Dealing with Anxiety Issues

Dealing with Anxiety Issues

It is normal to have fears. People are in fear of different things and while some are quite reasonable, there are some that are quite ridiculous and baseless. There are certain fears that limit a person, greatly, and it is important that you are able to handle these things so that it does not affect your life and the way you deal with people. Anxiety is a leading problem in today’s society, so if you think you are battling with a bad case of anxiety, then you need to do something about it ASAP.

Signs of Anxiety

Social anxiety is not something you would want to bring with you all your life. It is definitely limiting and you should deal with it as soon as you see the following signs:

·         Are you often trying to make yourself invisible when in the presence of a lot of people? When there is an opportunity for you to talk and to confront others, do you tend to cower and hide, in an attempt to avoid the situation?

·         Do you often find yourself saying “no” to all kinds of opportunities because you are afraid that you might make a mess of things and you believe that you are not good enough for it?

·         Do you find yourself stammering and losing your voice, when you are put under the spotlight? Do you find yourself struggling and suddenly feeling some discomfort when put in the spot? Do you see yourself suddenly feeling nauseous, sweaty and dizzy?

If any of these things sound familiar to you, then you have a problem-- a problem that you need to address.

Dealing with It     

                                                     

If you are having anxiety problems, it is important that you address it right away, so that you can pick your life up and make a positive change. Here are some of the things that you can do:

·         If you think that your anxiety is already taking over your life, then you will need to do something definitive about it, and that is to seek professional help. Some people go through extensive psychotherapy and cognitive therapies to be able to free themselves from this.

·         Meditation also helps. Meditation exercises help to channel specific areas in your brain that will help you significantly when you deal with anxiety attacks. When your mind is at peace, you can achieve a stronger hold over it.

·         Facing your fears head on also helps to resolve your anxiety. If you are afraid of speaking in public, then you should push yourself little by little, until you become more confident about it. It is not good to quit altogether and to quickly declare yourself defeated. Fight on, however small your efforts, and see if you can make a significant change in your life.

Anxiety can be crippling. It keeps you from growing and it limits you from achieving your true potential. If you are having problems with this, you should aim to overcome it. You should learn how to take control over your worries, so that it does not affect you.

Creating Your Self Improvement Plan

Creating Your Self Improvement Plan

If you want to be able to do something right, you will take time to write down a plan. A plan helps to keep things in perspective and it gives purpose and meaning to any endeavor. Those who are unhappy with the course that their life is taking will desire to make a complete turnaround, to be able to remedy it. Normal efforts will be proven weak and futile, and if you want to be able to empower your cause, you should formulate an effective self-improvement plan to follow.

Writing Out Your Plan

It is not easy to write out any kind of plan. Especially when you realize how important this plan is going to be, the pressure will consume you and you end up doing everything wrong. There is such as thing as a strong plan, and you can make sure to write the strongest plan that will guarantee great results.

Step 1: Analyze the situation. Before you write your plan, you should take time to look around and assess the situation. This way, you get to identify where everything went wrong, and specifically point out the problems. By knowing the root cause, you can base your plans to remedy and your efforts will be more exacting.

Step 2: Determine your goals. After identifying what is wrong, you should determine what you want to achieve. What is it that you expect at the end of all this? These goals will be your targeted endpoints and they should be the objects of your entire plan.

Step 3: Write it out. To make things final you have to write out a plan. Having a written plan makes it more definite and it also gives you something to refer to, in case you lose your way. This will be your map throughout your journey.

Step 4: Seek help. You will encounter hardships along the road and this is normal. To help keep you sane and so that you can keep going, you will have to learn to turn to the people in your life for support. Ask help if you do not know what to do; do not be afraid to admit weakness and defeat.

Step 5: Take action. A great plan is good for nothing unless you make things happen. Until you take the first step in your journey, your plan is nothing but writing on a piece of paper. So, go ahead and take that step. You will be surprised of what you can accomplish.

