Self-confidence is a fundamental characteristic of your personality which you will have in varying degrees. You can be self-confident in one area and not in another depending on your experiences, your environment, and your relationships.
The more you know and understand yourself the more you can do with what you have and what you desire to be.
Confidence comes from the Latin word Fidere which means to trust, therefore having self-confidence means you have trust in yourself.
Self-confidence is an attitude about your skills and abilities. It means you accept and trust yourself and have a sense of control in your life. You know your strengths and weakness well and have a positive view of yourself.
Knowing more and understanding more allows you to know what area to develop (if you choose to) sometimes you can be faced with what appears to be an avalanche of areas to work on – especially if you compare yourself to others!
It will never work to attempt to do everything in one go (believe me I tried) it can cause confusion and chaos and a potential loss of identity, which serves no one and especially you.
You need self-confidence but what you need is true self-confidence not the deluded type where individuals think they are good, right, great, when in reality they aren’t and it does happen.
‘Self-confidence is one thing and others having confidence in you is another’
Julie Hogbin
Answer the following questions with a true or false response and see what sort of result you achieve
All of the following statements can be reversed in behaviours if they need to be – it is the same with everything – if what you are doing is ultimately not serving you and you do not like the results you achieve – change. As somebody famous said you are not a tree!
- I hesitate to voice my opinion
- I always think about what I should have said after the event.
- I rarely feel comfortable with strangers
- I feel that people talk about me behind my
- I often worry
- I am easily
- I feel that people misjudge
- I do things better than most
- I am attractive to the opposite
- I rely on status symbols (car, club ) & who I am seen with etc to give me confidence.
- I make a point of quickly letting strangers know of my achievements & qualifications
- I am afraid of making a fool of
- Many people do not like me very
- I seldom receive encouragement from
- I am more creative than most people I know
- I have more drive and energy than most people I know
- I am less attractive than most other people I
- I am afraid to make a speech in front of
- In general people let me
- I strongly resent
- I would like more approval from
- I am over-modest.
- Most people do not understand
- I am happy with the way I
- I doubt the genuineness of compliments which I
- In most situations I do not do myself justice
- I am not good enough for my
- I am seldom sure that I have made the right
- I envy the success of
- There are many things about myself which I would like to
- I am satisfied with my achievements in
- My plans are more likely to fail than
- I often worry about the future
- I wonder whether all my thoughts are normal
- People do not take an interest in
‘It is not what you know that counts it is what you do with what you know that counts’
Julie Hogbin