Having good character is not good enough for building self-confidence.
You need to aim for EXCELLENT character.
Why? Because it leads to higher level of confidence and possible leadership opportunities in the future.
When I was in my early 20s, I would take many things in my life for granted. Things like having the ability to receive a college education from a decent college, having great parents, having money to eat and live on my own, and having genuine friends.
Despite having all these blessings, I would whine, complain, and bring myself down by thinking about what others have that I don’t. I never, for a second, thought to myself that there are people in this world that would love to have what I have in my life.
It’s very easy to fall into this trap. It’s easy to blame others, blame external circumstances, blame genetics, and so on and so forth. It’s easy to do these things, but very detrimental to your conscious and subconscious as well as overall self-esteem and self confidence.
On my 22nd birthday, I had been feeling a bit vulnerable, I always did anyways. For some strange reason, I always had a sinking feeling on my birthday, for every birthday before my 23rd. I would always look forward to my birthday, but then when the time got closer, I started feeling anxious and worried. And I had no idea why.
I had always felt that I wasn’t good enough, fun enough; cool enough to have many good friends join me in celebrating my birthday. I would always blame others for not thinking of me on my birthday and not caring enough to see me in person.
I didn’t think for a second, that maybe the reason people didn’t weren’t able to see me was because I had assumed that on my birthday, the world revolved around me. I didn’t give them enough heads up for my birthday, made proper birthday plans, and most importantly, I wasn’t excited for my birthday.
This lack of excitement was most likely because of all of my previous birthdays hadn’t gone the way I imagined. But at the end of the day, it was my own fault. Looking back at this, I know for a fact no one was to blame except for me. And I don’t mean this in an “Everyone is better than me” or “I’m not good enough” kind of way. I am trying to put this in a more objective light.
You see, I had been in a vicious emotional cycle for the majority of my life. I was very reactive to my circumstances, instead of being proactive in my life.
The only way I could change this, was if I changed my mindset and behavior. This way, my external circumstances would favor me more.
By NOT assuming that everyone should know it’s my birthday and be extremely pumped about it, putting out the effort to make proper plans with an appropriate amount of heads-up time, and believing that I will have fun and carrying out this fun vibe in my voice tone when calling others, I realized that this drastically changed my results for my future birthdays.
On my 23rd birthday and the birthdays after that, I never felt as depressed because I took these set of actions.
There are many things I had to correct about my character in order to increase the quality of my life along with my long-term happiness.
Lesson number five:
Stop assuming in a negative way.
This will make you feel down, depressed, anxious, worried, terrified, and maybe even lonely.
Instead of assuming the worst, assume the exact opposite.
For example, let’s say currently you are assuming that people don’t care about you; they don’t want to be around you, and/or people think of you badly.
Instead of assuming this, why don’t you try assuming the following? :
People love you just the way you are
People love spending time with you
People think of you as a great person
This will shift your future thinking, and will show in your actions, the way you carry yourself around others, and how people perceive you.
Let’s say you start assuming AND believing that people love spending time with you and say you meet person number one and he/she is not really sure how to feel about you since they have never met you, but because you are believing that people love spending time with you, you start to show your fun side of your personality with this person, and they truly end up love spending time with you. This will make you feel great about yourself and increase your self-confidence.
AMAZING, right? I thought so too!
I hope you all enjoyed today’s post and hope you will join me on the journey to self-confidence mastery!
Cheers!
– Steve Daniels
P.S. I would love to hear what you have to say about this post. Feel free to comment below!
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