Confidence is one of the most important things in anyone’s life. Confidence is needed, whether you are going on a date, you are going on a job interview, you want to make new friends, you want to speak in a large audience… confidence is needed. If you are a confident person, you will be able to give in your best at all time. This confidence will also make you believe that you can achieve whatever you want to achieve.
1. Practice Confidence
No one is born with confidence. We all must build our confidence – practice and learn. Confidence is something you must practice and work on day by day to get better at it. Here is an example of how you can practice being confident; If you are with your bunch of friends on a table, you should try to be the one to talk the most – bring up the most talks, tell stories, or maybe give them your opinion on things. Try to make sure that you are the spotlight on the table.
This is a great way to start a conversation and to practice being confident because you are right where your friends are, those you are used to. This will help you to be more relaxed and be good about yourself also.
After trying this a couple of times, you may feel a lot more confident. The next step is you trying to talk to people you are not used to or people you may not even know. You can try this by randomly, talking to someone in an elevator, or even in a pub as that’s also one of the best places to make up a conversation.
A crucial thing I will like to point out here is that you want to talk the most, but that doesn’t mean you will say things that are irrelevant and inappropriate. That may be annoying to the people around you.
2. Feel Good About the Way You Look
Listen, it doesn’t matter if you choose to wear something that is completely off trend. Everything is up to you. If you think you feel great about yourself by styling the way you choose, please just go with that. When you feel good about the way you look, your confidence will go way higher. Yes, it’s not just about looking good, but it is also about feeling good about yourself.
3. Work on Your Posture
Your posture tells a lot about who you are. Here is a quick tip on how to develop a good body posture.
To train our body to the right posture, you must practice.
- Stand up, nice and straight.
- Chest out
- Shoulders back
- Walk like you mean it; look people in the eyes.
In one of my articles, Daily Habits That Will Make You More Attractive, tip 4 shows how to keep a good posture. You can also exercise. This will help you to fix a bad posture, most especially when you do the right exercises.
One last tip on this is that you should not overdo these methods of having a good posture as you do not want to look like a robot.
4. Visualise Yourself as You Want to Be
This is controversial, but let’s face it. Confidence is all in the head. So, if you keep telling yourself over and over that you are confident, at some point you are going to start acting with confidence. This may sound crazy, but it is true. This is worth trying out.
5. Be Selective
Be smart when you are picking your circle of friends. Do not be around those that will bring you down. You do not need negativity in your life. You need someone that will help you, someone that will tell you where you are lacking on. He will tell you “You need to get better at this, and I am your friend, I will help you get better at this.”
A bad friend will only put you down and not care about you but themselves only. So, make quality friends and have a good inner circle of friends because that will boost your confidence.
6. Get Things Done
This may not sound important, but in other to build confidence, you must know that it is built based on your accomplishments. The first thing you do in the morning goes a long way with how you feel throughout the day. If you skip through your first task of the day, you are more likely to have less willingness to complete the rest of your task. Why? This is because you’ve acted in a way to make your mind feel relaxed and maybe lazy.
Therefore, with you doing the things on time and based on what is planned for you or by you, you will feel great and proud of yourself as soon as you complete through your actions and tasks of the period.
Always remember, building confidence doesn’t happen overnight as the progress is incremental. Create a reasonable goal; achieve it and do it all over again. This will be the beginning of you being a confident gentleman.
7. Monitor Your Progress
Now that you’ve set your goal, now is the time to monitor them. The more progress you make, the more confident you will feel, and be.
At the corporate place of work, employees tend to have a professional development review. This is in place in other to monitor the progress of the employee’s development over an objective. These objectives may involve public speaking or presentation, mentoring other junior staffs, etc. These may sound professional, but for you to be professional, you have to be confident.
8. Be Good with Money
Broke people lack confidence in themselves. This is not to bring anyone down at all, but facing reality, this is a fact! It doesn’t matter how much you earn, £150 per week or £5000 per week, if you are bad with money management, you will feel bad about yourself in even the mildest situation you may think of.
If I earn have £300 to myself after paying off my occurring bills till the next payday, and I save up half of the £300, I will be more confident in any situation than the guy that has £2000 to himself after occurring bills but squanders his whole money on the lottery, designers, or even other unnecessary wants.
“Money is security…” they say, but I am telling you today that “Money is Confidence”
9. Exercise
Exercise! Exercise!! Exercise!!! This cannot be overemphasised. Exercising should be a lifestyle; exercise comes with a variety of benefits of which confidence comes top on the list. The way you feel about your body affects you mentally, negatively or positively.
Besides benefitting your health in general, exercising helps memory retention, helps manage stress, improves focus, and prevents depression. So, stay active and take good care of yourself, this will help you on your journey in building confidence.
10. Go for Whatever You Want
This indeed may not be as easy as spelt. This comes eventually with constant practice –
There’s a great line in 10 Things I Hate About You when Joseph Gordon-Levitt is about to give up his pursuit of Larisa Oleynik, and Heath Ledger gives him a pep talk, ending it with, “Don’t let anyone, ever make you feel like you don’t deserve what you want.”
This affirmation said by Heath Ledger is something that will go a long way in your journey of building your confidence.