B A L A N C E

Recognize Your Weaknesses And Own Them

One of most overlooked parts of confidence is recognizing weaknesses We all have weaknesses and pretending they don’t exist only instills a fragile sense of confidence that can easily be broken.

Being confident is not about being perfect It's about acknowledging our weaknesses and figuring out how to work within them People are complex and, in that complexity, there are areas of both strength and weakness Part of being confident is being able to accept that both sides exist and that is ok

Live According To Your Values

This brings us to the next point - if we base our confidence solely on what we can do, then we are setting ourselves up for failure We will all have a bad day or make a mistake at some point in our lives If our self-confidence is based on performance, we are going to be devastated if we don't do as well as we had hoped.

One way to get off this precarious performance-based rollercoaster is to use our values as one of the things we root our confidence in For example, rather than someone feeling bad about themselves because they did not do well on a test, they can ask themselves if their actions leading up to the test were in line with their values. By basing confidence in values rather than performance we can introduce more context into situations.

Be Kind To Yourself

Many people would be horrified if someone else spoke to them the way they speak to themselves It may not seem like it matters, but negative self talk affects how we perceive situations and how we view ourself

The first step to changing negative self talk is noticing when you are doing it. After that you can ask why. Are you using negative self talk to try and not make mistakes, or to protect yourself from someone else’s criticism, or to confirm your own beliefs about yourself? Figuring out the why of negative self- talk can help us figure out what the next step is

Maybe instead of positive self- talk you can strive for neutral self -talk Maybe you can create a personal motto that can be used to combat negative self-talk or you consider what you would say to a friend in the same situation. Whatever strategy you use, working on negative self- talk will help immensely with self- confidence.

Building new patterns and becoming confident is like learning a new language and culture - it can happen, but it will not happen overnight As you continue to work on your self- confidence, notice when you make progress and celebrate successe

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