Written by: Sarah Bull

Confidence.

It’s how we believe in ourselves and know that we’re able to live up to our potential and goals. Confidence also allows us to take risks and challenge ourselves. And it’s what enables us to build positive relationships.

However, confidence can also be elusive. We take any past failures and rejections and allow them to create negative feelings about ourselves and our abilities. We hesitate, and we become risk-averse to the point of paralysis. In short, we lose confidence.

But don’t lose heart, you can find confidence again if you’ve lost it. Or even build on the confidence you already have. There are several tried-and-tested strategies to help you start living a more confident life.

 

It All Starts With Your Health

Nothing is more important in determining how you feel about yourself than how you actually physically feel. You can hardly feel confident or project an air of confidence if you’re tired and run down. Therefore, your first step is to take charge of your health.

No more putting off that exercise routine you’ve been promising to undertake. If you can’t afford a gym or that’s not your idea of a fun way to work out, then find something that is. Bicycling, running, swimming, and even dancing are great for your cardiovascular health. And don’t forget to stretch out those muscles with a few minutes of morning yoga.

Then it’s time to replace those foods that are making you tired, like soft drinks, pastries, and fried foods, all of which make you feel sluggish and lacking energy. Instead, go with fish, yogurt, almonds, eggs, black coffee, and even dark chocolate.

You should also consider your home when it comes to better health. A healthy environment is essential to your overall well-being. Just like taking charge of your body, take charge of your home and give it a good cleaning. It sounds daunting, but there are a lot of tricks and advice that can help. Find out more on how to make the process easier, more efficient, and safer.

 

Set Goals

Make a list of goals and a timeline for achieving them. It’s very important that you make those goals realistic and achievable. As Good Therapy says, If you want to set yourself up for success, make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T.: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Having goals and overcoming obstacles in order to achieve them is an excellent way of building self-confidence. You’ll know that you can push through obstacles and overcome hurdles going forward because you’ve already done it. Therefore, your self-confidence-building goals shouldn’t be too easy since you’ll want to learn how to successfully push through challenges, but at the same time, make sure they aren’t too far out of reach either, or that will turn out to be self-defeating.

 

Career Changes

Your confidence could be tested because your career is either not the one best suited to your skills and talents, or you’re unable to use those skills and talents to achieve all you can. If so, it may be time to look for work that will allow you to live up to what you know you can achieve if given the chance.

The first thing to do is to update or create a new resume that showcases those skills, talents, and experience. If you need some help writing a professional resume, get a jump start using a resume builder. This will let you choose your own style, colors, fonts, and designs from their extensive library while allowing you to upload images and designs of your own, too.

Then research the companies that best match what you have to offer and upload the resume you created right to their website or to professional job sites like LinkedIn.

You may find the best way to use your skills is with a business of your own. You can make thorough research on it by writing a business plan. With it, you’ll list all the details of how to take your business from an idea to a working company. Things like market research and the availability of funding can help you determine if your business idea is viable. If so, that same plan will also serve as a guide for how to proceed.

 

Finally, be patient with yourself. Understand that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has setbacks. The key is knowing how to bounce back from those and take them as a learning experience. Besides, making mistakes and learning from them might be the best confidence booster of them all.

 

Also Read: Ways to Build Your Self-Confidence

 

Sarah Bull is a single mom of two, an entrepreneur, and a penny pincher. She created her blog, economymom.com, to share what she’s learned about growing a home-based business and making money online all while raising two awesome kids. Through her site, she hopes to inspire readers, especially fellow moms, to take their earning destinies into their own hands using her career and money-making advice.