7 Mental Shifts to Help Build Self-Confidence

Boost your self-confidence and start taking control over your life.

In life so many things can come at you, and if you’re not careful you can find yourself in a place of doubting if things will ever change. The craziest part is, they will! But the shift must first start with you.

In this post, I share seven ways to start shifting your perspective to get the pendulum swinging in a more positive direction. Seven is the number of completion. So let’s start taking action today so that tomorrow will be different. 

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer

1. Put things into perspective 

In life, things can begin to spiral out of control very quickly. One minute you can go from feeling good, feeling loved, being happy to all of a sudden being in the sunken place.

This can be devastating and leave you wondering how things could’ve change this quickly. Nine times out of ten, it boils down to control and stability. 

We feel more in control when things are stable for us. But, the minute things change, we find ourselves trying to figure out where things went wrong.

This starts us to question and doubt ourselves. Thinking “am I good enough, smart enough or attractive enough? Self-loathing begins to spread like cancer. 

The next thing you know you feel hopeless and listening to sad music looking out the window like your in a music video. However, it pays to take a step back and realize, that some things are outside of our control.

Especially when it comes to the decisions of others. If someone has walked away from you, it can be pretty easy to be hard on yourself about someone else’s decision.

We can never control the thoughts and actions of others, with that in mind, our world is a collection of other peoples thoughts and actions. So, it’s easy to see why putting things into perspective becomes vitally important. 

“Things are never as bad as they seem.”  

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

2. Things are never as difficult as they seem

Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that things are harder than they really are. The first thing I think is to know that the confidence you need isn’t hard to get.

Most people never think about preserving confidence. They only recognize the lack of Self-confidence when things aren’t going their way.  

A string of bad events can crush even the most confident person in the world. For me, it was getting fired from my job, the woman I was interested in could care less and my first book bombed.

I was shattered, plus other than my mom’s house, I had nowhere else to live. My confidence was in the negative! 

But a shut down can easily be a setup for something much bigger and better. You see, looking back over everything, I realized that as bad as things were, they really gave me the confidence to approach life as if everything could be taken away.

That was freeing for me, it allowed me to really appreciate the people who were actually supportive. They believed in me, why shouldn’t I?

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

Lewis Carroll

3. Decide what you want

Deciding what you want is one of the first and most important steps in building self-confidence.

Without knowing what you want from specific areas of your life, it will be tough to know if you’re progressing.

A lot of people decide to lose weight for the new years. They create New Year’s resolutions, only to quit around February or March. 

According to U.S. News, about 80% of resolutions fail, because they lack the most important change, a change of mind.

Everything starts in the mind. So deciding what you want is crucially important. The next layer of a mental shift is to know why you want to have or be what you want. This, I believe is the glue that bonds you to what you want to achieve.

Visualizing the desired outcome through meditation is a good way to see yourself having what you want. By doing this, you put yourself in the future, allowing what you want to manifest to become a part of your present reality.

See yourself in a healthy relationship. What does it look like? What would it be like to have a relationship with someone where there are no arguments?

Knowing what you want is a key step to building self-confidence because without it you will end up floating right back to a state of low self-confidence.

You can’t hit a target that you cant see, and you can’t have a target without first deciding what and why is the ideal outcome that you desire. 

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” 

Vincent Van Gogh

4. Beat the little things

A lot of people get overwhelmed by trying to do everything at once. This is one of the biggest reasons people get stuck and don’t progress. This can be devastating to your self-confidence.

The temptation is to look at the success of others and compare your progress to that of others. This is a sure way of lowering your self-esteem and placing others above you. 

So let’s start by doing the things that you told yourself that you needed to do last week, last month, as a matter of fact, last year.

When you start doing the little things and get some small wins under your belt, it has a strange way of creating momentum. With this momentum, you can move on to bigger things that require more focus.

The little successes add up to big successes.

