Self-Hypnosis Can Help You Create Your Self-Confidence

Self-confidence is an attitude that is learned 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 prizefighter, so he gets a manager and takes lessons. His manager will not put him into a bout until he has acquired enough stamina and skill. And even then, the manager will only put him up against an opponent that he knows his fighter can batter. When his fighter beats the challenger, he is successful, and starts to gain a feeling of faith in his capability.

With each challenge, the manager puts his warrior up against an opponent who is only a slightly better challenger 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 escalate. This scenario continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter wins, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to escalate.

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.

Even if an individual has true self-confidence, it doesn't mean that they will be successful at everything. Most people who have true self-confidence have sensible expectations. 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 disproportionately on the acceptance of others in order to feel self-esteem. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They often belittle themselves and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.

On the other side of the coin, confident people are willing take a chance on disappointing others because they generally have faith in their own skill. A person can have great abilities, but still lack self-confidence. A lack of self-esteem is often the result of focusing too strongly on the unrealistic expectancy of other people, especially friends and parents. The power of peers can be more powerful than those of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Beliefs That Continue to Influence Self-Confidence

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

ASSUMPTION: It's important that I'm successful at every challenge that I undertake. This is a totally unrealistic assumption. In life, each person has their strengths, and their weaknesses. While it's important to learn to do the best that one 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 you don't know everything and you are not an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this is a totally unrealistic assumption. All human beings are imperfect. 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 controlled by external influences when you were a very young child, as you mature, you can gain awareness and a new point of view 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. Grant yourself credit for everything you can do. And give yourself recognition for every new adventure that you are willing to attempt.

Take risks. Adopt the point of view of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I learn what does not work, and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can try some other action.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a technique to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting yourself to be perfect, remind yourself that no one can do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself as you are striving to improve.

Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in the various scenarios that you currently lack confidence in. But see yourself behaving as like a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are many powerful self-hypnosis and NLP processes that you can use to create a huge amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious 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. refrain from the constant sense of chaos that comes from relying on other people's opinion.

Alan B. Densky, CH is a certified hypnotist and NLP Practitioner. His website offers hypnosis CD's for self confidence. His Self Confidence CD's were recently reviewed by Personal-Development info in England. Visit him for Free self hypnosis & NLP newsletters and MP3s.