have more confidence in myself

Imagine what it would it feels like to have achieved your goal.

What does it feel like now?

Try to imagine the feeling you had before.

You have all those things in you already.

You are still going to be the same person, albeit with the feeling of having achieved something you had imagined beforehand.

The hardest part is forging yourself. Be good to yourself, be your own best friend.

First of all: it’s easy. It’s really easy. Think of it like this: imagine it were really easy. What other things do you know in your life that are really easy, that you can do without thinking about it?

Now imagine having self-confidence is easy. Imagine it were possible.

The difference between self-confidence and self-consciousness is where your mind is. With things you do well, be it playing tennis, running, making that drop-dead gorgeous lemon tart — with all these activities, your mind is on the activity. You don’t need to think about yourself, you can just prepare the pastry, run the leg, cycle the stretch – your mind is occupied with thinking about what you are doing, the activities, the individual steps, the next 100 yards, the consistency of the yolk.

It’s with the things you are uncertain about, that’s where self-consciousness kicks in. You find yourself beginning to think about yourself thinking about what you are doing and how you could be doing it. You become self-aware.

And this is what feels uncomfortable. You feel as though everyone is looking at you, you are naked, you feel exposed and vulnerable.

Can you begin to see the difference?

Now imagine going in to this new task, the thing you want to do, the writing of the novel, the not letting others hurt you, the being able to feel relaxed in the moment, or even how you will whisk the egg, run the first fifty yards.

Even this first thought, this preparing, the visualising imagining, all this helps for you to gradually shift your awareness from your self to the trust of the thing at hand.

You can also look at it like this: the word confidence is related to confiding-in, with other words you are putting a bit of yourself into the task at hand, into the other location, you are shifting your awareness — and through it — you are becoming more confident with yourself.

See? It’s easy. Now you can do it.

Thank you Mo7! I really appreciate that. It means a lot to me.

I don’t come across as suffering from lack of confidence. It’s similar to being shy and overcompensation by talking a lot.

I am taking my time and trying to do things with ease and to pay attention. Every step helps. Thanks there.