Personal Well-being Centre Forums

Men can do all things if they will.
Leon Battista Alberti

Who has confidence? We all do! We just take for granted that we can do many things. So confidence is already there – and you can increase and expand it to other activities. The level of confidence is not innate, it varies from situation to situation and can be changed. The following factors can increase your confidence:
· Performance: confidence affects your performance but, in turn, the quality of performance affects confidence and this depends on your knowledge, experience and preparedness.
· Relaxation can reduce tension, which generally improves performance and in that way strengthens confidence.
· The sense of personal power: for example, physical power can give you confidence in dark streets, intellectual power at exams, or the power of attractiveness on a dance floor.
· Other people can also affect our confidence - in a negative and positive direction. So, it may be better not to completely depend on their support.
· Focus on doing your best, rather than worrying about the result (e, g. focus on playing well, rather then on whether the audience will like your playing or not). Doing your best depends on yourself, while the result depends also on circumstances and other people involved, so it is less predictable and more likely to cause nervousness and undermine confidence.
· Creating a mental image of confidence: if you link confidence to a mental image, bringing that image to your mind will bring confidence too.
· Believe that you can: negative thought before an action may help you predict what can go wrong and motivate you prepare better. However, doubts and thoughts that there is little chance of success while you are already doing something, are pointless.

Deal with your ‘saboteur’! If negative thoughts such as ‘I can’t make it’, or ‘I am not good enough’ creep up in your mind when you try to do something, try to find first who is sabotaging you and why (may be a voice from the past?). Are these messages really true? If not, try to gradually replace them with positive but realistic ones (e.g. ‘I trust I will do my best’)..

Overconfidence: although building confidence is important, unrealistically high confidence can be even more damaging than the lack of it, so it is good to be able to assess correctly your own abilities – how far you can go. A belief that you are invincible leads to arrogance and carelessness, which often changes success into failure. To avoid this, do not let yourself be carried away by success. It is better to recognise one’s limitations before it is too late, which is why modesty, rather than conceit and vanity, supports confidence. It can protect you from unrealistic aspirations and from flying too high, and in this way actually reinforces self-confidence.