Self-Confidence

I was reading a posting from a fellow writer, Nick Usborne, who wrote:

“When you lack self-confidence, you think stuff like, "I'm not ready. I'm not good enough. I can't do this." And when those thoughts fill your mind, you'll never have the courage to reach out for the best opportunities.”

Nick is absolutely right, but how does that help? How do you build self-confidence? One of the things that you need to do is look at reality…I mean be honestly and truthfully look at the reality of the situation.

If you are saying that you are not good enough, who are you comparing yourself to...honestly?

Now look at the reality of that situation. The person or persons that you are comparing yourself to, are they really “good” at whatever it is…truthfully? The honest answer is that they are probably NOT as good as YOU think they are.

Sure some of us work really hard to get good at something (no there is no such thing as perfect), but even those hard workers will put their proverbial “best foot forward” and will always highlight the best version of themselves.

Take anybody that you know or look up to…how do they present themselves to the world? Let’s take Michael Jackson as an example. He was in the media a lot for terrible things, but did he highlight those things? If you went to Michael’s website, would it be filled with complaints and court cases? No…it would highlight his awards, his albums, his tours…it would highlight the best possible version of Michael Jackson. Now if there was no media coverage, then we probably would have never have heard about this other version of Michael. Just like there is no media coverage to show the other side of the person that you are comparing yourself against.

Now let’s take it back to you. You are comparing yourself to the best version of another person…not the real person, but the best version of that person (the part that they want you and everyone else to see)…basically you are comparing yourself to a really nice website.

It’s unfair, but very much reality. So how do you build self-confidence? You start by looking at the reality of the situation. Do your homework…do they really have talent, are they faking it, or is somewhere in the middle? The honest answer is that they are probably NOT as good as YOU think they are…they just present themselves well.