With everything we are exposed to it’s no surprise that our self-confidence takes a knock.  As women we may be particularly at risk of losing our self-confidence. We are taught from a young age to put others before ourselves. We are also bombarded on so many levels by examples of how women should appear. No wonder our confidence to be just ourselves gets a knock.

The good news is that self-confidence isn’t something we are born with. It is something we can very much learn, or relearn, at any stage in life. We can rebuild it at any time by investing a little bit more time in our self. Even a few minutes a day can make all the difference to how we begin to think and feel about our self.

But one thing is for sure, you can’t think your way into confidence, you have to act also. We all need some basic skills that help keep our self-confidence in place or enable us to rebuild our self-confidence.

2 Tips To Help You Build Your Self-Confidence.

1 Getting A Basic Self-Care Practice In To Place Is Essential.

Having a proper basic self-care plan in place for ourselves helps not only set some boundaries but also helps rebuild our self-confidence. These basics should meet our basic care needs. When these are not being fulfilled we will feel off balance. Our confidence will reduce and we are usually putting everyone else before ourselves.

So getting these back on track is vital first step to restoring our balance and self-confidence. What do we need to put on this basic list?

1. Sleep between 7 to 8 hours every night or at least try to. If our sleep is out of sync then we will certainly not be up to par. So make getting your sleep right your first priority here. You can get 11 tips to help you make sleep priority here.
2. Eat regular meals, drink water and exercise daily. Yes the usual suspects but so important and so simple to change up. Cut back on caffeine and sugar as they do have a knock on effect on our sleep and mental health. This in turn leads to a negative cycle, particularly for stress and anxiety that will affect our self-confidence. Exercise will boost your serotonin levels which will boost your mental health and self-confidence.
3. Dress the best you can, every day. Wear something that helps you feel good never what others say you should wear. There really is nothing worse than wearing something you know you don’t feel comfortable in. It knocks how we feel about ourselves and in turn our self-confidence. So only ever dress the way you like.
4. Take time for your own interests and hobbies. It’s okay to do this. In fact it’s vital you set this type of boundary. You will feel much better doing things for yourself but also find meeting like minded people will boost your self-confidence.
5. Meet up with friends and family but only if they are supporting you. No negative vampires need apply.
6. Ask for help. Please speak to a professional if necessary, your doctor could be your first port of call. Attend therapy or recovery groups if needed weekly.
7. Other supports could be from friends, family or other professionals as needed. Make sure you build your positive team of supporters if you want to increase your self-confidence. These people are vital to every one of us in our daily lives.
8. Use appropriate self-soothing techniques instead of using alcohol, drugs, food etc. Self-soothing techniques are good habits, so use these to replace bad ones. Or introduce them while trying to quit bad habits. We tend to use bad habits when we feel down but they only build a negative cycle. This cycle will only make us feel worse about ourselves. If we want to rebuild our confidence then we need to ditch these bad habits. You can find six lists of good habits starting here.

Want a Basic Self-care Checklist and free course? Check out my free group.

2 Use Stress Reduction Techniques. 

Recognize your stressors firstly.

There can be many internal and external causes of stress. All of which will impact our self-confidence plus our mentally and physical health. It is important to figure out how we react to stressful events if we are to rebuild our confidence. So ask yourself these questions to get you started.

1. Which way do I normally react to stressful situations (your behaviour/responses when stressed)?
2. What triggers have you noticed? Make a note in a journal of a few examples of how you react. Particularly ones that occur regularly and how you respond to them. If you want free courses on recognizing your triggers then join my free group. Are there particular people or situations that are causing you the most stress? Start making a note of these also.
3. How does your body react to stress?
4. Have you noticed any particular symptoms? Remember to look at some of the following:

• How you are thinking?
• What are your physiological symptoms (where and what do you feel stress in your body)?
• What are your feelings when you notice you are stressed?

If we are to rebuild our self-confidence then we need to actively manage our stress. In order to do this we need to start recognizing what is happening to us. We need to become more aware of our mind and body.

Get some stress reduction techniques going next.

Once you recognize how stress affects you then start using stress reduction techniques. Your basic self-care above will stand you in good stead here as a starting point. But you also need to add to it with some form of relaxation and other stress reduction techniques.

Relaxation 

Developing a daily relaxation habit will help you notice your emotions, your posture etc., at other times too. One technique to help relax you is the 7/11 technique. It can be carried out at anytime of the day, even on the go. But completing it at least once a day is a must to see the best result.

Here is how you do the 7 – 11 technique? And it is as easy as it sounds:

1. Breathe in for a count of 7.
2. Breathe out for a count of 11.

Make sure that when you are breathing in, you are doing deep ‘diaphragmatic breathing’. That is your diaphragm moves down and pushes your stomach out as you take in a breath and your stomach goes back in when you breathe out. You can place your hand on your lower abdomen when you begin to make sure you are doing this correctly.

If you find that it’s difficult to lengthen your breaths to 7/11, then reduce the count to breathing in for 4 and out to 6, whatever suits you best. Remember as long as the out-breath is longer than the in-breath you will get the same result.

Continue in this way for 3 minutes or longer if you have time. Set up a formal daily practice and enjoy the calming effect it will have on your mind and body.

We may not be able to predict the future, but we know that feeling relaxed releases the thinking part of the brain to get on with the job on hand to the best of our abilities. Remember preparation and having a positive outcome are key here. Once we see how well this technique can help us we will also get a boost to our self-confidence.

Do A Quick Brain Dump.

There is nothing worse than keeping things locked in our head. When we enter that negative think cycle we end up damaging our self-confidence, feeling stuck, stressed, or anxious.

An exercise that helps at any time during the day or night is a simple brain dump. A brain dump is an exercise of writing everything we can think of down on a piece of paper or in a word document. We can then use this exercise to help us go back to sleep or to pick the next quick step (short task) that is important to achieve.

Try to pick a 5 minute task to begin with then move on to the next quickest task. We can also use the brain dump to see where, and with what, we might ask for help or delegate or delete off our “to do” list.

It’s okay to use this technique at any time of the day even if you have things planned out in a diary. Doing a brain dump gets everything out of our heads so we don’t need to hold on to them. We realize we don’t need to carry everything around in our heads and enter the rumination cycle which destroys our self-confidence.  We can let them go and focus fully on what we want to do next.

There are a number of other techniques I’ve suggested before but for even more training then you can join my free group.

Take responsibility for rebuilding your self-confidence.

An important step if you want to rebuild your self-confidence. Only you can make the changes you need to make for you. Yes you can ask for help for assistance so reach out if you need to.

Remember that the path back towards self-confidence is one that we all need to travel at some point in our lives. Help will support us but no one can do these exercises for us. Remember, they are exercises they may feel tough at first but in no time you will become the expert and your confidence will be boosted.

Find a mentor to support you. 

Most successful people have a mentor. Someone they can confide in and ask for feedback from. This mentor won’t do the work for them but they do support and encourage them no matter what.

Find someone you can confide in. Someone you know won’t judge you. Will give you good advice when asked for it and will support you no matter what. A mentor is part of the positive support team I mentioned above.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.