Hi lovelies,
There are plenty of things that contribute to living your best life. Your upbringing plays a big role, as does your general chemical makeup. Some people are just more predisposed towards energy and happiness than others. And then there’s the matter of confidence. This is an often underrated aspect of good living -- when you have it, you’ll feel much more capable that you’re able to take on the world and make your dreams come true. And when you don’t have it, well, the opposite will be true.
While some people have a natural confidence, that’s generally not the case. The good news is that it’s always something that you can bring into your life. In this blog, we’re going to look at a number of factors that will push you in the right direction.
Individual Interests
Life can be a lot of fun. All you need to do is throw yourself into it, and you’ll be rewarded. While this is something that everyone should do, it’s also important that you carve out your own place in the world. If you’re constantly going with the flow and following the interests of society, then at some point, you might find that you don’t have enough to hold onto on your own. The people who were best equipped to handle lockdown were the ones who had their own interests to enjoy when the world was shut down. It doesn’t matter what your individual interests/sources of enjoyment are, so long as they’re your own.
A Good Support Network
You don’t fully understand the importance of a good support network until you have one. If you have loving friends and family around you, then you’ll find it much easier to bounce back from setbacks. It’ll work in any setting, but let’s take, say, a breakup. If you feel alone, then you might begin to question yourself, your qualities, etc. If you have a solid group of people around you, then they’ll be there to build you back up, tell you how awesome you are, things like that. It becomes a metaphorical home base that performs a solid platform for you to grow.
In the Right Career
The details of our lives have, of course, a huge impact on how we see and feel about ourselves. The inner world you create is important, but the external factors have just as big a role. One of the biggest factors in our confidence levels is our work. If you’re in a career that you don’t like, or where you don’t feel challenged or thrived, then you might not lose confidence, but it won’t be as high as if you were in a fulfilling career. Staying in a job you don’t like is fine for a while, but if it’s going on for years and years, then it’ll be worthwhile taking the risk to switch to a career that you do like.
Healthy Living
An all-around healthy lifestyle helps to boost confidence in multiple ways. Perhaps one of the best ways it does this is by helping you to avoid the things that would otherwise bring your confidence down. People understand on a deeper level that eating fast food, not exercising, and drinking too much alcohol is bad for them -- and this understanding slowly erodes the confidence of the people who are doing those things. As such, an effective way to build yourself back up is to adopt some healthy habits. You’d be amazed at just how much of an impact cooking healthy meals and going for a run in the morning can do for your sense of wellbeing.
Looking Their Best
Related to healthy living is appearance. While how you look isn’t everything, it’s not completely unimportant. It clearly plays a role in how we see ourselves and how others see us. Healthy living will nudge your appearance in the right direction, but there are also other things you can do. For example, you can look at hitting the gym, body sculpting, and visiting a top-quality hair salon. Those three things alone could bring dramatic improvements. Other options include upgrading your wardrobe and getting the right skincare products.
Setting Challenges
The comfort zone sure is nice, but it can be a dangerous put to fall into. It’s better to be a little skeptical of doing the same old, same old, and trying to find new ways to push yourself out of your comfort zone. It can be scary but it’s nearly always worth it.
Self-Satisfaction
There are two types of people -- those that want to achieve glory so that they can impress other people, and those that want to achieve glory for their own satisfaction. The latter are the confident ones, since they’re not looking for the approval of others, which will come and go. Even if you get approval from others for a short period, it can always be taken away. And then what? There’s no inner worth to hold on to.
Seeking Help
Confidence isn’t the ability to do everything all on your own. A confident person recognizes that they need help from time to time. If you’re presented with a challenge that you don’t know how to complete, then reach out to people who can help you. It’s kind of like having a growth mindset. If you’re aware that you don’t know everything, then you’ll have the humility to reach out to people who can help you, when the moment calls for it. And of course, a confident person is willing to help others, since they know that they’re only in competition with themselves, rather than others.
Accepting of Flaws
Finally, perhaps the biggest -- and most important -- trait of confident people is that they’re aware of and accepting of their flaws and weaknesses. Confident people don’t have everything figured out -- they just know that there’s a way to get to the top of the mountain despite the weaknesses. It’s a way of trusting themselves, something that non-confident people (who can often have an unrealistic view of themselves) lack.
