How can you build your self-confidence and set yourself up to win right now?

Make the best of what you desire and deserve.

Recognizing Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence

First, let's talk about self-confidence which a lot of people ask me when they hire me as their coach or whether I'm speaking at virtual events or live events or doing my group training all around the world.

While self-confidence is based more on the external measures of success and value, self-esteem focuses on its internal measures.

Self-esteem is one's overall sense of his own value or worth. It is your attitude towards yourself. 

Research findings report that one's self-esteem and psychological beliefs affect his goals and commitment towards them.

Psychology experts and researchers concluded that one can be confident in a certain area yet may lack an overall view of his or her own value.

One of the things people ask me about all the time is, “Noah, how'd you get so confident? How can I build my self-confidence?”

Here’s a little secret that I don't tell a lot of people.

I'm not a naturally confident person. I wasn't born with oozing self-esteem.

In fact, when I was growing up as a kid, I was painfully shy. I had coke bottle glasses. I had a face full of acne and I didn't have shoulder-length hair, but shoulder-width hair. I had a big afro back in the '70s and '80s.

I had no self-confidence at all. I had often joked that I didn't have the fear of rejection, I had the certainty of rejection.

Maybe, you're like me and had low self-esteem or low self-confidence.

This is something that is definitely not natural for me. It's something I’ve had to work on for years and years. I didn't believe in myself and I didn't trust myself.

On Mental Health: Low Self-Esteem and Depression Tendencies

We all know that it takes a lot of effort and courage to believe in oneself.

News reports reveal an inflated growth of depression and suicide cases which created a global impact.

Most women show evidence of bulimic symptoms because of their insecurities, starving themselves to achieve unrealistic model proportions while some undergo surgery for enhancement.

They develop eating disorders later on. Students who struggle with their school performance were reported to have severe anxieties.

Those who were bullied and have experienced sexual abuse were prone to a sudden change of personality through their course of life and they suffer from depression.

Although interventions do help a lot in the process, we’ll be able to save and rescue more lives with simple preventive measures.

We can't blame it all on someone if he becomes delinquent and defensive with his actions after all the experiences and relationships he had in the past.

Nevertheless, what we can do is to take action against bullying, encourage healthy discussions and promote self-awareness.

Let me save you some time, effort, and maybe even some money because I know personally that not having that level of self-esteem certainly has cost me millions and millions of dollars over the years. 

Here are three proven tips to help you deal with self-esteem and press you towards victory:

#1 Decide that self-confidence and success is important to you

When an individual sets his priorities, he gives time, effort and really focuses on that matter.

Our society plays a big role in what we perceive as valuable for us.

There are differences in people's scale of priorities. Factors affect how they measure the level of importance.

People take each relationship of great value, may it be with family, friends, or significant other.

Students may focus more on their grades and scores because of academic endeavors.

Someone who is trying to get a promotion will dwell more on his job performance.

A public person may deal more with his physical attractiveness.

How do you set yourself to win?

When you set your priorities, you're setting yourself to things you want to achieve. 

Each achievement will contribute to a desirable outcome you want to gain in the future.

So if you set yourself at boosting your self-esteem, what could possibly go wrong?

It will all start within yourself and your decision to give yourself value. When you know and take self-confidence as a priority, everything else will follow.

Deciding to become confident does not equate to becoming perfect in all ways, but simply believing that you can do things despite all your fears and imperfection.

How will you excel in your school? How will you overcome your antisocial behavior and start making friends? How will you get good outcomes?

You just have to decide and know that it is really important to be confident. It is important to believe in yourself.

An indicator of self-confidence is being able to trust yourself. It is when you are able to trust your own instincts and realize that you can trust your own decisions, trust what you’re feeling inside.

Growing up, I didn't do that. I listened to everyone outside of me but I never really listened to myself and that was a big problem.

It got me into a lot of trouble and it really cost me a lot of money and opportunity over the years.

Now that we know what are the benefits we can get by simply being confident and how it can predict our life be in the future.

We have to understand the problem and situation were facing off, to risk ourselves at any cost, to study how we're going to succeed in our problem.

Remember that the first step to everything is to simply decide that it's very important.

#2 Develop self-confidence habits

If something is important to you, you'll take action to make things happen. Being in control gives you the power and freedom to navigate your life in the right direction.

A pattern of movement shows persistence in achieving a positive result.

This is something that I talk about in my books and online programs like Power Habits® - The New Science for Making Success Automatic.

So, what are some of the Power Habits®?

