How to Regain Your Confidence

Building self-confidence is one thing, getting your confidence back after a personal or professional calamity is a substantially different situation.

FORGIVE YOURSELF

Whatever experience or situation that caused you to lose your confidence needn’t have been your fault for you to be carrying around a load of embarrassment or guilt. It’s natural to feel that somehow you should have known, or been able to prevent the occurrence.

• Best case scenario, there was no way you could have predicted what happened, if you could accurately predict life, you’d be rich and famous and probably wouldn’t care if you missed one or two calls. Get over yourself and move on.

• Worst case scenario, no doubt about it you were at fault. Learn from the experience, become a better person for having gone through it, forgive yourself and move on.

REMEMBER THE FEELING

To regain the feeling of confidence try to remember that positive mindset you once had. Visualize a situation you remember feeling and handling yourself with total confidence.

Make your visualization as vivid as possible; remember as many details as you can, as if that past experience were happening right now. As you do so, you’ll notice that feeling of self-assurance returning and you’ll become familiar with it again.

FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT

Feelings influence behavior. Even if you don’t feel like it, put on a big smile, lift your head and tell yourself you are a self-assured, confident person. Remember, other people don’t know about your internal securities unless you tell them, so go ahead and pretend, and before long you actually will begin to feel more confident.

Regaining your sense of confidence may take work, but it’s worth the effort because lack of confidence will prevent you from being who you want to be or becoming what you want to become. Whatever negative thoughts you have about yourself will dominate your life. So if you want to be a person who is confident you must think and act confident. If you want to be successful you must think success.