Confidence - Before you seek it, understand what it is!

If if told you that bloozles were on sale now at 80% off, would that get you excited? Probably not, since you don't know what a bloozle is. (of course it's just a word that I made up)

Words that are not completely understood may elicit the wrong response or non at all. The term 'confidence' is one of those words that I hear bandied about by people who don't really understand what they are asking for. This lack of understanding of the term confidence makes it that much harder to attain it, since chances are, the activity you are doing to 'get there', may in fact be keeping confidence away from you.

So what does it mean to lack confidence?

Oh yes, I know that you can tell me your symptoms i.e. afraid to speak up, afraid to act on a desire, afraid to take a chance, etc..., but these are the results of lack of confidence, not the cause!

CONFIDENCE stems from the Latin con -"with" + Fide - "trust"

Therefore confidence is acting with trust

Since you are talking about your own self-confidence, what you are really asking for is to trust yourself.

By saying "I lack confidence", you are implying that there is something missing, something that you don't have, and must wait until it gets there for you to be able to make changes. Naturally, then, you search for that missing ingredient, that something that someone can give you, that will change your life.

It Is This Very Belief That Will Keep Confidence Away From You.

Let me repeat; Confidence is about trust, therefore Self confidence is about trusting yourself.

So what is required to trust yourself? What do you need to go and get, find, or discover, to allow you to trust yourself?

In fact nothing.

Permit me to tell you something about yourself that you may not know.

If you don't trust yourself, it is most likely because you have learned, or have been taught not to. Not because it was true that you were untrustworthy, but the idea was planted there, more likely than not because there was an advantage to someone else to make you feel that way.

Making you feel that you won't 'get the guy' if you are not wearing this perfume, or implying that the girls won't be attracted to you if you are not wearing this brand of shirt, is just a fairly benign way that others steal your confidence in order to motivate you actions towards a certain direction. But this 'convincing' that you need others to make you 'better', and that on your own you are not good enough, has been going on since before you could walk.

What Does it Take to Trust Yourself?

Simply the decision, that today, for the next hour, or the next conversation, that you will trust, that you are on your own side. Decide that just because you feel that you don't have any confidence, (self trust) doesn't imply that you can't trust yourself.

Stop trying to attain confidence. Instead, realize that confidence is something you choose to have. Sure it may be there for a while and then disappear, but the beauty of choosing is that you can simply choose again and again. Keep choosing, until it becomes a habit.

Quite a number of years ago, I didn't have the confidence that what I had to say was of any importance. I could tell you how being constantly ignored, and not listened to when I was young played a part in that, but the 'how it happened' isn't important. One night I had a dream that some mystical person came to me and told me that I would never say the wrong thing. When I awoke I remembered the dream, and although I didn't believe that I would never say the wrong thing, I wondered what would be the harm in "acting" that what I had to say was important. At that moment, I chose, to be a person with something to say. All that I did, was choose that whether I actually felt it or not, (and most times I didn't), that I would speak up and say my part. Only one year later, I was asked to host a radio show on ideas of personal development, which I did every week for two years.

I understand, and it is important for you to understand to, that when you say that you want confidence, what you are really saying is that you want to "feel" confident. That is a completely different thing, and worthy of other post, but you do not need to feel confident before you begin to act confident. If you could do that then you wouldn't need the trust in yourself would you?

Make a choice to be confident as often as possible, and sometime in the future,you will build enough evidence to affect how confident you feel.