Okay we all know what confidence is.  We see it everywhere  - the confident girl presenting at work –the suave guy in the pub – even in the clothes we wear.  Confidence and success often go hand in hand.  If you are confident you can manage yourself in any situation.  Think about that – if you are confident you can manage, you can cope with what life sends your way.

What has happened to you up until this point will have contributed to how confident you feel.  You will have been affected by lots of different factors: parents and home life, school and school friends, college and university, work, where you live, your friends, your relations...the list goes on.  Depending on how you have reacted to the different people and to the different events that have happened in your life will affect how confident you are.

Positive experiences from, being encouraged by your parents, to having good friends will build on your inner self confidence.  You would have grown up being supported and fitting in.  But this may not be the case.  Some parents find their children an irritation and do not help them with their homework and tell them to stop bothering them as they have something “more important” to do – even if it’s just watching the TV.  Imagine the impact that has on a child. Another crucial area is fitting in at school, if you don’t fit in you can be alienated that takes away your confidence in dealing with people, and that sometimes can affect your whole life.  If you let it!! That’s the key.  You can change.

If you have labelled yourself a shy person who is lacking in self confidence, identifying an influencing factor from your past might give you a eureka moment.  It may give you a reason why you became shy or a reason why you lack confidence.  It should also mean that you can see that you don’t have to be this way.  You have just reacted in a certain way because you didn’t know any different .  But now you can make a choice.  You can choose how you react to any situation.  Just because you are not picked first in a game of five a side doesn’t mean you have to feel a failure.  You can kick those feelings of negativity in to touch and you can choose to feel relaxed, calm, whatever you want to. You can choose to be confident. You are in control of your thoughts. Think self confidence.