This is where you start, ever so slowly, moving towards your goal. By doing the right things, and starting with small, easy wins, you’ll put yourself on the path to success – and start building the self-confidence that comes with this.
Build the knowledge you need to succeed:
Looking at your goals, identify the skills you’ll need to achieve them. And then look at how you can acquire these skills confidently and well. Don’t just accept a sketchy, just-good-enough solution – look for a solution, a program or a course that fully equips you to achieve what you want to achieve and, ideally, gives you a certificate or qualification you can be proud of.
Focus on the basics:
When you’re starting, don’t try to do anything clever or elaborate. And don’t reach for perfection – just enjoy doing simple things successfully and well.
Set small goals, and achieve them:
Starting with the very small goals you identified in step 1, get in the habit of setting them, achieving them, and celebrating that achievement. Don’t make goals particularly challenging at this stage, just get into the habit of achieving them and celebrating them. And, little by little, start piling up the successes!
Keep managing your mind:
Stay on top of that positive thinking, keep celebrating and enjoying success, and keep those mental images strong. And on the other side, learn to handle failure. Accept that mistakes happen when you’re trying something new. In fact, if you get into the habit of treating mistakes as learning experiences, you can (almost) start to see them in a positive light. After all, there’s a lot to be said for the saying “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger!”
Step 3: Accelerating Towards Success
By this stage, you’ll feel your self-confidence building. You’ll have completed some of the courses you started in step 2, and you’ll have plenty of success to celebrate!
This is the time to start stretching yourself. Make the goals a bit bigger, and the challenges a bit tougher. Increase the size of your commitment. And extend the skills you’ve proven into new, but closely related arenas.
As long as you keep on stretching yourself enough, but not too much, you’ll find your self-confidence building apace. What’s more, you’ll have earned your self-confidence – because you’ll have put in the hard graft necessary to be successful!
Overcome A Major Fear…
A major source of stress in your life is the “fear of rejection” or “fear of criticism.” This fear of rejection manifests itself in an over-concern for the approval or disapproval of your boss or other people.
The fear of rejection is often learned in early childhood as the result of a parent giving the child what psychologists call “conditional love.”
Rise Above the Need For Approval…
Many parents made the mistake of giving love and approval to their children only when their children did something that they wanted them to do.
A child who has grown up with this kind of conditional love tends to seek for unconditional approval from others all his or her life.
When the child becomes an adult, this need for approval from the parent is transferred to the workplace and onto the boss. The adult employee can then become preoccupied with the opinion of the boss. This preoccupation can lead to an obsession to perform to some undetermined high standard.
Don’t Burn Yourself Out…
People usually put so much pressure on themselves to perform in order to please their bosses that they burn themselves out. They often die of heart attacks before the age of 55. This conditional love in childhood is a very serious stress-related phenomenon in the American workplace.
Action Exercises:
Here are two things you can do immediately to deal with the fear of rejection, criticism and disapproval. First, realize and accept that the opinions of others are not important enough for you to feel stressed, unhappy or over concerned about them.
Even if they dislike you entirely, it has nothing to do with your own personal worth and value as a person. Second, refuse to be over concerned about what you think people are thinking about you. The fact is that most people are not thinking about you at all. Relax and get on with your life. You will succeed.
Be Happy – Win Your Battle With Confidence.