Friday, September 18, 2015

Proven Ways To Gain Self Confidence, Boost Your Self Esteem and End Self Doubt

For the last three weeks I’ve been running a survey asking people about their levels of confidence and self-esteem.  I promised I would share my findings now that the results are in.

The average survey respondent described themselves as appearing quietly confident, but deep down 48% tend towards self-doubt.  In fact they see themselves as sympathetic and warm with other people, but they are often unsure of their own thoughts – and often don’t trust their own feelings.  Ever felt like that?

When unexpected problems occur, they don’t always tackle them as well as they’d like.  In fact, one quarter said they feel completely useless in these situations.   

52% of responders wished they were more confident at work, as well as in everyday disagreements like at the shops, or over parking spaces.  Curiously the majority were happy to speak to groups or in public, but only provided they knew what they were going to be talking about.

A whopping 61% of those surveyed say that they are very critical of themselves and dread looking like a fool front of other, and after dealing with a person they will go away mentally analysing everything they themselves did and said, focussing mainly on their mistakes than what they did well.  Does this sound like you?

One third of responders had previously been told by someone close to them “Oh you’re just being overly sensitive”.

To build their confidence people have tried self-help material, visualisation, asking a partner who will “prop them up”, but that mostly didn’t work.

Where people have felt a boost in self-esteem was where they got support from other people, including going for counselling and hypnotherapy.  Just getting out there and meeting people seemed to help massively, if they could get themselves to do it.

When you surf the web searching for terms like “how to be confident” and “confidence building”, you tend to get dictionary definitions, or dumb platitudes like “Think nice thoughts” or “Shower more often” accompanied by childish cartoons.

I don’t care if you’re an HR Manager of a self-confessed nerd, there will be times when you feel small and powerless, and scared to open your mouth.

I spent most of primary and secondary school feeling TORTURED like that – wound up tight, avoiding eye contact, trusting only a very small number of trusted friends, and by the time I was 19 years old I was diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer, brought on by toxic thoughts of shyness and worry.  And then worrying about the worrying, if you know what I mean.

Where it changed for me, when I dig back far enough into my past, was reading my brother’s psychology books for his degree – I was fascinated to realise that I’d managed to burn a hole in my stomach with my own brain.  A crap superpower.  But what power!  What could you do if you turned it outwards?

And that started me on a journey in positive thinking, visualisation, then more advanced mind tools like NLP and Hypnosis.  The good news is that there ARE practical, useful things that work in the real world, that are easy to learn and really change how you feel, think and move.  Now I have an optimistic outlook, a healthy self-image, a usually supportive internal voice and I know how to move, breathe and speak to feel strong and in control most of the time.  And my stomach ulcer disappeared.

On September 23rd I’ll be running a free 1 hour webinar on how to go from timid mouse to superhero [at least in your own head] and you can learn all about that HERE.  I’m going to share 6 quick steps – real practical “how to” techniques – to make you feel more assertive and stronger inside.  And you can “lurk” and not even have to speak!


I hope you’ll join us J

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