Build your Self-Confidence

Build your Self-Confidence

Make your life successful and happier ….

Before we step on to the ladder of confidence building, it is very important to know what self-confidence actually means and how important is it in the way to success? to get this right path, it is very important to differentiate between how a self-confident person looks like compared to a person who lacks confidence. You can observe this from a person’s thoughts and behaviors. Such as,
A self-confident person:

  • Believes in self.
  • Follows his dreams.
  • Feels proud of his achievements.
  • Thinks positive in all circumstances.
  • Appears happy
  • Knows his strengths and powers
  • Has faith in the positive outcomes of whatever he does
  • Loves his work
  • Shows interest in whatever he does
  • Keeps himself busy
  • Works hard
  • Focuses on his goal attainment despite others’ discouragement
  • Others want to be like him

Without confidence a person is:

  • Easily stressed out
  • Easily withdraws
  • Has lots of incomplete assignments at hand all the time
  • Thinks that situations are hectic
  • Can’t ignore distractions
  • Focuses on small parts of success
  • Has negative self-talk
  • Doesn’t believe in his abilities

Above mentioned perspectives give you the idea of what behaviors you need to adopt and what to leave behind if you want to look confident. Here are some tips and techniques to help you become self-confident and successful.
Remember:

  • When you follow your interests, you would be able to put more efforts, therefore, choose tasks you feel more interested in and when you don’t have any choice over tasks then intentionally develop an interest in whatever you do.
  • Nobody knows your inner will power even most of the time you don’t know about your own abilities. Therefore, always be explorative about your strengths. To know your abilities, you have to focus on both your strengths and weaknesses. The next step would be to highlight your strengths and torn the paper of your weakness. Never underestimate your abilities.
  • Find out your achievements you have in your whole life, even good marks at your school at least in one subject is an achievement. When you are bargaining at the shop and you get your desired suit. Yes, it is your achievement. Congratulations! you got a convincing power. Oh, my God you are a very good buyer or seller, so why do not you join a marketing career?
  • Find out what you want to achieve in life. Whether it is money, fame, or acceptance among your family members. Keep yourself busy to achieve goals whatever comes your way. Enhance your skills related to your goals like how to enhance performance at a job or business and effective communication skills with family etc. Make new friends and build a social circle. Focus on your targets and when you achieve a smaller chunk of the goal, celebrate your success and share it with people around you.
  • Think positive and focus on the brighter side of the picture. Use positive self-talk and affirmations like Yes, I can, I can do it, it’s easy for me, I choose to do it, I decide upon what I do not others, I’m strong, I’m proud of myself, I believe in my will power, etc.
  • Engage yourself in activities you like most. It can be some music, yoga, mindfulness activities or anything you enjoy to do. Eat healthily, sleep well, enjoy romance, go into nature, and do whatever makes you happy.

Yes, it is you confident to know that you are able to do whatever life throws at you.

Just be yourself, you are wonderful!

 

Written by:

Mehwish Latif
Masters in Educational Psychology,
University of Karachi,
Trainee at Consult A Psychologist

Edited By: 

Mehwish Mursaleen

Save Yourself Before Saving Anybody

Save Yourself Before Saving Anybody

Yes, you can’t save everybody which is completely okay.

You are not bound to help others while hurting and forgetting yourself. Every now and then, you don’t even realize that you are sinking deep down while saving others.

If you have a sense of empathy for others, I’m sure you always get ready to help them and understand their condition. You understand the dilemma of other people so much that you might even feel what they feel. Their stress, depression, disease, sadness, and even happiness can be felt by you. You can feel everything. There are times when we see bad things happening with good people and we get powerless because we feel bad that we can’t help them.

I know it’s very hard seeing them falling in a hole but unable to rescue them. But… it’s okay.

Here may be a reality that you just cannot save everybody. It’s them, not you.

Helping everybody while not serving to yourself is an exhausting job. Sometimes you want to help them all, but you can’t. This isn’t because you don’t have time or money, this is because you are tired, and you need a break. This is not your responsibility to help everyone while leaving your own self. What is proposed here is not a “giving up” of moral responsibility to help others, but rather a type of taking a break while you help yourself? What an incredible world it might be if we tend to have that power to offer everybody what they required.

