by: Gabriele Sogka Reign
Have you ever admired the confidence 'other' people have? Well here are 5 steps to Turn On YOUR Confidence
1. BEGIN WHERE YOU ARE with what you have. The good news is that you already possess what you need to have the confidence you admire in others. Confident people have brains, you have a brain; they have feelings, you have feelings; they know how to use their thoughts and feelings to their advantage. In a moment, you will be able to use your thoughts and feelings to your advantage as well.
2. ELIMINATE SELF-SABOTAGE. To stop keeping yourself from reaching the confidence level you really want, it's vital that you realize the thoughts and feelings that fuel self-sabotage. Every time you think anything that doesn't say CONFIDENCE in capital letters, rephrase that thought so it screams CONFIDENCE.
3. THINK & FEEL Confidence. Notice how often your thoughts are 'anti-confident'. Simply by virtue of being alive and in any proximity to other human beings, we've learned though many experiences to be critical of ourselves. Our "critical mind" gets in the way and becomes a kind of default mechanism that runs in the background, critiquing and ready to jump on any new, positive thought that is different from what we've been thinking. The good news is that this can change more easily than you think, no pun intended.
The more you focus your attention on which thoughts you're paying attention to, the easier and more quickly you will be able to recognize and replace the negative, unsupportive thoughts with positive, confidence building thinking. You begin to fine-tune your thoughts in a way that only allows more like thoughts enter your mind.
Similar to thought, the same process applies to feelings. Notice what you feel. Every time you have a feeling of being 'less than,' are you fueling self-doubt or self-confidence? Feel the difference between can and can't. "Can't" will stop you in your tracks; "Can" will empower you.
If you can recall only one experience in your life when you've actually felt any level of confidence at all, activate that feeling. If you can't remember such an experience, you can imagine' it. Then keep bringing up more and more feelings intentionally, of what confidence feels like. The more you feel it, the more you'll feel.
4. SEE Confidence Visualize yourself as though you were totally confident. Even if you have to pretend until you actually feel confident, begin collecting confident feelings by practicing feeling confident. When you use your imagination in this way, your imagination muscle strengthens - the more your use it, the more you imagine, the easier you can access it.
5. 'BE' Confidence. Act 'as if' you possess the confidence you admire in others. When you act 'as if', you are confident, confidence actually becomes part of you cellular memory so that the physical representation of what you think, feel, and visualize attracts more and more like thoughts, feelings, and experiences to itself.
With these five steps and with a bit of attention and practice to where you place your attention, you'll be turning on YOUR confidence in no time!
Copyright 2005 Gabriele Sogka Reign