How to be more confident?

Confidence is everything…

If you are confident, then you believe in yourself. You believe in your ability to take action and accomplish your goals.

But without confidence? You’ll struggle to get what you want in your career and relationships.

In this article I will show you how to be more confident in yourself by giving you 9 actionable tips you can use today.

1. Set small goals :

If you want to be more confident in yourself, then you need to build trust in your ability to get shit done.

You need to prove to yourself that you can take action and accomplish your goals. And the best way to do this is to set small “bite-size” goals that you can accomplish in just a few weeks.

For example, rather than setting the large goal of “getting a new job”, set a smaller goal to “update your resume” or “apply to five different companies”. This way, you can quickly accomplish your goals, build trust in yourself, and create massive momentum in your life.

Right now, think of your #1 goal. How can you make this smaller? What is a realistic goal for the next week or 2?

2. Identify Your Insecurities:

Setting goals is crucial, but defining your fears and insecurities is even more important.

Right now, ask yourself: “What am I embarrassed about or ashamed of? What am I afraid that other people might discover about me?”

Then make a list.

This is a list of your top insecurities. We all have them, so don’t be embarrassed.

However, just making this list will not cause them to magically disappear. But it will help you acknowledge them and accept their reality. If you want to get over them, then I suggest you pick one and share it with a close friend or family member. This will not be easy, but it will help you remove the shame associated with it.

3. Practice facing rejections:

After surveying thousands of men, it’s clear that our #1 fear is failure and rejection.

We are afraid that we are going to fail to live up to the expectations of other people… and our own expectations… and it scares the crap out of us. This is normal, but if you let this fear stop you from going after what you want, then you will never reach your goals.

Instead, you must force yourself to face this fear on a daily basis. This is the only way to overcome it. For example, approaching one girl every single day and giving her a compliment or asking her out.

These “comfort zone challenges” will desensitize you to your fears and help you stop giving a fuck what other people think.

4. Practice desicion making:

If you want to reach true self-confidence, then you must be able to make fast decisions.

Most of us make the mistake of over-thinking and over-analyzing every little choice. This will cause you to lose confidence in yourself, because you’re essentially training yourself to doubt your gut instinct.

Instead, you must build your “decision-making” muscle. You must practice making decisions on a daily basis. Here are a few simple ways you can get started:

• When you eat out, select your meal off the menu in 30 seconds or less
• When you are getting dressed, select your outfit in 1 minute or less
• When you make plans with a friend, always be the one who makes a suggestion of what you should do

These steps will program your mind to make faster choices when you’re facing more significant decisions.

5. Try new hobbies:

If you want to be more confident, you need to try new things.

You can’t spend all of your time inside your comfort zone and expect things to change.

One of the best ways to “switch things up” and expand your comfort zone is to experiment with new hobbies. You never know, you might find a hidden passion you never knew existed. Or you may even meet a new best-friend… or girlfriend or boyfriend.

6. Spend time with people you admire:

“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”

This famous quote is shockingly true. Other people’s personality traits tend to “rub off” on you.

If you spend most of your time with lazy people who just want to get drunk and hang out, you will become equally mediocre. But if you spend time with motivated people who push you to get better, you will quickly gain momentum in your life.

If you want to build muscle and get fit, then hit the gym with your buddy who is jacked.

I’m not saying to destroy your old relationships, just to spend less time with people who hold you back.

7. Avoid the voice inside your head:

When you’re feeling a lack confidence, it usually starts with “the voice inside your head”. You know, the little voice that says you’re going to fail… that says you’re too ugly… that says other people are trying to hurt you.

The truth is that 99% of the time this voice is wrong! But it caused you to get stuck inside your head and start feeling awkward and nervous.

This is why you need “tools” to help you silence this voice and stay out of your head.

Here is one quick trick you can use right now: whenever you start to hear “the voice” getting started, stop and focus on the sensations in the bottom of your feet. This forces you to stay “out of your head” and keeps you feeling calm and confident.

8. The “I love myself” affirmation:

The final “hack” is a simple affirmation.

Affirmations are short statements that you repeat to yourself in order to boost your mood (and “hypnotize” yourself into actually believing it). The most effective affirmation I’ve ever tried is the “I love myself” affirmation…

Here’s how it works: stare at yourself in a mirror and say “I love myself” 5-10 times.

This sounds very basic, and maybe a little weird, but trust me it works. At first it may make you uncomfortable, but if you do it every day for a few weeks in a row, you will quickly start to feel true love for yourself as you repeat these words.

Full disclosure: I stole this from Kamal Ravikant’s book Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. It’s a quick read that I highly recommend.

9. Lift Weight:

Lifting weights is quite possibly the easiest way to build self-confidence.

It will help you build muscle and burn fat. And this will make you look better. And looking better will make you feel better about yourself.

Plus, like it or not, people subconsciously perceive muscular men as more confident and authoritative. This means other people will treat you better as well. On top of this, it will give you a whole lot of anti-aging benefits like increased bone density and stronger posture.

Conclusion:

Above you will find 9 simple “hacks” you can use to be more confident in yourself.

I recommend that you pick 2-3 and give them a try over the next week. You will find that some of these work better for you than others. Keep the ones that you like and discard the ones you don’t.