One of them is my teaching of Afformations®. If you go to afformations.com, you can learn more about my Afformations® method that's taking your internal negative beliefs and really flipping them into empowering or positive beliefs.

You can also get the book at powerhabitsbook.com  or you can just visit the website and watch a free training that I did on how you can develop the millionaire habits of the rich and famous.

On doing consistent and positive reinforcement

While what you do creates a great impact, consistent actions are of great importance, too.

Parents may experience stress in juggling time and helping their children with their studies. But when they start to introduce the habit of doing educational activities with their children at an early age, study time with them will be easier.

Adolescents wanted to be included in a circle and face challenges with social interactions.

An adolescent can start by understanding and listening to his own feelings and encourage himself to share his true self with a peer.

You may really want to develop chosen habits every day like the following:

• Doing journals is one of the most common habits you can try that can also track other habits you may want to develop.
• This also applies to unhealthy habits you want to stop like smoking and drinking alcohol.
•  If you've always wanted to become a leader, practice your leadership skills with your own plans and projects.
• If you're health-conscious, managing your calorie intake and physical activities may help.
• If you're aware that you lack some interpersonal skills, you can spend more time with peers who can help and support you.

 Remember to be firm with your objective so you can focus on a specific task.

It will be hard on the first few tries but you'll be surprised how you've grown. Execute with growth and happiness in mind, effects will come afterward. Try approving yourself while trusting the process you are in.

#3 Develop better body language

They say, "You are what you think." 

What's inside your mind influences how you act. You are perceived based on your behavior. It's a causal relationship, after all.

Now, think about a person who's not confident.

Think about what they would look like. What would they sound like? What would they move like?

You’d probably realize that they'd be sort of slumped over. Their shoulders would be slumping forward, they might not look people in the eye. They would look down a lot.

That was me, that was how I went through most of my life when I was growing up. It took me a long time to realize that I’ve got to put my shoulders back. I’ve got to look people in the eye. I’ve got to just say what I mean.

There’s an old saying, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

It took me a long time to figure that one out. I'll tell you that and those little habits every day putting your shoulders back and taking a deep breath.

When somebody asks you a question, maybe you don't know the answer yet.

Take a deep breath, go and say, “That's a good question. I'm not sure. Let me find out let me get back to you on that one.”

You don't have to answer right away just because somebody is demanding it of you.

You have permission to check in with yourself and make sure it's something that you really want to do and want to move forward on.

Posing Confidence Virtually

Also, notice that a lot of our communication these days is done virtually. A lot of people are meeting instead of face to face or instead of going into your work environment perhaps your office, you're meeting on Zoom.

If you're meeting virtually, make sure that you're looking right into the camera whether it's on your phone or your laptop.

Make sure you're looking right into that camera. A mistake that people make oftentimes is they'll look over here you know looking at the person that they're talking to.

And it's sort of natural to do that right but actually, the truth is you want to look right at the camera.

What I do is I look at the person out of the corner of my eye. I'm looking at my own screen so I can see myself over here.

But I am looking right at you and that makes the person on the other end and the receiving end feel a lot more comfortable because you look a lot more confident when you go like this.

Even though you're looking at the person, you're actually not. They don't feel you're looking at them because they don't get that.

Anyway, just use these little tips and let me know what you think of these tips.

Perception & Perspective: How Do You Position Yourself?

Individuals dwell with self-esteem problems every now and then. We badly wanted to be recognized, accepted and appreciated.

We look for support, crave attention. As we go further in finding our place to be socially approved, we lose our ways. We allow individuals to abuse us.

We are now left with the consequences because we care so much about people's opinions than our own ability.

Some become socially awkward, some result in aggression.

How can we highly regard ourselves if we are looking at the wrong concept of self-esteem?

When you love yourself, you embrace your personality. You change your unruly behaviors. You care less about likes and ratings.

So, if you think of yourself worthy enough then you'll be able to understand that society has standards beyond compare. People are predicted to follow them. 

But, beauty is subjective, and not all things are supposed to look pretty. We are only subjected to look, feel, and act like humans.

Keep a journal. Review what you've done in the past years. Look at the relationships you've been with. We never know what's ahead of us, we don't hold an accurate answer.

Failure will be present and it measures how persevering and true we are to our goal.

Self-acknowledgment leads to learning self-respect. Allow yourself to feel lovable and capable.

After all, it is not what we can't do that brings us fear, what frightens us the most is how powerful we can be beyond measures. 

Let your light shine.