14 Ways to Boost Your Confidence: Warrior Mind Podcast #567

Over 10 years and going strong!  With over 2M downloads from over 18 countries and 7 continents’…. this is the Warrior Mind Podcast.

In this episode of the Warrior Mind Podcast, I’m going to discuss 14 ways to boost your confidence for personal success.

14 Ways to Boost Your Confidence

Imagine how different your life could be if you felt more confident! Fears would be only a faint memory of days gone by. You’d know without a doubt that you could achieve whatever you set your mind to. Nothing could hold you back. You’d be living the life you’ve always desired!

Self-confidence is perhaps the most important quality that sets successful people apart from others. Think of every person you know who has achieved a measure of success. Can you find even one who doesn’t exhibit confidence?

These people don’t have more confidence because they’re any better than anyone else. They’re no better than you! They have confidence because they learned some skills and actions that brought them that confidence.

The good news is that you, too, can learn these skills and gain the confidence to propel you to success in any endeavor! Wouldn’t you love to have more confidence? It won’t come to you of its own accord; you have to be proactive if you want to build confidence.

You can learn the skills to build your confidence from this podcast. Here are the top 14 ways to boost your confidence so you can feel good about yourself and enjoy great success:

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Look good, feel good.

When you look and feel your best, you have more confidence, you’re more alert, and you bring more energy and focus to your projects. Other people also take more notice of you and respond positively to your positive energy.

1. Be a sharp dresser. Even ZZ Top, the classic rock band, took notice of the effect that dressing well can have on people when they wrote the song Sharp Dressed Man. The song says:

“They come runnin’ just as fast as they can
‘Cause every girl crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.”

Yes, whether it’s your business or personal life, looking your best can attract others. When you shop, buy nice clothes. If budget is an issue, buy less but spend more on each item. More expensive clothes look better, fit better, and last longer than the cheap stuff.

When you know you look good, there’s an aura of confidence about you.

• Stay in shape. Making the effort to stay in shape pays you well in terms of increased confidence and self-esteem. If you’re insecure about your weight, for example, those insecurities can affect many other aspects of your life.
  
• Eating healthy, nutritious foods gives both your body and brain what they require to function at top capacity. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, where you’ll find the fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, and whole grain breads. Stay away from the center of the store, where they keep all the preservative-laden foods in boxes and cans.
  
• Exercise every day to use up extra calories, tone your body, and bring you more energy. Exercising also produces endorphins, the “feel good” hormone, which gives you an emotional lift and makes you feel good about yourself.

Let your body language show confidence.

Experts agree that people may get more from your body language than they do from your words. Using confident body language will go a long way towards increasing your effectiveness with others and bring you greater confidence as well.

Follow these tips to exhibit confidence with your body language:

1. Stand up straight. Your posture can tell people a lot about you before you ever speak a word! Confident people stand straight and tall, whereas people who lack confidence shrink down.
   
2. Be relaxed and open. Even though you’re standing up straight, keep your muscles relaxed. Tense muscles exhibit tension, fear, or insecurity to others. Open body language shows self-confidence and trust in people.
   
3. Walk quickly. Busy, successful people usually walk quickly. They have places to go, things to do, and people to see. When you walk quickly, you join the ranks of these successful people, and others will automatically look at you as if you must be successful, too.
   
4. Hold your head up. Show your confidence by holding your head up high. Insecure people look at the ground a lot.
   
5. Make eye contact. When you look someone in the eye, they feel you’re honest, sure of yourself and that you know well what you’re talking about. On the other hand, avoiding eye contact makes people think you may have something to hide.
   
6. Smile and the world smiles with you! Smiles are contagious. They make everyone feel good, including you! Studies show that putting a smile on your face can actually activate pleasant emotions, including confidence.
    
7. Consider what a warm smile can do. Recently I had a conversation with a girl in high school, and she told me an interesting story. When she was introduced to someone, the person said:

“I remember you. Last year, one day when I was having one of the most horrible days of my life, I passed you in the hall and you gave me a smile. That smile made me feel better the rest of the day!”

Upon hearing this, my friend swelled with pride at how she had made such a difference in this stranger’s life by taking only a moment to give her a smile. This is a true story. So give someone a smile today, and know that you make a difference!

