Do you want to build confidence in a particular area?
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Perhaps, interviews, social or work situations, public speaking, performances or exams and tests? Who doesn’t right? But what is the key? Over time I have read and listened to hundreds of ways to build confidence from the scientific, to the practical, spiritual and absolutely ridiculous!
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Quite honestly I would not be surprised to hear of people standing on their heads in a northerly direction whilst sipping mango juice from the back of a coffee cup. I will mention though that out of all those methods there is a very simple way to build confidence and the best place to start.
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If you start here with this principle you will be on your way and can worry about the headstands later! So where to start?
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Answer: To seek out, study and practice the aspects associated with that area to increase your ‘ability to cope’ and lower your sensitivity to the threat. It’s not a method filled with mystery, but it works well.
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Why does this work so well? In the unconscious we have a highly developed and amazingly sensitive threat appraisal system which is usually built on past experience. This system warns us of possible threats in the environment almost instantaneously. So at the most basic level we want to decrease the threat level associated with the situation. The reaction will not be as severe, therefore boosting your confidence when confronted with that event.
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Some people believe all have the confidence in themselves that they can do absolutely anything. But even for the dynamic go getters of the world being confident in every activity throughout every day would be quite something. People are usually confident in one thing but completely lacking confidence in another.
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Confidence is not feeling great about yourself at every stage in your journey. We know from our experience that this can vary from day to day or even hour to hour. It would be extremely hard to someone to feel confident in every situation as everybody is completely different. So don’t be too hard on yourself if some things scare the hell out of you.
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Take a person that is incredibly self-conscious around others at a staff meeting or social gathering yet has no problem with attending school exams or playing piano in front of an audience. Yet another person is the life of the party however a simple exam or test can send them into total panic. Have you experienced this? It doesn’t make sense or does it?
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From one experience to another we are affected by our thoughts and emotions in various ways that can often be hard to predict. So rather than trying to be confident all the time in everything, it may help to choose some particular areas that you would most like to feel confident in and focus on those. In other words, don’t try to solve the whole puzzle in one go. Once you start to build confidence in one or two different areas that are important to you, then it's likely that this feeling will filter through other areas as well to some extent.
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Confidence can be based on experience and knowledge and also past experience. If someone has a great deal of knowledge about a particular subject than they can feel confident in the tasks related to that area. If the reason that you would like more confidence is to achieve some particular thing then study that particular area very very well, practice it, become good at it and you will naturally build confidence without even knowing it.
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Ask yourself what is important to you? If I was confident in this area, what impact would it have?
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So for example if you would like to feel more confident in social or work situations then study and practice such things as positive body language, communication skills, listening, storytelling etc. This foundation of skills will assist you in creating a much better ability to cope. The ability to cope is one of your subconscious threat appraisal mechanisms that quickly trigger anxiety and fear. If you increase this threshold through education and experience, then it's only natural that you will reduce anxiety and increase confidence.
It's one of those incredibly simple things that is often overlooked, but absolutely essential.
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Confidence= Knowledge and Positive Experience.
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The faster and more thorough you explore these two aspects the quicker you will grow your self-confidence in that area.
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So hopefully this has given you a couple of different ideas as opposed to headstands and the like (by the way is not recommended).
You might like to think about the two or three most important areas to you at this time that she would like to feel confident and begin to study those areas practicing the necessary skills that you think will be beneficial.
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Areas I would like to feel more confident in are?
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If I was completely confident in these areas I would be a superstar at?
What are some the things I could study and practice that will assist me?
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