Greetings my dear readers! I hope you’re enjoying your time
Today I will be presenting to you some tips to boost your confidence. I read the book “This Book Will Make You Confident” by Dr. Hibberd and Usmar which has great practices for a more confident personality. Therefore, I decided to let you know on some useful ones.
Now without further ado, let’s get confident!
1. Battling NATs
According to the authors we have a small inner judge that only spreads ‘Negative Automatic Thoughts,’ or NATs. Thoughts like “I’m not good enough” are considered NATS, they always come uninvited leaving you feel miserable. They are often plausible, like when you are struggling with something, but at the same time they are unrealistic, they will make you feel like you will never be able to cope, which is not true.
The best way to challenge NATs is to spot them, analyze them and work from there. Dr Hibberd and Usmar suggested filling out the NATs Table. In the table you will write the thought/situation and assess it, then you will try to challenge it and find better solution/s.
The table below is my example that I have done before:
Situation: I might not be able to pass my test
Self-critical Thought: why didn’t you ask anyone to explain to you what you don’t understand stupid?
How strongly do I believe this? (0-100)? 70
Emotion: scared, frustrated, worried, upset.
Behavior: Complaining about how hard the material is.
Challenges to self-criticism: Yes I did not ask anyone to teach me but I can start now, I still have time to study. And next time I will speak up in class.
How much do you believe the original thought? (0-100) 30
What would a more balanced perspective be? It is ok to not understand the material right away, I still can study and ask for help and i'll surely pass the test.
The more you battle and get rid of the negative thoughts the less automatic and influential they will be on you which will make it easier for you to look at the positive side and make you confident.
2. Acting out
Acting out or completing a task or something that you left off will give your confidence a boost. To do so you need to work on your “Self-efficacy.” Self-efficacy is what the psychologist Albert Bandura explained, as cited in the book, is “a belief in your ability to succeed in certain situations.” (Hibberd, Usmar, 2014). This belief, whether you have it or lack it, has a considerable role on how you work on your projects or goals. Low self-efficacy makes people hesitant toward finishing off their tasks because they will feel the need to feel completely certain before they do something which may take a very long time. Thus, the trick is to start and complete the goal before you are completely ready. If you do what have you been fearing then you might see that it was not that scary after all, you will be able to engage in the activity better and discover your hidden talents, and this will definitely boost your confidence.
Now if you want to raise your self-efficacy you can write down the different tasks you need to complete and rate their difficulty. Then write down what you predict will happen and experiment it (the task), then compare the expectation to reality.
Putting your insecurities to test will prove to you that things rarely go bad as you think they will. And practicing going out of your comfort zone will help your self-efficacy to level up and so does your confidence.
3. Letting go of anxious predictions
When you are not confident you will predict the worst in any situation which will make you feel overwhelmed especially when you want to start something new. Thoughts like “this will never work” or “I cannot do this” will stop you from starting the first step. These fearful predictions accompanied by anxiety will blow things out of proportion and will make it harder to assess the situation and think rationally because you will be basing everything on the thoughts in your head. Therefore, it is important to face the fearful thoughts and predict and evaluate what might or might not happen realistically. Remember that your thoughts are just ‘hypothesis, not facts.’ (Hibberd, Usmar, 2014).
To battle these thoughts there is yet another table that the authors suggest filling, it is quite similar to the NATs table, thus, I will summarize it briefly. You basically write down your anxious prediction and assess it. You put it on a scale from 0-100 and see how much you believe in it, then you describe your related emotions. After that, write down the evidence for and against your predictions and describe what the worst could happen and how will you cope. And finally write what the best could happen then rate how much you believe in it in the same scale.
4. Give yourself the credit you deserve
A very vital way for you to boost your confidence is to take pride in your achievements. You need to focus on your positives and strengths and learn to analyze them because that is how you know where to put your feet to reach your goals. You must fight the prejudice against yourself that keeps convincing you that you are not good enough. One way to do that is to start taking compliments from others and yourself. You need to believe that there are people who know you are doing great and that is why they are complimenting you. Start acknowledging and absorbing your positive traits and you will see a positive impact on yourself.
Before I finish this article I would like to add that it is ok to have negative thoughts and doubts because even confident people have them, but it is important to have this faith that good things will happen, in any situation, and if something wrong happens instead then believe that you can make it better.
Thank you for reading.
Sending hopeful prayers your way <3
