4 CHOICES | 2013 SPRING ISSUE
CONFIDENCE IS A CHOICE
BY JUDI MOREO
Why is having confidence in ourselves and our abilities so hard? Why do many of us have the tendency to overestimate other people’ s abilities and power and underestimate our own? Why are many of us so concerned with what other people will think about us?
f we are to understand these things, first we need to understand why we think, feel, and act the way we do. We need to understand why and how we have become who we are, as well as why we react or respond in certain ways. When we understand ourselves, we can either accept the way we are or make changes so we will be able to accept ourselves.
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What we believe and accept about ourselves determines our behavior and performance. These, in turn, create our results and our results affect our confidence levels.
If we have self-limiting beliefs, we will have self-limiting behaviors. If we have self-empowering beliefs, we will have self-empowering behaviors. In other words, if we think we can, we can. If we
If we have selflimiting beliefs, we will have self-limiting behaviors. If we have selfempowering beliefs, we will have self-empowering behaviors.
think we can’ t, we can’ t. If we think we can, we will find a way. We perform as well as we believe we are capable of performing.
Many of our beliefs about ourselves have come from outside sources: people, education, and experiences. Many of us have allowed the opinions of others to become our opinions of ourselves. We’ ve listened to people tell us we are incompetent, inadequate, unworthy, bad, or stupid. We’ ve internalized, processed, and often believed what others have told us.
There is a direct correlation between the quality of our relationships and our levels of self-esteem and selfconfidence. If we are like most people, how we feel about ourselves, good or bad, is largely dependent upon the degree of acceptance we have felt from the influential people in our lives.
If we were compared negatively to other children, especially children outside of our immediate family, we might have believed those children had more abilities and were“ more” than we were. That is when feelings of inferiority started to set in. If we didn’ t receive appreciation or recognition for our achievements then, we may believe others are smarter, stronger, or better than we are now.