Category: Confidence

  • Building Self-Confidence in Practice

    In-I-T-I-A-te change! When you apply the I-T-I-A Formula – Self-awareness +Intention +Thinking +Imagination +Action – to confidence building, the shift in consciousness is not necessarily dramatic, more like a gradual awakening. Over time, you cast off your negative conditioning and adopt more empowering beliefs. Then feelings and actions change too. It’s like climbing a ladder;…

  • Respect yourself!

    If you could have done it better, you would have. If you could have known better, you would have. You learn by doing it right and you learn by getting it wrong. Missed opportunities will come round again, only next time you’ll be ready for them. Just because you once saw something as bad for…

  • Give up approval-seeking behaviour

    It’s perfectly natural to want to be liked and accepted, but it becomes a problem if you constantly edit yourself to win others’ approval. Approval-seeking behaviour has some short-term benefits (e.g. it can help avoid arguments), but has long-term consequences. You are unlikely to feel good about yourself if you continually pander to others. Concern…

  • How to be more assertive

    Even if you’ve never considered yourself a particularly assertive person, mastering a few basic techniques can help you to develop this essential skill. Start with small steps and stretch yourself a little more each day as your confidence grows. The basic rules are:  Choose your outcomes. Decide what you want after consider the consequences.  Adopt…

  • Finding purpose and meaning in your life

    There is ultimately only one route to success that brings true happiness: find a purpose that excites you and pursue it, using your talents and potential to the full. In her book, ‘The Fourth Instinct’, Arianna Huffington writes: ‘Give a gibbon a mate, a peaceful stretch of jungle and plenty of figs to munch on,…

  • Strengthening Self-Belief and Overcoming Doubt

    Whenever we set out on a new course of personal growth it is only natural to wonder whether we will succeed. Sadly, many people are beset with self-doubting thoughts which feed on themselves. They have to be firmly dealt with. There are no quick fixes and no easy solutions. We must continue to discipline our…

  • Told ‘No’ 100,000 times by the age of 12

    Our country is suffering from an epidemic. Every day most of us come into contact with sufferers. You may even suffer from it yourself. And yet it often goes unrecognised. The condition? Acute low self-esteem and a chronic lack of self-confidence. Yes, low self-esteem is endemic in society and it wreaks more havoc than cancer,…

  • Give up approval seeking behaviour

    Approval-seeking behaviour means being a people-pleaser. It implies being too concerned with what others think at the expense of your own feelings and beliefs. In extreme cases psychologists recognise this as a deep-seated neurosis because you are in effect allowing others to make your mind up for you and dictate your actions. Of course, it’s…