Kevin Sinclair


Self confidence is a general and realistic belief in one’s own abilities. Self confident people trust in their own ability to achieve goals that they plan and set out to achieve. This belief needs to be realistic.

Self confidence does not mean that an individual can achieve anything and everything, even absurd goals. It simply means that the person will have a sense of control over his own destiny, a positive frame of mind and is likely to make the best use of his talents and skills in achieving positive outcomes.

Achieving self confidence is a fine balance. Lack of self confidence or under-confidence will result in an individual doubting his abilities. Such people seek the approval of others for reassurance. They believe they have to conform to the expectations of others to fit in and be accepted. They will tend to avoid taking risks for fear of failure. They expect to fail and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Under-confident people tend to under-achieve since they have a low estimation of their abilities and therefore will not push their boundaries to achieve their best. They also tend to play down their abilities and are often uncomfortable dealing with compliments - usually discounting them.

On the other hand over confidence is not desirable either, as such individuals may tend to have unrealistically high expectations and beliefs in their abilities and therefore take unwarranted risks.

Self confidence is not necessarily all-pervasive. An individual who is completely comfortable and confident in one area of activity, say his work or profession may lack confidence in other areas such as social situations.

What factors contribute to lack of confidence?

Lack of confidence is often the result of unrealistic expectations. Constantly aiming for perfection is a certain recipe for failure which reinforces feelings of inadequacy. Children who grow up in excessively protective environments and are not allowed to develop their independence may tend to be less confident than others who are allowed to develop their own abilities and self reliance. Similarly over critical and demanding parents may undermine a child’s self confidence and cause them to continually doubt their abilities even in adult life.

What steps can be taken to improve self confidence?

Low self esteem and low self confidence are perpetuated by unhelpful and often destructive thought patterns. Self confidence may be improved by identifying the offending thinking habits and taking steps to correct them. For instance seeking acceptance and approval from everyone may be an unrealistic expectation. The fact is that in day to day life one will encounter people that will never approve of every aspect of your life. It is far more beneficial to set personal standards which are not dependent on the approval of others.

Under confident people are quite often their own worst critics. They are quick to brand themselves failures at the slightest obstacle. It is important to remember that even the most successful people encounter setbacks. What sets them apart is how they deal with that setback and venture into the future. A setback or failure in the past need not dictate the course of your entire future.

However, if at the first sign of failure you label yourself a total failure, chances are that’s exactly what you will be! Evaluate your expectations - Are they realistic? Don’t be overly critical of yourself. Refuse to accept the criticisms of others where it is unrealistic.

Give yourself credit for what you do achieve rather than focussing solely on the negatives. Resist the temptation to magnify negative outcomes out of proportion while minimizing positives.

Persons with low self esteem avoid risks and may therefore never truly find out what they are capable of. Taking calculated risks can broaden one’s horizons and help to gain greater self awareness and acceptance.

Evaluate your standards - substitute more reasonable expectations for perfectionist targets that are bound for failure. Build up to more challenging targets as your confidence grows.

Self consciousness is a major hurdle to self confidence especially in social situations. Diverting attention away from yourself can help to diffuse this situation. This can be achieved by keeping yourself occupied with other activities or focussing on the purpose of the social encounter and engaging your mind on furthering that social purpose. Not having enough to keep your mind occupied is guaranteed to produce feelings of self consciousness leading to feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and lack of confidence.

These are just a few steps that may be taken to improve levels of self confidence. Clearly it is just the tip of a very large iceberg and the most appropriate measures would of course need to be determined by individual circumstances.

Abhishek Agarwal


As the experts say, self-esteem is the way in which a person feels & thinks about himself or herself. The psychologists have proved that self-esteem develops most effectively in one’s childhood. Majorly it is determined by how the individual has been treated by his surrounding people, especially the parents.

While there is no statistical evidence, it won’t be wrong to say that many individuals in today’s world suffer with low self esteem, even in the developed nations like US and UK. This affects their lives drastically as it disturbs all the facets of one’s life, whether professional or personal. These affects are as follows:

a. Loss of his/her confidence.

b. Loss of the ability to make & relationships such as friendships & romance.

c. No career development.

d. Ill work performance.

e. Unhappy & unsatisfactory life.

