How to Build Self-Confidence & Taste Victory More Often

Who doesn't want more self-confidence?

It feels good when you can approach life with a sense of confidence instead of doubt and fear.

Without self-confidence, you're more likely to avoid trying new things. You may even become depressed and walk around with your head down.

So, what can you do to build confidence and find more success in life?

Here are a few tips for building your self-confidence.

Success Breeds Success

In nature, like-kind produces offspring of like-kind. The same is true of success and failure.

Each time you experience success, you're more likely to succeed the next time. When you acheive something, it becomes a stepping stone for the future.

Take boxing, for example.

While a fighter is improving his skill he arranges fights so his opponent is closer to his skill level. As his skill improves he's able to take on more challenging fighters.

If a boxer fights an opponent far beyond his skill level, the chances are good the novice fighter will lose. The defeat erodes his confidence making it harder to develop into a champion fighter.

The same is true for us in life.

If we take on challenges too far beyond our current skill level or ability, we're likely to meet with defeat. If we do this often, we begin to expect failure instead of success. This can spread from one area of life into others until we feel like we can't do anything right.

So, start with smaller challenges to get easy wins. Then increase to more challenging problems. This builds your self-confidence and skill. You'll begin to taste victory more often than defeat.

Visualize Past Successes

Another technique is remembering our past successes. Our nervous system can't tell the difference between imagined success and real-world success.

When we remember a previous success, it puts us in the mental state we were in at the time of the event. This changed state gives us the "feeling" of success. You can use this success feeling and state to fuel your next success.

So the more you can produce and evoke a "winning feeling", the more success you'll experience.

When you do this, you're setting your internal mental machinery for success. It's programming and tuning it for success. The more vivid your picture of success, the stronger the feelings and emotions. The stronger the feelings and emotions, the more prepped you'll be to win.

This "imagination," coupled with "winning feeling" is powerful. So, use it as much as possible.

Keep Your Promises

You build self-confidence by keeping the promises you make to yourself. Every time you say you're going to do something and then DO IT you're reinforcing your belief in yourself. You're building trust with yourself.

The more you believe you'll do what you say the more self-confidence you'll have.

The opposite is also true.

Think of this like making deposits and withdrawals. Every time you keep your promise to yourself, you're making a deposit. When you don't do what you say you're making a withdrawal from the "self-confidence bank."

This is why it's important to set realistic goals and to break them down into smaller increments. The smaller steps help you better visualize the journey you'll take to reach your goal.  This also helps remove the feeling of overwhelm and increases your motivation to follow-through. 

The more clear your goal, and the steps to achieve it, the more likely you'll get there. This increases self-confidence because you know what to expect.

The mind likes to visualize or picture things. We see in images. So the more detailed the picture of what we want, the better our mind sees and chase after it. We will know what the target looks like and doesn't look like. This way, it doesn't hit the wrong target or get off course. We pursue our goal like a heat-seeking missile.

Choose a Proven Model to Follow

It's good to do some research and to model other successful people. This will help cut down the learning curve. Most experts spent years getting their knowledge and expertise. By learning from them you can do what memory and brain expert Jim Kwik says, you can "turn decades into days."

Pick a successful mentor or two and model them. Deconstruct and learn their process. Then get started. You'll create your unique process once you get a good handle on theirs. This takes time and hands-on experience before you know what to change or add.

You'll have more confidence knowing you're following a proven model or example. This way, you don't have to rely only on your knowledge or experience. You don't have to be a pioneer.

I hope these tips help you to build your self-confidence. Take it one small win at a time. You can do it.