Step 6: Reassess your plan. Every once in a while you should take time to review your plan and see if you need to make changes.

The Importance of Goal Setting and Planning

A life without purpose is a life not worth living. If you want your life to have meaning and purpose, you need to define your goals. A goal gives you direction and keeps you strong. When the going gets tough and you are losing your way, a clear picture of your goal will invigorate you and keep you focused on what is real and important. Suddenly, you are no longer the lone person attempting to live, rather you are a person determine to make a big difference not only in your life but also in the life of those around you.

The most successful people in this world use goal setting as a means to push forward and finish what they have set out to achieve. If you want to be like them, write a plan and aim to materialize it.

Create a Passion and Motivation for Life

Create a Passion and Motivation for Life

When you’re trying to build up your self-confidence, something that can give you some help is to find your passion and motivation for getting up in the morning. If you’re so far down in the dumps that you don’t even know if you’ve got a passion in life or not, it’s time to sit down and create one. Not only will this give you something to work for, but it will give you this inner glow that will radiate outward to anyone that comes in contact with you.

People that have a passion in life will draw others to them like magnets. This is one of the best cures for the shyness induced part of lacking self-confidence.  When you first meet people, speak to them enthusiastically about things that are going on in your life and share your plans for the future. Even if you’re a bit shy at first when meeting new people and you’re not feeling all that confident, fake it until it becomes a real factor for you.

If you’re still a little shy or it bothers you to meet new people, keep in mind that the more you talk about your passion in life, the more that positive and confident energy will shine through. Once you land on your passion, don’t be frightened to talk about it. Passion is an excellent motivating factor and will project the confidence that you know what you want out of life and that you’re going to get it. Don’t be surprised if others don’t want to jump on board and live out your passionate dream with you.

Granted, you may have to talk yourself up a bit before you start believing your own hype, but the more you talk to others about things that get you excited, it’s going to be obvious that you’re someone that’s going places in life. This excitement catches on and suddenly you’re popular because people can feel the confidence that’s pouring off of you. The one thing that you’ll find you need to keep an eye on, though, is to make sure you’re not doing ALL the talking. Encourage others to share their opinions and passions, too.

In fact, when you get others to start talking about themselves, that makes you appear even more confident to them. Anytime that you get people talking and feeling important, it somehow makes you look great and like someone that they want to be around. At the same time, you must make your interest in them appear genuine and sincere because, just as an interest in them makes you appear confident with a healthy dose of self-esteem, insincerity will make you appear arrogant and condescending.

Hopefully, you already have a passion in your life, or something that motivates you to display your best qualities to others and help you appear to be very confident. However, if you don’t, you may want to consider creating one for yourself so that you’ll have something to use when projecting yourself as a confident person.

Confidence Building Techniques

Confidence Building Techniques

If you don’t feel good about yourself, you don’t like the way you look, and you don’t mingle with others well, chances are that you’re suffering from a lack of self-confidence. As this is one of the most important aspects of life, particularly in the social area, you need to get started in correcting that immediately. People must have confidence in themselves so that others will find them sociable and attractive. Those with no self-confidence typically don’t attend social gatherings of any sort due to their insecurities about themselves.

On the flip side of the coin, people that are confident generally get the best jobs and are invited to all the parties. This most likely happens because they present themselves well and people are just naturally more drawn to those with a confident demeanor. It may not be the easiest thing in the world to build self-confidence, but it’s certainly possible to do. Have a look at the following techniques to help you gain self-confidence:

·        Embrace yourself, warts and all: The first thing you must do in your quest for self-confidence is to accept yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself or what you’re capable of, you’ll never have the confidence that you need. Learning to accept yourself before you do anything else will help you feel good about yourself.

·        Join in workshops and seminars: When you take relevant seminars and workshops as well as participate in other activities, you can learn from these as well as meet new people. Ask questions of the speakers and leaders. Spend time talking with the other people there and have fun! Workshops can be particularly effective when it comes to developing confidence.

