I have a lot of weaknesses that I need to work on but self-confidence is one of my greatest strengths. It wasn’t always the case that I was a confident person on the exterior but I have always maintained an undying belief in myself even if in my interactions I was shy and timid. In all my years on this planet I have had the opportunity to meet some really great people and I’ve noticed that some of the smartest and most interesting had zero self-confidence. Confidence isn't something you’re born with rather it is something that can be honed and strengthened over time and have a profound impact on how you live your life. For me it was a challenge to break out of my shyness and transform that inner belief into outward confidence but I have successfully done it. Hell, five or six years ago I was all but petrified to talk to a girl and nowadays the past few girls I have dated remarked that one of the main reasons they fell for me was due to my confidence. So if it is something that can be developed in a person what are some steps you can take to make yourself into the confident person you want to be? It’s not always an easy journey but developing self-confidence is a must if you ever want to be successful.

1. Figure Out What You Can and Can’t Do

Strengths and weaknesses, we all have them but do most of us really take advantage of them? Confidence in yourself stems from how well you can react in a given situation and if you are particularly strong in one area then you should use that as a place to start building your self-confidence. Suppose you had to give a speech in front a classroom full of people. What topic could you speak in a detailed and interesting manner and have the least amount of doubt or anxiety within while speaking? As I have mentioned before, I am terrible at math so if someone asked me to get in front of a room and speak on mathematics in detail I wouldn’t be able to pull it off and the whole situation would go badly. However, if I were allowed to choose a topic I knew very well even if I didn’t have any prep time I could still confidently work my way through it.

The point of all that was to show that your strengths can be a source of confidence just by focusing on what you do well. On the opposite end of the spectrum you should clearly define your weaknesses and decide how you’re going to begin to turn them into strengths. It is important to recognize that some weaknesses are actually limits that you cannot personally go beyond. I could study for years and never be a brilliant mathematician and that’s okay I don’t feel down on myself because of it. I have tried many different things in my life to discover what I was good at and what I would fail miserably at. You shouldn’t limit your dreams but you do need to realize that you cannot do everything at a high enough level to be great at it.

2. You Know Your Strengths, Get Ready to Reach Your Potential

Remember the speech example? What would my confidence level have been if I would have had a week or two to prepare and practice? Pretty damned high. Being the best you can be at something isn’t just a matter of having natural talents but cultivating them as well. Putting the work into making yourself even better will naturally give you a shot of confidence that you never had before. You will feel accomplished and well prepared to react to any changes that present themselves in your life. Working towards being the best that you can be gives you a type of focus that very few people in this world have and when you start seeing all of the positive changes and others take notice of them it is a recipe for a strong self-confidence.

3. Learn From Your Failures, Don’t Let Them Ruin You

Getting knocked on your ass by life is a total confidence killer IF you let it be. Trial and error is always a step on the path to accomplishing your goals and you will undoubtedly have more failures than you will ever have triumphs. That’s okay. That is how it is supposed to be. Life is a learning experience and if you want to live a good life you have to get beaten down sometimes and figure out how to keep on going. Failure makes your victories all the more sweet because of all the time, energy, and thought you put into your goal. Confidence can be had through education, learning what does and doesn’t work and channeling that into your future ventures. Have you failed with the opposite sex before? I have and it didn’t feel too good. Was that a reason to just give up and live an unhappy life all alone? Hell no. I took my lumps, licked my wounds, and gave the dating world another shot and you know what I’ve been succeeding in ways I couldn’t imagine a few years ago. Failure is not the end of the world; it is the start of something new.

4. Surround Yourself with More Positive People

One huge hindrance in many people’s lives is the social identity that they have developed for themselves and it being hard to get away from. Your friends and family have certain perceptions of who you are and they aren’t always the most accurate picture. If you want to make a dramatic change in your life these same people can often react negatively to your new found ambitions. The environment that surrounds you can have a positive or negative effect on how you live your life and if you’re not careful it can cause you to stagnate for years at a time. Think about it like this, say you wanted to go on a diet and you and all of you’re friends get together on a regular basis and eat foods that aren’t in your diet. Would these friends be supportive or would they judge you and act negatively towards your change? Sometimes the best of friends can be more of a weight holding you down than a positive influence that raises you up. Misery loves company and two people can trick themselves into thinking they are happy with their current life if everyone they surround themselves with is also going nowhere. Confidence comes from within but it can also be bolstered by those around you that shower you with love and encouragement. Take stock of who is and who isn’t a positive person and strongly consider distancing yourself who only want to keep you down with them.

5. Learn to take Criticism in Stride

Looking at number four you see that sometimes friends have negative reactions to what you want to do and the changes you make to get there. Other times their criticisms are valid and you should learn to accept these constructive criticisms. The difference is fairly easy to spot, constructive criticism doesn’t present itself in the form of personal attacks and provides insight that you might not have recognized yourself. If you want to increase your self-confidence you cannot take constructive criticism to heart because it will only serve to help you grow as a person. Whoever is criticizing you isn’t trying to bring you down or belittle your work but rather give advice on how you can get better. On the other hand you have to be able to take negative personal attacks in stride and easily forget them. There will always be some small number of people that will lob hollow critiques of you and your life that are designed to simply cause damaged to your self-esteem. Don’t fall into the trap of embarrassment or fear of trying because of these people, they are just bitter and if you take them seriously you’ll go nowhere.

