How To Cultivate Your Inner Self-Confidence To Achieve Your Goals
Imagine having all the confidence in the world to pursue your hopes and dreams. You would believe in yourself so much that you would take calculated risks without second guessing yourself and invest in yourself in order to live the life you are meant to live.
Confidence can look different for everyone. For one person, it may be believing in yourself enough to walk into a room full of strangers and strike up a conversation. For another, it may look like mustering up the courage to ask for a raise at work.
Sounds amazing right? Keep reading to discover seven steps to help you build your self-confidence and how therapy can help!
Combat the inner critic voice - talk to yourself the way you would to a friend. Would you tell your friend they are not good enough?
View failure as part of the learning process- sometimes the biggest successes come from initial failures.
Adopt a growth mindset- we are constantly learning and evolving into a better person.
Try new things (no matter how intimidating) and build from those experiences - you can do hard things!
Recite positive affirmations to yourself multiple times a day - tell yourself what you need to hear and believe. Start by using “I am” statements.
Give yourself permission to not be perfect - perfectionism is an impossible standard guaranteed to set you up for unfulfillment and burnout.
Praise the heck out of yourself for your accomplishments, big or small! - You cannot rely on external validation alone.
Working with a therapist to build self-confidence
It can be extremely helpful for you to seek professional help from a therapist who can help you with developing insight, while providing a safe space to open up and feeling validated.
In order for the steps mentioned above to be effective you first must have insight into your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Not everyone has the same level of self-awareness which is where therapy comes into play.
Therapist can help you develop insight into your life
A Therapist can help you build this insight by viewing your life through a different lens. Therapists are skilled in recognizing patterns of behaviors and themes you yourself may not be able to see.
By gaining an awareness of said patterns and themes you will gain a better understanding of yourself.
A Therapist is also able to gently point out how these patterns are impacting your ability to live a confident life.
For example, you may not be able to connect the dots of how your perfectionism is linked to feeling as though you were never good enough growing up.
Therapist can provide you a safe space to open up
A Therapist also provides a welcoming, non judgmental space for you to safely unpack the origin of your negative core belief and insecurities. It can be scary and uncomfortable opening up about ourselves.
In my experience, I have yet to work with a client who enjoys talking about painful events from their past.
It is essential that you are able to be completely honest with yourself in order to identify the parts of you that need to heal in order to grow into a more confident you.
Therapist gives validation to your thoughts and feelings
A Therapist is skilled in knowing when and how to provide validation to your thoughts and feelings. Feeling heard and understood brings so much comfort and peace.
Sometimes you need to hear that what you are feeling isn’t wrong or shameful. It feels good to know that your feelings make sense given the situations you went through.
Feeling validated also helps you build your confidence in your ability to think and feel, which is huge.
Conclusion
I hope after reading this you have a better idea of how to begin working on your inner self-confidence so that you can achieve your goals. I’d love to hear what goals you have in mind for 2021.
Leave a comment below on what you are doing to cultivate your inner self-confidence and what goal(s) you are working towards.
If you still find yourself feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start, please don’t hesitate to reach out for some extra support on this topic.
