3 Mental Hacks To Boost Your Confidence

Boosting your self-confidence can be difficult, particularly when you feel stuck by your own mental barriers and are aware of them. Building confidence often requires stepping into uncomfortable or challenging situations, which might cause sweaty palms, flushed cheeks, a racing heart... and the urge to retreat forever!

Even when confronted with all the possible signs of distress, after surviving an awkward situation, you should ask yourself, “...but did you die?”

If you're reading this blog, the answer is likely no. It's normal to feel overwhelmed by uncertainty, but after enduring a tough experience, many of us gain valuable insights about ourselves that help lessen future feelings of distress.

Whenever you feel discouraged while working on enhancing your self-confidence, it's crucial to remember the reason you're taking on this challenge and to keep pushing forward.

Allow me to reveal a "not so hush hush" secret...

You don't have to wait for an uncomfortable situation to discover more about yourself and increase your confidence!

Now that I've shared that secret, I feel at peace with our relationship. Let's explore three practical mental hacks to enhance our progress.

Overcoming self-limiting beliefs

Reluctantly, we must acknowledge that we need to take responsibility for the harmful habits we impose on ourselves. Indeed, we often restrict ourselves and sometimes shift the blame to something or someone else rather than the real cause—ourselves. To start changing your mindset, it's crucial to evaluate your own thoughts.

Don't allow others to project their beliefs, doubts, and fears onto you regarding what you can or cannot achieve. Admittedly, this is easier said than done, but the aim of this blog is to help you discover practical habits, even if they're not always easy.

Many of us tend to cling to remarks or opinions from parents, siblings, family members, friends, spouses, co-workers, bosses, and even strangers who have no right to define us. We let these external comments shape our thoughts and taint our self-perception, even though it shouldn't be that way.

An Exercise for Overcoming Self-Limiting Thoughts Through Challenging Experiences

To overcome self-limiting thoughts, immerse yourself in various situations that challenge your insecurities related to a particular skill. Gain a deeper understanding of your thought-provoking limitations so you can recognize WHEN you start to feel uneasy. Confront your fears.

This exercise is designed to help you identify your triggers and thoroughly examine the root cause of your discomfort. Consider the following questions:

• What caused my discomfort?

• What exactly is the discomfort?

• When or where did it occur?

• Why did it happen?

• How did it influence your behavior?

After identifying your triggers, take the time to explore them. Approach the fear that triggers you with curiosity and closeness. Visualize them. Then, concentrate on your breathing and muscles. Your muscles might feel somewhat tense, and you might not even notice it.

Breathe in for 5 seconds, then breathe out for 5 seconds. As you exhale, relax your muscles. Keep doing the breathing exercise until you genuinely feel your body has relaxed in that specific situation.

By understanding your triggers, you can discover healthy strategies to navigate through the discomfort.

Understand how to separate your memories from the facts

When we go through an event, we tend to record our experience in a way that makes sense to us through memory. It's crucial to understand that our memories aren't always accurate, especially if they involve situations that are unpleasant or controversial to us. We subconsciously organize the sequence of events in our memories in a way that aligns with our understanding.

This is why different people can have varying versions of the same story. Your brain is naturally selective and will categorize memories based on its own criteria. Everyone is unique, but it's important to focus on yourself and the genuine facts within your memories—REAL FACTS, not imagined ones that provide comfort.

Your brain's selectivity is due to confirmation bias, which is the inclination to interpret new information in a way that aligns with your belief system.

This implies that your brain will retain information that coincides with and supports your personal beliefs, core values, and self-image.

Be cautious of your own confirmation bias. It's challenging to recognize it by yourself, and it can make you less inclined to acknowledge facts from your personal memories that contradict your self-image when building your confidence.

For instance, if you favor a particular experience, you will look for information to support it, whether consciously or subconsciously. Similarly, if you are against a certain experience, you will interpret memories in a way that aligns with your existing beliefs.

It's crucial to enhance your curiosity to extract accurate details from your memories. To achieve this, revisit a memory or experience filled with self-doubt or limiting self-thoughts.

Exploring Perspectives: An Exercise in Recalling and Analyzing Memories

Recall a memory or event and pinpoint the factual details of the occurrence. Engage in discussions with others who might have a different perspective on the same event. If no one else experienced the event, find a partner who can provide an objective and unbiased review of your story.

Additionally, when seeking someone's support for this exercise, ensure you are not intentionally looking for someone to validate your self-limiting beliefs. Often, we find it easier to accept our misfortunes rather than overcoming them, which can lead us to choose "crutches" that keep us stuck in a negative cycle. Break free from it! Do whatever it takes to escape. Discard the crutches.

Encourage yourself with positive self-talk to combat confirmation bias

Yes, I'm saying it. SPEAK TO YOURSELF. I assure you...it's not a taboo. Talking to yourself can enhance your focus and understanding of yourself or situations you've experienced. It can also assist in overcoming self-doubt.

Be careful though...when talking to yourself, it must be positive. If speaking to yourself negatively, you may be doing more damage than you think and you will keep yourself in that vicious cycle. To be positive, you must learn to turn negative thoughts into positive ones.

Transforming Negative Self-Talk: Exercises for Positive Thinking

An enjoyable way to practice this skill is to create a T-table on a piece of paper (or in a word document on your tablet/computer) and list 10 negative thoughts about yourself on the left side. These could be related to how you handle situations, skills you have, or self-comments.

Then, rephrase these thoughts positively on the right side. Use the positive statements to replace the negative ones when talking to yourself for a set period. It could be 7 days, maybe 14 days—choose a duration that suits your needs and stick to it.

An effective exercise is to generate 3 to 5 positive thoughts for each negative thought you have about yourself. Spend at least 20 to 30 seconds reflecting on each positive thought before moving on to the next one.

Acknowledge both positive and negative thoughts, as they are reflections of your emotions. Remember, your feelings deserve recognition because they are real and valid for you. No one else can invalidate them since they are not their feelings.

Avoid trying to suppress your negative thoughts or emotions. This is a common coping mechanism that many people, myself included, experience. Work through it.

Identify your emotions for what they truly are, but avoid fixating on them, as this can lead to the same harmful cycle you're attempting to escape. Move forward.

Conclusion

Confidence manifests in various forms, each interconnected with the others. Enhancing your self-confidence can be draining if you feel trapped by your own mental obstacles. Developing confidence frequently involves placing yourself in uncomfortable situations and learning to navigate those challenging moments.