A social phobia is a fear of interacting with others on a social level. Examples would be talking in front of other people, waiting in line at the checkout imagining others are looking at you, or even fear of talking on the phone.
Self-confidence is a demeanor that allows individuals to have positive, yet realistic views of themselves and their situations. Self-confident people trust their own qualifications, have a general sense of control over their lives, and have belief that, within reason, they will be able to do what they want and need to do.
Self-confidence is a demeanor that is garnered through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful. And that expectation itself will cause a feeling of self-confidence.
As an example: A young man wants to be a boxer, so he gets a trainer and a manager. His manager will not arrange a bout for him until he has generated enough stamina and skill. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a rival that he knows his fighter can pound. When his fighter beats the contender, he is successful, and starts to gain self-confidence in his capabilities.
With each engagement, the manager puts his champion up against a challenger who is a slightly better rival then the last, but not good enough to beat his fighter. By the end of the third fight, the young contestant begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to bloom. This series of events continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter contender continues to win, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to flourish.
As another example: A young lady who is afraid of high places wants to learn to dive into a swimming pool from a high diving board. So she finds a diving coach. He asks her to dive into the pool from the first rung of the ladder up to the diving board. The first rung of the ladder is not awful high, so the young lady feels completely confident, and she dives from that rung, and lands safely in the water.
Next, the coach has her take a dive from the second step of the ladder, and so forth. I guess that you are beginning to get the picture. 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 dives in and is unhurt, the girl's self-confidence increases, and her expectation of success on the next step 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 self-esteem arena fails, they tend to lose confidence, and expect failure, which often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Even if an individual has true self-confidence, it doesn't mean that they will be successful at 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 confident and to accept themselves.
People, who are not self-confident, tend to depend disproportionately on the approval of other people in order to feel good about themselves. They usually don't take risks for fear of failure. They often put themselves down and tend to discount compliments that are offered to them.
On the other side of the coin, self-confident people are willing take a chance on disappointing others because they generally trust their own abilities. They tend to acknowledge themselves; and they don't believe that they have to conform in order to be approved.
Just because one feels self-confidence in one or more parts of their life, doesn't mean that they will feel secure in every single part of their life. For example, a person might feel self-confident about their mathematical talent, 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 Self-Esteem Created initially?
Many effective factors have an affect on the development of self-esteem. Parents' attitudes are relevant to the way children view themselves, especially in their early years. When parents provide acknowledgment, children receive a good foundation for self-esteem. If one or both parents are disproportionately critical, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children may come 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 self-esteem is often the result of concentrating very strongly on the unrealistic expectancy of other people especially parents and friends. The affect of friends can be more effective and powerful than that of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.
Assumptions That Continue to Affect Confidence
In response to external influences, people develop beliefs. Some of these are helpful and some are not. Several assumptions that can interfere with self-confidence and alternative ways of thinking are:
ASSUMPTION: It's important that I am successful at every challenge I undertake. This assumption is unrealistic. In life each person has their strengths, and their weaknesses. While it is important to always do your best, it is more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and deficient. You should feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that you don't know everything and you don't need to be 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 is desirable to develop personal standards 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 influenced by external influences during your childhood as you gain maturity understanding and a new point of view 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 in the face of past events
HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE
Emphasize Your Strengths. Bestow upon yourself credit for everything you can do. And grant yourself acknowledgment for every new adventure you are willing to try.
Take risks. Adopt the attitude of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I find out what doesn't work and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can test something else.
Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a method 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 do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself while still working towards improvement.
Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in scenes that you currently lack self-confidence in. But see yourself behaving like a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are
powerful Self-hypnosis and NLP techniques that you can use to
instill a tremendous amount of 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 assess yourself as an individual human being. Refrain from the frequent sense of disturbance that comes from relying on other people's opinion.
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Author's Bio
Alan B. Densky, CH. has been a certified hypnotist and NLP Practitioner since 1978. His website offers
hypnosis CD's that will create a super amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious mind. His
Self-confidence CD's were recently tested by Personal-Development.info in England.
