Learning to be more confident can be difficult, especially if you feel that you have nothing to be confident about. Part of becoming more confident is believing that you already have everything that you need within yourself already. Confidence breeds happiness, success, and positivity, and the more confident you are, the more likely that you are to succeed in life. If you allow a lack of confidence to hold you back, then you could be missing out on many opportunities. Here are some practical ways that you can become more confident so that you can take back control of your life.
Address Your Body Language
If you want to become more confident or want to appear more confident, then you need to first work on your body language and the way that you carry yourself in public. Fidgeting, shifting your feet, and pacing are all signs that you are nervous while standing up straight, and keeping good posture shows that you are confident. Wherever you go, pay careful attention to your posture, and the way that you carry yourself. If you look like a winner, you will feel like a winner.
Keep Eye Contact
Looking people in the eye is a great way to build confidence. At first, it can seem daunting, and you might find yourself looking everywhere but in a person’s eyes. Maintaining and keeping eye contact with people can be a very positive experience, however. Whenever you find yourself avoiding eye contact with somebody, bring your gaze back to theirs, and hold it. Over time, it will become easier, and eventually, it will become second nature to you.
The Tone of Your Voice
When you speak quietly, timidly, or hesitate during a conversation, you reveal your lack of confidence to the person to whom you are speaking. It is important to distinguish a person with a soft voice and a person that speaks quietly. A person with a soft voice can still be assertive and confident, while a person who speaks quietly, more often than not, just appears nervous. To sound more confident, breathe deeply. The deeper you breathe, the more open and resonant your voice is. You can practice this by recording yourself speaking and playing it back.
Think Differently
If you are not a very confident person, then you are more likely to be critical of yourself than a more confident person would be. Sometimes the key to unlocking your confidence is to start thinking differently and to start ignoring that nagging internal voice that questions everything you do and makes you second-guess yourself. Anytime that you hear that voice, counter it, and remember everything that you love about yourself, and everything that you are good at. Negative thinking can impede your confidence, so now you know that, try to think positively.
Always Love Yourself
Keeping in line with our last point, the best way to become more confident is to be more positive and to love yourself. Repeating daily self-affirmations of love has been proven to increase confidence. Start each and every day by telling yourself that you’re great as it helps to boost your confidence, so anytime you find yourself confronted with negativity, repeat your self-affirmations, almost like a mantra. Positive thinking can restructure your brain and it can improve your confidence in ways that you could never have imagined.
Friends and Family
Surrounding yourself with friends and family who encourage you and make you feel good about yourself can be a very healthy way for you to improve your confidence. Negative relationships and toxic friends can destroy confidence, while conversely, nourishing and loving relationships can build it. If you notice that any of your friends are particularly harsh or judgemental, especially when you are trying to better yourself, then maybe you are better off without them. Friends and family that encourage you, on the other hand, can help you to work to become stronger and more confident.
Start Saying ‘No’
More confident people are less likely to give in, to peer pressure or to be persuaded into doing things that they don’t want to do. To become more confident, you need to start to say no, and you need to feel confident doing so. You are an individual and you can make your own decisions without being told what to do, and when you come to understand this, you will instantly feel more confident.
Establish Clear Boundaries
Similar to the last point, establishing clear boundaries can increase your confidence massively. Set boundaries in your life for everybody, and do not allow them to be crossed. When you establish personal boundaries, you instantly become more commanding and assertive in the eyes of your friends, family, and colleagues.
Challenge Yourself
Practicing and developing strategies for tackling your lack of confidence at home is only beneficial to a point. Eventually, you will need to go out into the world and challenge yourself. Really, how can you become confident when you don’t have any social interactions? Set yourself a challenge, such as making a new friend, or approaching a person and starting a conversation, and stick to it. Challenging yourself boosts your confidence and helps you along the path toward being a happier person.
You’ve Got It Already
The answer to your lack of confidence is within you, and it is waiting for you to discover it. You do not need to spend a fortune on designer clothes, nor do you need to show off on social media. People that do these things are generally very insecure, and they are typical of today’s generation. You can most certainly enjoy these things without it being unhealthy, but when you begin to latch onto them and use them as vessels to appear more confident, they become instantly negative.
With all of the suggestions made in this article combined, you should be able to tackle your lack of confidence once and for all. Becoming a more confident person will not be easy, even with all of this, but keep working at it, and constantly work on improving yourself in other ways, whether through fitness or education and eventually you will succeed.
Photo by Blake Weyland on Unsplash
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