How to Be Confident In Life: Amazing Ways To Build Belief
By Anubhav Srivastava ( Register for his Workshop – Build Super Confidence For Super Success!)
Wondering How to Be Confident in Life? Self Confidence is absolutely essential for any kind of success in life. If you do not have confidence, you will always doubt your own abilities to do things. If you are always stuck in doubt you will probably not take action. If you do not take action, you will never get anywhere. It is that simple.
In this article I will tell you 8 strategies that will help you build immense self belief. So if you want to learn how to be confident in life, start reading this article and read it all the way to the end!
Tip 1) Breathe in a regulated way
When you are anxious your breathing often becomes out of rhythm. You either start breathing really fast and harder or you stop breathing entirely for many seconds. Both these actions may appear natural and involuntary however they are habits you can control . In fact breathing in a slow regular state calms down your mind and helps you think logically. When you are in a calmer state you automatically become more confident because your mind isn’t clouded by negative emotions.
So the next time you are anxious and catch yourself breathing irregularly, stop! Slowly take deep long breaths where both the inhalation and exhalation process lasts at least a few seconds each. There are a variety of resources available on the internet than can teach you the right breathing exercises to calm you down and become more confident. So make sure to do a search.
Tip 2) Respect yourself for all the things you are really good at.
If you are someone who is suffering from a low self esteem or are jealous of others because you don’t have the looks or the money, remember that someone with the looks or the money may also be suffering from low self esteem because they might not be as intelligent as you! Or you may be a master at a few things they may want to do but cannot.
The truth is that no one in the world is better than one or the other in all aspects. Everyone is a master in some thing and a rookie in another. Everyone has a few things others might crave and might never have. Focus and appreciate those things. Don’t say that you are not good at anything. That is impossible. You just haven’t identified what you are good at yet or don’t value it enough.
The root cause of low self esteem is when people judge themselves by what they don’t have or are not good at. When they finally shift their perspective and start identifying the things that they do have, they realize they are immensely blessed and special. Just a mere appreciation of all those things you are really good at, at which others are not, will help build your self confidence tremendously.
Tip 3) Dress better.
There are some people who are completely comfortable in their own skin and they don’t need to dress better to feel better, however that is not true with the majority of us. The better we dress the better our self image is.
Humans naturally desire a positive self image. The way you dress often becomes an expression of you, it becomes your personality. If you are the kind whose level of self esteem doesn’t depend on the way you dress, feel free to ignore this. Otherwise commit to investing in clothing that makes you look and feel better. When you dress well people will start respecting you a lot more. When you start getting respect from people, your self image rises.
But you don’t always need to conform to what society thinks is good fashion. Don’t put pressure on yourself to appear perfect. Do whatever makes you comfortable as long as it makes you feel better and positively affects your self image.
Tip 4) Exercise Regularly
Exercise helps in two ways. One, it makes you look better. When you look better, you get a positive self image. When people see you look good or have lost weight, they pay compliments to you or pay more attention to you thereby raising your confidence even more.
Secondly, exercise has been shown to boost mood elevating endorphins which make you feel better. In fact depressed people are regularly advised by medical practitioners to workout because exercise elevates their mood, makes them feel happy and more confident.
But do remember that exercise is a habit, so once won’t be enough. You have to make it a part of your life forever if you want to see sustained changes in your body and consequently improve your overall confidence levels.
Tip 5) Face your fears
If you want to learn how to be confident in life you will have to step outside your comfort zone and face your fears. If you avoid what you fear, a false message gets sent to your brain that the thing you are avoiding is harmful or will get you into a lot of trouble. So when you avoid it for a bit, you feel safe, but the moment it comes into the picture again, your brain sends you an even bigger fear message thus wrecking your confidence in the ability to deal with it.
You have two options at that time, either you face it and gradually let the fear subside. Or avoid it yet again and then have the fear rise even more thus continuing a vicious cycle until which you become extremely scared of facing it. This vicious cycle avoiding behaviour plays a big role in the development of phobias. Avoidance makes you feel safe temporarily but is a hugely destructive behaviour in the long run. So no matter how cliche it sounds, one of the most effective ways to learn how to be confident in life is to face what ever you fear. You then stay with it as long as possible and as often as possible until the fear gradually subsides on its own and your brain reprograms itself.
