Unfortunately, most of us are told or tell ourselves that we aren't good enough, strong enough, smart enough, talented enough or even pretty enough to accomplish whatever it is we're trying to do. Consistent criticism from ourselves and others may contribute to the systematic erosion of our self-confidence, interfering with our ability to achieve.

How do we rebuild that sense of self-confidence? Fortunately, with practise and dedication, you can use many different techniques to build and strengthen your sense of self-confidence.

Having lots of self-confidence is arguably your most valuable asset in reaching your goals and believing that you can do anything you set our mind to!

What is self-confidence

• Definition: Self-confidence can be defined as experiencing pleasure and satisfaction in our own skills, abilities and achievements, which motivates us to continue pursuing our goals and take risks.
• Source: Good self-confidence can be achieved through realistic expectations based on well practised skills, good knowledge, adequate preparation, good physical condition, experiencing success and respecting your own competence.
• Confidence levels: Being under-confident or over-confident can cause various problems.
  • Under-confident: Fear of failure may prevent one from taking risks and cause self-doubt, lack of concentration and negativity. One may find oneself blaming oneself for faults that lie elsewhere.
  • Over-confidence: Being over-confident can set one up for failure. One may not try hard enough or get oneself into situations which one do not have the ability to get out of. Over-confidence may result from vanity, ego, unrealistic visualisation, or childhood care-givers who set expectations for the child wihtout understanding the child's abilities.
• Benefits: Self-confidence in your own ability to cope with difficult challenges gives you the faith to overcome them - if things go wrong, you can put them right.

Self-confidence breakers

• Natural: Crises of self-confidence are a part of the human experience.
• Overly critical: Being too critical of yourself chips away at your self-esteem.
• Inner critic: The inner critic nags that you aren't good enough - if it convinces you, it robs you of your wildest dreams.
• Should's: Focussing too much on what others may think one should do lowers one's self-confidence.
• Word choices: Saying I can't is subtle little words, but if you repeat it many times, it becomes hard to convince yourself that you can!
• Unrealistic: To strive for perfectionist, absolute achievements invites stress and failure.
• Self-Talk: Most people bombard themselves with derogatory self-talk and don't even know they're doing it.
• Self-doubt: Self-doubt may seem to be harmless, but it eats away at our self-confidence
• Avoiding problems: By avoiding problems you have the ability to solve, you threaten your self-confidence.
• Self-limitations: Many people believe that they cannot do anything about altering any of their circumstances or their own flaws.
• Compelled: Where one is compelled to participate in activities for which one have no aptitude, failure and lack of self-confidence may be consistently reinforced.
• Rejection: Rejection hurts no matter how self-confident one is, a part of you may cringe every time it happens or even just thinking about it.
• Aging: Often beautiful dynamic people go through age related depressions, because of not making peace with the aging process.
• Beaten: When one lack self-confidence, one stops setting meaningful goals and resign to a life of mediocrity and dullness and a steady decline in self-confidence.
• In YOUR hands: Its foolish to sit around and wait for someone else to encourage, uplift, and inspire you towards your greatest moments.

Self-confidence builders

• Inner purpose: Live your life on the basis of what is fulfilling to you, your personal interests, abilities, values and goals.
• Self-respect: Respect your deeper needs and wants and regularly explore and remind yourself of what's important to you.
• Health-plan: Maintain care and respect for your body by drawing up a plan for daily exercise and a healthy, balanced diet.
• Realistic goals: Set measurable goals you can realistically achieve based on a rational assessment of your abilities.
• Visualise: Visualising yourself achieving your goals helps you to believe that your goals are attainable.
• Skill-up: Assess which skills you need and find ways to develop and practice them.
• Participate: Nurture your interests by engaging regularly in enjoyable activities that are meaningful to you.
• Limitations: Accept and be comfortable with what you can and can't do at any point in time.
• Clarity: By knowing what you are able to achieve, you won't set yourself up for surprise failure.
• Stretch: Look for projects which will stretch you, but won't overwhelm your abilities.
• Strengths: Focus on your strengths and what you can do - always consider which strengths to develop further.
• Assertive: When you assert yourself, you enhance your sense of self. Take a firm stand for yourself.
• Potential: Value what you want and what you are good at and take actions designed to fulfil your potential.
• Persistence: Take a leap of faith and if you fall, get up, re-evaluate, and jump again... learn each time, you'll get over all the fear and begin to concentrate on souring.
• Non-emotional: Separate negative emotional reactions from observed reality - the challenge may turn out to be an opportunity.
• Decisions: Practice flexibility and firmness in making and implementing positive decisions.
• Opinions: Entertain feedback from others, but depend on your own opinion and values when making decisions.
• Take risks: Feel good about trying something new, making progress and increasing your competence. Learning experiences build self-confidence.
• Challenges: Solve problems, facing them squarely, identify ways to solve and cope with them.
• Passion: Dive with everything you have into your wildest dreams with so much passion and fire that you forget all about the possibility of failing.
• Success: Referring to a list of successes in difficult times will reinforce your belief in your ability to overcome obstacles.
• Probable: Seek out and often put yourself in situations in which the probability of success is high.
• Acknowledge: Whatever you accomplish, let yourself acknowledge and experience how good success feels.
• Rewards: Recognize success! Reward yourself for achievements and offer words of praise to yourself.
• Motivate: When your success depends on things that you really don't want to do, focus on ways to stay motivated!
• Responsibility: Take responsibility for getting rid of any negative emotions and do what will make yourself feel good.
• Mistakes: Accept mistakes as part of the process by not being disappointed if you don't do it perfectly.
• Forgiveness: Forgive yourself when things went wrong, release negative emotions, make room for poise and confidence!
• Self-talk: Talk to yourself positively and stop listening to your cruel inner critic.
• Self-trust: Trust yourself to be able to deal with the consequences of your decisions.
• Self-support: Strengthen the trust and support system within yourself by being kind, generous and gentle with yourself.
• Self-acceptance: Replace doubts with self-accepting thoughts, balanced self-assessment and self-supportive direction.
• Patience: Change takes time and dedicated effort - be patient.
• Practice, Practice, Practice: Practice naturally improves your skills and eventually the self-confidence will show itself.