What if we could stop friends from making bad choices, what if we could provide endless funds to the homeless and needy people, what if we could rescue orphans from burning buildings, what if we can stop the crime and corruption and what if we could change the world for the better.

Well, of course, that would be great, but we can’t probably look forward to being able to do the whole thing. But we can take care of ourselves. We can keep spreading smile and peace around ourselves.

Whether it’s part of your job, or you’re just caring and kind, but always remember that you can’t live a life dedicated to others, with a complete discount of your mental and emotional solidity and well-being. You must take care of yourself too.

This is because everybody has a limited capacity and resources and that is what we can’t borrow or lend others. Within this limited capacity if you spend huge energy and time for others it will be taken for granted and nobody can appreciate this in the long run. After all, everybody is responsible for their own deeds. In the end, it will develop high expectations within yourself and within those around you. When somebody would fail to meet these expectations, you will experience a huge hurt which nobody will be able to recognize. After all, self-sacrifice would hurt you deep inside and this vicious circle will move on until your life end. It is, therefore, psychologists in their professional work during therapy, train their clients to keep balanced expectations from yourself and from others which would create a healthy impact over the mind.

Someone aforesaid and that I quote,

“You all have a little bit of ‘I want to save the world’ in you, that’s why you’re here. I want you to grasp that it’s okay if you simply save one person which is you.”

 

How to Develop Optimism?

How to Develop Optimism?

A way to boost your self-esteem

Optimism is a term which means being positive about the outcomes going to happen in our future. Many theorists in psychology consider optimism as a personality trait. Research in psychology relates optimism with positive mental and physical health outcomes. Researchers show that optimistic people are less likely to have depression and other mental health problems. They have low chances of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and other medical diseases. They use effective coping strategies to deal with stressful life circumstances. They have better adaptability and high quality of life. They adopt a healthy lifestyle and protect themselves from engaging in harmful behaviours such as smoking and other risky outcomes (Conversano et. al. 2010).

If optimism is supposed to be such a useful factor in life, then the question arises here is: How to develop optimism in your personality. Here I’m giving you some tips which you will use and enjoy the positive outcomes in life.

  1. Think Positive: This is something easy to say than do it. How can you make it easy to do? You just need to get over your past (particularly those negative memories which could have been hurtful for you). Focus on your present life circumstances and you will find a way to make your future better than today.
  2. Every day, take some time for yourself when you do something creative or helpful. It can be listening to music, doing a relaxation exercise, helping someone, enjoying cycling/exercise or anything which you consider pleasurable.
  3. Keep eye on what’s going on in your life. There might be stressful times in your life but the effective tool here is, you understand your life stressors and find ways to come out of them. Don’t make you stuck on one point. Always push yourself to move ahead and work out problems.
  4. Take some time to show gratitude. Think of the blessings you have in life, the positive qualities you possess, and achievements you got in career/family/professional/social/community life.
  5. Take care of your self-talk: We all communicate to ourselves in the form of thoughts, images, or words. If your thoughts are positive, you will experience positive emotions, and then your behaviours and life outcomes will be positive because there is a link between thoughts-emotions-behaviours. An easy way to do this is: write down positive affirmations for yourself and refer them every day.
  6. Keep yourself in a company of positive people because you are a reflection of the people with whom you spend most of the time. You always have a choice to include and exclude people in your life. Positive people will leave a positive impact and the negative ones will affect you adversely. Therefore, plan ahead of the time what consequences do you want in your life. Make friends who are likeable, easy to get along, and match with your positive self.
  7. Develop problem-solving skills: problems and stress is a part of everyone’s life. What optimistic people do is plan ahead of the time before the problems take over them. There are always ups and downs in life. If you understand this fact, you will be able to take responsibility for your life and hence own your problems. You will find yourself in a better position to deal with problems and find solutions.
  8. Set your goals and priorities in life: this is the secret of how optimistic people get more success in life. How they look positively towards their future is through goal planning. They have a very clear idea where they want to go in life. They give themselves easy steps toward success. Such as, they make to-do-list of every day so, every day they spend becomes useful in some way. They also have long-term planning for their career, family, social, and professional life and “to-do-list” helps them every day to cover one step of stairs to success.

