7 steps to gain self-confidence.

Self-confidence is the key to success. To gain and strengthen it, you need to know a few simple rules and remember to apply them.

We are all trying to achieve something in this life. In order not to deviate from the intended path, you need a powerful incentive that will allow you to move forward. It could very well be self-confidence if you know how to use it wisely.

Here is a list of the most popular goals that people strive to achieve most often:

• find a prestigious job ;
• meet the love of your life;
• become an author whose works are published;
• learn a new language and start speaking it fluently;
• open a business that will generate a stable income.

Even if for some reason your cherished dream was not included in the list above, this does not at all negate the fact that self-confidence will not be useful to you.

Self-confidence is a guiding star that does not allow us to stumble along the thorny and winding path to our intended goal.

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 be a good starting point. After reading it, you will be convinced 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 halfway through the process. Simply because you won’t even have such a thought. Simply because you will know that you will definitely achieve your goal. This is such a magical article. Let's get started already.

1. Think positively

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

For our time, such a philosophical movement as Stoicism is very indicative. It allows you to determine quite accurately whether you are following your beliefs as they should.

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

To explain briefly, the essence of the teaching is that you need to live wisely.

The basic principle of Stoicism is:

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

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

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

Let's think back to the general goals mentioned above and see how people justify themselves when they don't achieve them:

• 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/clumsy; 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; publishers did not appreciate my creation; I have too little time to do this;
• learn a new language and start speaking it fluently - there is no time to practice speaking skills; I'm embarrassed by my pronunciation; native speakers will not understand me;
• open a business that will generate a stable income - there is too much competition; no one will buy from me; I don't have that much money.

Sounds familiar?

This is exactly how people usually set goals for themselves: they incorrectly define the end result, find excuses, get 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 set yourself on a deliberately false path and tried to achieve something that, in principle, cannot be achieved at all (based on your own excuses). How did you plan to pull this off then?

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 slightly reformulate the list of goals. You'll get something like this:

• find a prestigious job - communicate with 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 about;
• learn a new language and start speaking it fluently - set aside at least 15 minutes daily to speak/listen/read/write in the language you are learning;
• open a business that will generate a stable income - spend a certain amount once a week on advertising and promotion until you find something that really works.

It's a completely different matter, right?

Goals become much clearer when we apply the philosophy of Stoicism to them. They become literal and you either do something to achieve them or you don't.

Understand the goals you set for yourself. Set yourself up for their successful achievement. Stop doubting yourself.

2. Keep it simple

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

Keep in mind that we will only pay attention to those things over which we have complete control. There is no reason to do something if you are not sure about it or doubt its success. 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 from them. Why is this wrong?

• Firstly, the expectation of the result itself is outside the control zone. What's the point of just doing something just to meet someone else's expectations?
• Secondly, unjustified expectations in most cases lead to great disappointment.

You must be prepared to be disappointed sometimes. We are all humans. There are days when we are in a bad mood and everything goes wrong. But this does not mean that you should immediately give up and stop performing tasks that should lead to your goal. You must 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 writers. But many complained that sometimes they felt absolutely no desire to write, but still did it. By writing 100 words a day, they met the daily requirement that the experiment required of them, and at the same time became 1% better throughout the day.

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

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

This is a lot like reverse psychology: an inclination toward a certain action causes the exact opposite reaction. The trick is to stick to ridiculously easy goals. This will give you the energy to deal with them. You will do the minimum and 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 your plans?

Every day, do things that will bring you closer to your goal. Work on yourself every day to become better. Overcome yourself, even if the day is not going well. Focus on what you can change.

3. Call on math to help

There is another good technique that will help you increase and strengthen your self-confidence. To monitor your progress, simply count it. For example:

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

Simple math and calculating what results you got from completing certain tasks will provide an understanding of how fast you are moving towards your goal and provide a good incentive for further progress.

Let us illustrate everything said above with a concrete example that all writers can take into account.

All a writer can control are the words that appear on the screen and the time it takes to write them. Words can be made as persuasive, attractive and wise as possible, but if they are not to the liking of readers, then they will not 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 begin to manage it.

