The Key to Self Confidence

Lack of self confidence is a debilitating affliction that bedevils a great many people. Amazingly, it is a simple state of mind that stands between being consigned to living a mediocre life and one’s ability to live life to the full.

Thought – action – achievement

Nothing can be achieved in life unless you are prepared to take deliberate and decisive action. And decisive action is always preceded by decisive thought.

If you think about it, even the act of getting out of bed in the morning requires a firm decision to get up, followed by decisive action.

So, if we can make the decision to extract ourselves from our beds each and every morning why is it that some of us are unable to make the decisions required to avail ourselves of the many opportunities presented to us?

The twin motivators

The reason lies in a powerful little concept called ‘pleasure and pain’ or the twin motivators.

At a basic level everything we do or don’t do is motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of ‘pain’. I put ‘pain’ in inverted commas, because, unlike in the days of our hunter gatherer ancestors, the type of pain we spend most of our time trying to avoid in modern times is emotional, not physical in nature.

We have been taught to judge our personal value and success by the norms of society. Not living up to what others – or the external world – expects of us, causes us to feel failure, loss of face, embarrassment or even ridicule.

Getting back to what motivates us to get out of bed each day, you may appreciate that during holiday periods, we are mainly motivated by the pursuit of pleasure. It may be the thought of breakfast, a stroll on the beach, exploring the local town or whatever.

During work days, we are mainly motivated by thoughts of pain: “What will people in the office think if I don’t get to work on time,” “How much money will I lose if I don’t get started early,” and so on.

Thoughts of pleasure outgunned by thoughts of pain

An important point to understand here is that the avoidance of ‘pain’ is an even stronger motivator than the pursuit of pleasure.

Therefore, even if an opportunity presented to us excites and motivates us as we imagine the pleasure that would result from it, we may still not be able to bring ourselves to act because of a simultaneous association with pain (often subconscious in nature).

The perceived pain that acts as an anchor to prevent us from taking action, can have quite complex roots. It usually remains in the mind, seldom expressed, leaving us in a state of low level frustration and confusion.

A person who is offered a promotion at work may turn it down because of an internal fear of failure. Someone given the opportunity to conduct a motivational talk may decline because of a worry about not living up to the expectations of the crowd. An opportunity to travel to a foreign country may be foregone because of the fear of being embarrassed at not being able to speak the language of the host country.

Opportunities lost

These are simple examples but they highlight how easily opportunities, that, on the face of it, promise the individual great pleasure and personal growth, can be shunned thanks to a deep rooted concern about the emotional ‘pain’ that might result.

Perhaps surprisingly, lack of self confidence afflicts people at all levels and in all walks of life. In fact, as one moves into positions naturally associated with more power and authority, lack of self confidence can escalate as the relative potential for loss of face, embarrassment or failure rises.

The mindset antidote

The antidote to this opportunity-sapping affliction lies in one’s ability to adopt a different mindset. That may sound both obvious and simplistic, but consider this:

How you feel about yourself on the inside is a far more authentic and reliable barometer of your happiness, fulfilment and personal ‘success’ than what the external world may think of you.

Read that and read it again.

Break free from the paradigm

Once you truly get that, it follows that you simply need to break free from the ingrained paradigm that dictates that how you feel about yourself is dependent on how the outside world feels about you.

Once you can break that link, you are in a position to define and create your own happiness, your own fulfilment and your own success.

And the automatic result of doing so is that your self confidence will skyrocket!

Self confidence comes from inside

With greater self confidence comes an increased ability to recognise opportunities that, when taken, will make you feel good inside, coupled with a greatly diminished concern about whether or not you will look good in the eyes of others.

In other words, through conscious awareness and a simple shift in mindset, you can learn to amplify the relative importance of your pleasure motivators and tone down the importance you ascribe to your pain motivators.