Actually, self-esteem is deep rooted with ones belief in their ’self.’ With the increasing doubts & uncertainties on one self, the capacity keeps on lowering. This is the key lack of self esteem.

Here are some ways & means to build your self esteem and get out of the vicious circle:

1. Positive Self Imaging

This is one of the most effective means to build self esteem in any individual. Positive self image implies the agreeable and / or the favorable view of your ’self’. For this you can count on your talents, abilities and the physical attributes. You have to see them all as your strengths not the weaknesses.

Explaining this the other way round, a person with healthy self-esteem would surely be able to love or at least like himself or herself, just the way they are. In case you dislike your ’self’ for any reason, you can never have a high self esteem.

2. Avoid All Negative Thoughts.

In order to get rid of all the negative thoughts, recognize them the moment they strike your mind. It is not that you have to throw away these thoughts as this is practically not possible. You have to try to replace these negatives with some positive ones. For instance, you are initiating some work and have doubts regarding its success, replace the doubts with confidence & self belief.

3. Do Not Make the Negative Thoughts a Habit.

In case the negative thoughts continue to linger on in your mind for quite long, they tend to become a habit. Then it indeed becomes very difficult to get rid of them.

4. Give Your Self Some Positive Affirmations.

To deal with your negative thoughts tell you self some positive affirmations. That means that you have to suggest your self some positive beliefs & ideas. These must be read aloud or should be recited repeatedly.

For instance, here is one positive affirmation, that you can give yourself everyday:

Everyday, in every way, I’m getting better & better.

5. Spend Time With Supportive Relatives & Friends.

Improving your self-esteem also becomes easy when you hang out with the positive & supportive friends & relatives. This is perhaps the most effective means of boosting your morale in terms of self-esteem. Their words of encouragement & praises would do wonders to the self-esteem. The love & understanding definitely makes you more powerful than the affirmations & the positive thoughts. Also sometimes knowing that some one believes in you, it increases your self confidence.

kavita thapliyal


Self Confidence: the key of all Locks

In this age of competition a student has to be very intelligent right from his childhood. In addition to be good in his academics, he requires special skills to establish his identity in this vast unfamiliar land where he has to traverse along.

To endure this prolonged journey of life, one has to develop self-confidence from his infancy. There is a vast difference between confidence and self-confidence. The first lead to the victory on not always being right but also not getting fear to be wrong, and the second is the competence over the complex and dangerous deeds by winning self. Self- confidence is related to your self worth and your value. Confidence is a mental process that arises from considering the capacity, if a person or thing is capable of something. Self-confidence is having confidence in oneself considering a responsibility of commitment and result.

We can never predict what kind of life we are going to have or what circumstances can make us crippled. In order to overcome the unwanted hurdles of our life we need to develop strong self- confidence and clear vision. We should always rise with an appetite to know our inadequacies and zeal for problem solving. We are never born with confidence from our birth as it is well said, “Rome was not built in one day”, and so is the confidence.

The very first step towards success is to stop obsessing about what others think of you. Avoid self-pity, or the pity and sympathy of others. Never allow others to make you feel inferior–they can only do so if you let them room for criticism. Who so ever had tried to do something different must have chased the hard road to toil and thus you can look more confident in long run. This will only be possible when we establish true self-confidence and must concentrate on small steps towards success and forget about the failures and the negatives in our life. So just chill yourself and sincerely target yourself towards destination and hold your head high and stand tall.

To build self confidence, we first need to be regular in our deeds and we should divide our tasks into small steps as in the story “the hare and the tortoise” we all have seen how impossible mission was made possible by the tortoise; the steps were small but the theme was consistency.

The strongest single factor in prosperity of consciousness is self-evaluation: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, believing you will get it. Self-confidence is the most important factor in our life. It can be multiplied by feeling good, taking responsibility and being accountable to failures. Today we all have made a veil around us and never try to look beyond it and unnecessarily pretend our self with false and negative images. We do generally show that we are over burdened with work and the rest are enjoying the gala days. We need to learn the acceptance of our duty and responsibility and rather than transferring it on the shoulder of others we start accepting to say, “I am responsible ”.

