giving a personal example. As incredible as it seems today (where I have an undergraduate, master’s and I’m finishing my doctorate), I was never an excellent student in school. In the first year of high school I almost flunked out. In the second and third year, I used to skip some classes to watch movies. For this reason, when the time for the entrance exam approached, I thought it was a possibility that I might not pass.

But that’s when I read a book that went through exactly this technique of visualization of success. I started to imagine what was after the entrance exam, which was what really mattered: I started to see myself going to college, meeting my colleagues, taking classes and, of course, going to parties…

Result: I entered the most competitive entrance exam at the Federal University of São João del-rei at the time. Imagining my own success gave me confidence at test time and spurred me on to study in depth during the last few months before and as Napoleon Hill says, “What the mind can conceive, it can accomplish.”

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