Building Self Confidence

This lens is about
Self-Confidence believing in yourself and finding the strength and courage to take the first step towards improving your life. Low self- confidence is a huge problem for many people, we spend our lives being told who we are, what we can and cant do and how we should or shouldn't behave, so when we realise that parts of our personality don't conform to society's ideal allot of us suppress what we feel in order to try and fit in, in the long run we are only damaging ourself. Instead of trying desperately to bury your own feeling and thoughts and trying to fit into someone else idea of who or what you should be, learn to be yourself, accept who you are, acknowledge all those little faults, deal with them and find a way to channel them in a positive way.

It will take time to build up your self esteem, especially if its very low and even when you do start to look at yourself in a positive light there are going to be times when you feel down and your self confidence starts to fall again.

I'm sitting here writing an article on self confidence and all the while I'm fighting the urge to give into the belief that it wont be good enough. Here is the thing, I finally got up the courage to build a
Self-Confidence website, I really wasn't sure if I would be able to do it to begin with but with the right tools and some patients (I'm a VERY impatient person) I got it done.

After that I hear that a good thing to do, as well as writing content for the site, is to write separate material that you can distribute over the net for free, fair enough...right?

WRONG! Even after having written the content for the site (with the help of some friends to edit it for me) I looked at the idea of writing an eBook or a lens and my confidence totally plummeted, I just didn't believe it was possible. Here is the problem, my spelling is terrible, I have no grasp of grammar what so ever (there will be people reading this and agreeing about now) and the idea of writing a book (OK so an eBook is a bit smaller than a novel but that's besides the point) just scared the hell out of me.

The idea stayed with me though, I put it off, made excuses but I just couldn't shift the though that I needed to at least try. I not sure how but at some point while I was doing the dishes I started to think about all the amazing people in the world that overcome so much more than just a bit of bad spelling to become pretty much legendary in their field, just look at Stephan Hawking (for the people who are looking slightly blank right now....WHAT stone have you been living under? Go goggle the man!). So with this thought in mind I'm now madly typing away and wishing I still had MS Word to do my corrections for me! (just so you all know, the spelling and gamma will be fixed, just not by me).

The point to this little rant is simple.....DON'T EVER let other people tell you that you cant do something or that your not good enough. Allot of the time they really do mean well, but that doesn't make them right. If I listened to all of the people in my life that had told me I would never be able write an article, or build a website you wouldn't be reading this today and I would probably still be working in a job I hate. Take a look at story below, its a wonderful example of what self belief can do for you.

Here is a little exercise to help you begin to understand yourself and where your feeling of inadequate come from, this will work for which ever area you you need help in.

Get a pen and a piece of paper

Think about your problem for i.e. 'I don't think I can write the novel I want because...' 'I don't have the confidence to start dating because...' or 'I don't think I will get the job...'

Now take that thought and start writing. Think about that nagging little voice in your head, about the preconceptions you have of yourself and work backwards. What is it that's making you feel that way, where did that though first come from.

Keep going, it may take a while but it will be worth the effort. It doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to be well written or edited in any way, you are the only person who is going to see it.

When you have finished read it back to yourself. You may be surprised by what you learn about yourself.

When your finished, when your all written out and tired from all the soul searing you have just done, you have two choices...firstly you can destroy it, tear it up, throw it away, set it on fire (in a safe way of course, don't accidentally set your house alight) its a really good way to purge yourself of those negative feelings. Secondly, you can keep it, refer back to it or maybe even turn it into an article for others to gain inspiration from.

I have been using this exercise for years, you really can learn a great deal from it and by doing that you being to understand yourself.

My latest attempt at doing this exercise actually became the inspiration for the website I built. I was suffering from bulimia (a nasty eating disorder) and when I decided I needed to get a handle on it and STOP I turned to writing to help. Originally I started just writing about why I was making myself sick, what it was that upset me so much that harming myself was the only outlet I had. What I ended up with was an article on how my eating disorder had begun, until I started writing I had honestly not realised that I had been anorexic as a teenager, even now the idea just seems strange to me, but looking back at things logically I can see that I did.

I used what I had written in the beginning to create the article 'My Eating Disorder'. I gave the article to my partner to read (he spent a lot of time working abroad and had no idea what I was going through) so that he could try to understand. Sharing the problem with him was a huge help to me, he never really knew what to say or how to help me, but the fact that he knew and wanted to help me though it made a huge amount of difference to me and my recovery.

Try it for yourself and please drop me a line to let me know how it works out for you. Just click though to my site http://www.one-perfect-you.com and use the 'Contact us' page (it will come straight though to me and no one else will read it. If you do decide to turn your writings into an articles feel free to post it in the 'YOUR Articles' section of my site and I will review it, you can leave it as anonymous if you wish.

Remember people, its your life, your the one the one that has to live it, YOU need to take control.



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