The road to success is littered with failures. It’s how you deal with them that determines your future. Self-confidence and self-esteem are essential for anyone looking to succeed in life. Without it, achieving your goals can be challenging. Fortunately, there are many practical ways to boost your confidence and self-esteem so you can tackle the world head on.
1. Start small
Don’t try and change everything about yourself at once. Start small and focus on one thing you want to improve. For example, if you want to boost your self-confidence, start by wearing nice clothes to work, or speaking up in meetings. If you want to improve your self-esteem, start by being nice to yourself. If you try to do everything at once, you risk feeling overwhelmed and give up. Start small and you’ll be amazed how quickly you can make progress.
Don't change everything
Remember that you are unique and that is so important. Although I am encouraging you to change things about yourself for confidence, I encourage you to not change too much about yourself when it comes to your core values and morals. Instead, focus on things like fashion, haircuts, and positive talk as opposed to negative talk.
Introvert/extrovert
Qualities we hold such as being an introvert or extrovert, or somewhere in between can't be changed entirely. But there are things you can do to test your boundaries. For introverts, like above, you can try speaking up in meetings or say hi to a stranger on the train or in the street. You could go out to a party where you don't know all too many people. For extroverts, you can take a vacation to a cabin somewhere, turn off electronic devices and just be with yourself for a few days. Or maybe instead of being the life of the party, you can root for someone else to take the limelight.
2. Ask for feedback
We’re all self-critical to some extent, but this can be harmful if you’re overly critical of yourself. Try and get some feedback from others. You may be surprised how accurate their feedback is. This can be about your appearance, your personality, or even the way you speak. Feedback is a great way to get an objective view of yourself so you can work out where you can improve.
Advice from the right people
It's important that the feedback you get is from trusted friends and family. Remember that not everyone's opinion in the world should matter to you. Pick the people whose opinion matter most to you, for example your parents can be a good place to start, then to your best friend. If you are looking for another fresh perspective, ask a niece or nephew, but beware, kids don't have filters like we do. Their feedback can be brutal, so you should remember to take what they say with a grain of salt.
3. Practice makes perfect
Whatever skill you want to improve, practice it as often as you can. This may be public speaking, making friends, or a sport. Whatever it is, practice it as often as you can. The more you practice, the more natural and confident you’ll feel doing it. Don’t wait because you're worried you won't be perfect at it, just go for it, imperfect practice is better than no practice. Being perfect doesn’t happen overnight. You have to practice, and lots of it.
4. Look at yourself through new eyes
Spend some time with a friend or family member who loves you and is supportive of you. Ask them to tell you three things they admire about you. Hearing someone say nice things about you to your face can be really enlightening an make you feel good about yourself.
Time to be kind to yourself
Now, you are going to say it to yourself, just like when you asked a loved one to say three things they likes about you, you are going to look at yourself in the mirror and say three things you admire about yourself.
Then, look yourself in the eye and promise you’ll be nice to yourself for the rest of the day. Do this for a week, and see the difference in your self confidence. Finding positive ways to look at yourself will help you build your self-esteem and self-confidence.
5. Take care of your body
We all know that good diet and regular exercise are important for our long-term health. What many people don’t realize is that they’re also great for boosting your self-confidence and self-esteem. When you lead a healthy life, you feel better about yourself. You feel stronger, more energetic, and more positive. This is a great way to build your self-confidence and self-esteem.
It's not about losing weight
Against popular belief, exercising isn't all about cutting down dress sizes, but more about keeping a strong body. Exercise is important because it pushes our bodies to perform daily tasks. With our lifestyle theses days, we are much less active as a whole, so we need to be pushing our bodies in some ways. The strength that comes with exercise will make you feel like you can do daily activities with ease.
6. Celebrate your successes
Make a point of celebrating your successes. This doesn’t have to be a big party every time. It can be a simple “well done” from a friend or family member. What is important is you make a point of celebrating the times when you’ve done well. This will help boost your self-esteem and self-confidence. It’s also a great way to motivate yourself to keep going when times get tough.
7. Don’t blame others for your mistakes
We all make mistakes. It’s part of being human. The sooner you come to terms with this, the better. Blame is a negative emotion. It will only hold you back from progressing. Accept that you’ve made a mistake, own up to it, and move on. If you dwell on your mistakes and blame others, you’ll never get ahead in life. Move on, learn from your mistakes, and let go of any blame. This is a great way to boost your self-confidence and self-esteem.
Remember you are capable of self-confidence
Everyone has self-confidence and self-esteem to some extent. It’s how you express these that determines your success in life. Boosting your confidence and self-esteem doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and effort. However, the rewards are well worth it. You’ll be able to achieve so much more in life when you have a high self-esteem and high self-confidence.
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*This post is a copy of the original blog post found here
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