WOMAN 2 WOMAN:Enhance your confidence through self discpline

We all have our goals in life, both long and short term. Do you want to buy a house within five years, get promoted within two years, have your first child after three years of marriage, or lose weight to be able to fit into your old clothes? You will need self discipline to be able to accomplish those. Self discipline refers to a person’s ability to take action, no matter what emotional state they may be in. With self discipline come persistence, hard work, and will power. Not everyone has achieved the same degree of self discipline. But it does not mean that this is possible to only a few. Think of it as building muscles where we develop one set of muscle then another. Body builders did not just gain the physique they now sport a few months back. To first timers, they have to start with the basic training like everyone else did. Slowly, they would move to advanced training with heavier weights to develop the muscles to their full potential. The same applies to self discipline. People who have accomplished much in life have learned to curb their sharp tongues, become friendlier, and be better persons as a result of self discipline. More importantly, they have learned to follow through on their plans where others would have given up. On the other hand, improving your self esteem will help you build self confidence. You either have enough courage and self esteem to remove yourself from it or the other people involved will treat you differently because you now act in a different way. Self esteem issues start quite early in life, sometimes at a tender age when we are children. Somehow, we get ideas that we are not loveable, not good enough, not worthy and so on. Some of these ideas might come from harmless remarks somebody made, with no harm intended, but we take it very badly and construct all these damaging ideas around that one remark. Of course, constant exposure to put-downs and being told that we are stupid, crazy or similar may cause serious setbacks to our self esteem too. These problems may persist into adulthood and ruin our life if we do not take action and heal the past. Yes, it is our job to heal the past! Somebody else has caused the damage, so to speak, but we are responsible for our well being now and have to take action. The most important step in building self confidence is simply to take action. Working on something and getting it done. Sitting at home and thinking about it will just make you feel worse. While it is simple it is not always easy to do! To make it a bit easier, here are some ways to make it easier to take action: Get to know who you are and what you want out of life. To build and find more confidence in yourself you have to get to know yourself better. Go exploring. Face some of your fears. Fail over and over and understand that it isn’t really that big of a deal. Grow stronger through such experiences and also become more internally relaxed. Figure out what really excites you by simply trying out a whole bunch of stuff. When you know more about who you are and what you want out of life – not other people say you want – you will have more confidence in yourself and what you can do. Be ready to learn from mistakes - Instead of seeing failure as something horrible, you can start to view it more as a learning experience. And remember, the world doesn’t revolve around you. Maybe a disappointing thought. But a liberating and relieving one too because now you can let go of that worry that everyone is watching you. ubernie@gmail.com