This will start to shift your mind into thinking “I need to find something small to accomplish” it can be small, but the key thing is to do something to its completion. This actually slows things down and eventually redirects you towards more positive experiences. 

Try this exercise tomorrow, plan out your meals for tomorrow. Decide what you’re going to eat and the times that you will eat.

Make sure that it’s the healthiest meal you’ve eaten all year. If that’s something you currently do, then try calling that someone who you’ve been telling yourself that you need to speak to. Heck, make a list of people that you’ve been meaning to call. 

“A Dream becomes a goal when action is taken towards its achievement.”  

Bo Bennett

5. Just do it

Don’t doubt yourself. Focus on the result that you want and start doing something every day in that direction. I remember when I was younger, about 14 years old, I played basketball, like every day!

I wanted to be able to dunk, like bad! So, I did what just about any young man in my position would do. 

I got my hands on a pair of strength shoes! I also was in the weight room every day working on my legs. My dream was to be able to dunk a basketball standing still under the basket.

So, initially it started with one plate on the leg press machine, then went to two and before you knew it I had five on each side. Five!! That’s 495 pounds. I only weighed 185 at that time. 

That’s almost three times my body weight. But you know what, it worked. I eventually was the highest jumper in my school with a 46 inch vertical. Not too bad for a summer’s worth of work.

I said all of that to say, if you want it, focus on the result and just start working towards your goal, you just might get it.

Fear is the killer of progressive action. But fear itself is an action. The bottom line is you’re going to something, why not do something that moves you closer to a better life for yourself?

What’s the worst thing that could happen? As stated before “Things are never as difficult as they seem.” Just do it!

“You cannot have a positive life and have a negative mind.” 

Joyce Meyer

6. Bring in more positive tune out more negative

As you start to hit a brick wall in building confidence, one thing that has helped me is to constantly reaffirm what I want.

This allows you to focus on the positive results, not the results that you don’t want. By shifting your focus on the things that are desired, you will begin to tune into the energy that you desire to have. 

What I like to do from time to time is listen only to audiobooks or music that is positive and relaxing. I’ll do this for like two or three weeks.

That means no profanity, sexually explicit images or that in any way conflicts with my current mind state. By doing this you tune your mind to being in a more peaceful state. You become receptive to positive and more resistant to negative energy. 

This is important to building self-confidence because it helps you to stay clear of being mentally distracted.

I mean think about it, if you see yourself as being a confident person, why would you allow negative information into your mind? It conflicts with the positivity that you’re trying to cultivate. 

Another thing is that anything negative or contrary to you being positive creates a distraction. This also includes; TV shows, videos online and gossip at work.

These things are food for low self-esteem. So be careful who and what you find yourself gravitating towards while you are feeling low. They have a peculiar way of keeping you there. 

“There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on…”

Robert Byrne

7. Finish what you start 

Finally, finish what you start, or don’t start at all. The more things that you have piled up that are neglected, the more reasons you’ll find to beat yourself up about.

When you tell yourself that you’re going to start something, start it and see it through until it’s completed. This, I find is a great way to start building self-confidence. 

If you start but don’t finish something, you start to create a new habit of quitting or leaving things unfinished.

This carries over into your relationships and can be the very reason why people start a relationship with you and then leave it unfinished.

Like, will always attract like. So, go back over and write down the things that you’ve told yourself that you needed to do, set a date and finish it. 

It’s as simple as putting things in the right perspective because things are never as difficult as it seems. Just decide on the outcome, take small actions, stay positive and see it through to the end. Just do it!

I promise you, when you do, you will begin to see a change, before you know it you’re not even thinking about the problems.

You’ll be so focused on keeping that good feeling going, and the negative will start to shrink. That my friends is confidence in self. 

I hope you have enjoyed reading my post and please consider subscribing to our weekly newsletter (The LoveLetter) and the Relationships&Chill Podcast for more amazing relationship, dating and self-improvement content.

Peace & Blessing

Coach R. Anthony