These are difficult times for living: global economic crisis, challenging business trends, multifunctional roles- women want (and usually are expected) to be good wives, mothers, daughters, employees, etc. When we add personal things, such as emotional crises and hard decisions, we have to wonder what secret ingredient we have to add into our lives to make things easier. The answer is self-confidence.
Self-confidence is a component of an important part of our personality- self-respect. Self-respect is an assessment that a person makes about her/himself. It shows to what length one considers him/herself to be capable, important, successful and competent. Self-respect consists of two parts: self-esteem and self-confidence. Self-confidence is defined as a belief that we can choose, learn, make decisions, deal with problems and cope with changes. A person with a low self-confidence level doesn't believe in her/himself and doesn't feel competent to face different life situations.
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People with high level of self-confidence consider their success to be the result of their efforts, and failure to be the result of some external factors out of their control. For example, they will say that they got a pay raise thanks to their intercession while people with low level of self-confidence will say that the pay raise is a result of reorganization or boss's good will. The situation is similar in explaining failure. When a person with high self-confidence fails to get the desired position s/he will say that an employer is unable to choose the right candidate, while those with low self-confidence will say that they aren't good enough. You can guess the first advice how to build your self-confidence is to become aware of the real causes of events and, if needed, to change our attitudes.
Make your self-confidence stronger
By strengthening your self-confidence, we are also strengthening our psychological immunity and become ready to confront all life troubles. Self-confidence can be understood as a sort of protection that is particularly important in critical situations when we are even more vulnerable than in everyday life. This is how to make that protection stronger.
• Be kind to other people
If we don't pay attention to others, and we are not kind, we cannot expect them to like, or respect or understand us. Social support is especially important during critical periods.
• Be the one who changes things
People are often unsatisfied with human relations; they complain and expect that a husband, a boss or a friend change. Why would they change if we are not ready to? People often change at the same the moment we change- if the action change, it is highly likely that the reaction will change too.
• Stop torturing yourself with bad thoughts
Some people torture themselves by regretting something from the past. For example: 'If only I'd moved to London' or 'I wish I hadn't started working here'. That's how we unrealistically expect ourselves to predict future. And such thing being impossible, we often get disappointed, which leads to low self-confidence. We have to accept critical periods as well because they are an integral part of our lives and an experience that leads to further development of personality.
Others, however, feel sorry for themselves: 'no one likes me because I'm too fat/ unsuccessful...' Have we checked this? 'No one likes me' is a general assertion. Who doesn't like us? How do we know that? Maybe we don't like ourselves because of our weight? It would be good that every time we 'decide' that others don't like us, ask ourselves is those our thoughts and feelings. After that, it is essential to turn out thoughts to opposite direction and think about good things, because they certainly exist. It is important not to be our enemies during crises because that lowers self-confidence.
• Learn to accept compliments
When someone says that we made it good through a crisis or that we have a beautiful necklace, the best answers are not 'I was lucky' or ‘I’ve bought it on sale'. It is crucial not to explain yourselves but to accept the compliment. A smile and a 'thank you' would be great.
Roots are in childhood
Low self-esteem, hence the low self-confidence, almost always forms in childhood. We often hear parents saying to their children things like; ' Everything you do, turns out wrong', 'All kids are good, except you', etc. Research show that the upbringing has a significant role in the formation of self-confidence and that children with high self-esteem have parents who treated them with respect and love, who accepted them as they are, who were consistent in their actions, were not mocking at them and believed incompetences of their kids. But, every rule has an exception.
