Garret

How to be confident even when you may not feel particularly strong comes down to the way that you treat and feel about yourself. Many people let the words and thoughts of others dictate how confident and approachable you are when in truth the only person who has the right to dictate how you feel is yourself. Self talk, image and focus will be dependable keys to ensuring that you can maintain confidence even if under pressure and even attack. By being prepared for the best and worse any situation has to offer you will not be thrown off by an unexpected result or circumstance.

How you feel as well as how confident you feel will be highly dependent on how you feel about yourself. So if you wake up in the morning look in the mirror and say negative things to yourself then you are not setting yourself up for a rewarding day. Instead if you approach your day as a new challenge that you are ready and prepared to take on then you will see major differences surrounding the way you cope with a tough situation. Feeling good when you want is based on how you feel about yourself and obviously not all people feel good all the time so when you are feeling low deal with it before a situation arises.

Self consciousness can be the greatest detriment to self esteem and confidence. You need to beat self consciousness to adequately prepare and cope so that when a situation arises you are in control confident and secure that you will be ok. Self consciousness is the little voice inside which questions how beautiful, motivated and equipped you are to tackle each day. Stop self conscious talk before it begins, choose from the start of the day how you will feel and stick to it. Learning to be positive when no-one else can cope is a sure fire way to gain confidence and trust so by taking a deep breathe and telling yourself that you can do anything. You will be at ease.

Undue criticism is hard to handle at the best of times and while you will need to identify the difference between constructive criticism and undue insult it is important for the sake of your confidence that you do not allow silly or hurtful comments from others affect the overall way that you feel about yourself. When the words of others are unhelpful and hurtful this is abuse and is not to be tolerated. Remove yourself from people who cannot offer helpful useful criticisms. We all a touch of reality and growth but don't take undue criticism.

In the even that you have prepared to your best ability, broken each task into steps and loved yourself silly all morning, in some situations especially in a group setting even the most confident person can succumb to pressure so it is important when in a difficult situation that you have a back up plan. This will be the best way for you to stay calm in a sticky situation without making a fool of yourself or others. One of the most effective ways that I have had suggested to me is when feeling under pressure to focus on the importance of the situation. Not in the sense that if you mess up its all over, because those thought will be detrimental but to remember the excitement and potential of the situation. Remind yourself why you went in the first place and this should be enough to get you through, other tips are deep breathing and a quick visualization to keep you bouncing till you can re-strategize at a later stage.

Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because it is available only at: conversation starters