If so – you are very lucky. Self confident persons are considered to be much more successful than those who find it hard to trust themselves. Most of us will agree that a person who speaks loud enough, keeps his head high and is assured in what he says has much more chance to persuade us and reach his aims. So it becomes obvious that persons with a lack of self confidence are not so inspiring and don’t look so charismatic and attractive. Of course all of us would like to be self confident, successful and always in front with great ideas and others support though it is not as easily done as it sounds. Reality shows that many people who have less self confidence would like but cheer up; if you are one of those – there is always a way to improve the situation.

Am I self confident?
If you feel you should be more self confident than you are now, first of all try to find out what do others think about you. Maybe this lack of self confidence is not obvious at all. If so, the only thing you have to do is to persuade yourself that you are a good and trustful person, which is not very hard having a strong support from your close people. The main things that show incontinence are fear of failure and avoidance of any risk, dismissing compliments you get, strong dependence of other people opinion and similar. If you have some of these features and that makes you feel uncomfortable it’s about time to get rid of them. Don’t think it will take only a few minutes because it will surely take some of your time, but if you be positive and expect good results it will be quicker.

How can I become more self confident?
Think of this process as of a journey. First of all you have to decide whether you really want this journey and decide to start it or not. Firstly, you will need feedback which will make you stronger for starting. Your feedback can be your past achievements, so write them down. Make a sheet of what you have already done that makes you feel proud of yourself. For example a very important project or even a good advice which you gave and it helped.
When you finish writing your past achievements, start a new sheet about your present situation. For this step you may use SWOT analysis. The basics of it are determination of your strength, weakness, opportunities and threats. Strength is what you have that other don’t for example when comparing yourself with your friends maybe you have some special features like education, specialty, sense of humor, look and similar. Do something similar defining your weaknesses which will be mostly your complexes. Opportunities are all means and ways which you could use for improving your personality like moving to a new place, changing job, taking a holiday or even meeting new people. Treats will be all obstacles which can appear while using opportunities.
The next step is setting up of your future goals. SWOT analysis is a very good way to see what you are and see what you should improve and what to avoid for reaching some goals. When you have past achievements and a realistic view of present, try to decide what you want to achieve in the future and define areas which need to be changed. When defined some major goals make a list of small steps for reaching them.
When you have a clear vision of what you want to be, start managing your mind. You have to be positive and promise yourself that you will do anything to achieve your goals. Don’t be afraid of taking small risks and challenges – it’s a part of your journey. Start valuating your casual actions and enjoy everything you do, and if something goes wrong, say that you’ve done your best and you’ll do even better next time.



Start doing practice – define skills needed for achieving goals and learn them, make steps you wrote in previous parts, celebrate each small success. Don’t be too strict if you have some problems - mistakes are your learning experience and what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger! Don’t stop until you get the results you wanted and be always proud of yourself for the efforts you are giving!