How much do you believe in yourself? What price tag do you put on your talents and capabilities?

Part of self-awareness is acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses, but are you putting the emphasis on your strengths?  Concentrating your efforts on your positive attributes and building on existing competencies are helpful in building your confidence and achieving your goals.  A good practice is to reflect on occasions when your confidence levels were high and ask yourself how you can do more of that.

Self-consciousness often inhibits the growth of confidence.  Have you ever entered a room full of people and wanted to hide in a corner?  Or failed to ask important questions in a group discussion because you were afraid of how the group may perceive you?  Moving our awareness on to others or focusing on our purpose will help us let go of our egos.

Many self-help articles and books suggest that we keep telling ourselves how good/beautiful/intelligent we are.  Perhaps we should rather stop beating ourselves up about the things we don’t do so well.  When I play bridge, I get SO angry with myself when I make an error that costs us a game, concentrating on that one bad hand instead of celebrating the 10 good ones.  How much better could we be if we could just forgive ourselves for our mistakes and move on?

Acknowledging our abilities, believing in our capacity to achieve our goals and letting go of our egos all contribute to the growth of our self-confidence.  This self assurance then adds to our “presence” – that indefinable way of being that inspires others’ confidence and trust.