Self-Hypnosis Can Help You Create Self-confidence

Self-confidence is a frame of mind, which allows individuals to have explicit, yet realistic views of the themselves and their plight. Self-confident people rely on their own know-how, have a general sense of control over their lives, and have confidence that, within reason, they will be able to do what they want to do.

Self-confidence is a frame of mind that is learned through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful. And that expectation will cause a feeling of confidence.

For example: A young man wants to learn how to be a prizefighter, so he gets a manager and a trainer. His manager will not put him into a competition until he has acquired proficient skills. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a challenger that he knows his fighter can pound. When his fighter beats the adversary, he is successful, and starts to gain a feeling of faith in his fighting skills.

With each challenge, the manager puts his warrior up against a challenger who is a slightly better adversary then the last, but not good enough to beat his man. By the end of the third fight, the young prizefighter begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to escalate. This scenario continues to repeat itself. And as long as the prizefighter continues to win, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to escalate.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the self-confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having self-confidence doesn't mean that individuals will be successful at everything. Usually people who have self-confidence have realistic expectations. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.

People, who are not self-confident, tend to rely disproportionately on the confirmation of others in order to feel good about themselves. They refrain from taking risks for fear of failure. They belittle themselves and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.

Conversely, confident people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally trust their own talents. They tend to accept. A lack of self-confidence is often the result of centering much too strongly on the ridiculous expectations of other people, especially parents and friends. The importance of peers can be more powerful than those of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Beliefs That Continue to Influence Self-Confidence

In response to external influences, people create beliefs; some of these are good and some are not. Several assumptions that can interfere with confidence and alternate ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: It's important that I'm successful at every challenge I undertake. This assumption is a totally unrealistic assumption. In real life, each person has his strengths and his weaknesses. While it's important to do the best that you can, it's more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and fallible. Feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that you don't know everything and you are not an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this is a totally unrealistic assumption. All human beings are flawed. It's better to develop personal standards and values that are not completely dependent on the approval of others.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially controlled by external influences when you were a young child, as you grow older, you can gain knowledgeunderstanding and point of view on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don't have to be helpless because of past events. HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize your strengths. Give yourself credit for everything you can do. And grant yourself recognition for every new thing that you are willing to undertake.

Take risks. Adopt the frame of mind of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I learn what does not work, and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can attempt some other action.

Use Self-Talk: Use an inner dialog with yourself and counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting perfection, remind yourself that no one can do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself as you are improving.

Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in the various scenarios that you currently lack confidence in. But see yourself behaving as like a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are many self-hypnosis and NLP procedures that will create a tremendous amount of confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that are lacking confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to appraise yourself independently. refrain from the frequent sense of chaos that comes from relying too much on the opinions of others.

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Alan B. Densky, CH. is certified hypnotist and NLP Practitioner. He opened his practice in 1978. He is the inventor of Neuro-VISION, an NLP / Video hypnosis technology that received a US Patent because of its effectiveness. Neuro-VISION has been perfected for video hypnosis for weight loss and video stop smoking hypnosis. Visit the Neuro-VISION NLP & Hypnosis site and download FREE MP3's hypnosis newsletters, and original articles on hypnosis & NLP.

 

Source: Alan B. Densky, CH