“With confidence, you have won before you have started” – Marcus Garvey
Self-confidence can make one succeed both personally and professionally in life. It helps motivate you and allows you to present yourself well to others.
However, life is not perfect. Adversaries can come knocking on your door, and your self-esteem takes a nosedive.
It is easy to succumb to negativity, but you can combat this by boosting your self-confidence.
Fortunately, you can use many confidence-building exercises to help boost your self-confidence.
Wherever area of your life you lack self-confidence, these exercises can uplift you.
What Are Self-Confidence Exercises?
Self-confidence exercises are practices one uses to increase an appreciation for their abilities and qualities.
Regular practice of these exercises can help build more confidence and improve productivity and work quality.
This article contains a list of confidence exercises you can do in your personal and professional life.
Why Improve Self-Confidence?
Confidence makes you feel secure as a person and what you plan to achieve. You ignore your weaknesses and use your strengths to keep you grounded.
You trust your ability to face any situation and are ready to take on all challenges to reach your goal.
10 Confidence Building Exercises
If you are ready to boost your confidence, here are ten confidence-building activities you can try.
1. Be Positive
Maintain a positive outlook. Replace negative thoughts with positive ones. It may seem complicated, but challenge your inner critic by silencing it by engaging in positivity.
Use positive affirmations to counteract them. Affirmations can help you rewire any negativity.
For example, if you feel you have no focus, you can counter this with an affirmation:
“My mind is clear and free of worry. Nothing can distract me from achieving my goal.” Keep repeating this until you find your focus.
Nat King Cole knows what he says in his song “Smile.” Smiling releases neurotransmitters from the brain to activate hormones that positively affect mood and well-being.
A smile can lift your mood, relieve stress, reduce pain, and help you stay positive.
Smiling can also help you hide your nervousness. Smile is positive body language that encourages others to interact with you.
Smiling while maintaining eye contact gives others a good impression of your confidence.
Suppose you are doing a presentation. Your audience will believe and trust your words if they perceive you as confident.
Convincing your audience will be easy; after all first impression lasts.
You can also take a break. Step away from whatever is causing you negativity. Sometimes, taking a break allows you to regain a positive view of things.
2. Listen To Positive High-Power Songs
According to Harvard Health studies, music affects one’s mood, memory, athletic performance, and cardiovascular functions.
Music can pull you out of a gloomy or down state. It creates an environment that inspires and empowers your creativity. It can also soothe and relax both body and mind.
Take the song “Believe” by Cher. The music speaks of letting go and embracing a new life. The lyrics “You’re strong enough” is a confidence booster.
It is a powerful affirmation to give you the confidence to face your heartbreak and move on.
You can also combine music with meditation. It helps deepen its effects to bring you tremendous relief from stress.
It enables you to relax and better manage more pressure that comes your way. Instrumental music that has a slow tempo is often preferred.
It prevents you from getting distracted and getting your mind engaged.
High-energy music helps you regain your self-confidence. The music genre that can influence you varies. Soft ballads or jazz can help soothe and relax you.
If you want to shake off nervous energy, you can listen to pop or other upbeat songs that inspire you to dance.
Some listen to heavy bass rock music to pump up their adrenalin or to feel powerful. Whichever genre you choose, it would leave you feeling calm, happy, and empowered.
3. Plan Ahead of Time
Success can boost your confidence, and the way to ensure success is to plan ahead of time. You don’t set goals to fail but to succeed.
Planning ahead of time can help you cover all possible eventualities.
Planning ahead of time teaches you to be proactive and see forthcoming roadblocks, allowing you to plan your action and face the roadblocks confidently.
By planning ahead of time, you gain the confidence to discuss your plans with others and help you make informed decisions. It can help give you peace of mind.
It provides you the confidence needed to take risks, allowing you to face competition without worry.
In addition, you can set measurable and achievable goals when you make your plans. Start with small, attainable goals to make you feel accomplished.
Your achievements can motivate and encourage you to set and attain bigger goals.
4. Surround Yourself With Like-Minded and Successful People
“Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.”
The people you surround yourself with can influence what you think and how you perceive yourself.
When positive people surround you, you are more likely to imbibe their positivity. You are more inclined to adopt their beliefs and empowering attitude.
Associate yourself with people who care and love you. These are people who want what is best for you and help you boost your confidence.
You become smarter with intelligent people. They can introduce and inspire you to new ideas, concepts, culture, and other knowledge.
They can show you where to find the good stuff like events, career opportunities, and networking.
You become the people you surround yourself with. If the people around you are destructive, harmful, or insecure, you turn like them.
Even the strongest person is not immune to negative energy.
5. Listen To Inspiring Podcasts With Successful People Who Inspire You
Podcasts are series or collections of digitally recorded audio files made available on the Internet. These digital files may contain inspirational or motivational stories, news, or interviews.
Podcasts can stimulate or inspire mental imagery than reading or watching television. Listening forces the listeners to use their imagination.
Podcasts can be one of the best confidence-building exercises. It can inspire listeners to be more outspoken and confidently share their opinions.
The more you develop this skill, the more it feels natural and comfortable. Sharing your thoughts can make you confident about your ideas.