The main thing when trying to build up your self-confidence is to really get in touch with who you truly are and where you want to be in the future. You cannot always escape negativity and in all honesty you shouldn’t try to because failure and pain are sometimes the only paths to success. Figure out what it is you are good at and then use that as a place to build off of not only your self-confidence but your life in general. It takes time and it takes effort but being self-confident is attainable for anyone who is willing to put in the work.

I was a rather shy kid when I was in elementary school, not to the point of complete inability to communicate with others but it certainly slowed me down. When I got a few years older they shyness itself wasn't a problem but I did retain some of the hesitancy to speak or approach certain situations that I wasn't fully comfortable with or unsure about. Shyness doesn't have to just be an overwhelming fear to be a menace in your life, even something as simple as fear of getting in front of a group and speaking can hold you back from opportunities and experiences. Shyness however, is not something that you have to live with and just accept it can be overcome just like any other fear.

We know that shyness is a fear but a fear of what exactly? It seems to me that it is nothing more than a fear of humiliation or judgment from society. Most of the time these thoughts you have about other people judging you when you speak are unfounded because most people aren't even necessarily paying too much attention to what you say but waiting for their own turn to speak. What you are actually perceiving is you self conscious holding you back from an experience that isn't all that bad by making you afraid of some grand negative consequence. You may have had a bad experience when you were younger that instilled this fear, perhaps you spoke out of turn and some adult chided you. This might have had a point at the time (maybe you were saying bad things) but now that you're an adult you have the ability and the duty to yourself to speak up and be heard. Let it go!

Now once you have recognized and acknowledged your shyness you must next take steps to boost you confidence. This article I wrote isn't specifically about confidence building but it may help Take Control of Your Life: Stop Living in Fear and Act. Confidence can be developed directly by facing your fears in social situations and get a huge boost indirectly by improving what you're already good at or passionate about. Those are just a few tips for purposes of this article and I may go into further depth in a future article but until then do a quick search on building confidence.

Building confidence will help you to remain cool, calm, and collected in social situations but you must also stop getting inside your own head and starting trouble. If you are too focused on yourself during a conversation then you nitpick everything that you do and build up those walls of fear again. Let's say that you were on a date and this self consciousness started to creep into your mind. One solution is to turn your focus onto what the other person is saying and not to be focused on you. Pay attention and be a good listener which will allow you to make simple responses, focus on the conversation, and get out of your own head.

Understand that you are going to make mistakes in your actions and say the wrong things sometimes and that's okay because everybody does this. Stop expecting perfection from yourself and realize that mistakes are part of life. By fearing a mistake you effectively silence yourself and your opinions when I guarantee that you have something valuable to say and contribute to other peoples lives. When I look back at all the potential friends I missed out on when I was younger or fun times that I could have had but didn't because of my silence and lack of confidence it gives me a bit of regret. Overcoming shyness and becoming more social takes consistent work and practice in situations where your comfort is tested. I know that I still struggle with it from time to time but I've also learned that I must immediately correct myself when these feelings start. So the next time you have about of shyness remember to take a deep breath, relax, and dive right into slaying your fear. It's really the only way to overcome your shyness.

In all aspects of our lives we will periodically experience letdowns and sometimes it can seem that nothing ever goes your way. For men in the dating world these letdowns often come in the form of being rejected by a woman. The fear of rejection stands in the way of just about every guy at some point in their lives and it can be utterly crippling if you do not work to overcome it. There isn't anything inherently wrong with you as a man but your mind is planting seeds of doubt about your chances of attracting a potential mate. How do you get past your fear of rejection? I think that it is useful to weigh the costs of rejection against regretting not taking action.

If you are still going through the stage of inaction when you see an attractive girl on a regular basis then I'm going to assume it is out of inexperience. The rejection fear really represents a bridge you must cross in your quest to build self confidence and become a successful dater. You may have been working on your confidence for a while and changing your life for the better (if not you might start here Reinventing Yourself ) but while you're out on the town you come across a pretty girl and suddenly you freeze. What's the cause of your fear? That you will fail? Why is that such a bad thing? Getting rejected doesn't mean that you are somehow less of a person then you were five seconds before you made your approach, in fact you should be an improved person because there is opportunity to learn from your mistakes.

The fear can be reinforced from adolescence when it seemed like the whole school would see and laugh at you if you failed to land the girl you wanted. The thing is I don't think that it has ever been true unless you did something totally out there to get that many people talking but so what even if other people see your rejection they will soon forget. Your brain sometimes makes it seem as if you are the center of the universe and that everyone will pay attention and chide you for your failings but guess what they've all got their own problems to worry about. I can think back on my own life about all the many times I have been rejected and laugh at them now because they were all part of my learning experience, you cannot become good at anything in life without failure (see: Success is made of Failure)Were some of these approaches nerve racking in the moment? Yes, pretty much all of them but after it was over I didn't have to live with the notion of regret, I lived those moments the way I wanted to.

Notice this about rejection, you survive each time, I mean if it were as bad as our fear makes it out to be how am I still alive to write this today? This should also tell you that regret is a worse proposition than being rejected 100 times because you are putting boundaries within your life that shouldn't be there and once that opportunity to act is gone there may never be another one. You must get over any doubts and jump into action to be successful in picking up women and other areas of life as well and the only way to do this is to accept that failure (rejection in this case) is apart of the deal and is going to happen no matter how much of a smooth talker you are. So ask yourself today what's worse a few moments of nervousness or the compounded depression you will face by sitting on the sidelines and living your life with regret?