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At a certain moment in my life I understood that I can no longer take myself the way that I am. I smoked cigarettes, I drank alcohol, and I led quite a low-quality lifestyle in general. No, no, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a hopeless human being or anything like that. I had a place to study, a family and a place to live. I just saw no progress in life and I had no final destination. My life had little meaning, which caused me to experience day after day that vicious circle from which I could not see any light. Self-confidence was almost invisible, and depression was slowly crawling onto me.
Despite having that prolonged dark moment in my life, from time to time I would experience a strong desire to change. I knew that there was something in life that I would love to do, I knew that I could do it, but I just felt like it was too far away from me to even bother trying.
Nevertheless, one day I woke up with a feeling that this was the end. I knew that my life was about to change. I had a thousand ideas rushing through my mind of how to become happy, successful, determined, inspired, etc. There was just one problem – lack of self-confidence. In fact, that was the reason that I was too scared to begin my transformation in first place. This time, however, fear and anger outgrew me, and I knew that I needed to raise my self-confidence, for real.
I won’t bore you with everything that didn’t work out for me in the process of raising my self-confidence, but I will tell you about the things that did. The things that I will describe have changed me to the core. Today I no longer feel that I lack something, or that I am not strong enough. I feel that I can succeed in many of the things that I choose to, and the things that I fail at (if I do), I just use them as a valuable lesson to push even harder next time. As the saying goes, everything that doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.
Self-confidence approach 1 – watch and imitate
One cause for the lack of self-confidence in us comes from the fact that we don’t have enough of confident people around us. If you are reading this post, then you are probably like me – you didn’t grow up self-confident.
One of the most important habits that you can pick up on the way to becoming self-confident, is the habit of imitating very confident people. In this case I mean imitating people in real life, the ones that you know, but also random people on the street, people you hear or read about on the news, or whoever else that may be. And I don’t meant the imitation of only one trait of their character, such as the way they publicly speak, or the way they talk about money, but all traits! You must learn to see the best in people, and to soak up all of the best qualities. Look at this as a process of rebuilding your mind, but from the best parts that you can find.
When I began to imitate self-confident people, I looked at the way they talked to others, the way they handled issues, acted at work, drove their cars, and even the way they walked. Trust me, minor things, such as a confident walk and a straight posture can drastically change your way of thinking.
Remember, imitation is the first step to becoming self-confident. The fact that we lack it in first place, means that we lack that type of mentality. Copying it off of someone else is key.
Self-confidence approach 2 – physical exercise
The ones out there thinking that physical exercise can be avoided, don’t be mislead! To become self-confident, you absolutely must have physical exercise, and the more, the better.
Not only physical exercise reduces the amount of stress in us, it increases the amount of testosterone and therefore self-confidence. So guys, you especially, don’t take this for granted. The bottom line is that doing sports is healthy and sexy.
Self-confidence approach 3 – educate yourself
Stop wasting time on things that take you further away from your dreams. If you want to become self-confident, you should be doing things that make you more aware and knowledgeable. The more useful content that you consume, the more chances there are that you will make use of it.
Let me tell you this, when I began my search for self-confidence, I watched so many motivational videos, listened to so many audiobooks, and read so many posts on the internet (such as the one you are reading now, haha) about the subject, that I began to feel that being self-confident is the only path to success. That idea had its roots grow into me.
Therefore, reduce to the bare minimum useless input, such as from social media, and maximise input that makes you stronger and wiser.
Self-confidence approach 4 – have no fear
The last thing that I want to tell you is – have no fear. Don’t be afraid to change life. Don’t be like I was, don’t think that it is “too late”. I was extremely blinded with limiting beliefs. How can a 23-year old guy think that it’s too late? I now think that it was silly, to say the least.
Life is like a pendulum that will never stop swinging you around. You will always have your ups and down, and as long as you are alive, there is nothing you can do about it. The only thing that you can do, is to become fearless, and to learn from your mistakes. No successful person is without fears, and no successful person doesn’t make mistakes. They all do. The only difference between them and the people lacking self-confidence, is that they never give up. Adversity is just a part of life, and the quicker we understand that and accept that, the quicker we can begin improving ourselves.
As an end to this text, I would like to share a quote that really motivates me and raises my self-confidence. I hope it will do the same for you. “In any given moment of decision, the best thing that you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing” – Theodore Roosevelt. Now go on, make yourself better!
