The art of confidence
Confidence can be SUCH a tricky thing! Some days I have it and some days I wonder where on earth it went! It can be hard to realise that it isn’t a permanent thing once you have it. Things change, people change and life moves at lightening speed. With all this there are, however, small things we can all do to help bring a more confident feeling and a happier starting point to our days.
Confidence and happiness are uniquely tied together. When you are happier you will FEEL more confident and then that increased confidence will make you feel even happier. It becomes a spiral upwards. Before you know it life starts to feel completely different and then you feel alive. We can all do with some of that!
But getting to the basics what does being happy mean? and how do we get from happy to confident and back again?? Here are a few things which I’m trying out:
3 minutes to calm
Have you ever noticed your breathing when you start to worry about something? Be it a stressful situation at work, tension about going to the gym or even that never ending to do list? I find that when I start thinking about things like this my breathing becomes short and then I don’t feel great at all. The funny thing is that until recently I didn’t even realise I was doing it! I just felt rubbish and accepted that maybe that’s just how it has to be. Not so!
Breathing deeply - in through the nose & out through the mouth - is such a simple thing and yet when I do this not only do I feel calmer but also clearer.
To begin - set a timer for 3 mins. In this time take a some deep slow breaths in through the nose out through the mouth. Don’t force it though, if it feels tough stop and start again. There is no rush. Allow yourself to follow your breathing and pay attention to where the breath moves. Allow your lungs to fill up with air gently then release by breathing out. Once the time is up continue with your day but pay attention to how you feel. If you start to get stressed during the day take time out for a coffee/tea and start the 3 minutes again (even 30 seconds can be helpful if you are pressed for time). Use your breathing as a focus point and you can always have control over stressful situations.
The genie within
In many eastern philosophies - teachers look at the mind as having two halves. Put simply we have a positive mind and a negative one. Sometimes referred to as ego or mind monkey or the Inner mean child- the negative mind can sometimes have a tendency to take over. When that happens we tell ourselves “I can’t do that!”, “They have this but why don’t I?” “I don’t know what I’m doing!” and so on. This voice has the ability to destroy the mind BUT only if we let it.
In order to build a happier mind and more confidence we need to coach the inner mean girl/boy to become useful. I do this by questioning what it is that I’m feeling. This can be talking out loud myself or writing down thoughts and worries on paper. The key here is self reflection and learning that these are just thoughts! The idea of getting the thoughts out of your head is that once you do they are no longer internal worries and you are free to get on with your day.
You can take 5 mins out of your day to simply check in with yourself by assessing how you feel and why you feel that way. Questions I ask myself in these 5 mins are: What am I feeling? Why am I feeling like that? What do I really want? and… What is the worst thing that could happen if I simply do nothing?
Have a go and see what comes up for you. Be sure to talk out loud or write it down! It will make a big difference. I challenge you to see whether an internal worry is really what you think it is. Sometimes the act of giving an internal thought some distance (out loud or on paper) makes you realise that it isn’t as bad as you thought!
Social Media free time
If you’re anything like me a “quick” trip to Instagram or Facebook can start an endless comparison game. For me I go onto Instagram to see updates then end up lost in the search bar looking at people with perfect homes and cars and lives. Before I know it I’ve spent an hour in the comparison trap feeling like other people have it ALL. It’s a definite way to knock confidence and potentially give up.
But how to you deal with it? Surely Instagram and Facebook etc can’t be all bad? They’re designed to bring people together! They’re not so bad but the key thing is to be responsible with our time and use of social media. For me the never ending stream of content on Instagram makes it tough for me to switch off.
My solution: experimenting with social media free days/weekends. By this I mean that I set myself a time such as an hour or a few hours per week to not be on my Insta/Facebook/Snapchat and so on. To begin this was hard! I felt like I was missing something and that I was bored. The challenge is coming up with things to do that can be subsituted at those times. A few things I found enjoyable are: reading books, exercise classes, exercise videos, photography or learning a new skill on YouTube (using it for education rather than comparison, avoid this if you feel it will lead to social media browsing).
As the time went on I found that I not only have MORE time but a much richer fuller feeling when it comes to the end of a day and I’ve been living more purposefully. Now when I do go on social media it is with a purpose - be it to blog and inspire or to learn something. I use Instagram wisely have more of a mission statement for how I use it.
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Confidence is a skill and like with all skills it can be grown, nurtured, developed and maintained BUT it takes time, effort and awareness. Never be hard on yourself for having a bad day or a low confidence day. Learn to see that it is temporary and focus on the good things however small they might seem at the time!