Self Confidence
A Key Factor in Personality Development
Self – Confidence may be defined as the realistic belief or expectation of achieving success. Oxford dictionary defines Self-Confidence as “the feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment”. Thus, belief in your abilities, qualities, skills & values makes you self – confident and creates bright chances of success in certain situations or so in life. Hence it becomes the key factor when you want to develop your personality, as lack of confidence imparts a negative factor in your personality making you weak.
Confidence: Self-confidence gives you the vision to see the things positively; it is the state of mind. It enhances one’s performance in any kind of situation. In ordinary situation anyone can perform or do some heroic work, but under critical situations when there is a lot of pressure only self-confident persons can perform well. In such situations neither over-confident persons nor persons with low confidence will performs, as over-confident persons will commit more mistakes whereas low confident person will fear or back-out.
Lack of Confidence: In many children lack of confidence can be seen. Lack of confidence can be result of one or many reasons including: past experiences of failures, not believing your abilities, situational pressure, lack of knowledge or skills required for particular activity, lack of preparation because of laziness, lack of enthusiasm & motivation, lack of willingness to try new things, fear of the unknown things, fear of criticism or lack of exposure in social life. This lack of confidence creates negativity, anxiety & puts pressure, thus leads to failure.
Thin line Between ‘Being Confident ’&‘ Becoming Over-Confident’: One should realize the thin line between being confident & becoming over-confident. It is necessary to evaluate the actual strengths and thus know your limits. Not considering your limits lead you to become over-confident student. Confident students know their limits & shortcomings but they try to minimize mistakes through working out resolution on those shortcomings. Over-confident students overlook their shortcomings thus cross their limits without preparation at the time of performance. This way, they commit many mistakes due to wrong decisions, making more chances of failures. It will be advisable to over-confident students that they admit mistakes, re-evaluate their actual strength, and focus on shortcoming by working out a resolution to defeat them.
What Scriptures say about Self-Confidence?
“Laziness erodes a person of his enthusiasm and energy. As a result, the person loses all opportunities and finally becomes dejected and frustrated. The worst thing is that he stops believing in himself.” – Sam-Veda
What great Acharya / Saints / Leaders say about self-confidence?
- You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself – Swami Vivekananda
- Man, often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning. – Mahatma Gandhi
How to Develop Self-Confidence:
We have seen several reasons behind not having Self-Confidence. Self-Confidence is not an in-born quality that can never be built in life. We can develop self-confidence with determined mind-set & preparation. Now, we will see how to develop the balanced Self-Confidence.
- Determination: You must cultivate strong determination & conviction in your mind that you have to develop confidence in yourself & become successful in life. Without your determination nothing can be possible.
- Develop Will-Power: Will-power is the key to success. Many of the times we decide something but do not anything towards the goal. This lack of will-power won’t develop self-confidence. These are relative to each other. Develop a strong will-power so that you can work hard on set goal.
- Evaluate your Strengths: You should analyse yourself; visualize your strength, your success stories such as you scored good numbers in the particulate subject; performed well in sports; did something that made a difference in one’s life by changing his mind-set from negative to positive approach; etc. Thus, you will know your good qualities, skills & your strength.
- Note down your short-comings & bad habits: List out your weaknesses & shortcoming so that you can work out on them one by one. Many times, training your mind can change many things. For some skills, learning may be required. Never ignore the importance of knowledge in life. Though, you may not be having talent in something but constant learning & practice can develop the required skills in one.
- Set some short-term Goals: Set some short-term goals in your life like: build physical strength in next three months, improve communication skill in next six months, score good marks in next quarterly exam, etc. Prepare yourself for these short-term goals & after achieving success, you can see the difference.
- Mind Control & Mental Strength: Try to balance emotions that come to your mind. Sometimes negative thoughts depress you. At such situations, try to overcome these negative thoughts with positive thoughts. Be in cheering & enthusiastic environment so that negativity can be controlled. Train your mind daily by thinking positively. This training to your mind can create wonders in your life. Develop strong mental strength.
- Keep Self- Respect – Self-Esteem: Never under-estimate yourself. Keeping yourself low degrades your emotions about yourself & that creates negativity & low confidence in you. Try to be positive always. At the same time don’t be rude or become egoistic.
- Hard work & Prolonged Preparation: Never mind, how much hard work is required, big things can never be achieved very easily. Hard work & prolonged preparation will always make you success. Have patience.
- Acceptance of your body & look: Don’t think much about what people says about your personality or how do you look. Being mentally beautiful & strong is much better than your external outfit or look. So, accept yourself & forget about how do you look, while thinking for positive change in your life.
- Believe in Higher Power than you: Believe in Shree Swami Samarth Maharaj. Always remember the kind words of Swami Maharaj, “Don’t be afraid, I am always with you!” If you develop strong faith & devotion in Swami Maharaj, no power in the world can deviate you from the divine path.