confidence – Soul Essence

How do you see yourself? Do you feel like a superhero? If the answer is no, and you do not believe you will do well in the world, you probably will not. We manifest what you believe, not what you want. Start to improve your confidence and self-esteem by believing in yourself.

Here are some suggestions: –

Improve your mind – Self-confidence starts in the mind. Setting yourself some “me time” to nurture your mind, body, and spirit for an hour a day if possible, is a good habit to form. I like to read, meditate, walk, and do some light exercise. If you do not take time for yourself, you allow the opportunity for someone or something else to shape your perspective of the world.
Stop the negative thoughts – how negative is your self-talk? Practising mindfulness or meditation is a great way to reprogramme our negative thoughts. Positive affirmations as you go to sleep, or doing the housework also helps.
Learning – we should never stop learning, whether this is a professional course, a hobby, a spiritual practise, these all help our personal growth. By completing a course or project helps our confidence.
Impostor syndrome – it is so easy to tell ourselves what we have created in our lives was all down to luck, and let the feelings of inadequacy and fear set in. We need to learn to adopt ways to accept our accomplishments, chatting with our peers helps with this.
Dress – During the recent lockdowns, many of us are working from home and staying in our PJs. If you want success, you need to get up and dress like you would if you were going to the office. When you look good, you feel good, which will then show in your attitude and confidence.
Learning a skill – public speaking, amateur dramatics, anything where you are in front of an audience, helps you think and react quickly. Any of these will help at meetings and improve your confidence massively.
Your value – self-confidence is not all about the success you have in business. You also need to find ways to connect with yourself and grow. This could be volunteering, meditating, exercise workout, and going out with friends. It needs to help you see your value outside of your work, even if your work is a parent.

Soul-Essence runs a fortnightly online meditation group email rosemary@soul-essence.com if you would like more information on meditation, energy healing or integral core therapy.

Self Esteem – what is it?

Self-esteem is the opinion we have of ourselves.

When your self-esteem is healthy, you tend to feel positive about yourself and about life in general. It makes you more resilient to life.

When your self-esteem is low, we tend to see ourselves and our life more negatively and critically. We also feel less able to take on the challenges in life and are less resilient.

Causes of Low Self Esteem

In childhood, we absorbed the positive or negative messages around us, from our teachers, siblings, parents, teachers, and possibly the media.

The most common message we take on is “We are not good enough”. You could never please your parents, teachers or other adults, therefore, creating thoughts about how we are expected to be or not be.

Life events, losing loved ones, serious illness will also impact our self-esteem.

How Low Self-Esteem Affects us?

Low self esteem or a lack of confidence encourages us to: –

Hideaway from groups or social situations.
Avoid trying new things.
Prevents you from challenging yourself.

These will temporarily make you feel safe, but hiding and avoiding situations, reinforces your doubts and fears, teaching you the only way to cope is to avoid people and situations. This will possibly lead to depression anxiety and habits like drinking and smoking.

Improving Your Self Esteem

Ideas to boost self-esteem and confidence.

Identify and list the negative beliefs that you have about yourself.
Think about when you first had these beliefs and why.
Now list positive evidence to counteract the negative beliefs.
List all the positive things about you, example “I am kind”, “I am good at ….”
Keep this list somewhere you see it regularly.
Add to this list each day and pick 5 to focus your attention on. Reminding yourself, you are GOOD ENOUGH.
Try to avoid spending time with people who bring your mood down. Let them know how you feel about the way they talk to you.
When you listen to that inner voice that is being very self-critical, think of how you would talk to a friend, and talk kindly to ourselves.
Stop saying yes to please others, when you don’t want to do something, let people know honestly how you feel. Learn to say no, so you do not become overburdened and stressed.
Remember, no one likes to be outside their comfort zone, by giving yourself a challenge and achieving your goal will increase your self-esteem. Start with small challenges and build to more complex ones.