8 Power-Ups for Reclaiming Confidence

There is nothing more crippling than losing your confidence.

 

Without confidence, everything gets harder. You struggle to concentrate. Tasks feel overwhelming. If you stay there, you’ll even find a more long-term emotional impact, where you might fall into depression or become bogged down in indecision. Without confidence, you lose all forward progress.

 

This is why it’s so important to reclaim your confidence after suffering a blow. For a fast boost, try these eight power-ups.

 

Do What Makes You Uncomfortable

 

When you take risks, you stretch yourself in surprising new ways. This is a powerful feeling. Why? It takes confidence to step outside your comfort zone. Trying something new forces you to act with confidence, whether you started out feeling it or not.

 

Find Your Purpose

 

Knowing what you’re destined to do is a fantastic feeling and fills a person with confidence. If you’re unsure why you’ve set a particular goal, or are questioning what you’re doing, you’re not likely to feel confident at all. Solidifying the goal in your mind is a rapid boost to confidence then. 

 

Keep Trying

 

It’s normal to experience failure from time to time. This kind of disaster can easily destroy confidence. You regain this confidence when you get up and try again. 

 

Learn Things

 

Knowledge truly is power. When you really understand something inside out, you tend to be very confident (at least in that area). Continually learning new things expands your knowledge base. As a result, your confidence extends in new directions as well. 

 

Drop the Idea Things Have to be Perfect

 

When nothing is ever good enough, confidence falters. How are you supposed to feel sure of yourself when you’re feeling things are always unfinished or lacking somehow? By accepting things as they are, warts and all, you’ll find you’re relax more and even become more confident in what you’re doing because you’re telling yourself that what you have or are doing is exactly what you need.

 

Dress for Success

 

How we present ourselves to the world really can affect our mental state. Wearing what makes you feel good about yourself will restore confidence. A change in attitude is only a change in outfit away.

 

Trust Yourself

 

When you doubt your instincts, you’re telling yourself you don’t really know what you’re doing. This is why it’s so important to ‘go with your gut’ when faced with a challenge. This kind of trust instills confidence in your ability to judge a situation or outcome.

 

Look Forward

 

Confidence has a hard time standing up to ghosts from the past. When you get caught up in your previous failures or uncertainties, confidence falters. Instead, look forward to positive emotions. When you recognize your potential, you start seeing just how amazing you are. 

 

Embrace Imperfection to Raise Self-Worth

Everywhere you look nowadays there is advice on how to strive, beat the competition, be happy, successful, wealthy, thin, married to your soul-mate, have perfect kids, balance work, and life, win the marathon and then come home and make the perfect dinner. In other words, how to be perfect or at least our early twenty-first-century concept of perfect. There are self-help books to improve every conceivable aspect of your life from your personality to your career.

 

But what if striving to be perfect is not the right goal? What if beating yourself up and scheduling and improving isn’t where you should be? Because becoming 'your best you' isn’t about being perfect (and is, in fact, a shortcut to disappointment at best and a breakdown at worst).  Perfection is an illusion, and making it your life’s aim is a damaging mistake. The bottom line is–you will never be perfect. Imperfection is not only inevitable, but it's also okay. And it’s the thing that keeps us moving forward.

 

Perfection is a mirage, and if it's your goal, you are very likely to fall into the trap of carping on yourself when you don’t achieve it. You will have a skewed view of yourself by having the wrong expectations. The more you try, and fail, the worse your self-esteem will become. That is not a recipe for a happy life.

 

Be kind to yourself – if you’re constantly striving for perfection and criticizing yourself for not meeting those impossibly high standards, you’re setting yourself up for a miserable life because you can’t achieve the impossible goal of perfection. 

 

Take a look around you – despite what you see on television and social media, no one is perfect. Ever. At no point in human history has anyone been perfect. People just do their best, most of the time.

 

Embrace your imperfection – it’s part of what makes you human and not a robot (and remember even robots can malfunction!) Imperfection makes you quirky and interesting and brave and admirable. What’s to admire in someone who gets a perfect score first time, compared to someone who worked hard, made mistakes, learned from them and got there in the end? Or didn’t, but gave it their best shot? 

 

Trying to be perfect is choosing to suffer when you don’t need to. Trying to be your best self is a very different proposition. That’s likely to lead you down all sorts of interesting and fulfilling paths if you’re prepared to make mistakes along the way.

 

5 Steps to Effectively Communicate Your Feelings in Relationships

In relationships, there’s communication, and then there’s effective communication. Communication is something that takes a lot of work, and once you’ve successfully positioned yourself as a communicator, the next step is to crack the code at being an effective communicator. If you’re at that step, try these 5 mini steps to help you along with effectively communicating your feelings. 

 

1. Allow Yourself to Feel 

 

Going into a conversation with guilt or apprehension about your feelings? That won’t help you or your partner. You’re completely allowed to feel whatever you’re feeling, and you’re also allowed to talk about those feelings. 

 

2. Label your Feelings

 

You’re experiencing these feelings, but are you reading more into them? Are you labeling them and trying to put into context the essence of your emotions? It’s not easy to do, but it’s a really important exercise for you to do on your own before opening up and sharing with someone else. 

 

3. Start with Yourself

 

If you’re extroverted or you like talking about your feelings a lot, your first inclination may be to talk it out with your significant other. That’s a great thing to do, but it begins with you. You’ll have a hard time processing everything if you’re influenced by someone else’s insight or advice. Start with yourself, and then work your way up to a discussion with your partner. 

 

4. Remember How Much You Matter

 

You matter to your significant other; your feelings matter to your significant other.  Keep this in mind and try to negate the potential fear or hesitation you may be experiencing. Swap those feelings for feelings of confidence and security in the strength of your relationship. 

 

5. Swap “You” for “I”

 

Whenever you get close to saying “You made me feel” or “You did this,” swap it for a personal statement. A conversation is helpful for you to share your perspective – not for you to point fingers at your loved one. Think about how you feel, why you feel that way, and what has happened to contribute to those feelings. 

 

Above all, when you’re entering into a conversation with your significant other, be happy that you’re taking this step. It’s excellent for you and even better for your relationship. Give yourself (and your partner) a pat on the back for working through something difficult, and keep yourself reminded of the light at the end of the communication tunnel – a happy, healthy dynamic between you and your partner.