If you start developing above mentioned skills and practice each in real life circumstances, definitely you are making your way easy to optimism. And, now you know how optimism is going to make your life outcomes so positive and healthy just as you want.

Reference:

Conversano, C., Rotondo, A., Lensi, E., Vista, O.D., Arpone, F., & Reda, M.A. (2010). Optimism and Its Impact on Mental and Physical Well-Being. Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health, 6, pp: 25–29.

Doi:  10.2174/1745017901006010025

 

Written By:

Mehwish Mursaleen (PhD, Clinical Psychology)

How to Identify Low Self-esteem

How to Identify Low Self-esteem

People think that those who appear over-confident are really getting the best of their lives. Just as the low self-esteem hurts personality, the over-confidence shakes the balance of an individual. We call this an inflated self-esteem. This is not the reality of people with over-confidence. Infect, they over-estimate themselves because there is an underline inferiority complex and actually the person has low self-esteem deep inside.
Similarly, a term is used in psychology literature i.e. Unstable self-esteem. This is a more threatening thing which underlies many personality disorders. You can understand the matter by simply assuming that anything other than a stable self-image is harmful to the psychological well-being of the person.
Here are some points which are characteristics of either unstable or low self-esteem. Reading this will help you to identify if you have a self-esteem issue.
People with low self-esteem:
1. Always try to impress others
2. Constantly compare self with others
3. Always think people are jealous of them or from their luxuries
4. Always need to be center of attention
5. Always want attention through attention seeking behaviors or statements e.g. “I am not feeling well”, “I am not being hungry”, “I am not eating proper meals” etc.
6. Always try to big head their related people’s designation, luxuries they have, and lifestyles
7. Always boost about themselves, show off, praise their self e.g., “I am so pretty”, “the outfit I’m wearing is so awesome” etc.
8. Easily impressed by the glamor or by the media fields
9. Always thinks they are right and others are wrong
10. The last but not the least, they don’t listen to others and can’t tolerate if someone criticizes them.
After you identify or suspect that you may possess low self-esteem, you can think to seek help from a professional psychologist to reshape your personality….

Written By:
Sana Mehboob (MS. Clinical Psychology)
Clinical Psychologist (Karachi psychiatric hospital)
Associate Clinical Psychologist (Institute of Professional Psychology-BUMDC & S. Abdur Razzak Medical Center)

Editor:
Mehwish Mursaleen (Ph.D., Clinical Psychology)
Clinical /Organizational Psychologist (Overtop Consultants),
Online Psychotherapist (iCliniq & Consult-a-psychologist.com)

How Low Self-Image Shatters Your Confidence to Let You Down In Life

How Low Self-Image Shatters Your Confidence to Let You Down In Life

Low Self-esteem vs. Low Self-image
“Confidence is a good thing but overconfidence always sinks the ship”

This quote has a very deep interpretation; being a psychologist my interpretation about this quote is related to low self-image and low self-esteem.
If you want to be a healthy individual, want to live a successful life, want to achieve your goals, you have to identify your weaknesses, faults in your personality& your complexes. Then work on your mental condition and reshape your personality.
Having complexes is not a bad thing complexes lead to low self-esteem but we can work on low self-esteem, boost low self-esteem through positive activities, and work on cognitions. The main difference of low self-esteem and low self-image is the person who has low self-esteem underestimates self but people with low self-image always overestimate themselves.
Low self-esteem can easily be boosted if you identify the lacking needs or the cause of your low self-esteem: for example, if someone is not very good in speaking English and can’t write well, always feels sad or low in his academic or professional life. He always thinks that I am not good I can’t speak, I can’t write, other people are very genius, they all speak well etc. In this case, he can work on his unreasonable thoughts/beliefs, can learn strategies to become an expert in English, and definitely, it will boost his self-esteem.
Building self-esteem is related to things which boost your esteem needs and channelize your low self-esteem towards personal growth. If it is fulfilled, the individual reaches to self-actualization stage.
People who have a low self-image means that they feel low in their own self. They are not satisfied with their personality they do not own their self and unconsciously they start to compare themselves with others.
It can be surprising for you that people who have low self-image may appear as over confident. These people hide their low self-esteem unconsciously which may lead to Narcissistic personality. Having low self-image can never be a positive thing because it will never lead towards personal growth and the person will never go to the self-actualization stage.
It is therefore very important to identify if you are low on confidence or overconfident because neither of the two things will help you to succeed in life.

