7 steps to gain self-confidence

People are quite capable of moving mountains and doing the impossible if they are fueled by faith in the right things. In which? We'll tell you. This article is by no means intended to be a comprehensive guide to gaining self-confidence, but it may well be a good starting point. After reading it, you will see that you can set goals for yourself, stick to them and go to the end.

The main thing is that you will not think badly of yourself, even if you give up your plans halfway. Simply because you will not even have such a thought. Simply because you will know that you will definitely reach your intended goal. Such is the magic article. Let's get started already.

1. Think positively

How you articulate your beliefs determines how firmly you stick to them. How you behave and what life principles to follow also depends on them.

For our time, such a philosophical trend as stoicism is very indicative. It allows you to quite accurately determine whether you are following your beliefs properly.

Stoicism is an ancient philosophical school that was founded in 300 BC by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Kiti.

In short, the essence of the teaching is that you need to live rationally.

The basic tenet of Stoicism is as follows:

Focus on what you can control and ignore what you cannot control.

Sounds pretty good and pretty simple, doesn't it? And yet, why are so many people in the world still spending time and energy on things that they are unable to change?

This is because we are constantly haunted by feelings of guilt. We say to ourselves: “I can’t do anything about it”, “I cannot change anything” - thereby trying to absolve ourselves of responsibility for defeats and failures.

Let's revisit the general goals mentioned above and see how people justify themselves when they are not achieved:

finding a prestigious job is all because of the crisis; I have little experience; I am not suitable for this position;
meet the love of your life - I'm too fat / thin / scary / awkward; there is always someone better than me; I don't trust people;
to become an author whose works are published - I am not that good at writing; the publishers did not appreciate my creation; I have too little time to do this;
learn a new language and start speaking it fluently - no time to practice speaking skills; I am ashamed of my pronunciation; native speakers won't understand me;
to open a business that will bring a stable income - too much competition; no one will buy from me; I don’t have that much money.

Sounds familiar?

This is how people usually set goals for themselves: they incorrectly define the final result, find excuses, become disappointed and give up. Let's be honest: you just didn't believe in your success from the very beginning! From the very beginning, you directed yourself along a deliberately false path and tried to achieve what, in principle, cannot be achieved at all (based on your own excuses). How then were you planning to pull this off?

People achieve their goals only when they set themselves up for success from the very beginning.

Taking into account the first principle of stoicism, let's try to reformulate the list with goals a little. It will look something like this:

find a prestigious job - talk to recruiting managers as often as possible, do not get hung up on any one company;
meet the love of your life - try to meet someone new every week;
become an author whose works are published - start a blog, regularly publish in it what you consider important to inform your subscribers;
learn a new language and start speaking fluently - take at least 15 minutes daily to speak / listen / read / write in the language you are learning;
open a business that will bring a steady income - spend a certain amount once a week on advertising and promotion until you find something that really works.

Quite a different matter, right?

The goals become much more transparent when we apply the philosophy of Stoicism to them. They become literal, and you either do something to achieve them or you don't.

2. Be simpler

Now that we have dealt with the first point, let's try to concentrate on the tasks that we set ourselves, and how to believe in their implementation.

Keep in mind that we will only pay attention to things over which we have complete control. There is no reason to do something if you are not sure about it or doubt it will be successful. You must be consistent in both your beliefs and your actions.

There are people who are confident that they will get a certain result if they perform some specific action that everyone expects of them. Why is it wrong?

First, the very expectation of the result is out of control. What's the use of just doing something just to meet someone's expectations?
Secondly, unjustified expectations in most cases lead to great disappointment.

You should be prepared for the fact that sometimes you will be disappointed in something. We are all humans. There are days when we are in a bad mood, everything falls out of hand. But this does not mean at all that you need to immediately give up and stop performing tasks that should lead to the goal. You should always do everything consistently.

For example, an experiment was conducted in which you had to write 100 words a day. It's pretty easy, even for people who don't consider themselves to be writers. But many complained that sometimes they felt absolutely no desire to write, but still did it. By writing 100 words a day, they satisfied the daily requirement that the experiment demanded of them, and at the same time got 1% better during the day.

When you make your goal ridiculously easy to achieve, something magical always happens:

you meet the required minimum;
you start wanting to do so much more.

This is in many ways similar to reverse psychology: the inclination to take a certain action causes the exact opposite reaction. The secret is to stick to ridiculously easy goals. This will give you the energy to deal with them. You will complete the minimum and you will be satisfied with yourself. The moment of truth will come when you have a bad day. Will you be able to overcome yourself and not give up on what was planned?

3. Call math to help

There is another good technique that will help you increase and strengthen your faith in yourself. To keep track of your progress, just count them. For example:

if you are in sales, count the money earned;
if you are a writer, keep track of the number of views, readers and responses;
if you're a marketer, track the number of clicks.

The simplest mathematical actions and calculating what result you got by completing certain tasks will provide an understanding of how fast you are moving towards the goal, and will give a good incentive for further progress.

Let us illustrate all of the above with a specific example that all writers can take on board.

All a writer can control is the words that appear on the screen and the time it takes to write them. Words can be made as convincing, attractive and wise as possible, but if readers don't like them, they won't share what they read with anyone.

There is a theory that the more you write, the more responses you get. This factor can be checked, and then you can start to control it.

For example, the author of the article gives the following figures obtained from personal observation:

post number 1: 500 words - 100 responses, hour of time spent;
post number 2: 2,000 words - 1,000 responses, four hours of time spent.

Mathematical calculations help to identify some pattern that can already be controlled:

post number 1: 500 words - 0, 2 responses per one word, 1, 66 responses per minute;
post number 2: 2000 words - 0, 5 responses per one word, 4, 16 responses per minute.

