The inner critic damages our self-esteem. In this article you will find the best exercises for greater self-confidence.
An exercise for greater self-confidence
Words create reality. Not only the ones we hear from childhood, but also the ones we say to ourselves. They have an enormous influence on our self-esteem and our sense of self-worth. And who would not like to react calmly and confidently in any situation? We cannot influence what other people say to us, but we can influence what we say to ourselves! With one simple practice we can influence our words and, through them, our reality.
Our brain loves to focus on the negative
According to research, you say 50,000 words to yourself every day. And here is the trouble with self-confidence: our brain is mainly busy keeping us alive. Negative images and dangers trigger a far stronger emotional and neural response than positive messages do. Unless we give our mind another task, it spends most of its time solving problems and taking everything negative to heart. A critical “conversation with yourself” brings a dispiriting result. With one simple exercise you break this cycle and give your brain a new structure, one in which it has to think positively.
Here is why you should never be afraid of these 4 gremlins. - Articles - Freud's Legacy. A club of psychology and personal development
This article is about how to find what keeps you from moving on and reaching your goals — and what to do about it.
https://freud.online/articles/vot-pochemu-vam-nikogda-ne-stoit-boyatsya-etikh-4kh-gremlinov
Give your brain a task
Think of ten strengths, or ten things you like about yourself. If you cannot, ask friends or colleagues. You will be surprised how easily other people name your strong and positive qualities. This first step gives the brain the task of concentrating on the positive.
But simply listing your strengths and telling yourself how good you are will not help. You have to join your words to experience: to recall the times when something worked out, when you reached a goal, when you were “on top”, and to build a new, positive emotional fixation. Only in this way can you create an additional inner image and an emotion to go with it. By awakening the feelings you had in those moments, you can positively influence your body's biochemistry. If you cannot manage it on your own, ask your parents what you achieved as a child. New experience can also be gained through meditation and visualisation.
SMART goals and what to do with them? - Articles - Freud's Legacy. A club of psychology and personal development
So, let us talk about goals. More precisely, about SMART, the system for setting them properly. Do you think these are simply clever goals, from the word “smart”, ...
https://freud.online/articles/smart-tseli-i-s-chem-ikh-edyat
The effect on your biochemistry
Say your 10 strengths out loud 10 times a day, combining them with a visualisation of your positive experience. It does not have to be in front of an audience. You can simply use your time in the shower or your ride to work.
Here is what it can look like in practice. I, for example, am very lazy but consistent: once I have started something, I hate to leave it unfinished. So I worked consistently — thirty minutes every day — simply doing what had to be done: writing a couple of lines of an article, or preparing material for the next seminar, or exercising to keep in shape. When I think of “consistency” as one of my strengths, I remember how I once trained for those thirty minutes, and then in my mind's eye I see my results: a huge number of articles and a great many grateful comments from people, clients from different countries and an excellent figure. A feeling of pride comes up and stays with me all day long. These neural stimuli affect my biochemistry; on the whole I feel much better. The external reality stays exactly the same, but inside I take it completely differently.
1,000 positive affirmations for a new self-confidence
If you do this exercise — “10 strengths, 10 times a day, 10 days in a row” — you will meet 1,000 positive affirmations that will strengthen your self-confidence in the long run, both by ear and by sight. Having done this 10-10-10 exercise, we start telling positive stories again instead of fairy tales. The number 1,000 may look small next to the 50,000 words we burn every day in our own inner talk, but a positive thought leads us to incredible results. The 5–7 minutes in which you actively do the exercise have a positive effect on the hours that follow, or even set off a domino effect. Thanks to that you quickly reach the critical mass needed for a complete change and for steady growth of self-confidence. A positive thought challenges the opposite negative thought, the message of failure. You begin to write your own story. You are no longer the “picture” created by other people's assessments and opinions: you decide for yourself what and who you want to be.
