subject: How To Gain Confidence - Regain Your Confidence [print this page] When we feel down, it is easy to get into a spiral of doubt and low confidence. If things have not been going well, you might feel that your skills are deserting you. You might lose all confidence in your abilities. Unfortunately falling confidence makes performing competently even harder. Its like a self-fulfilling decline. The less confident you feel, the worse you perform and so the less confident you feel.
Many people, even the most confident, go through times in their life when they get into this kind of rut. As the laws of physics will tell you, getting a car started from being stationary takes a lot more energy than accelerating when you are already moving.
Trying to build confidence when you are feeling anything but can be difficult. Sadly, when we are in these situations, we often get well-meaning people telling us Just be more confident or You need to be more confident. I would if I could!
While it may be difficult to start feeling confident in the midst of a confidence rut, it is not impossible. What you need is the right approach. And the right approach involves taking things slowly. Returning to the example of the car getting moving from a standing start. Imagine if the battery was dead and you had to push the car to get it started.It might be impossible for you to push the car to a speed of 50 miles an hour, but by pushing it you can get it up to a speed that you can start the engine and let it do the work from there. Its the same with your confidence. You just need to get yourself started feeling confident and then it will be easier after that.
So how do you start? You need to get some small successes under your belt. You need to celebrate small things. If you are having trouble getting the big wins in life, start focusing on the details. Get the details right. And celebrate every time you get the details right. That happy feeling when you are doing small things right will start to spread and make improvement that much easier.
Once you get some momentum going, then you will find it easier and easier to build your confidence.
The key is to be patient and really concentrate on the small successes you can achieve. Then build it up slowly. If you can continue taking small steps in the right direction, you will eventually get there.
