Confidence is a key that opens many doors. These doors are relationships, promotions, starting a new career, starting your own business, accomplishing your life goals, and anything in-between. You want success and end the pains of struggling to achieve your desires and dreams. Now is the time to learn how to build continuous confidence. Continuous means that every day for the rest of your life, you have a proven method to help create confidence and grow it to your wildest dreams. When I was younger, I would hear people say that confidence is a mindset and all you need to do is believe in yourself. So let me ask you. Has believing in yourself helped you become successful at everything you attempted? Better yet, do you understand how to believe in yourself? If I asked you to cook me jollof rice with salmon sliders, could you do it better than anyone else with just belief? Can belief in yourself alone help you start a new successful business? If you are like me, you require much more help than just belief.
My confidence didn't start to mature until my early thirties. Then, I noticed the growth in my spirit when it came to dating and finding my life partner. So, let's talk about my dating life to help expand on what confidence looks like from a different perspective. In high school, I had a hard time making friends. I was afraid of rejection, yet all I wanted was to be acknowledged by my peers and lusted over by my crushes. I was a trend follower. My problem in my teenage years is the feeling of not being accepted by my peers. My glasses didn't fit an attractive person's appearance during that time. My clothes and how I wore them didn't scream out look at this cool kid. I was so focused on being wanted I never studied for any test, so I couldn't be the "nerd" that people assumed I was. So, I drifted for years, trying to force love.
When I turned twenty-one, something significant happened. I was reunited with both my birth mother and father. Explaining this story will take too much time. I will share a video explaining that story.
After meeting them, I felt more confident in learning more about who I was. What gave me confidence was taking the time to understand myself. It took years for my self-awareness to blossom. The journey of my self-awareness was the first step to building my confidence. Meeting my mother and father helped me understand my past. I learned so much about my parents, but that was when I realized I still needed to remember who I am myself. I was motivated by what I learned from my parents that I started my journey to self-awareness.
Self-Awareness is like putting the keys into the ignition but not turning it. Eventually, the goal behind your self-awareness is to understand your fears, trauma, life motivations, and love for yourself inside and out. Self-awareness is a continuous process because as our perspectives on life change based on life experiences, we evolve and change. So, you are in a constant state of learning who you are. Self-Awareness is an oversimplification of accepting yourself without running from your faults.
So now I am on this journey of self-awareness and have started making friends. I was confused because I wasn't sure why people wanted to be around me, but I just went with it. My biggest fear at the time was talking to strangers. I feared rejection, so I never wanted to approach anyone unless I were sure the conversation would yield results. However, while on this journey of self-awareness, I learned that I wanted to be a person without fear of rejection. So, I did the only thing I thought made sense. I would face rejection head-on. I tested myself by forcing myself to try and start a conversation with three people daily. I wanted to be comfortable with rejection. It's like getting over your fear of the dark. It won't happen unless you step foot in the night. I assumed I would get rejected two out of three times a day. Instead, it was two or three times a week. Facing my fear of rejection head-on was monumental in establishing continuous confidence.
Think about the personality traits of the person you want to be in the future. If you have a journal, write them down. What personality would you like to have? What is the character of the person you want to become? We must practice being that person now. That is the motivation that turns the key. With Self-Awareness comes a clear understanding of what success looks like for us. We can learn who we want to be. To create multiple purposes and not just live for one significant moment in life. The second step to building confidence is Practicing being the future you. To be a kickboxing champion, you learn the skill and practice until you are perfect at it. I never said building confidence would be easy. I get it. It would help if you had the confidence to face your fears in the first place. So here is my advice on needing the spirit to build trust. Create minimal goals for yourself. You can even break down facing your fear into small steps. I started with just saying hello to people and not striking up a conversation. Hello, it felt harmless to me because I didn't feel required to start a conversation.
Practicing being the future you will require patience. I also want to point out that I had a mental health professional to talk to during this process of my life. I highly encourage it, but if you choose not, you can still work through these steps to help build confidence. So, the next step in my quest to find a partner was going out on dates. My starting process with dates was terrible. Most were my fault because of a lack of communication or willingness to save money. I was not always the best person to date. After four attempts at a relationship, I stopped at 23 and stayed single until 28. During that time, I would go out on dates until I learned what I wanted. That was when I realized a difference in the people I was dating. I started to have better quality dates. I found better matches. My communication became better because I knew what I wanted. I had created my life plan of who I wanted to be, thus making my communication better to express what I truly wanted from a partner.
Creating your life plan is the third step to building continuous confidence. Remember, we are trying to develop boundless confidence. This approach is lengthy but effective. Ask yourself who you are in the next ten to twenty years. Your answer can't say anything about a spouse, children, money, or career. So, who are you in the next ten to twenty years? What are you doing with your free time? What impression are you leaving on others? It's like writing a mission and vision statement for your life. You will feel more confident in your life decisions when the motivation is to achieve your life goals.
Continuous confidence takes a long-term goal that will yield the most extensive results. You can now create smaller goals for yourself to help you achieve this long-term goal. When you think about a life partner, you will focus on what a real partner looks like to help see this vision come to life. Our Life plans are the energy required to make that hand move to turn the key.
After finding a partner that matched what I was looking for, the belief in my life goals began to sprout. I found a partner whose goals and plans matched what I was looking for, and our love for each other was supportive and nurturing. Confidence is more than a mindset. Confidence is knowledge, confidence is practice, and confidence is a plan. These three combined will help you believe more in the goal you want to achieve. That is how we believe in ourselves. That is the formula for building continuous confidence. Think about racing a go-kart. Without Self-Awareness (Knowledge of your Go-Kart), how can you drive it at its peak performance? How can you beat the competition without Practicing being the future you (practice learning how to drive)? How will you finish the race without your life plan (Creating a Finish Line)? Everything I do in my life is to stay focused on the life goals I have created for myself. My confidence has grown because I have accomplished many small and significant goals to get me to my finish line.
One added benefit I will give you is to have a confidence token. Something you can hold power. My confidence token was contact lenses, dressed differently, and even my journal at times. So find what gives you that boost and run with it.
When you work hard on your goals and focus your life decisions on achieving that goal, your confidence will grow for you. Love for self is a significant step we all need to take to help build confidence. That love inspires us to be different and encourages us to accomplish things we never thought possible. Believing in yourself is the right step. However, it takes these steps to help build that belief. To be successful at a goal, you must speak it into existence. Work hard to accomplish that goal. Believe in yourself as much as you believe in your God. Then sacrifice because we must always give something to receive something. This journey will be difficult and will require you to hold yourself accountable. Don't worry if you feel you need help. Contact a life coach today and learn how having the proper assistance in your corner can yield excellent life results.