The lamp of faith within us should always get the oil of consistency and there should be no dark clouds of disappointment. The major problem of our failure is that, we keep thinking what we have done is right and we don’t critically express ourselves, where we went wrong. If we really want to conquer diffidence, then we need to defeat greed, hatred and jealousy, as these evils never let us pursue right path in our life.

Everyone is born with strength and weaknesses. We can develop and excel our-self according to our environment and situation by sticking to our principles and we have to be generous enough to accept our failures positively and try to be adventurous enough to define our aim. Trust yourself, know yourself better than you think, stop thinking what is not with you and try chasing what is great in you that others don’t have. The day you start thinking so you’re moving towards creation of self-confidence.

If we look at some great men who achieved success in their life, it is their self-confidence, determination and consistency in their thoughts and achievements. A great man is great in himself and what is in him to be great is his self-confidence. Self –confidence teaches us to dream and leads to attain the goal disregarding; the hurdles come across in our life.

Personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill etc has great mission and it is their self-confidence helped to overcome the problems and attain what they wanted. However you are rich, intelligent and strong, without self-confident you will not cross the tunnel and perhaps you may stand where you stood.

Steps to master Self-Confidence.

•  Tracking inadequacies & Reframing Failures: It is failure that pushes people into depression and insecurities. Find out your failures and start working on it. Have patience and faith within you and take the life the way it comes and be positive.

•  Self Determination : Know your strengths, it alone will do miracles that you even never think off. Learn to evaluate yourself independently. Stronger sense of self will give you a platform and will prevent you from giving your personal power away to others.

•  Lessons from past victories : Learn from your past mistakes, they are lessons for you and focus on your successes encouraging yourself to greater achievements in the future. “Treasure every moment! Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present”!

•  Self Trust: Believe in the best, “Win yourself before winning others”. It needs right acumen, true and sincere approach towards life and consistent commitment towards goal.

Persistence: Persistence is the fifth and final pillar of self-discipline. Persistence allows us to keep taking action even when we don’t feel motivated. So we should always have a zeal for persistence in order to remain in action.

By: Kavita thapliyal

 

Spero J Theodorou


If you feel somewhat cursed by fate because of pronounced facial features that attract unwanted attention, facial enhancements can improve your appearance. Through surgical, corrective, smoothing, dermal filler and other facial enhancement procedures, plastic surgeons help men and women get the look they desire. Whether it’s the eyelid, the nose, the ear or the entire face that needs working on, facial enhancements promise great results. An improved appearance can contribute a lot to boosting self esteem and improving confidence.

Here are some common facial enhancements to improve your appearance, and their benefits:

•    Face Lift: Lends the face a more youthful look after damage caused by factors such as the stress of everyday life, exposure to the sun, and the natural process of aging. Wrinkles can be softened, fat deposits can be removed and facial muscles can be tightened.

•    Eyelid Lift: Gives the eyes a more vibrant and less tired appearance. Signs of aging such as sagging and loose skin can also be corrected and noticeable stitching or scarring, if any, can be eliminated.

•    Rhinoplasty (Nose Surgery): For certain breathing difficulties, a nose surgery can do wonders. Rhinoplasty can adjust the nose size, change the shape of the nose, correct birth defects and injuries, set right marked asymmetry, and lessen nostril flare.

•    Otoplasty (Ear Surgery): Incisive, trimming and sculpting procedures are involved in otoplasty; this procedure is done to make right abnormally shaped, significantly protruding or very big ears.

•    Dermal Fillers: These sterile gels can be used to give definition to the lip, make dark circles surrounding the eye less visible, and to smoothen facial folds and wrinkles.

If you have the time to spare and the strong desire to make good those facial anomalies, there is a host of facial enhancements to choose from.

Ahoboguy

A song by the offspring with lyrics attatched so you can sing along if you want.