·        Seek inspiration: Look for inspiration. This can be in the form of a person, goal, pet, or anything that inspires you. Inspiration can provide motivation to look and feel your best while aiming to achieve dreams. Remember that only confident people are successful ones.

·        Learn from mistakes: Everyone makes a mistake at some point in their lives. You can’t avoid it. However, these mistakes can be just as important as successes in that you can take away knowledge of how NOT to do things. That’s why they’re actually very useful in building confidence.

·        Keep a positive attitude: Stay optimistic about your life even when things aren’t so great. Life is meant to be enjoyed and there are solutions to all problems. You just have to stay strong and hold that belief in yourself.

·        Dress for success: Always go out of your way to look your best whenever you go anywhere. Be clean and neat at all times. Maintain good posture at all times because these are the people that stand out, appear more attractive and confident. 

Most importantly, keep a high regard for yourself at all times. This will help you remain confident in yourself and your ability to get things done. Confidence will eventually help you achieve all of your dreams and life’s goals. You just need to do the things to build it and then keep it.

Conditioning Your Mind to Be Great

Conditioning Your Mind to Be Great

There are some things in life that are just difficult to fathom, difficult to accomplish and impossible to achieve. When you encounter these things you can either succumb to failure or just accept it as your only reality, or you can make your own ending. It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be easy to fight against the tide but you have to do it if you must and it is not going to be easy to work against what is natural for our body and mind.

Conditioning yourself

Think of your mind as a muscle. It may be thinking and functioning a certain way, but you can always teach it to do something else. If you think differently, then you can condition your mind:

·         Stop being afraid. People have fears. It is part of human nature to fear all kinds of things but you can teach yourself to stop being afraid. You can choose to just say “I refuse to be afraid anymore” and suddenly, things will be easier. Your fears will amount to nothing and you will realize that you are bigger than your fears. To condition yourself to stop being afraid you have to slowly make yourself encounter the elements. Take things a sip at a time, until you become fully immune.

·         Dare yourself. Risks are dangerous. Risks can strain you and bring you harm but you sometimes have to learn to take risks, especially those that are worth taking. Dare yourself to do things that you would normally refuse to do. Dare yourself to go against the flow. Dare yourself to do something that is totally against your principle. Dare yourself to be different from what people expect from you.

·         Harbor nice thoughts. Happy thoughts can easily build confidence and highlight a positive energy. If you harbor nice thoughts you will have the right energy, the right emotion and the right motivation to do the things that you have to do. By making your positive thoughts the fuel of your vehicle you can be sure that you will have a favorable ride.

·         Dance when no one is looking. This may be a little ridiculous, but you should not take it too literally. Dancing when no one is looking only means that you should give yourself an opportunity to let loose and just be yourself. Dance like nobody is looking, so just go ahead and do things and care not what other people say. If you think you are bad at it, who cares? If you think you are going to make a mistake, why should you stress about it? If no one is looking you should not worry about whether or not, you do things right or wrong. 

·         Visualize your life the way you want it. Allow yourself to dream. Even if it seems impossible and all the signs are pointing to “no”, you should give yourself a reason to think that things can happen, and you should allow your mind to wander off and explore a world that you have not seen before, where you are on top and your life is just as you want it to be.

Common Mistakes that People Make in Boosting Self-Confidence

Common Mistakes that People Make in Boosting Self-Confidence

Some people are oozing with self confidence while others also have very little of it. A person’s self confidence comes from a combination of his environment and his personality. There are ways of building self confidence. If you want to help a friend or family member improve his self confidence, make sure to avoid doing the following. Listed below are common mistakes made when boosting self confidence.

Giving Too Much Praise and Saving Criticism for Another Day

When you want to build a person’s confidence, say in drawing or singing, it helps to praise the person. But don’t say you’re great or you’re so talented if it isn’t the case. He is bound to realize what you’re saying is merely getting lip service. Only give praise when it is due. You are not building up confidence by over-praising. In fact, it will seem like lying knowing the work or result was really second-rate. When you are giving praise to someone, stop right there. Save the criticism, constructive or otherwise for the next day. Let him savor the moment for the time he did good. Even if there is room for improvement, leave it. Praising then criticizing is like inflating the ego and pricking it with a huge needle afterwards.

