Confidence is a mentality 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 prizefighter, so he gets a trainer and a manager. His manager will not put him into the ring until he has acquired proficient skills. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a rival that he knows his fighter can beat. When his fighter beats the contender, he is successful, and starts to gain confidence in his capabilities.

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

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 true self-confidence doesn't mean that individuals will be able to do everything. Most people who have true self-confidence have down-to-earth expectations. 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 lean unreasonably on the acceptance of others in order to feel self-esteem. They avoid risks because of the fear of failure. They belittle themselves and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.

Conversely, secure people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally have confidence in their own prowess. A person can have plenty of abilities, but still lack confidence. A lack of self-esteem is often the result of concentrating completely on the unrealistic expectations of other people, especially those of parents and friends. The affect of friends 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 create beliefs; some of these are positive and some are negative. Several assumptions that can interfere with confidence and alternate ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: I must always be successful at every challenge I undertake. This assumption is totally unrealistic. In real life, each person has his strengths and his 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 you don't know everything and you are not 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 flawed. 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 vulnerable to external influences during your childhood, as you grow older, you can gain insight and outlook 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 based on what happened in the past. HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Think about and give yourself credit for everything you can do. And grant yourself credit for every new thing that you are willing to experience. Take risks. Adopt the attitude of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I find out what doesn't work, and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can attempt some other action.

Use Self-Talk: Talk to yourself in positive terms to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting yourself to be perfect, 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 while still 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 NLP and Hypnosis techniques that you can use to instill a tremendous amount of confidence from within your unconscious 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 judge yourself independently. Circumvent the perpetual sense of chaos that comes from relying too much on the opinions of others.

About the Author

Alan B. Densky, CH is a certified hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner. His ecommerce site offers self hypnosis CD's for self-confidence. His Self-confidence CD's were recently reviewed by Personal-Development info in England. Visit him for Free self hypnosis & NLP newsletters and MP3s.