If we take slightly larger amounts of information, we get something like the following: each written sentence finds an average of 5–7 responses, that is, five minutes of the time spent is worth about 20 responses. By doing such small calculations, you will realize that you have not wasted your time, and you will gain confidence in your own abilities.

Use tools that help you control how you move towards your goal. These are very simple and obvious formulas that you need to deduce once, remember and apply in cases where you want to evaluate your effectiveness. They greatly simplify life and allow you to visually assess the results of your efforts.

4. Let go of your failures

Don't set high goals and be prepared for disappointment and failure. Things can go awry at the very last moment and undermine your self-confidence. Don't let things you can't control punch holes in your armor and frustrate you.

Start a special "journal of disappointments" in which you can keep a chronicle of all the things that upset you, and describe how you felt at the same time. Subsequently, when you re-read it, you will be able to understand how insignificant they really were.

The problems that will be described there, for the most part, seem far-fetched to you and not worth spending time and effort on them. Ideally, you shouldn't let things in the magazine unsettle you. But this is generally easier said than done.

What is the point in humbly accepting the blows of fate every time? Isn't it possible, at least sometimes, to give free rein to emotions?

Yes, you definitely can. We're just humans. There is another principle of stoicism that you need to be aware of.

The second most important principle of stoicism is this:

The worse the better.

The more negative in a situation, the greater its positive potential. Negative emotions always motivate people to take decisive action. It’s hard at first to accept the idea that everything you’ve worked so hard on eventually turned into smoke, but then it’s going to be of immense benefit.

First, ask yourself if this particular failure affected your ultimate goal. Most often, the answer to this question is negative. Your faith in yourself should not be shaken by this. Give yourself time to recover from what happened, and then get down to business with renewed vigor.

If the failure did somehow affect the end goal, then be sure to consider what went wrong. Take time for reflection and consider the situation from all angles. Just don't let your emotions get the best of you. In any situation, with due diligence, you can always find positive moments.

5. Get inspired by the negativity

We are all pretty lazy. Some are simply extremely. We need to be pushed all the time and forced to do something. But why then do we still go to work, communicate with people, do things that we do not want to do, violate our comfort zone? All this is due to the influence of other people on us.

Nothing spurs us on better than having a rival. It doesn't matter what kind of sphere of life it will be: work, sports, personal life or something else. Nobody wants to feel like a failure. This is a very powerful incentive and motivator to move forward.

Finding sources of negative inspiration is easy. Life throws them to us at every step. The most banal example can be given: our former classmates.

Let's say about ten years have passed since leaving school. Naturally, you will be interested in who and who became, who and what achieved. Think about what is the real reason for your interest? You just want to compare all these people to yourself.

What has become of her now?

Does he still live with his parents?

I wonder what kind of car he has?

She was so smart at school, what happened?

Wow, they even have a child!

Yes, perhaps this is not the best and highly moral way to build self-confidence, but sometimes the answers to all these questions are really reassuring.

Honestly, the fear of falling behind and the fear of being worse than someone is one of the best incentives that help us not to give up. Of course, you have to live your own life, but if sometimes in moments of weakness or despair you want to compare yourself with someone, then nothing particularly terrible will happen. This may not be a good thing, but as long as a negative example builds your faith in yourself, it will be a fairly fair and effective way.

6. Get inspired by the positive

If you've read the Harry Potter books, then you probably remember that in order to drive away the Dementors (evil spirits that sucked souls), you had to cast a special spell that summoned the Patronus, which scared them away.

In order for the spell to work properly, you had to recall your brightest, most powerful memory, which reminded of a happy moment in life. If the memory was not intense enough, then nothing came out but a flash of light.

Severus Snape, professor of potions from the same books, was in love with Lily, the mother of Harry Potter, from childhood. But she never reciprocated. Nevertheless, Severus' love for Lily became his happiest and fondest memory. It was this that always allowed the professor to summon a Patronus if necessary.

- Do you still love her after all these years? Dumbledore asked.

When you are not motivated enough to move on, be sure to remember all the good things that happened to you in life. It can be happy childhood memories, your first love, some common joys that you shared with other people. Think about how good you once were, and also think about how many pleasant moments are ahead of you.

You will definitely feel how a wave of warm memories will overwhelm you and will certainly cheer you up. This is how positive inspiration works, which allows you to revive the best in your memory.

7. Don't be invisible

Each of us should have a person with whom we could share our thoughts and ideas. Every time you tell someone about them, two things happen:

you strengthen your faith in yourself;

you have a person who supports you in your endeavors.

People who do not share your faith (ideas, dreams, etc.) will always tell you that it is almost impossible to achieve what you want. While people who share will serve you as good helpers in achieving your goal.

Think of it this way: A person who does not share my beliefs does not believe in them from the beginning. By associating with him, I am doing myself a disservice. And I don't need it at all.

Many people have a habit of keeping all their ideas and dreams to themselves. They stay with them forever, like a novel locked in a drawer that will never see the light of day. This can happen for many reasons. People are often afraid that their ideas will seem funny, stupid or ridiculous to others. But they themselves do not think so.

Yes, you may seem silly and ridiculous to someone. Yes, people may shun you or start attacking you, thinking that you are insane. Oddly enough, all of this will only help you move forward towards what you believe in. When you are determined to solve a problem, nothing should stand in your way.

Do you have the courage to take the risk and announce your intentions to the world? If so, then such an act will become the very litmus test that will help you test your faith in yourself.

Imagine what it would be like if you only did what you like. Would you be happier? No. You would be much more vulnerable. You would be incapable of taking risks.