Written By:
Sana Mehboob (MS. Clinical Psychology)
Clinical Psychologist (Karachi psychiatric hospital)
Associate Clinical Psychologist (S. Abdur Razzak Medical Center)
Editor:
Mehwish Mursaleen (Ph.D., Clinical Psychology)
Clinical /Organizational Psychologist (Overtop Consultants),
Online Psychotherapist (Consult-a-psychologist.com & iCliniq.com)

How to Develop Optimism (A way to boost your self-esteem)

How to Develop Optimism (A way to boost your self-esteem)

Optimism is a term which means being positive about the outcomes going to be happening in our future. Many theorists in psychology consider optimism as a personality trait. Research in psychology relates optimism with positive mental and physical health outcomes. Researchers show that optimistic people are less likely to have depression and other mental health problems. They have low chances of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and other medical diseases. They use effective coping strategies to deal with stressful life circumstances. They have better adaptability and high quality of life. They adopt the healthy lifestyle and protect themselves from engaging in harmful behaviors such as smoking and other risky outcomes (Conversano et. al. 2010).
If optimism is supposed to be such a useful factor in life, then the question arises here is: How to develop optimism in your personality. Here I’m giving you some tips which you will use and enjoy the positive outcomes in life.
Think Positive: This is something easy to say then do it. How can you make it easy to do? You just need to get over your past (particularly those negative memories which could have been hurtful to you). Focus on your present life circumstances and you will find a way to make your future better than today.
Every day takes some time for yourself in which you do something creative or helpful. It can be a listening music, doing the relaxation exercise, helping someone, enjoying cycling/exercise or anything which you consider pleasurable.
Keep eye on what’s going on in your life. There might be stressful times in your life but the effective tool here is, you understand your life stressors and find ways to come out of them. Don’t make you stuck on one point. Always push yourself to move ahead and work out problems.
Take some time to show gratitude. Think of the blessings you have in life, positive qualities you possess, and achievements you got in career/family/professional/social/community life.
Take care of your self-talk: We all communicate to ourselves in form of thoughts, images, or words. If your thoughts are positive, you will experience positive emotions, and then your behaviors and life outcomes will be positive because there is a link between thoughts-emotions-behaviors. An easy way to do this is: write down positive affirmations for yourself and refer them every day.
Keep yourself in a company of positive people because you are a reflection of the people with whom you spend most of the time. You always have a choice to include and exclude people in your life. Positive people will leave a positive impact and the negative ones will affect you adversely. Therefore, plan ahead of the time what consequences do you want in your life. Make friends who are likable, easy to get along, and match with your positive self.
Develop problem-solving skills: Problems and stress is a part of everyone’s life. What optimistic people do is plan ahead of the time before the problems take over them. There are always ups and downs in life. If you understand this fact, you will be able to take responsibility for your life and hence own your problems. You will find yourself in a better position to deal with problems and find solutions.
Set your goals and priorities in life: this is the secret how optimistic people get more success in life. How they look positively towards their future is through goal planning. They have a very clear idea where they want to go in life. They give themselves easy steps towards success. Such as, they make to-do-list of every day so, every day they spend becomes useful in some way. They also have long-term planning for their career, family, social, and professional life and “to-do-list” helps them every day to cover one step of stairs to success.
If you start developing above mentioned skills and practice each in real life circumstances, definitely you are making your way easy to optimism. And, now you know how optimism is going to make your life outcomes so positive and healthy just as you want.

Reference:
Conversano, C., Rotondo, A., Lensi, E., Vista, O.D., Arpone, F., & Reda, M.A. (2010). Optimism and Its Impact on Mental and Physical Well-Being. Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health, 6, pp: 25–29.
Doi: 10.2174/1745017901006010025

Written By:
Mehwish Mursaleen (Ph.D., Clinical Psychology)
Clinical Psychologist & Online Psychotherapist
(Consult-a-psychologist.com & iCliniq.com)

WhatsApp chat