A Critical Piece Of The Puzzle
I normally don't recommend taking the fast and easy way to any achievement, especially in the area of self change and personal development. But skills like meditation and visualization and affirmations can take awhile to develop and perfect, and when it comes to the subject of self confidence I have to rethink. The reason for this is that self confidence is an absolutely critical element of the whole success equation and firmly establishing this characteristic as part of our personality will positively impact all of our other efforts in achieving any goal we set ourselves, so it would seem to be a logical first objective, and one of the quickest means of achieving this objective is through self hypnosis.
Once the field of self hypnosis escaped the entertainment arena it gained respectable prominance in a very short time, especially the NLP spin off. Taking all the practical and common sense aspects of the processes by which we are able to place ourselves in a trance like state or level of consciousness and put those processes to work for us in a consciously directed manner is a huge step forward, and while I believe it is a great tool for quick launching self change issues, I don't think it is the answer to achieving every personal development objective. Having said that, I also believe that when we need an immediate jump start on important issues like self confidence, NLP hypnosis may be just the ticket.
The Constructive Side Of Self Deception
Normally we engage in self deception and denial in order to avoid facing some reality that we are not comfortable with. We do this by simply manipulating our perceptions of things so that they are easier to live with. In the long run this turns out to be a very costly decision, but this is not an article about self deception, it is about how we can take advantage of the strategies and techniques of self deception in order to accomplish positive personal development goals such as developing self confidence. The power of our ability to deceive ourselves is undeniable, so think of the possibilities of putting such a powerhouse to work for us in achieving positive goals.
The first steps in this process are the most difficult and will take a little courage to get rolling. We need to identify certain realities such as what are our strengths and weaknesses. In addition to acknowledging our strengths and assets we need to accept the reality that we are not perfect and neither is anyone else. Self evaluation is one thing, but self criticism is destructive. Recognizing unreasonable expectations is a big step in developing self confidence. Once we get through the self discovery stage we will know what we need to change and can begin to initiate those changes.
Taking The Bull By The Horns
Once we identify problem areas such as unreasonable expectations, excessive self criticism, low self esteem, too much reliance on what others think of us and any number of negative images of ourselves that may revolve around too many failures or parental abuse in the form of psychological and or emotional abuse even if they are as subtle as just being unable to live up to their expectations, we can now begin to replace them with more positive and constructive thinking and behavior patterns. Our negative patterns will suggest their own replacement most of the time and one of the hardest things you will deal with will be the recognition that at some point you bought into a bunch of ideas about yourself that were complete bull crap and you may feel a little embarrassment over this but don't dwell on it and give it energy to grow. Recognize it, accept it and move on!
NLP hypnosis is one of the better resources for this kind of activity but do your homework there are a lot of pretenders out there as with almost everything these days. The link I provide below will take you to a free e-book on the subject that I found interesting. But once you have identified the problem areas that you need to work on, get up to speed on the latest self hypnosis techniques to begin addressing those issues so you can develop the confidence in yourself necessary to all successful achievement.
There is a great free e-book that explores self confidence here.
Robert Darby is a self change and personal development specialist who writes for many organizations including The Agenda Of Life Foundation He focuses on developing personal power since that is usually the cause of all Human problems. Largely due to his fearless exploration of the true nature of our inner reality, R.E. Darby is emerging as an important writer of our time.