How to increase your confidence
Life is like a long familiar path that we are used to. We don’t like major change, especially losing the people in our lives that we need. Life can be scary and we do need other people to help us through the difficult times. We need the confidence to make the most of our lives. Every time something goes wrong in our lives, it undermines our confidence and then it can take a while to reassure ourselves that things won’t keep on going wrong in the future.
We can lack confidence for other reasons too. Marilyn Monroe became very nervous when she had to speak. She was confident about her looks and liked being photographed, but lacked confidence when it came to communicating in public. The reasons were complicated and her childhood experiences made her insecure and she was treated rather like a blonde bimbo and a sex object. If she had been better educated, rather than relying solely on her looks to gain success; she might have been more confident. She seems to have had severe problems of confidence and took to drugs and alcohol to help her cope.
Education can make us more confident then, being knowledgeable or good at something, rather than just looking good. Looking good can help with confidence though and so we should make an effort, particularly on occasions when we need more confidence. Avoiding behaviour that society frowns upon can increase our confidence too. We constantly make judgements about other people and ourselves. If we judge ourselves as stupid, lazy, devious, idle, greedy, dishonest or judge ourselves to have some other negative attribute. This can seriously undermine our confidence. It is important then to behave in a civilised way. Looking good isn’t enough. We also have to be nice people and have a sense of morality.
Some people seem to be very confident and not care what anyone thinks. They have no empathy for others and care little for other people. These people are confident and often rise to positions of power; they become politicians and successful businessmen. Should be try to emulate them and become selfish and uncaring, cheats and liars? I think not, because if we are caring people, we will only feel confident by doing what we feel is right. Our behaviour determines whether we are confident or not and whether we are happy with ourselves or not.
We feel in control when we’re confident, but should that control be at the expense of other people? Should we be in control, because other people like us and will care, because they like us? Or should we have control, because other people are afraid of us? Do we want others to be our friends or our slaves?
When you look in the mirror, what kind of person do you see looking back? If you don’t like the person who looks back, then why not? Is it the way they behave, their core values that makes their behaviour less than acceptable? None of us can be perfect and so don’t expect the person looking back in the mirror to be perfect. Your genetics could mean you’re not the most attractive person in the world. You might have had a rough childhood that is hard to forget or come to terms with. You might have gone through a traumatic experience, that has had a devastating influence on your life. Some things can have a negative affect, but they also make you more interesting. If however you chose a path through life that was regrettable, you might want to stop and choose a different path for the future. You might have led a life of crime, been naive and followed the crowd, got in with a bad crowd or acquired bad habits. Whatever it is, you can change. You can change your behaviour, your core values and that person you see in the mirror will not only be a nicer and more acceptable person; they will also have a lot more confidence.
I hope you have found today’s blog useful. There are other blogs in this series of psychology blogs and there are a lot more subjects to discover. You will find links on the home page. Please comment if you found this article helpful.
