You may not be fully aware of what gets in your way, but the clues are in what you say and how you describe your experience. Ever heard yourself utter things like ‘It’s impossible for me to leave my job’, or ‘I’m always going to have problems because I never went to the right school’, or ‘They’ll never choose me for promotion because everyone knows they want someone who is younger/ slimmer/ an accountant/ a creative type/ female/ male/ white/ black’ and so on.

The following are some beliefs that usually holds you back:

• The unknown isn’t safe.
• I’m too old to make a major life change.
• I am not skilled enough.
• My family and friends will think I’m crazy.
• I’m not sure that I can trust my decisions or choices.

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You may still be curious as to what kind of confident person you can be at your best. This is a question that even the most experienced, capable chief executives and media personalities ask themselves regularly. Successful people stretch themselves. You have enormous potential limited only by yourself. And it’s up to you to realise it.

Very few people are wholly confident in every area of their life. Those who appear to be so are probably good at acting – with themselves as the audience.

Be your own sponsor as well as critic. You may be good at giving yourself a hard time by comparing yourself unfavourably with others: ‘I’ll never be as good as. . .’ Comparisons with others are valuable in that they can help you to excel and raise your game as a budding Tiger Woods on the golf circuit, for example. But don’t waste energy beating yourself up by not being as good as the expert who dedicates every day of their life to practice.
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As I mature …

I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in

I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people are just assholes.

I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust, and only takes suspicion, not proof, to destroy it.

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Mark Twain said that each one of us has the substance within to achieve whatever our goals and dreams define. What we are missing are the wisdom and insight to use what we already have.

A key aspect of confident people is that they have high self-esteem; they hold themselves in positive self-regard. This means that they know how to love themselves and that they acknowledge what they’re good at. These realisations boost their resilience and ability to take on greater challenges.
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Any measure of confidence is by its nature pretty subjective. Other people may form an opinion about how confident you are based on your outside appearance and actions, but only you can know for sure what you feel like on the inside – what you believe to be true, and what it’s like to be you.

Your confidence level is different according to the time and place. If you think back ten years to a younger you, you probably realise that your confidence has grown since then according to the experiences you have faced, knowing that you have lived to tell the tale. How confident you feel differs in various situations, and may well fluctuate from day to day and week to week according to what’s happening at work and at home. There may be areas where you’ve taken a risk, or suffered a loss, for example, and your confidence has dropped.
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Being confidence makes us feel good. Confidence is an everyday experience, something you have quite often, except on those all important occasions when it seems to leave you and could really use more of it - whatever ‘it’ is. You may think you know what it is, and you may feel certain that you can recognise it when you see it, but you may struggle to define exactly what ‘it’ is.

When asked to think what confidence means, most people have a feel for it but find it quite difficult to tie down precisely. After all, confidence is not some miracle pill or wonder food you can buy in a shop.

A good dictionary provides at least three definitions for confidence, and it’s important to understand each aspect as it is easy to muddle them: Self-assuredness, Belief in the ability of other people, Keeping certain information secret or restricted to a few people.
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