How Developing Emotional Resilience Builds Self-confidence.

There is an old saying which goes like this:

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?'. I think the moral of this riddle is that one doesn't happen, without the other.

Some people just seem to exude self-confidence don't they? They don't seem frightened to speak up, ask for what they want, or to offer and stand up for their opinions and values. Some other people prefer to be more reserved. But is there a cost to not standing up for yourself? I think there is. I think that a sense of self-esteem is invaluable to good mental and emotional health, and you need self-confidence as the 'bridge' to get you there.

Self-confidence is ideally fostered in childhood. It's the time when you can get approval, security and encouragement from those you trust and look up to. At that age it really imprints into your sense of 'self'. In an ideal world, your parents/care givers would have been able to do this in a way that gave you positive experiences. This in turn, would encourage you to 'go for' the things you want to do. And when you have positive feedback from experiences of doing things, your self-esteem grows.

The fact is, parents and care givers are often in themselves - lacking the necessary tools and experiences to raise children this way. Limiting beliefs can develop, such as - I never succeed ;there's no point in me trying ; It always goes wrong for me "It doesn't matter", and "I don't care". I have seen people try to 'go for it' from a position of low self-confidence and they often feel very unsupported in the new situations they try to push into. That, in turn, increases their feelings of 'not being good enough' and can lead to vows such as I will never try that again. "I am just never going to succeed".

If you haven't got as much self-confidence as you would like to have, the good news is it is possible to develop it now. Although I have written about self-confidence widely, I have not tried to redefine it. I think it's a really useful place to start, as knowing what you are aiming for must be a pre-requisite for getting there. A quick look at the web offers the following definitions:-

htttp://www.wordnet.web/princeton.com who include in their definition,'assurance, freedom from doubt, belief in yourself and your abilities.

In facing something unknown or brand new, I think doubt is natural. It might happen for a rare handful of people but - is it necessarily a useful thing to be free of doubt? Doubt held in a healthy perspective can instruct us as to potential pitfalls and cause us to think more deeply. Doubt has a use, providing that it isn't allowed to 'freeze' us.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com defines it as:- "confidence in oneself or one's own abilities" and

http://www.uncommonforum.com says:- self confidence is a belief in yourself and your abilities, a mental attitude of trusting or relying on yourself . . .. so that self-confidence is actually about feeling uncomfortable with uncertainty and not knowing what the outcome will be. . ..

For my money, this is a lot closer to how I would define it. However, I am going to write my own definition which includes another layer a critical layer that is usually missed: -

Self-confidence is knowing that you have the ability, mentally and emotionally, to enter into new situations, without being certain of the outcome. Self-confidence is about having goals that are meaningful to you and being committed to achieving them . It means that you are willing to undergo some discomfort in the process of reaching them. Self-confidence implies a willingness to grow, to endure some discomfort; to make mistakes and to fail. It also implies the ability to discriminate which goals to strive for and when: also which to abandon, based on your own values and desires.

Self-confidence has an emotional content to it and it is that layer that often needs to build on to become truly self-confident, happy and achieving as individuals.

by: Debs de Vries

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