What is Self Confidence?

To be able to achieve a goal you need skills, discipline, determination, capability and self confidence. Self confidence comes from having the right kind of skills and clarity of goals to be achieved. The clearer the goal, the better the focus of mind and self confidence. Nothing great was ever achieved by people who lacked confidence. A capable body and mind will not function to their greatest potential if not backed by self confidence. Self confidence, hence, is the pivot on which all the creative and analytical abilities of the mind rest on. Low self confidence can impair the functioning of both the body and mind, resulting in failure. Self confidence is the measure of one's collective ability to march right ahead to achieve a said goal.

Self confidence has a way of being visible. You can tell by observing the very manner of a person walking, communicating, working, socializing, as to whether he is confident or not. The very first handshake with a person will tell her level of self confidence. A self-confident person truly stands apart. Drooping shoulders, falling jaws, undecided steps are not the characteristics of a confident person. Confidence is infectious; the very presence of a self-confident person tends to charge up the air around him. Everything automatically falls in place for a confident person, and the world stands apart for the man who walks with sure, confident steps. A confident person commands respect as well.

Great things are seldom achieved without necessary confidence. All the skills and efforts possible are useless if confidence is lacking. Low confidence halts your steps and you cannot take initiative. Low self confidence paralyzes both the body and mind at the time of making decision. It leaves you undecided and the undecided are swept away. There is no place for the undecided in this world where success is worshipped, and success seldom comes to someone who is undecided. As the old saying goes, you must stand for something or you will fall for anything – and it's your confidence that holds you together or breaks you apart.

Confidence isn't genetic nor it is hereditary. Nobody is born confident. Confidence is acquired. Confidence is learned. Confidence is improved. Confidence is practiced. And confidence can be generated. You need to first realize the importance of confidence before you can make any efforts to get better with it. It's very much in your hands to develop a self-confident behavior.

It is said that one has to take risks to achieve something. There's no gain without pain, as we've all heard. So what is it that enables one person to go ahead and take risks while another is held back? Yes, it's the level of confidence that makes people come out and lead from the front without caring for failure. It's this belief in oneself that differentiates achievement from failure. It's sometimes the bald guy who takes the girl because he has something more than the handsome guys around – yes, you guessed it right, he oozes self confidence that makes the lady weak in her knees!

Confidence in themselves was behind scores of people who broke the shackles of a well- paying, “secure” job to pursue their dream of creating something, being something and ended up building great businesses. Surely what turned these seemingly ordinary men and women who were stuck in the nine-to-five ordeal into successful entrepreneurs was nothing but a belief in their dreams and immense self-confidence!

In today's world of competition, confidence isn't just an asset. It forms the very basis of your survival. Getting a good job means you need to be confident in the interview. Getting a raise, again, needs you to be confident at work. The confident ones are the ones who get attention. Attention brings acceptance and acceptance brings love, peace and energy that make you efficient. Efficiency makes you an achiever and achievement makes you even more confident.

And when you are confident, can happiness and riches be far behind? Make sure that you are never out of this magical spiral. Believe in yourself, get going; tell yourself that you have it in you. Because ultimately the one who wins is the one who thinks he can!

How To Build Your Self Confidence Learn to accept yourself

The very first step is to accept yourself – lovingly. No person in the world in perfect so why bother and shed tears over your imperfectness. This is how God wanted us to be – Imperfect! We might have something that someone else may lack and someone else might be endowed with the qualities, which we lack. This incompleteness makes us go out and seek companions who make us feel loved, wanted and complete. Oh what a great feeling! Would we experience it if we were inside the cocoon of our perfection? Never! So accept yourself the way you are. It will free your mind of a heavy baggage of unnecessary worries. You will instantly feel light and cheerful.

Liberate yourself - Go out and do what you like!

How long it has been since you last went to have a walk among the pines – something that you loved as a child? How long has it been when you walked hand in hand with your friend to the bakery and tossed a coin to decide what to buy? These might seem very simple things but these simple things have the power to add on to build great confidence and fulfilment. Life if see is actually quite simple. What gets a bit too complex though is to remain simple. Isn't it? Just as small drops of water make the mighty ocean, the little things you enjoy doing have the capability to turn you into a storehouse of confidence. When God made you, He put a desire in your heart and bestowed onto you the capability to achieve it. However, in the process of growing up, you forgot what exactly was your purpose, what is that you liked and what is that you enjoyed doing. It does happen with lots and lots of people who do feel like breaking free but are too tied up in their day to day responsibilities that it gets impossible for them to spare even 10 minutes to reflect on their lives, their direction, their dreams and goals. It's our duty to clear the mess that prevents us from hearing to our heart. The conversations with your heart should keep getting clearer and the best way to do it is to find time to do what you enjoy. And since you enjoy doing that activity, it straightaway means that you have all the aptitude and intelligence necessary to do the job effortlessly even though you may not realize it.

Find your flock

Birds of a feather flock together. You must find out people with whom you enjoy being. They are certainly the people of your frequency and the energy flow between you and them is natural. Life becomes easy when you are among the people who are more or less on the same plane of thought as you and it's easier to relate to them. They seem to understand you and vice versa thus creating conditions for healthy conversations. A good conversation is a very healthy exercise and an important need of our mind. We all want our ideas to be heard and appreciated and a good company provides platform for the same.

Set Achievable Goals and Go for it!

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The idea is to begin with a small single step that can then further developed into giant strides. Learn to do the work at hand rather than to overwhelm oneself by looking at the entirety of a mammoth looking task. Just like the soil underneath your foot, the top of mountain too would someday be under your step. The only way to do something is to Go For It! No matter how small the progress is the focus should be on completing a task successfully even though it's a small task. A series of big uncompleted task is a sure shot way to depression. Break a big task into a list of small tasks to be completed. Tick off from your list each job successfully completed. A completed task no matter how small it is gives a sense of achievement that boosts our confidence and equips us with more energy to try a bigger task.