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Self-Hypnosis Can Help You Develop Self-confidence

By: Alan B. Densky, CH Self-confidence is a mentality, which allows people to have confident, yet realistic views of themselves and their circumstance. Self-confident people believe in their own talent, have a general sense of control over their lives, and trust that, within reason, they will be able to do what they want to do.

Confidence is a disposition that is conditioned through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful. And that expectation will cause a feeling of confidence.

For example: A young man wants to be a boxer, so he gets a manager and takes lessons. His manager will not setup a fight for him until he has developed enough stamina and skill. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a rival that he knows his fighter can conquer. When his fighter beats the opponent, he is successful, and starts to gain a feeling of confidence in his capabilities.

With each combat, the manager puts his fighter up against a rival who is only a slightly better opponent then the last, but not good enough to beat his man. By the end of the third fight, the young fighter begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to bloom. This series of events continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter is victorious, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to bloom.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the self-confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having true self-confidence doesn't mean that individuals will be able to do everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are attainable. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.

People who are not self-confident, tend to lean unreasonably on the confirmation of others in order to feel self-esteem. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They belittle themselves and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.

On the other side of the coin, confident people will risk the disapproval of other people because they generally trust their own abilities. A person can have tremendous abilities, but still lack self-confidence. A lack of self-confidence is often the result of concentrating too strongly on the unrealistic expectancy of other people, especially parents and friends. The importance of peers can be more powerful than those of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Assumptions That Continue to Influence Self-Confidence

In response to external influences, people create assumptions; some of these are good and some are not. Several assumptions that can interfere with self-confidence and better ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: It's important that I'm successful at every challenge I undertake. This assumption is totally unrealistic. In life, each person has her strengths and her weaknesses. While it's important to do the best that you can, it's more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and fallible. Feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that no one knows everything nor are they an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this assumption is totally unrealistic. All human beings are flawed. It's better to develop personal standards and values that are not completely dependent on the approval of others.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially subject to external influences when you were a very young child, as you grow to adulthood, you can gain awareness and a new slant on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don't have to be helpless based on what happened in the past.

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Bestow upon yourself credit for everything you can do. And give yourself acknowledgment for every new adventure that you are willing to experience.

Take risks. Adopt the perspective of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I find out what does not work, and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can try something else.

Use Self-Talk: Use an inner dialog with yourself and counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting perfection, remind yourself that it's impossible to do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself while still improving.

Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in the various scenarios that you currently lack confidence in. But see yourself behaving as a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are many powerful self-hypnosis and NLP techniques that you can use to build a tremendous amount of self-confidence from within your unconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that are lacking confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to appraise yourself as an individual. Circumvent the frequent sense of chaos that comes from relying on what other people think.