Mental Health Training

3 Simple Tools to Boost your Confidence, By Sully Ali

Posted by on 22 Aug, 2017 in Mental Health |

3 Simple Tools to Boost your Confidence, By Sully Ali

This blog is going to show you 3 simple and quick tools / methods you can use to boost your confidence. All of these things are quick boosts that you can do to help boost your confidence when you need it, and the more you use them the stronger your confidence will get in the long term, too.

They will only take a few minutes to do, but none of them are magic / permanent solutions if all you ever do is use them once for 3 minutes. For best results you should practice them on an ongoing basis or use them at least once a day, and as you keep doing this the changes will really start to build and spill over into your every day life.

Enough waffle anyway – here are my top 3 confidence building tools:

Positive Affirmations: You are probably sick of hearing about affirmations, but have you actually committed to doing them seriously for any real period of time, or have you thought about doing them, or done them once and dismissed them?

Affirmations can sound a little too good to be true, or a little too simple to actually work, but sometimes we look for the magic bullet, the “all powerful” technique, and ignore the simple things which really work if you stick to them.

I have been as guilty as anyone of neglecting affirmations, but after really giving them a go I have made some real, and lasting changes in my life.

If you are new to affirmations then as a basic definition they are phrases that you repeat to yourself, about yourself, to tell yourself something is true – the idea being that after you have repeated these affirmations over and over you will change your self perceptions, beliefs, and actually become more confident, more motivated, more positive etc. Here are a few possible affirmations for improving confidence:

  • I am naturally confident and outgoing
  • I feel confident in all situations
  • I exude confidence when meeting new people
  • I feel naturally confident both inside and out, at all times

All affirmations should be in the first person, and positive, and if you need to you can find various affirmations lists on-line, but I would recommend writing your own – this way they are much more personal. A good way to do this is to brainstorm how you would think and feel about yourself if you were more confident and use these phrases as your affirmations.

Usage is simple – repeat your list of affirmations a couple of times on a morning, and then again before you go to bed. If you actually commit to this and do this every day for a month you should notice a real difference.

Anchoring: This is one of my favourite quick techniques ever, probably because of it’s simplicity. Anchoring can be a really effective way to change your attitude, beliefs, and even behaviour.

Anchoring is basically a way of tying an emotion of feeling to a physical action, and then later reproducing this physical action later when you need to. For example you can tie the emotions and feelings associated with confidence to pinching your index finger.

To do some quick anchoring simply think of a time when you felt naturally full of confidence. If you are struggling it can even be something as simple as just going to the local shop, or hanging out with friends. Really try and experience the feelings again and at their height pinch your index finger. This “anchors” the feeling of pinching your finger to the feeling of confidence.

You can keep repeating this exercise, trying to make the feelings more intense each time, or thinking of other times when you felt confident and adding these to your anchor too, and next time you are nervous or in a new situation you can pinch your index finger and remind yourself of how confident you can be.

Subliminal Audio: I will be the first to admit that it is not for everyone, but with the right attitude and understanding subliminal messaging can bring fantastic benefits. Subliminal audio is basically just positive affirmations recorded to audio, and moved to a sound frequency just out of the range of your hearing capacity – but which can still be processed by your subconscious mind.

When positive affirmations are transmitted in this way they basically act as a very mild form of hypnosis (only without inducing a trance like state), to make gradual changes in your subconscious mind.

As I said, it isn’t for everyone, and isn’t a magic or completely effortless solution, it simply adds some subconscious support and gives you a boost. Just as positive affirmations work to gradually eliminate your negative thoughts and self beliefs, subliminal audio works in the exact same way – over time (which ranges from a few days to a few weeks depending on the changes you are trying to make) the messages will build in your subconscious mind, and begin to spill over into your conscious mind and make real lasting changes to your self perception and even physical behaviour.

Read more from Sully Ali and find out more about his work here