6. Focus On Your Strengths (skills and talents)
Understandably, you cannot always feel positive. There are times you feel overwhelmed and lost.
When this happens, shift your focus to positive things. Remind yourself of just how much skills and talents you have.
Remember how you accomplished them using those skills and talents. You can find your strengths by reflecting on past achievements, wins, and how you confidently carried yourself.
- Reflect on past achievements. Make a list of your proudest accomplishments, professionally or personally. It can be an academic award in school, a promotion at work, or landing a big deal.
Remind yourself how you accomplished them despite all adversaries. It will remind you of your confidence, driving away your negative thoughts. If you did it once, you could do it again.
- Celebrate your wins; big or small, celebrate them. It can be as small as losing 1 kilo from the scale or as big as winning 1 million in the lottery. Celebrating your wins will help motivate and give you the confidence to aim for higher goals.
- Show a confident appearance. You can create an alter-ego or portray a confident persona. It can be a fictitious character that combines all the characteristics you admire.
Acting as this persona can make it easier to perceive yourself this way – for example, wearing power suits or suitable clothes, getting your haircut or changing your hairstyle, or having a facial.
You can do simple things to make yourself look and feel good. When you know you are at your best, it’s easier to project a confident image.
Once you remember them, focus on highlighting them to boost your confidence.
7. Adopt the Confident Body Posture
Want to become more confident faster? Here’s more on this from Paul
It is said that “action speaks louder than words.” Body language can influence how you and others look at yourself. Even if you are nervous, you can use body language to appear confident.
A slight body posture and movement modification can significantly impact how others perceive you. There are many forms of body language that convey confidence even when you are not.
- Don’t Slouch. Stand up straight and maintain an open posture to occupy space. Insecure people take as little space as possible, so they slump in a protective pose.
- Stop Fidgeting. Fidgeting is a sign of nervousness and anxiety. Tapping your fingers on the table or bouncing your knee are signs of being bothered. It also draws your audience’s attention away from your presentation or conversation.
- It’s in the eyes. Maintain eye contact with your audience or listener. It shows confidence and interest. If you find direct eye contact intimidating, focus on a spot near the person’s eye. It’s a trick that effectively works.
- Move slowly and take longer strides. When you are always in a hurry, you appear anxious and harassed. Try slowing down, and you will start calming down too. Instead of walking too fast, try taking longer strides. Longer strides make you appear more authoritative and confident.
- Walk with your head up. Always keep your head held high when you walk or talk to someone. Do not look down at the ground because it makes you look scared. Raise your chin as you walk or talk to appear as if you are posing confidently.
8. Practice Self-Care
You can’t feel good if your body does not feel good. Practicing self-care shows you proactively care for your body, mind, and spirit, making you feel more confident.
Self-care is one’s ability to promote and maintain health, prevent diseases and manage disability and illnesses independent of a healthcare provider.
Enrich your body with nutrient-dense foods. When your body is healthy, you feel strong and energized; as a result, you feel better. It boosts your level of self-esteem and confidence.
Regular exercise improves your self-image. As mentioned, self-image is vital in boosting confidence.
Sleep is another form of self-care. Haven’t you noticed that you are cranky and irritable when you lack sleep?
These negative feelings can negatively affect your performance, resulting in decreasing self-esteem.
Meditation helps your mental health. Other than relaxation, it aids you in recognizing and accepting yourself by disconnecting from your hostile surroundings.
Self-care is integral to feeling more confident; caring starts from within you. You cannot expect others to care for you if you cannot take care of yourself.
9. Practice Gratitude
You may not realize it, but gratitude directly affects your confidence.
The more grateful you are, the greater the things you receive. It would be best if you were thankful for every little thing in your life.
Being grateful shows contentment, and this leads to happiness and satisfaction.
When this happens, you know that all is right in your world, making you confident that you are doing things right.
However, things are never perfect. There would be days when you feel flawed or inadequate and think everything is going wrong – practice gratitude.
Be thankful, even if it’s just the air you breathe or waking up on a new day.
You can also create a personal growth journal of your positive traits. For example, show appreciation for your willingness to help despite your dire circumstances.
Focusing on your positive characteristics can keep your mind away from negative thoughts.
When you make the practice of gratitude a habit, you become more aware of the good things you have, allowing you to forget the negative stuff.
10. Read Confidence Quotes For Inspiration
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'” —Eleanor Roosevelt
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” —Thomas Edison
“It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you are not.”—Denis Waitley
These are just a few inspirational quotes that can help boost your confidence. Confidence quotes offer inspiration when motivation no longer works.
It appeals to the subconscious mind and suddenly changes your thought process.
Filling your subconscious with positive commands uplifts your general view and personality.
Generally, confidence quotes take about 20 seconds to read, but the message conveyed is sufficient to leave a recall, propelling you to act.
Confidence Building Exercises: Final Words
Confidence is innate in everyone, but it needs work and nurturing. There would be days when your confidence suffers, and you can boost it with confidence-building exercises.
You deserve to be the superstar that you are meant to be. All you need is that extra boost. Choose from any of these building-confidence exercises and take the next step.
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