Unique Ways To Build Confidence

Recently, Pat, a 30 yr old woman shared her frustration with me; “How can I be confident and affirm that I have the best job possible when I am receiving only rejections to all my job applications?”

She was trying to recover from her condition and had made a vision board to help her visualize. Pat said, “When you are facing so many problems, how can you build your confidence and believe that you could achieve your dreams?”

She was going through a tough time and feeling guilty and focused on regrets in her life. She lacked confidence. Many people have similar troubles with low confidence and difficulty visioning success when they are going through a tough time.

You may or may not be going thru a difficult time but you may be just thinking about your New Year’s resolutions as the year ends. This is a good time to reflect on what goals you were able to achieve in the past year, what great surprises came your way that you did not anticipate at the beginning of the year and what you would like to achieve in the New Year.

This unique technique from the new “Stress to Joy Guided Gratitude Journal” may help you.

Let’s review it in two steps of the technique I call, advanced gratitude:

1. Achievement
2. Vision

Grateful Achievement.

When Pat faced the above dilemma, I advised her to add a Grateful Achievement and change her vision board to Grateful Vision using advanced gratitude concept. To do that, she took a manila folder with two plain sheets of paper pasted/stapled on each side. One side was her Grateful Achievement, and the other side was Grateful Vision.

For Grateful Achievement she wrote:

I am grateful that I was able to

• Pass high school
• Win a championship in athletics
• Become a mother to two beautiful children
• Write a resume and give good interviews

I’ll share what she wrote on the other side – in the next blog on describing Grateful Vision.

Before doing this, she was feeling like a total failure. She could not feel the confidence that she could get out of the hole she was in at that time, with all the legal and financial difficulties.

The next time I saw her, she had a big smile on her face. Her energy was palpable. She felt confident yet humble.  When she did this as part of her daily practice, her goals remained in front of her, and she kept on taking deliberate steps towards her goal. She was close to achieving success.

You may be asking, why Grateful Achievement?

You can easily accomplish results with a simple achievement board. I learned Achievement Boards from John Assaraf, where you post all the symbols of successes you have achieved in life till now.

I tried it but had some difficulty due to my past belief system. You see, I grew up in a culture where talking about your achievements is considered negative. Therefore, I try to be humble which is a high virtue in my value system. However, when someone is too humble, it affects their confidence and ability to express where it is needed, like in a job interview.

When you add ‘I am grateful that I was able to achieve’ in front of the list of your achievements, I feel the confidence with humility. I can be the best I could be. Therefore, I use Grateful Achievement.

If you do this exercise, you will also be able to feel confident without arrogance. Combine it with Grateful Vision and you will have a tool that will help you get closer and closer to your success with confidence and humility.

Go ahead make your list of achievements and say I am grateful that I was able to achieve….

Don’t forget the simple achievements. They may be simple for you, but for many people in the world, they may not be.

For instance, when I taught this technique to primary grade kids, one of them shared her goal of understanding a certain math concept. She said I don’t think I can ever achieve that goal. I asked her if she understood some other math concepts and she listed many. She minimized her simple achievement, saying it is not a big deal. Everyone knows that. Yet it was a big deal for a kid from lower grade sitting next to her. Furthermore, there are many kids who may not even have the chance to learn those concepts as they don’t or can’t go to school.

It made sense to her. Once she listed her gratitude for being able to learn and know the learned concepts, she felt more confident that she will be able to achieve the goal of learning other concepts she was having difficulty with.

You could also be grateful for all the simple things that you may take for granted or say, it is not a big deal.

Acknowledge them, offer gratitude for them and it will help you to build confidence and to be able to achieve the goals you would like to achieve.

Dr. Rozina

#1 Best Selling Author, Speaker, and Psychiatrist
www.drrozina.com

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I share many tools and techniques that I have found to be helpful. They are not intended to replace treatments. Please seek treatment from licensed medical or health professionals as needed. I change all names for privacy.