Self Confidence & Your Beliefs

When people have lots of self confidence they tend not to think about it too much, but when something goes wrong and their confidence takes a knock, then they begin to pay lots of attention to it.

This cycle of high and low confidence is a natural part of life, and nobody, regardless of how perfect their life may be, will feel 100% confident all the time.

So when it comes to developing your self confidence it is important not to set yourself unrealistic expectations, by thinking that once you achieve your desired level of confidence your life will be in a state of never ending bliss. That is nothing more than a childish fantasy.

Healthy self confidence comes from managing the natural cycles of life, and that means minimising the times when your confidence is low and maximising the time when your confidence is high.

In this and the upcoming articles we are going to be looking at how you can do this, by identifying some of the main factors which cause low self confidence.

Self Confidence & Your Mental Framework

One of the biggest causes of low self confidence are the thoughts you have on a daily basis. Unfortunately for most people, most of these thoughts are self defeating, which basically means they put you down or reduce your self worth in some way.

Some common things people say to themselves begin with phrases such as:

“I can’t do that…”
“I have never been able to do that…”
“I will always be…”
“…Is impossible”
“I’m not good enough…”
“There is no way I could…”

These phrases are just a small selection of the many forms of negative self talk people use on a daily basis, and signal a self rejecting mind.

The Self Rejecting Mind

A self rejecting mind is a mind that works against itself, and as a result its true potential is continually limited by self imposed restrictions.

These restrictions are the beliefs you have acquired from your parents and society, and will either help you to live a self confident life or take away your confidence.

What makes these statements even worse is that they are not real. They are just illusions, false statements that have no relevance to the reality you are currently facing.

Whenever something triggers one of these limiting beliefs, they appear like a puff of smoke in front of your eyes and then change the way you perceive reality, distorting it through a lens of lies.

As a result, you begin to see a version of reality in which you are somehow limited or restricted because of some fault or disadvantage you think you have.

This then causes you to live your life within those limitations, never knowing or experiencing the full version of reality that surrounds you.

Basically what this all means is that the beliefs we carry around inside our head can either enrich our lives or restrict it.

For a lot of people, their life is restricted because they carry around self defeating beliefs which cause them to have low self esteem and self confidence.

Self Confidence & Your Mental Cage

In order to create a more confident self, you first need to step out of the mental cage you have created for yourself and venture out into the wider world of possibilities, a world in which your mind expands your reality rather than restricts it.

A good example of how a mind can expand reality can be found with unattractive people who date very attractive people.

Most unattractive people feel that nobody finds them attractive, and so they stay in that mental cage never venturing outside of it.

Some unattractive people however choose to step outside this cage, and by doing so experience a world others thought was impossible.

The same can be found with severely disabled people. To most, such individuals would appear hopeless lost causes who would be unable to achieve much in life.

Yet there are many examples of such people who have achieved far more than able bodied people have.

What separates all these types of people is how they describe the world around them, because ultimately how you describe your world determines how you experience it.

How Do You Choose To Experience Your Life?

If you see everything in a negative light, then you are going to experience more negative things than you are positive. If you see things in a positive light, then you are going to experience more good in the world than you do bad.

However it is important to point out that what we are talking about here is your perception of reality, so just thinking positive doesn’t mean nothing bad is going to happen in your life.

What it actually means is that if something bad does happen to you, then you are able to see it in a positive light rather than in a negative way.

What is the advantage thinking this way? Well, since you can’t control everything that is going to happen to you, you can control how it affects you.

You can either let a negative event in your life drag you down and make you feel bad, or you can allow it to empower you and make you a stronger person.

Of course this won’t always be easy, and bad things will make you feel bad. But the important point to remember is that you always have a choice as to how you experience your reality, and therefore whether or not you allow that experience to restrict your life or expand it.

Self Confidence Comes From Accepting True Reality

One final thing to say in conclusion to this article is something I have noticed a lot since the movie “The Secret” was released.

Many people I have spoken to are trying not to think about anything negative at all, because they somehow think that if they ignore the bad things in their life then those things do not exist.

This is a false and extremely dangerous belief system, because essentially that person is choosing to deny reality when reality is something you cannot deny.

If something bad has happened in your life then you have to deal with in an appropriate manner, otherwise you will suffer later on.

This tendency to deny reality since The Secret was released is a bit like someone sitting in their bedroom with their house on fire.

People are shouting at the window telling them to get out because their house is going to burn down, but because their room isn’t on fire yet they shout back “stop being so negative, everything’s fine“.

Until the fire reaches their room they feel good being positive, but when the fire starts to burn down their door and they are engulfed in flames, they aren’t so positive anymore.

So whilst you should try to view things in a positive way and experience the world in a positive way, you must also acknowledge that you can’t deny reality and that there will be times in your life when bad things happen.

This is the natural cycle of life, and having high self confidence means minimising these bad times and maximising the good times, rather than expecting to eliminate the bad times completely.