A social phobia is a fear of interacting with others on a social level. Examples would be fear of talking on the phone, imagining others are looking at you while waiting in line at a checkout, or even talking in front of other people.
Self-confidence is a position that allows individuals to have confident, yet realistic views of themselves and their status. Self-confident people have confidence in their own abilities, have a general sense of control over their lives, and have belief that, within reason, they will be able to do what they want to do.
Self-confidence is a posture that is garnered through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful. And that very expectation will cause a feeling of confidence.
As an example: A young man wants to be a boxer, so he gets a manager and takes lessons. His manager will not setup a bout for him until he has developed proficient skills. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a rival that he knows his fighter can hammer. When his fighter beats the adversary, he is successful, and starts to gain self-confidence in his capability.
With each competition, the manager puts his contestant up against a rival who is only a little bit better of a contender then the last, but not good enough to beat his fighter. By the end of the third fight, the young contender begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to grow. This scenario continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter warrior is victorious, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to bloom.
As another example: A young lady who is scared of heights wants to learn to dive into a swimming pool from a very high diving board. So she finds a diving coach and he asks her to jump into the pool from the first step of the ladder that is going up to the high diving board. The first rung of the ladder isn't especially high, so the young lady lacks any feeling of fear, and she jumps from that rung, and lands safely in the water unharmed.
Next, the coach has her make a jump from the second rung of the ladder, and so forth. I guess that you see what's going on here. With each additional step she takes as she climbs up the ladder, since the girl was able to jump without being harmed, and the next higher step is only slightly higher then the last, the fear of harm factor is negligible, and the girl expects to be successful. When she dives in and is unharmed, the girl's confidence grows, and her expectation of success on the next step up the ladder increases.
If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-esteem does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and expect failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Even if an individual has true self-confidence, it doesn't mean that they will be successful at everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are practical. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.
People, who are not self-confident, tend to lean overwhelmingly on the acceptance of others in order to feel good about themselves. They usually don't take risks because of the fear of failure. They belittle themselves and tend to discount compliments that are made about them.
Conversely, confident people are willing take a chance on disappointing others because they generally rely on their own talent. They tend to acknowledge themselves; and they do not feel that they have to conform in order to be acknowledged.
Just because a person feels self-esteem in one or more aspects of their life, doesn't mean that they will feel secure in every arena of their life. For example, a person might feel self-confident about their athletic ability, but not feel confident as far as members of the opposite sex are involved, such as in a dating situation, or social relationships.
How Is Self-Esteem Initially Created?
Powerful realities touch on the maturation of self-confidence. Parents' attitudes are decisive to the way children view themselves, especially in their early years. When parents provide admiration, children receive a good foundation for seeing themselves in a positive light. If one or both parents are disproportionately demanding or critical, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children may be fated to believe they are incapable, inadequate, or inferior.
However, if parents encourage a child's moves toward self-reliance, and they are not overly critical when the child makes mistakes, the child will learn to accept herself, and will be on the way to developing self-confidence.
Just because a person does not have confidence, it does not mean that he/she doesn't have abilities. A lack of self-esteem is often the result of centering much too strongly on the unreal expectancies of other people predominantly parents and friends. The have an influence on of peers can be more powerful and effective than that of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.
Conclusions That Continue to Affect Confidence
In response to external influences, people create beliefs. Some of these are good and some are not so good. Several assumptions that can interfere with confidence and positive ways of thinking are:
ASSUMPTION: I must always be successful at every challenge that I undertake. This is a totally unrealistic assumption. In reality each person has their strengths, and their weaknesses. While it is important to do the best that you can, it's more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and fallible. Let yourself feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that you don't know everything and you don't need to.
ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this is unrealistic. All human beings are deficient. It's better to develop personal standards that are not very dependent on the approval of other people.
ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.
ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially vulnerable to external influences when you were a young child as you grow into adulthood consciousness and point of view on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don't have to be helpless based on what happened in your past
HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE
Emphasize Your Strengths. Bestow upon yourself credit for everything you can do. And give yourself recognition for every new thing you are willing to try out.
Take risks. Adopt the attitude of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I learn what does not work and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can try some other action.
Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a technique to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting yourself to be perfect, remind yourself that it is impossible to be an expert at every activity, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself while still improving yourself.
Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in the various scenarios that you currently have low levels of confidence in. But see yourself behaving like a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are
many Hypnotic approaches that can be used to
build a splendid amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that require more confidence!
Self-Evaluate: Learn to assay yourself as an individual human being. Avoid the frequent sense of commotion that comes from relying on what others think.
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