Tip 6) Be around positive people
When you are around people who are always cynical and negative you become like them. The difference between successful and average people is often the company they choose to keep. When you hang out with people who are always jealous or lack confidence in their abilities, you will almost always be judged the same way. When you hang around negative people, they are going to make you feel like you are mediocre as well. They are going to make it seem that all successful people just got lucky by being born in the right family or having the right godfathers or marrying the right people.
You will then come to the conclusion that because you have none of them you are doomed for mediocrity forever. This will totally shatter your self confidence. So if you want to learn how to be confident, start hanging around positive people. Start being with people who have dreams and aspirations and a rock solid belief that they will carve their destiny. Start being with people who only focus on improving themselves instead of criticizing others. Being with these people will fill you with the belief and positive mindset that you will need to succeed. Furthermore, when you see these people succee, it will fill you with the confidence that you can do it as well. After all, attitudes are contagious! So if you want to learn how to be confident in life and succeed, start associating with positive people!
Tip 7) Visualize the Best outcome
Visualization techniques are used often as an aid by some of the most successful people in the world like Elite Olympic Level Athletes and Astronauts flying on Space Missions.
Visualization basically means you sit down with your eyes closed and imagine, step by step, the things you would do or the exact process that would lead to your desired perfect outcome. An Olympic Level Swimmer would thus imagine the perfect way in which he or she would dive into the water, the perfect streamlined way in which they would swim, with the least amount of resistance, that would put them ahead of their competitors and would lead them to win the event.
While visualization is not a substitute for actual hard work or practice that would help you develop the skill to achieve your desired goal, when you visualize you make yourself believe with absolute certainty that winning is possible for you. And when you are filled with the belief that you will, winning becomes much more easier as long as it has been complimented with the right real life hard work. So the one of the most important steps you need to take if you want to know how to be confident in life is to start doing visualization exercises. A simple Google search on how to do visualization exercises can help you get started.
Tip 8) Prepare Really Hard
Working really hard on preparation is the most important way to build self confidence. When was the last time you felt confident about doing anything if you had not prepared for it at all? Unless you are supremely talented or delusional, you would not feel confident at all. The more you prepare with strict self discipline, the more confident you become.
Let’s go back to the Olympic swimmer analogy, no matter how many visualization exercises you do, will you acquire the actual skill to beat your competition without getting into the water every single day and preparing? Absolutely not. And even if you did get the delusional self confidence, it would be shattered the day you got into the pool in an actual competition.
Muhammad Ali, the great boxing champion had a habit of proclaiming ” I am the Greatest!” almost all the time as a way to build up his self confidence. The greatest he was indeed, at least in boxing, however, thousands of other boxers tried telling themselves the same, without much success. This is true even for the talented ones. Why did it work for Muhammad Ali, when it did not work for others?
It worked for Ali because he backed up his talent and confidence with supreme hard work and preparation. Training for hours every single day, going through the most rigorous of preparations he built himself into an indomitable force. He trained so hard that he became a force that could not be beaten. Apply the same discipline to your goal as Ali did to his, confidence and skill will both come automatically.
Conclusion
I hope this article has been useful. As always, don’t just read. But actually apply these strategies. You don’t learn martial arts by just reading about various attacking moves or defense moves. You learn it by applying it through actual practice. So apply these strategies and see your life change!
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The author of this article, Anubhav Srivastava is an author, motivational speaker and the director of Carve Your Destiny, a first of its kind inspirational documentary featuring some of the most famous personalities from diverse fields, who teach the viewers how they too can make all of their dreams come true. The movie itself has been seen on Youtube by close to 600,000 people. Anubhav has also been featured in numerous International and India Media outlets such as BBC , The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Rediff.com, Leicester Mercury and many others.
Email Anubhav Srivastava for coaching, consulting or motivational speaking queries at anubhav101@gmail.com.
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