3 Amazing facts about self confidence that will make you confident

Do you feel lack of confidence most of the time?

Well you are not alone, many people in the world feel the same way. That's not your fault. Read through this post and you will get to know amazing facts about your self confidence. And also actions you should take if want to increase your confidence level.

Journey of life and Self Confidence

If you feel short of confidence, think about was it same always from childhood? You will be amazed to recall that you were not always the same like you are today. Searching for confidence and looking for motivation.

The two inborn traits of children are that they are fearless and they have high level of self confidence. If you observe any child closely they do not fear doing things. Why ? 

Because they don't think about failure. They are only driven by joy or pleasure of doing things. They are not motivated by outcomes.

But as a grown up can you tell the same about yourself? I am sure most of you will say no.

So you must understand what is the difference. 

A new born has raw brain and in born personality traits. Before the they are fed with society acceptable norms and expectations of others around them they are driven by their primary motivations.

But all of us grow up interacting with people around us, the society and our environment. we are also fed with parent's expectations and taught how to get accepted in society.

If child likes to do anything which does not fit into society norms, he/she is stopped from doing that. Kids are more pushed towards studies even if they love sports or any other thing like dancing or singing as it is more accepted in society that for making good careers scoring high grades in exam is must.

Most children don't  get support to follow what the like and make a career out of it.

So with time the primary motivation dies and secondary motivations take over us. Children are forced into a rat race.

In childhood score good in exam, then pursue course of higher study which can fetch a high pay job. There is no harm in doing this if the child gets self motivated and likes to do these. There are many examples who wants to do this and are doing great in life. 

But that's not the case always. There are many are not made for this but forced into this and ultimately loose self confidence. They loose motivation in whatever they do. And over a period of time they forget who they are and become frustrated. 

If you are able to relate to this then stay tuned, I am going to show how can you break this and find real you and the joy in life.

Group Positioning and Self Confidence

Do you know our self confidence or lack of confidence depends on others too?

Persons who lacks confidence don't feel the same all the time. When they are with friends or with family or some other people they are comfortable with they feel good and confident. They can express freely their thoughts, emotions etc.

So it is very clear that level of confidence varies in different group of people. 

How this happens?

We humans are social animals and it is our natural tendency to fit into a group. We also grow up being in group, be it in school or parents' friend circle or any other group. 

Our basic personality traits and that of others decides our positioning within the group. For example if a child had a tendency to dominate then he/she will carry the same in the group. And those who are submissive of less dominant will tend to follow.

This dominance of submissive trait is also effected by how children are treated in home. Children who gets loving and nurturing upbringing they will be more confident. They will have a balanced approach in everything and towards others.

If children are treated with authority with no freedom, their confidence will do down. They become submissive and tend to be followers.

If children are allowed to do anything without control and enjoy power, they will grow up feeling entitled and will have more dominant nature.

So the way we are treated as child will reflect in our group positioning and this is same for others as well. 

If we are surrounded by people dominant than us then we will feel less confident. And if within a group we are less dominant than us we feel more confident.

This is relative positioning, and this starts from childhood.  So our confidence is not about ourselves only it depends on others as well.

Self Image and Confidence

I want to throw a question to all of you who lacks self confidence. Is your lack of confidence real of just a state created by your thoughts?

Think deeply to find the answer.

Many a times our lack of confidence is just a perception created by our thoughts only. It is not real. 

As human beings we are trained to think in a particular way. Like outer gorgeousness of someone makes us feel that they superior than us. And we lower our self image. This applies to things and places as well.

For example, when you go to a party and look at a person very good looking, much better dressed than you and talking to people around him/her. What do you portray about that person in mind in comparison to you? 

Don't you feel that that person is superior than you and you lower your self image and confidence as well? The reality may be quite different.

It is clear that when we lack information about something or some person we tend to judge it by outer look and position our self image according to that. It decides our confidence level also.

So by now you know the 3 amazing facts that effects our confidence

1. How we are treated as child

2. Confidence varies with group positioning

3. Self Confidence is often decided by our self image

Train your brain for boosting self confidence

Yes! you can train your brain to increase your confidence level. All our activities, emotions are controlled by our brain, So as confidence level.

Throughout life we have got different experiences in different situations. Some of these were good and positive, some of them were bad and negative.

When we experience something and it gets repeated its effect gets stored in our brain as long term memory, be it good or bad experience. The good experiences boosts our confidence and the bad ones reduces our confidence level.

Now the fact is one of the primal functions of our brain is to keep us safe, so whenever any such situation occurs which have created bad experience in past, it recognizes that as potential danger situation. 

And our confidence level around that situation is automatically reduced except for fight response.

I will discuss about different threat responses our brain triggers in separate post. For now its important to know that these experiences that are stored in our brain is responsible for all the actions we take. 

It also controls our confidence level about a situation or around specific set of people based on the past experiences. All these happens automatically and most of the time we remain unaware of it.

Now to change this and train our brain to override our automatic response system, first thing you need to do is to be self aware. Self awareness means you should be able to notice the situations where you are feeling confident and when you are having lack of self confidence.

As I have mentioned most of our response are controlled by automatic response system, self awareness will help you to stop giving control to automatic response system. 

But even if for some time it gets the control, you will be able to take the control back to the thinking brain. 

All you need to do is to notice the situation when you are not confident and start challenging your automatic response system by questioning it. Control should go to your thinking brain.

For example if you feel lack of confidence whenever you meet your boss, then before going to meet him/her next time. Just take time and question is facing boss really that tough. He/she may be a dominating person but how your collogues are able to face boss and still stay calm. This means there are ways to face boss calmly. What I mean to say just challenge your previous experience to create a new one.

It will still not easy for you in the beginning as  the automatic response system will always pull you back, but you need to give control to your thinking brain to stay calm. So how much uncomfortable you may feel try to give control to rational brain.

You can apply some mindful berating  techniques. If you don't know then you can learn mindful breathing to stay calm and thereby holding your confidence level. 

Even after all these your boss will remain in charge as bosses remain in charge, but mark my words, if you give it a proper try your feelings won't be the same  as before and this will be starting of a new experience creation system. This can change your life.

Training your brain to boost self confidence is all about challenging the automatic response system and creating new and good experiences.

 So that the old bad ones can be replaced. But remember it takes time. As the bad one also took time to settle down and still will remain there, the good ones will need more time. 

There is no magic wand to it. It's a continuous process and you need to keep doing it over and over again and in all the situations where you lack confidence and try to avoid facing it.

So you can start a journey towards a new you right now.