3 Super Power Techniques (Plus a Bonus... KAPOW!) to Improve Self-Confidence
Is your self-confidence low or perhaps it's been recently knocked down? Try these three super power techniques to build it back up. (I'm even throwing in a bonus fourth step!)
In general, I have a healthy level of self-confidence. But now and then, some unfortunate event will happen that causes my self-confidence to take a knock. (If you’re curious, somebody I like ghosted me, and that stings…) Luckily, I spent a lot of time developing my self-confidence so I know how to get more. Over the years, I’ve experimented widely to find the best methods for improving self-confidence. For a while, I even worked with a hypnotherapist. Does hypnotherapy work? I don’t know, but I do occasionally cluck like a chicken.
Seriously, I did try hypnotherapy for a while, and even though it helped, I don’t think it’s necessarily the best (or most affordable) way to grow self-confidence. After much practice (and trial and error,) I have learned that one significant source of our self-confidence is our self-talk. You know that monologue that runs constantly in your head? What is it saying?
If your self-confidence is low, there’s a good chance that your inner voice isn’t saying many positive things. If you want to develop and improve your self-confidence, one of the best things you can do is prompt your inner voice to say more positive things about you. How do you do that?
To change your self-talk, it helps to clear your mind. The best way to do this is meditation. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend meditating for ten minutes every morning. (I won’t get into how to meditate in the post. But if you’re interested in learning my method, message me, and I’ll send you the details.) Imagine that your mind is a closet that contains all your thoughts. Mediation allows you to clear your mind, so new thoughts, the more positive ones you choose, can now occupy the space previously taken up by negative self-talk.
Now that your mental closet space has been cleared, it’s time to replace those negative thoughts with positive, self-confidence-building ones. This is where affirmations come in. An affirmation must be a desirable, present tense “I am” statement. Affirmations work because our subconscious lacks guile and believes whatever we tell it. So our affirmation can be as simple as saying, “I am confident” repeatedly. However, as long as you keep them simple, you can make your affirmations more specific. By simple, I mean it is easy for you to remember and repeat. Making your affirmation more specific is desirable because that’s how your subconscious knows to create the particular outcome you desire. For example, I might affirm, “I am confident, and I speak to everyone I meet with ease.”
I write my affirmation down ten times in my journal immediately after I meditate each morning. Doing so plants my affirmation into my freshly cleared mind. Do you know what happens after I repeat the “meditation and then affirmation” process for five, ten, fifteen, or more days straight? My affirmation becomes my new default way of thinking. As my new default, my affirmation starts popping up in my self-talk even when I am not deliberately thinking about it; it’s replaced my negative self-talk and my confidence increases!
Sometimes, something knocks our self-confidence so much that ten minutes of morning meditation followed by writing affirmations isn’t enough to overcome our negative self-talk. Remember I mentioned feeling down because someone I liked ghosted me? (Seriously, how is ghosting still a thing!?) That rejection hurt a lot; it affected me, and I knew it would take more than a bit of meditation to knock it out of my mind. How did I overcome this?
In this case, I found an eight-hour looping recording of a powerful affirmation I knew would help. (You can find these things on YouTube or audiobooks or write and record them yourself!) Then, before I went to sleep, I started my affirmation playing at low volume, and then I slept for eight hours while this played! This works because even though we are asleep, we still listen, and our subconscious takes in everything. This technique is extremely powerful and effective but comes with some caveats.
Remember, your subconscious believes whatever you tell it. So be sure that whatever you put on the loop before you sleep is a positive message that will help you.
Keep in mind that our subconscious works slowly. So, practicing a sleep affirmation for only one night will not be enough. When I do this, I notice a change in my state of mind after a week. However, you may need to do it for longer. Perhaps you will need to play it for twenty or thirty nights in a row. This could be a real problem if you sleep with a partner. In this situation, you may want to try sleeping while wearing headphones.
One weird effect when I do sleep affirmations is I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and be disoriented by the voice speaking in my room in the dark. I’m pretty good at reminding myself that it’s just the voice of the affirmation, and then I quickly go back to sleep. However, it has occasionally freaked me out. Be warned. Don’t panic. You can always turn it off.
So meditation, affirmations, and sleep affirmations are the big three. Are you ready for the bonus? This one is slightly more subtle, but it makes a big difference. Ready?
Cut out the self-deprecating humor.
Sure, it’s usually an easy laugh when we put ourselves down (which is why we do it.) However, we’ve just been discussing how powerful positive affirmations are. Self-deprecation is essentially making a negative affirmation about yourself. (Then, to make it worse, everyone hearing it enjoys a laugh at your expense.) We must say, hear, and believe positive messages about ourselves to grow our self-confidence. You deserve to hear positive messages, and you deserve to have your self-confidence and self-esteem grow.
Don’t beat yourself up if you make self-deprecating jokes. Just today, I caught myself after making a self-deprecating wisecrack. Afterward, I realized I said it because it got me an easy laugh, but really… I work too hard to maintain my self-confidence to undermine it for a cheap joke. I then promised myself to take more care to cut self-deprecating humor out of my vocabulary.
If you’re interested in trying out my four suggestions, I recommend starting with ten minutes of meditation and then following up immediately by writing down your affirmations ten times in your journal. Once you get the hang of it, then move on to trying out sleep affirmations. Meditation, affirmations, sleep affirmations, and cutting out self-deprecation, are powerful. (Super powerful!) If you decide to try them, or if you already use them, please share what results they create for you!
Great article Matt and a good reminder about affirmations too. I love meditation but do tend to skip the affirmations… will be adding these back in and be more mindful of any self deprecating comments.
I am guilty of throwing out a self deprecating one liner. Wrote about it!