Boost your confidence to find happiness

If you want to change your life, you need to start taking positive steps right now, even if it feels scary. Don’t let your head get in the way of your dreams – take charge of your mind and you will find great happiness and fulfillment.

Lack of confidence is one thing that hinders us from realising our dreams. If you are confident, you
feel like you can deal with anything. But if your confidence levels are on the low side, you will be besieged with selfdoubt, scared of taking risks and feel convinced you couldn’t succeed. Many
people have let their dreams go because they lacked confidence to chase them. The good news is that it’s possible to get out of a negative cycle of self-doubt into a frame of mind that will help you believe you can achieve anything. You can do it now by taking the following steps:

If you are always thinking negatively about yourself you will start to believe it. Start to become aware of your negative thoughts and then stop yourself every time one pops into your head. Always be
conscious about your thoughts as they often translate into your actions. Replace a nasty thought with a positive one, for example, instead of saying, ‘I’m useless, I’ll never be able to accomplish this task,’ think, ‘I can do this and I will work hard to learn the needed skills and also do my best. I will give it my all and will not give up no matter what.’

Use pictures too. When you are telling yourself something positive, visualise it. If you are after a promotion at work, imagine yourself doing the new job and get an idea of what it feels like. It will make you excited and make your expectations more real. You will have more confidence when you start feeling and acting the part.

Learn to praise children. When we recognise children in a positive way we are helping them to develop good, positive emotional and behaviour patterns, as well as their self-esteem. Using praise is one of the most powerful ways of allowing children to feel good about themselves. When we say things like, ‘You did well, very good, I’m proud of you,’ we can feel the warm glow in the child’s heart and we have a warm glow in our heart too. When we give positive support we feel great ourselves – all the more reason to give it.

We can produce amazing results by taking general praise one step further and adding descriptive praise. This means noticing and mentioning specifically what it is that the child is doing well. Sometimes we may find ourselves saying to our children, ‘Oh yes, that’s marvelous, great, brilliant,’
without really paying too much attention. This sort of praise can lose its meaning if we are not careful. To make our praise even more effective we need to slow down and really pay attention to what the child is doing.

There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when you encourage a child to feel good about themselves. If you haven’t got a child, go out and find one to appreciate. Praise a niece, a nephew, a next-door neighbour – they will feel great and so will you.