Nlp Can Help You Access Your Self-confidence

Confidence is an attitude that is garnered through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful. And that expectation will cause a feeling of confidence.

For example: A young man wants to be a boxer, so he takes lessons, and gets a manager. His manager will not put him into a bout until he has built up enough stamina and skill. And even then, the manager will only put him up against an opponent that he knows his fighter can hammer. When his fighter beats the rival, he is successful, and starts to gain a feeling of faith in his proficiency.

With each encounter, the manager puts his warrior up against an opponent who is a slightly better rival then the last, but not good enough to beat his man. By the end of the third fight, the young prizefighter begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to flourish. This scenario continues to repeat itself. And as long as the prizefighter wins, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to flourish.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the self-confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having self-confidence doesn't mean that individuals will be successful at everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are common-sense. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.

People, who are not self-confident, tend to depend excessively on the agreement of others in order to feel self-esteem. They refrain from taking risks for fear of failure. They often belittle themselves and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.

Conversely, self-assured people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally depend on their own competence. They tend to believe in themselves; and they don't believe that they have to conform in order to be accepted.

Just because a person feels self-confidence in one or more aspects of their life, doesn't mean that they will feel confident in every part of their life. For example, a person might feel confident about their musical ability, but not feel confident where members of the opposite sex are involved, such as in a dating situation, or social relationships.

HOW IS SELF-CONFIDENCE INITIALLY DEVELOPED?

Various phenomena touch on the maturation of self-confidence. Parents' attitudes are all-important to the way children feel about themselves, especially in their early years. When parents provide acceptance, children receive a good foundation for seeing themselves in a positive light. If one or both parents are excessively demanding or critical, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children may come to believe they are incapable, inadequate, or inferior.

However, if parents encourage a child's moves toward self-reliance, and they are not overly critical when the child makes mistakes, the child will learn to accept herself, and will be on the way to developing self-confidence.

A lack of confidence (is not necessarily related to a lack of ability. A lack of confidence is often the result of centering completely on the unreal expectancies of others, especially friends and parents. The domination of peers can be more powerful than those of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Beliefs That Continue to Influence Self-Confidence

In response to external influences, people develop beliefs; some of these are helpful and some are not. Several assumptions that can interfere with confidence and alternate ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: I always have to be successful at everything. This is totally unrealistic. In real life, each person has her strengths and her weaknesses. While it's important to do the best that one can, it's more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and fallible. Feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that no one knows everything nor are they an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this assumption is totally unrealistic. All human beings are deficient. It's better to develop personal standards and values that are not completely dependent on the approval of others.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially subject to external influences when you were a very young child, as you gain maturity, you can gain understanding and point of view on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don't have to be helpless in the face of past events.

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Grant yourself credit for everything you can do. And give yourself acknowledgment for every new thing that you are willing to undertake.

Take risks. Adopt the frame of mind of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I learn what does not work, and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can try something else.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a tool to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting perfection, remind yourself that no one can do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself as you are working towards improvement.

Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in the various scenarios that you currently lack confidence in. But see yourself behaving as like a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are many powerful NLP and self-hypnosis processes that are effective and will instill a tremendous amount of confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that are lacking confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to appraise yourself independently. Bypass the continual sense of chaos that comes from relying on the opinions of others.