• Smile at yourself in the mirror every morning as you begin your day. It will put a spring in your step and give you confidence to meet the challenges of the day.

Use positive self-talk throughout your day.

We talk to ourselves inside our mind all day long; it’s like a running dialogue that never ends. The things you say to yourself forge energy pathways in your subconscious that control your attitudes, beliefs, and actions. How you react to your experiences is part of this self-talk.

When your self-talk is positive, it can move you to accomplish great things. When it’s negative, it can hold you back and even keep you from ever accomplishing the things you desire.

Use these tips to help you form the attitudes that can bring you success and confidence:

1. Make use of affirmations. Affirmations can literally change your life for the better, one thought at a time! Use them to reinforce your positive behaviors and override mental attitudes that hold you back. For best results, repeat them at least twice a day.

Follow the 3 P Method to write effective affirmations:

• Positive. State your desired behavior in a positive manner. Avoid the word “not.”
• Personal. You’re speaking to your subconscious, so use the word “I.”
• Present Tense. Write your affirmations as if they’re attitudes and behaviors you already show in your daily life. Use words like “I am” or “I feel” or “I believe”

Here’s an affirmation that can encourage greater confidence:

I accomplish my daily goals with ease. I am prepared to meet any challenge that comes my way. I feel confident at all times. I let go of my fear of meeting new people and look forward to new contacts.

• Keep your inner dialogue positive. As you go through your day, be sure that what you’re saying to yourself is something you want to hear. You don’t want to hear how stupid you are for making a mistake! Keep it positive. If you make a mistake, learn from it and move on.

Set SMART Goals.

Confidence comes to people who know exactly what they want, where they’re going, and how they’re going to get there. Setting SMART goals virtually guarantees your success, and every time you achieve another one of your goals, your confidence is kicked up another notch!

Use the SMART strategy for setting goals you can achieve: 

1. Specific. Describe exactly what you want. Set a specific number of whatever you want.
   
2. Measurable. Choose a goal where you can measure your progress and know when it’s achieved.
   
3. Attainable. Plan a series of easily achieved steps, or small goals, that lead to your end goal and can be achieved quickly. Reaching these micro-goals on a regular basis will make you proud of yourself, let you see you’re on a successful path, and fill you with confidence.
   
4. Realistic. Be sure your goals are realistic for YOU, not superman or someone else.
   
5. Timely. Always set a time for reaching your goal so you can make an action plan that’s complete by your desired date.

Here’s an example of a SMART Goal: “I will save $10 this week.” This goal meets every criterion in the SMART strategy. It may look insignificant, but achieving those small steps on your way to your big goal adds up and instills you with confidence and motivation to keep going.

Maintain positive relationships.

Our relationships can fill our lives with rich rewards. Because they’re so important to us, they have the potential to either instill great confidence or devastate our self-esteem. Incorporating these strategies into your relationships will ensure that they’re positive and beneficial.

1. Give compliments. Make others feel good about themselves.
2. Receive compliments graciously. Feel proud of whatever you did to deserve the compliment.
3. Follow the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.
4. Be honest.
5. Show kindness and love. Let others know you care.
6. Sandwich constructive criticism in between good points.
7. Look for the best in others and bring it out.
8. Admit your mistakes and apologize when you’re wrong.
9. Never gossip.

Look within yourself.

Self-assessment is also an important part of building your confidence. Analyzing your unique talents and passions along with determining where you want to improve can help you plan action steps based on your findings. Self-knowledge results in a stronger, more confident YOU!

1. Strengthen your strengths. Identify your talents and build on them. Take advantage of what you do well to help you set and achieve your goals.
   
2. Determine your passions and pursue them. What are you passionate about? Spending more time in learning about and pursuing your passions will refresh you, bring you another strength you can depend on, and give you more energy for all aspects of your life.
   
3. Write a “me” speech. List all the things you like about you: talents, skills, and past successes. Remind yourself of these good things every morning. Recite your speech while looking in the mirror and smile! Allow yourself to feel good about your accomplishments.
   
4. Improve your weaknesses. Realize that no one is perfect. Expecting perfection can only lead to disappointment! Even so, there may be some things you’d like to improve. Determine where you’d like to improve and design a plan to effect this improvement.
   
