Confidence: How do you find it?

If there was something I could change about myself, I would like to be more confident.

I am pretty knowledgeable in different areas, but I have a hard time admitting that to someone. I don't want to come off like I'm bragging.

Or someone will ask me about something and I'll give a non-committed answer, just in case I happen to be wrong.

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I could become more confident.

Thanks

For me, I'm allways improving in this, I wasn't too bright about that eather but things are get improved by some causalities,
knowing how you want to communicate with the world is crucial, and for absorption I'll try naturally ask question that clarify for me the ideal communication.

Something that make it for me really liberating is a phrase that some dude doctor mention(in some dudes doctors forum ) that, kinda like, the food of anyone is the poison of someone. and I thought like, I need to live the passion of that phrase. And that is kinda liberate me from what other people think of me and stuff, because no matter if you gonna do the ideal things there is allways someone that give you reasons to back it off, so why won't just do the things that naturally comes out from you with good intentions and ignore those someones...

So much in life depends on confindence. I heared many ideas from teachers I admire about what confidence is and how to develop it. Once again I came to the conclusion that everything in our mind is interconnected and interrelated, and there are many ways to explain and approach this particular topic. I mean that confidence is not something you can or should separately work on but rather an aspect that gets improved when you work on yourself on the whole.

Let us first see a definition of what confidence is considered to be. According to Wikipedia, "Confidence is (...) a state of being certain, either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct, or that a chosen course of action is the best (...). Confidence can be described as a subjective, emotional state of mind, but is also represented statistically as a confidence level within which one may be certain that a hypothesis will either be rejected or deemed plausible."

According to the law of attraction [The Secret, The Science of Getting Rich] your emotions guide you on the path towards your goals. Negative emotions indicate that you are off your path, while positive emotions indicate that your are on your path and in alignment with your true desire. Recently, I came accross the idea that the very basic emotions are fear (negative) and love (positive). All other emotions branch from these two.

In our society, fear of rejection and fear of failure are very common (for instance, fear of rejection is the emotion that hinders you to give a committed answer). Thus, you have to actually cope with your fear to gain confidence.

A common suggestion how to gain confidence is to educate yourself. You have to understand your fear in order to work on it. More specific suggestion is "to feel the fear and do it anyway". Stretch yourself, put yourself intentionally in situations where you unescapable have to face your fear [Anthony Robbins]. For instance, go selling vacuum cleaners or insurance from door to door, get rejected and see that it is okay to be rejected. I bet, without confidence you will not sell anything.

A different approach, is to understand that your thoughts of what other people think of you are actually a pefect reflection of what you are thinking of other people. In other words you are judjing people and this in turn causes you to think that people judge you in a similar way. A way out of this cycle is to let go your expectations, accept people as they are, accept yourself as you are (affirmations may help to achieve this). "Non judgement" is what is also known as "unconditional love". In essense, this approach is the same as netanel22 has suggested (to stop idealising things and to stop worrying of what other people think of you).

Do you see how it all comes together Talk with other people about your and their personal issues (that is what we have friends for) and stretch yourself. You will find out that other people actually have problems very similar to yours and on the inside are often very different from your expectation. This in turn will help you to stop judjing people and yourself (to love other people and yourself unconditionally). Educate yourself not to become (more) knowledgeable but to understand your true human nature. Do not fall into the trap of believing that expert knowledge is everything you need in life.

Generally, the whole process of self improvement seems to be about moving from emotional patterns of fear to emotional patterns of to love.

Good luck!

thanks for the great post

Being confident does not mean you become a bragger.

A silent light can shine very bright as well, and everyone who wants to notice, will.

I heard about a friend who had a similar problem. He used self-affirmations - several times a day, in front of a mirror, for several minutes, during a period of maybe a month or a bit more. He combined this with self-made self affirmation tapes, and also some EFT.

I dont know what he was like before (only know him now) but he is a very interesting character, not bragging, but everything he says has a lot of weight, also, people cannot and dont try to put him down on anything.

I heard similar things of other people - the self-affirmations. It is kind of a self-hypnosis, and if you do it often enough it is bound to work. You can do real miracles with it.. also, make sure you think about what you tell yourself.