How Self-confidence Can Strengthen Your Lifestyle Design And Personal Development.

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” -E.E. Cummings

Impenetrable Self-Confidence: The Key Driving Force behind Getting What You Want Out of Life.

Raising your self-confidence will take you far in building upon your lifestyle design and personal development. Confidence is the motor behind the passion to strive to achieve your goals. It’s the tool that will break down the barriers of fear that’s holding you back from achieving your desired lifestyle design and goals. Let’s take a look at some steps on how to build self-confidence to achieve what you want out of life.

The simple formula to confidence.

Experimenting + failure = learning + confidence

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.” -Mark Victor Hansen

Live by your values.

Values define what’s most meaningful to us. They’re guides to our daily decisions, life priorities, and purposes. You can see a person that’s true to his/her values by the look in their eyes. They’ve a sense of purpose in life, a passion to live. They have a core set of values and nothing will shake their self-confidence.

In order to have impenetrable self esteem you need to define your life values and live by them. Everyday people are living by other people’s values, one of the main reasons they are so stressed.

They are not living with integrity. Living with integrity will build your self-confidence because every thoughtful decision and action you take is based upon your values. If you are not living life based on your values then your self-esteem and confidence will slowly deteriorate. You will always be second guessing yourself.

What are your values? There are tons of values out there. Think about what your values are and define them. Write them down and place them all around you, just like you would with your goals (See my recent post on how I set effective goals).

Start basing your decisions in accordance with your values and self-confidence will start flowing through your body and mind. You will feel it both mentally and physically. Which leads me to the next step…

The Power of Physiology.

How we present ourselves is a big determinant in our self-confidence. For example, look at those who have confidence. They are smooth like a lake on a calm night. They are determined because they have the unstoppable force of passion. They stand up straight like a soldier marching into battle. They speak with a sense of excitement. They look directly into your eyes. Most importantly, they smile and laugh more often than those who lack self-confidence. They are passionate and living with a purpose, a mission in life.

By changing your physiology you can instantly change how you feel and how you think. You can do this by learning to be consciously aware of your body. When you know you are slouching, prop your shoulders back. Make it a point to look at people in the eyes. Call people by their names when you talk with them.

And yes, most importantly, smile. When you smile, the brain produces endorphins which are chemicals inside your body that, when released, help relieve physical and emotional stress, and thus, create a sense of well-being. So many of us get caught up in things that we do not allow our self to relax and just smile.

By giving off these physiological signals, they’ll connect with your mind and allow you to feel and exert more self-confidence. Start becoming consciously aware of when you are feeling down and how your body responds. Then, be aware of how your body responds when you’re up, happy, and living by your values.

Mind: The most powerful tool for self-confidence, the mental laws of self-confidence, and positive affirmations and visualization.

Thoughts are constantly streaming throughout our minds. Only you can allow what thoughts you think, whether they are positive or negative. You should strive to have a positive balance of positive thoughts throughout your day. The most powerful tool to self-confidence is the mind and your ability to think. According to personal development guru, Brian Tracy, there are some mental laws that help build confidence:

Law of cause and effect.

Sowing and reaping. If you define clear goals and objectives in your mind you’ll reap clear results and happiness in your life

Law of attraction.

Like attracts like, you inevitability track into your life people, ideas, circumstances and opportunities that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts. Whatever you think you draw in…Fuzzy goals bring in fuzzy results. Know exactly what you want and think of nothing else. The number two foundation of lifestyle design, I recently posted about in What is Lifestyle Design?, is the people around you.

Law of correspondence.

Your outer world tends to be a reflection of your inner world. Your thought is the most powerful force in your universe. Thought is forming the world around you.

Law of concentration.

Whatever you dwell upon continually grows into your reality. Dwell upon any goal or subject and the more your mental capacities make that goal a reality. Dedication to a single purpose goes hand in hand with accomplishment.

Law of substitution.

You can either have a positive or negative thought at one time. If you have a negative thought, recognize it and figure out why you’re having negative thoughts. Work towards changing it into a positive thought. Program self-confidence deep into your subconscious mind.

Law of emotion.

Every decision you make, every thought you think is based on emotion of some kind…Emotion of fear or the emotion of desire at the other end of the spectrum.
Action without thinking is the cause of every failure, whereas action preceded by thinking is the cause of every success.

The way you talk to yourself has a huge impact on who you think you are, and thus is a strong determinant of your self-confidence. You need to continually reinforce who you want to be by positive affirmations. If you follow my guide on setting goals, then you’ll have plenty of positive affirmations to write down based on your goals. Go back, review and repeat these affirmations to yourself a few times throughout the day.

Positive visualization.

Positive visualization is another tool of the mind that builds confidence. It’s one of the most powerful tools for professional athletes. Many professional athletes, including the recent Athelete Of The Decade: Tiger Woods, prepare themselves by putting themselves in certain situations, and then playing out those scenarios. Picture who you want to be and mix emotion with your picture in your conscious mind. The more emotion you visualize the faster the picture will emerge in reality.

See yourself in whatever situation that is coming up. For example if you have a speech coming up, picture yourself in the room, on the stage with all the onlookers. Visualize giving your speech like JFK or whoever you think might be the greatest speaker. If you’re going into an interview, visualize the setting, answering your questions with confidence, and so on.

As you can see self-confidence can be developed through implementing some steps. Self-confidence will carry your far into your lifestyle design and personal development. Don’t try to implement everything at once; begin by taking small steps. In time you’ll gradually increase in self-confidence and begin conquering fear. You’ll begin to take on that larger project or find confidence to join that yoga class or talk to that cute woman at the coffee shop.

Final Thoughts.

One last quick point I want to make is surround yourself with positive material, such as Lifestyle Design For You and Life Destiny. You’ll notice that the more you expose your mind to positive material such as this blog and others; you’ll begin to feel and act more confident. Consider investing in some audio books and listen to them on the way to work, contact me for suggestions.

Related posts:

1. Why Meditation Is The Rocket Fuel For Lifestyle Design And Personal Development.
2. Lifestyle Design Versus Personal Development.
3. Personal Development By George Clooney: How Much Does Your Life Weigh?
4. 7 Personal Characteristics For Effective Lifestyle Design.
5. Six Things You Should Do Daily To Succeed.