How is Your Self-Confidence or Self Esteem?

When you enter a room do you speak to the people you come in contact with? Better yet are you the first to extend your hand out for a firm hand shake when you speak to a stranger? These are signs of a self-confident person. Self-confidence is exemplified through your body language and speech and it is a necessary ingredient for success. Some people appear to be born with self-confidence; however, if you ask them they will tell you it is something they had to work hard to achieve. Most of us have to work on ourselves so we can increase our confidence and project a charismatic confident image.

Do you exude lack of self-confidence or low self-esteem? Are you always beating yourself up for something you said in a prior conversation with someone or what you should have said? Or perhaps you are the type always putting yourself down always finding something wrong with yourself and the world. If someone gives you a positive complement, say on the cloths you are wearing you just have to counteract that with something less complimentary like, “this old thing”. If this sounds like you than you may have a case of low self-esteem or lack of self-confidence.

Self-confidence is generally defined as having assurance, belief, and or confidence in oneself. This confidence could be belief in oneself to succeed in whatever situation life has in store for you. Muhamad Ali said that lack of self-confidence is, “It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believe in myself”. We have to have self assurance in our ability to succeed in spite of the situation or circumstance we may find ourselves in.

Lack of self-confidence is a psychological issue which could stem from a number of other issues, i.e. anger, guilt, unforgiveness, pride, etc. Sometimes we have not forgiven ourselves for an incident that happened in our past and the thought of it is holding us hostage in our present. Therefore, some times when we want to have positive thoughts of ourselves we remember our negative behavior (failures) which results in having bad feelings about ourselves. Subsequently, these bad feelings we feel about ourselves damage our self-esteem or self-confidence. We may begin to compare ourselves to others and feel inferior to others because we may feel we do not have the looks, education, money, or raised on the wrong side of the tracks. These are all indicators of low self-esteem or lack of self-confidence. Let’s be clear all of this negativity was derided from a THOUGHT. You have to make a choice: what thoughts will you entertain in your mind.

If we lack knowledge, then we have to educate ourselves. If we do not know how to do something then that is when we have to learn how to do it. Do the research, if you have a computer and access to the internet then, you have a world wide library right at your fingertips. We can no longer sit idly by and allow life’s uncontrollable events (economy, job lose, and governmental policies) dictate our livelihood. If, you do not have confidence in your ability now is a good time to develop it. We are going to have to stop allowing our fears (and other people) control our decisions. We are going to have to build our self-confidence and raise our low self-esteem by eliminating all negativity around us; whether it is negative people or negative thoughts that bombard our mind.

I would like to leave you with the timely wisdom of Donald Trump, the advice he gave about self-confidence. He said, “Even if you haven’t encountered great success yet, there is no reason you can’t bluff a little and act like you have. Confidence is a magnet in the best sense of the word. It will draw people to you and make your daily life…and theirs…a lot more pleasant”. I wholeheartedly agree.