Using a Sibling or Colleague as Model

Comparison is a big no-no in boosting self-confidence. Saying “why can’t you be like your sister?” that is one big letdown. People have different strengths and weaknesses. And even if they are related, they are still separate and unique individuals. Comparing him to another person usually serves to discourage rather than encourage. He will feel not good enough and would rather not compete. Find ways to inspire the person to do better. Compare him to the time he did good. Not when others did good. You can focus on the person’s past accomplishment and remind him of it. He will remember how he felt and the increase in self-confidence at that particular moment. Use that as a model instead. Compare him to himself and no one else.

Being Insincere

It helps if you are honest in your praise. Insincerity can be sensed a mile away. If you are merely saying nice things but do not mean it, it would be useless. Only say what you truly believe in and not what you think the other person wants to hear. Sincerity is felt and cannot be forced. If you cannot say a good thing, then say it in a diplomatic manner. Think of when you are giving a flattering comment. You give that comment because it is true. Not because you feel you have to. Remember that you are saying these things because you want to boost the morale of a person. If you are insincere or even lying straight-faced, what purpose does that serve? It is like kicking a person when he is already on the ground.      

The desire to help boost a person’s self-confidence is a noble act. But in the process, you have to make sure you are doing the right thing. The purpose will be defeated otherwise. Learn about common mistakes in this case and avoid them by all means. 

Change What You Can and Hide the Rest

Change What You Can and Hide the Rest

For many people, physical flaws can put their self-confidence UNDER the barrel. These can be such things as being too heavy or too skinny, having acne or other skin conditions, unsightly birthmarks, and a variety of other things. Many of these can be changed and others you’ll just have to learn how to live with them. It’s the flaws that really bother you that you need to focus on changing.

For instance, weight is an issue for many people in the world these days. In lots of cultures, people that are carrying a bit of extra weight are not considered to be attractive. It’s also in those same cultures that only thin people are considered beautiful. Whatever happened to just being healthy no matter what size that turned out to be for someone? First, consider that you’re not one of those cookie cutter people with a skinny body. Then stand in front of a full length mirror completely naked. If you don’t like what you see, start taking some steps to change. That means that you don’t get to hide in your house and never go out among people.

 It means you start changing.

If you happen to have a really bad case of acne, there are so many different products on the market today just for this, that you could probably spend an entire year just trying them all out. They’re not all going to work for you, but there’s a chance that one of them will. In the event that none of them do much for you, there are plenty of home remedies that will go a long way in reducing your problem. As a last resort, you may need to see a dermatologist to deal with the issue. The point is that there are many ways to change this part of your life if you really put your mind to it.

Some things such as birthmarks and scars may be more difficult to deal with or change. However, if you can’t change something like this, you can take advantage of one of the many types of makeup available these days and simply conceal this part of yourself that hinders your self-confidence. Something that you need to remember when you hide physical flaws like this is that once someone really likes you, a scar or birthmark isn’t going to drive that person away. All they need is to get to know the real you.

The real you is, after all, the most important part of this entire exercise. People that are beautiful and have such self-confidence that it practically drips off of them are often not beautiful on the inside. This can make you wonder if it’s even worth trying to compete against those people. Of course, it is! Because while you may not compare in physical beauty, once you’ve learned to let out your inner beauty and have become confident enough to really let it shine, you’re going to blow that soulless beauty right out of the water! 

Are Those Self-Help Books Really Helpful?

Are Those Self-Help Books Really Helpful?

One avenue that many people take when it comes to improving their self-confidence and self-worth is that of reading material. As there are so many people that need a huge boost when it comes to self-worth, many authors have discovered a virtual goldmine. They sit down and whip up these self-help books, give them some strong marketing, and BANG! They’ve got themselves a best seller.

