Confidence building - no idea where to start?

People with high self esteem behave confidently. Low self esteem stops all your efforts to be confident.  Confidence matters in:

• relationships
• work
• parenting
• life skills - decision making, achieving, improving situations or circumstances you don't like
• expressing yourself - read more about being yourself socially
• taking up new challenges
• being open to change
• self improvement

Where does self-confidence come from?
It comes from several sources:

• from within yourself
• from others
• from your achievements 

Some people appear naturally confident but guess what? They've learnt how to be that way and so can you! 
If you lack self esteem or self-confidence you must look above for the reasons. You may be overly criticizing yourself or telling yourself negative things like "I'm bound to fail" or "I'm not good enough" or even "I don't deserve to succeed". These will make failure likely.

Maybe you believe others comments about your inability to succeed or your faults as they see them. What's stopping you proving them wrong or challenging their view instead of accepting it? Defend yourself. Your self esteem depends on it! If you have a poor opinion of yourself, why should others respect you?  
Focus on what you have done and you can be proud of.

How you can become more confident and successful?

• Look for a model (someone who is confident) and learn from them. What is it they do that makes them confident, how do they act?
• Focus on your achievements and even if you failed try to work out what you did right and how you could succeed next time
• Act as if you were confident!
• Prepare thoroughly for any task so that you can be sure you are ready
• Work on any skills you need to do what you want, you can never be overtrained or over skilled for any challenge in life.
• Learn relaxation skills
• Always smile
• Set reachable goals for yourself 
• Reward yourself when you succeed

Unsure which are the best confidence building tools?

Use any tools available to you to improve your performance. Tools could be books, courses, attending seminars or researching the internet. Try using a journal to plot your successes as they occur. You can learn to become confident I promise - so start today!

Recommended Books  - buy from amazon.co.uk
#1 How to Develop Confidence and InfluencePeople by Public Speaking
#2 A Toolbox for ourDaughters: Building confidence, strength and integrity

  http://www.more-selfesteem.com/confidencebuilding.htm