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

• post No. 1: 500 words - 100 responses, an hour of time spent;
• post #2: 2,000 words - 1,000 responses, four hours of time spent.

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

• post #1: 500 words - 0.2 responses per word, 1.66 responses per minute;
• post #2: 2,000 words - 0.5 responses per word, 4.16 responses per minute.

If we take slightly larger amounts of information, we get something like this: each written proposal receives an average of 5–7 responses, that is, five minutes of time spent is worth approximately 20 responses. Having made such small calculations, you will understand that you did not waste your time in vain, and you will gain confidence in your own abilities.

Use tools that help you control how you move towards your goals. These are very simple and obvious formulas that need to be derived once, memorized and applied in cases where you want to evaluate your effectiveness. They make life easier in many ways and allow you to clearly evaluate the results of your efforts.

Formulas and calculations will help you gain self-confidence and understand how close you are to your goal.

4. Let go of your failures

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

Keep a special “frustration journal” in which you can chronicle all the things that upset you and describe how it made you feel. Later, when you re-read it, you will be able to understand how insignificant they really were.

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

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

Yes, it's definitely possible. We are just people after all. There is another principle of Stoicism that you need to know about.

The second most important principle of Stoicism is this:

The worse, the better.

The more negativity in a situation, the greater its positive potential. Negative emotions always motivate people to take decisive action. The idea that everything you worked so hard for has ended up going up in smoke may be hard to accept at first, but it will be of great benefit later on.

First, ask yourself if this particular failure affected your ultimate goal. Most often the answer to this question is negative. Your self-confidence should not be shaken by this. Give yourself time to recover from what happened, and then take on the task with renewed vigor.

If the failure somehow affected the final goal, then be sure to think about what went wrong. Take time for reflection and consider the situation from all sides. Just don't let your emotions get the better of you. In any situation, with due diligence, you can always find positive aspects.

Failures are obstacles that block your path to your ultimate goal. They are important and useful because they teach us to overcome ourselves, cultivate willpower and strengthen character.

5. Be inspired by negativity

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

Nothing spurs us on better than having a rival. It doesn’t matter what area 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 very easy. Life throws them at us at every step. We can give the most banal example: our former classmates.

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

What happened to 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 baby!

Yes, this may not be the best or most 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 helps us not to give up. Of course, you must 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. It may not be a good thing, but as long as the negative example strengthens your self-confidence, it will be a fairly fair and effective way.

Sometimes it is useful to assert yourself at the expense of others, but you should not abuse it too much. Allow yourself momentary weaknesses, but don’t live with them all the time.

6. Be inspired by positivity

If you read the books about Harry Potter , then you probably remember that in order to ward off dementors (evil spirits that sucked souls), you had to cast a special spell, calling on a patronus, which scared them away.

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

Severus Snape, a potions professor from the same books, was in love with Lily, Harry Potter's mother, since childhood. But she never reciprocated his feelings. However, Severus's love for Lily became his happiest and brightest memory. It was this that always allowed the professor to call a patronus if necessary.

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

“Always,” said Snape.

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

You will definitely feel how a wave of warm memories will wash over you and will definitely cheer you up. This is exactly how positive inspiration works, allowing you to recall all the good things in your memory.

It's completely normal to doubt yourself. Even if you are confident enough in your abilities, from time to time you can still despair and give up. At such moments, call on positive memories to help.

7. Don't be invisible

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

• you strengthen your self-confidence;
• 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 achieving what you want is almost impossible. While people who share will serve you as good helpers in achieving your goal.

Think of it this way: a person who doesn't share my beliefs doesn't believe in them to begin with. I'm doing myself a disservice by talking to him. And this has absolutely no use for me.

Many people have the 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 don’t think so.

Yes, you may seem stupid and funny to someone. Yes, people may avoid you or start attacking you, thinking that you are crazy . Ironically, all 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.

Are you brave enough to take a risk and announce your intentions to the world? If yes, 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 liked. Would you be happier? No. You would be much more vulnerable. You would be unable to take risks.

The ability to overcome life’s difficulties is one of the main indicators of a person’s maturity and ability to achieve their goals. Don't be afraid to express yourself to the world.