Are you confident?

March 22nd, 2010 by admin

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.” ~ Mark Victor Hansen

This week we will discuss confidence, specifically self confidence. Many of us have a problem having enough confidence in ourselves to do the things we want to do with our lives. Does this sound like you?

There can be many reasons why we lack self confidence. The main reason is the way that we are conditioned as we grow up by parents, institutions, and religion. We are conditioned to lose our identity in order to fit into society. Many, as I was, were told what we could not do and very seldom what we could do.

After being told time and time again what you can not do you begin to believe that you can not do anything and your self confidence gets less and less. Add that to the fact that our schools and other institutions try to control us to the point of stifling our growth it is no wonder we have so little self confidence by the time we become adults.

Many spend their whole lives trapped in that web of low self confidence and end life regretting that they never took the risk to do what they really wanted to do in their life.

I had a friend who I grew up with and went to school with. Whenever I would go home for a visit he would tell me how lucky I was to have left home to travel and try different things. I would tell him that if that is what he wanted to do it was not to late to do it. He never got the message and always talked of things he would like to do but never did.

His problem was fear and lack of self confidence. As adults we are responsible for our lives and no matter what happened to us as we grew up, it is up to us to take responsibility for our lives as make them what we want them to be.

There must come a time when we stop blaming our parents or other circumstances for the lack in our lives. We are the creators of our reality and it is our choice whether this is done haphazardly or directed by our intent and focus.

There is only one way to overcome the fear and lack of self confidence. That is by, as Nike says, just doing it. Gathering the courage to step up, confront our fear and move forward. Once we overcome the fear we wonder why it took us so long.

TODAY’S TIP: Find a quiet place and sit with yourself for a few minutes. Ask yourself if there are things you want to do but have not done because of fear and lack of self confidence. Set your intent to confront the fear and risk what is necessary to accomplish the things that have been sitting in the back of your mind waiting for you to get the courage to move forward.

Are you willing to overcome?