These books appear in various forms now. You can buy an actual book that you can hold in your hand to turn the pages. There’s also the ebook format that you can download online instantly upon making your payment. Then you can read this book online or save it to your desktop and read it whenever you want to. Of course, with all of the ereaders that are currently available nearly all books now have versions that you can buy and read directly from the ereader of your choice.

Now that it’s been established just how easy it is find these self-help books, the more important question is whether or not the information in these books actually work. It’s a hard question because you really never know the answer until you’ve read the book. By then, it’s too late to take your money back if it was packed full of useless information.

There are a few helpful things that will assist you in buying the right books for improving your self-confidence. You just have to understand what you’re looking for. That’s why the first thing on the list is to figure out where you need the most help in boosting your self-confidence. Maybe you’re not happy with your appearance, for example. In that case, you would want to focus on books that will improve whatever part of your physical appearance you don’t like. This can be weight loss books, hairstyle books, and even makeup tips.

Most people find that their main problems with self-confidence come from a place on the inside of themselves. These are such things as shyness and fear of not knowing how to approach people or have decent conversations with them. You’ll find that there are books to help you do that, too. These books will teach you basic “people” skills that you can use to turn your life around.

Whatever your major issue with confidence, you can bet there’s been a book written on it. The problem is that many of these books are really not worth your money and time. Stay away from self-proclaimed “gurus.” If you’ve never heard of them, no one else probably has, either. Stick with the more proven authors. There are more than enough of those to give you a wide range of books to choose from.

Once you’ve chosen your book, or books, that you feel will help you, commit to following the advice and lessons provided in these books. All of the help in the world won’t do you one bit of good if you don’t put it into practice. That means you need to take the information to heart and do any “homework” at the end of the chapters. When you can do these things, a self-help book can be everything you need to develop a bit of a mental and emotional swagger that others will notice. 

Building a Positive Image

Building a Positive Image

What kind of image do you have? Some people are not particular about the image they have but image is very important because your image travels much like your reputation does. If you have a good image for the public, then you can expect that more people will trust and follow you. If you have a bad image, on the other hand, you will have a hard time convincing people to be on your team. A positive image is important, and a lot of people work hard on building and maintaining one.

The Positive Image

What does one have to do to be able to maintain a true positive image? When you look at a person, how can say that this one is positive and the other is not? First, one can significantly set a positive image by always being punctual. Punctuality is a good character to have because it shows that you are responsible and you are mindful of others. You do not like to keep them waiting and you eager enough to get things going. Second, one can establish a positive image through physical means. He or she can dress a certain way, talk a certain way and basically behave a certain way, that send a positive message across. Third, someone who wants to establish a positive image will not allow anything to ruin it.

Thinking Positive to be Positive

It is all about how you think. If you think of positive thoughts then you will learn to be more positive. Here are some positive thought strategies that you can try applying on your own lives:

·         Focus on the positive. There will be negative stuff in your life, things that will get you down, but you can choose not to be affected by these. You can always choose to focus on something that is going to build character and not on something that can destroy.

·         Accept your flaws. You are human; therefore, you are bound to make mistakes. In fact, you are expected to make tons of it and you should not be too worried about it. Accept your flaws because it is part of living. Accept your flaws and find a way to cope with your insufficiencies, so that you can find ways to better yourself.

·         Believe in yourself. You should be your first fan and sometimes it may happen that you are your self’s only fan, and you should not mind about that. You have to find comfort with your own skin and you should believe in your ability to push through, do extraordinary things and be amazing.

·         Embrace criticism. You will have a lot of these. You can choose to dwell on them or you can learn to shrug it off and use it for your benefit. Take what the other people have to say about you and embrace it. Use their feedback to improve yourself.

The Importance of a Positive Image

You seek to establish a positive image because you want to be respected. If you want to be taken seriously and you want people to believe in what you have to say, you need to convey an image that commands respect. Respect is earned and not demanded.