5. If you want to improve your knowledge or skills in an area, sign up for some classes or read books on the subject.
   
6. If your weakness is a character flaw or bad habit, use affirmations to help you make good decisions and take appropriate actions every day to minimize this weakness.

Do things you enjoy.

The activities you enjoy are most often the same things in which you excel. While you’re spending time having fun with these activities, you’re also reinforcing to yourself how good you are! The more time you spend doing this, the more your confidence grows. So go out and have some fun!

Feel gratitude.

Being thankful for every good thing about and around you puts your mental energies into a positive state and attracts more good things for you to feel good about. It’s a cycle that can do wonders for your confidence and self-esteem.

1. Reflect on the good. Give thanks each and every day for your blessings.
2. List all the things that are good in your life: big, small, and seemingly inconsequential.
3. What special talents have you been given?
4. What good things happened today?
5. Look for the good in challenges. They may be there to actually help you in some way.

• Keep a gratitude journal. Write down the things of each day that you’re thankful for. When you’re feeling low, reading your journal can lift your spirits.

Speak up and be noticed.

Do you ever wish others would pay more attention to you and what you have to say? There are things you can do to make people think of you as more of a leader. These actions will cause a gradual attitude shift in both you and other people that will help your confidence climb.

1. Sit in the front. In classrooms or seminars, sit in the front row and actively participate.
   
2. Have something to say. In meetings or group discussions, speak up with positive opinions and input. Even if what you say isn’t particularly momentous, significant, or important, people will still begin to think of you as more of an authority.

Seek the company of positive people.

When you’re around positive people, it’s easy to feel confident. They help bring out the best in you. You know you can be yourself without fears of them judging you. The more time you spend with them, the more your good feelings about yourself and others will spill over into the many areas of your life.

• On the other hand, avoid negative people. They tend to be critical and try to drag you down to their level. Be like the gingerbread man of the fairy tale. He said, “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me; I’m the gingerbread man!” Don’t let those negative people catch you and take away your confidence.

Congratulate yourself.

Always congratulate yourself for your accomplishments. When you do something good, pat yourself on the back, celebrate, reward yourself, and feel good about it. Then move on to your next achievement with renewed vigor and even more confidence.

Live by your principles.

Allow yourself to feel secure in your beliefs and act accordingly. Others will have more respect for you, even if they don’t agree with you or have the same beliefs. When you let your principles guide your actions, you never disappoint yourself. This also increases your confidence level.

1. Know what’s important to you.
2. Always do what you believe is the right thing.
3. Desire things because YOU want them, not because someone else wants them.
4. Don’t compare yourself to others. Your measure of yourself doesn’t depend on other people.

Challenge yourself.

Pushing yourself a little more than you’re used to will open up new doors for you. When you meet the challenge, it may take you by surprise to learn that you can do things you never thought you could! You’ll feel better about yourself than ever and your confidence will soar.

1. Take one of those courses where you learn to survive in the wild.
2. Learn a new skill, such as woodworking or landscaping, and beautify your surroundings.
3. Set a slightly higher goal and work until you achieve it.

Act confident.

We all have days where nothing seems to go right. When this happens, our self-confidence is likely to plummet. On days like these, when all else fails, act confident anyway.

Perhaps you’ve heard the statement, “Fake it till you make it!” With respect to your self-esteem, sometimes faking it actually does make you feel better!

The actions that make you look confident can make you feel more confident as well.

1. Smile. Giving someone a confident smile will make you feel better, too.
   
2. Help someone else. Helping other people feel better about themselves also gives you a boost. Plus, there’s nothing like the feeling you get when you see someone’s eyes light up because you did something that made a difference in their life!
   
3. Dress for success. Even if you don’t care what you look like on a bad day, take the trouble to look nice anyway. Not only will you feel better about yourself, but others will respond to you more positively, bringing you even more confidence.

Following these strategies for boosting your confidence will bring you more confidence than you’ve ever had before. With more confidence, you’ll discover that you’re suddenly able to achieve more than ever. Plus, you’ll feel happier, more satisfied with life, and more fulfilled!

So many strategies can seem overwhelming at first, but don’t let that keep you from gaining the confidence you deserve. Plan to add just one or two strategies each week to your daily routines.

Soon enough, you’ll be a fountain of confidence, gushing with all the confidence you could ever desire and constantly renewing it as well. Enjoy!

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