NLP & Hypnotherapy Can Build Your Self-Confidence

A social phobia is a fear of interacting with others on a social level. Examples would be imagining others are looking at you while waiting in line at a checkout, talking in front of other people, or even fear of talking on the phone.

Self-confidence is a demeanor that allows people to have decisive, yet realistic views of themselves and their predicament. Self-confident people have faith in their own know-how, have a general sense of control over their lives, and have belief that, within reason, they will be able to do what they want to do.

Confidence is a demeanor that is conditioned through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect success at his/her endeavors. And that expectation will cause a feeling of confidence.

As an example: A young man wants to be a prizefighter, so he gets a manager and a trainer. His manager will not arrange a bout until he has developed enough skill and stamina. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a challenger that he knows his fighter can crush. When his fighter beats the contender, he is successful, and starts to gain self-confidence in his fighting skills.

With each encounter, the manager puts his contender up against an adversary who is only a slightly better competitor then the last, but not good enough to beat his gladiator. By the end of the third fight, the young contestant begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to increase. This scenario continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter contestant continues to win, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to accrue.

As another example: A young lady who is scared of high places wants to learn to dive into a swimming pool from a high diving board. So she finds a diving coach and he asks her to dive into the pool from the first step of the ladder up to the diving board. The first step of the ladder is not awfully high, so the young lady feels totally confident, and she dives from that rung, and lands safely in the water unharmed.

Next, the coach has her take a dive from the second step of the ladder, and so forth. I think that you get the idea. With each additional step up the ladder, since the girl was able to jump without fear, and this next step is only slightly higher then the last, the fear of being harmed factor is negligible, and the girl expects to be successful. When she jumps in and lands unharmed, the girl's confidence increases, and her expectation of success on the next rung up the ladder increases.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having true self-confidence doesn't mean that individuals will be able to do everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are sensible. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.

People, who are not self-confident, tend to lean unreasonably on the acceptance of others in order to feel self-assured. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They put themselves down and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.

On the other side of the coin, confident people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally have faith in their own potential. They tend to accept themselves; and they don't feel that they have to conform in order to be approved.

Just because a person feels self-confidence in one or more aspects of their life, doesn't mean that they will feel self-confident in every single part of their life. For example, a person might feel self-confident about their athletic talents, but not feel confident as far as members of the opposite sex are involved, such as in a dating situation, or social relationships.

How Is Confidence Initially developed?

Powerful truths impact the course of self-esteem. Parents' attitudes are fundamental to the way children feel about themselves, particularly when they are very young. When parents provide acceptance, children receive a great foundation for feelings of self-esteem. If one or both parents are disproportionately critical, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children may start to believe they are incapable, inadequate, or inferior.

However, if parents encourage a child's moves toward self-reliance, and they are not overly critical when the child makes mistakes, the child will learn to accept herself, and will be on the way to developing self-confidence.

A lack of confidence is not necessarily related to a lack of ability. A lack of confidence is often the result of concentrating much too strongly on the unrealistic expectations of others especially those of parents and friends. The control of friends can be more powerful and effective than that of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Conclusions That Continue to Influence Self-confidence

In response to external influences, people create assumptions. Some of these are good, and some are bad. Several assumptions that can interfere with self-confidence and alternative ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: It's imperative that I'm successful at every challenge that I undertake. This assumption is unrealistic. In the real world each person has her strengths and her weaknesses. While it's important to always do your best, it is more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and flawed. Feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that no person knows everything nor are they an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this assumption is totally unrealistic. All human beings are flawed. It's desirable to develop standards and values that are not completely dependent on the approval of others.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially subject to external influences when you were a child as you grow to adulthood consciousness and perspective on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don't have to be helpless based on what happened in your past

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Bestow upon yourself credit for everything that you can do. And bestow upon yourself recognition for every new thing you are willing to test.

Take risks. Adopt the point of view of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I learn what does not work and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can try out something else.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a technique to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting perfection, remind yourself that it's impossible to be an expert at every activity, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself as you are improving.

Make mental movies: Picture yourself in the various scenarios that you currently have low levels of self-confidence in. But see yourself behaving like a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are powerful Hypnotic approaches that can be used to build a titanic amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that require more self-confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to grade yourself as an individual. Avoid the perpetual sense of agitation that comes from relying on the opinions of others.

Want to learn more about hypnosis? Visit Alan B. Densky's free hypnosis article library.