Natural Beauty & Self Image
-“ Self Confidence for Women”

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Natural Beauty & Self Image....WE WOMEN can gain an insight into any lack of self confidence by delving into some handy scientific research. The differences between mens' and womens' brains show that women are more likely to worry than men.

How many of you ladies miss out on fun and opportunity because you are too busy worrying?

For women, lack of self confidence is built upon worry and procrastination. Women who tend to ruminate rather that act are less likely to:

- feel comfortable in new situations

- relax when things don’t go to plan

- seize an opportunity as it arises.

If, for women, self confidence is the ability to:

- face new challenges with optimism

- walk into a room full of people with wet hair and less-than-perfect make up

- still trust that a smile and a friendly manner will be what interests and engages others.

Then how can we learn to override the introspection that says “Things won’t be ok?”

Women can learn self confidence

Self confidence, contrary to popular belief, isn’t always bestowed at birth; it can be learned.

Have you ever seen a child taking their first faltering steps? Despite falling down a thousand times, within a short space of time they are walking all over the place, then running, dancing and jumping. In the same way we can build a set of skills that enable us to feel better about ourselves.

• Natural nerves!

Some nerves are natural for both sexes, a new date or an important meeting with your boss will often cause a few feelings of anxiety, the trick is not to waste time negatively predicting the outcome.

• Catastrophising!

When you think that you don’t look your best, maybe not had enough time to get ready or having put on a few pounds, one of those ‘honey I look a wreck!’ moments; it is easy to feel that everything else will go badly as a result. The sure thing is that if you dwell on that single thought you are not going to enjoy the event.

• Negatively ruminating

How often have you said “What if she really meant…?” “I know that Mary has invited us to their party, but I think she only invited us because she felt she had to?”

Women tend to be more sensitive to others’ needs, and more aware of changes that might improve a situation or make it more comfortable for someone. Unchecked however, this ability to think things over can turn into over-analysis and make life miserable as this internal process leads to confusion, anxiety and inaction.

Tips To Build Confidence In Women

1. The ability to relax

When there is an event that naturally brings about a few butterflies, spend some time thinking about times that you have done well at something, remember what it is like to feel good, then take a few moments to imagine yourself with those feelings in the future.

Notice how your posture, facial gestures and words feel and sound, and what a difference it makes to the enjoyment of any event. If it is a meeting or public performance, remember that preparation and a belief in a positive outcome are key, even if we can’t exactly predict the outcome we know that feeling relaxed releases the thinking part of the brain to get on with the job in hand to the best of our abilities.

2. The shower that need not become a monsoon

Just because one thing isn’t as we would like it, it doesn’t follow that the rest of the day or evening is going to be awful. Women who appear confident don’t let a bad hair day stop them from enjoying life.

Make a list of the qualities that you have and next time that you tell yourself that you look awful and that the evening is ruined before it has started, remind yourself that you can’t see into the future!! And of the other things that make a good party apart from a perfect hair do. A recent survey said that people who smile a lot are rated more attractive than those who don’t.

3. Developing an optimistic outlook

Women are more likely to read more into facial gestures and voice intonation, a useful trait but sometimes we get it wrong. So before the miserable demons of ifs, whats and maybes get their teeth into your thought patterns, work on developing the power of optimism the tool that vanquishes negative rumination and allows the possibility of fun times.

4. Action v rumination

I have noticed that one of the key skills of women who appear confident is the ability to notice that even if they are feeling a little nervous inside they take their attention to the world around them.

No longer dwelling on the internal chatter, they can enjoy the people they are with, they may also notice that they don’t have the longest legs or are not the liveliest woman in a room; but that is a fleeting thought and they carry on engaging and enjoying.

Giving the people around top quality attention…. showing an interest makes them feel wonderful! They will remember it even if you spent a short time with them.

For women, contemplating our internal ruminations can be a creative process that leads to beneficial actions, fun times and rewarding relationships. Taken too far however, it becomes a road to inaction and anxiety.

Avoid paralysis by analysis!

For maximum self confidence, women need to avoid paralysis-by-analysis so when opportunity strikes I am going for action! (Mind you, on the other hand…;-)

Article by Jill Wootton, Training Director, Uncommon Knowledge

Click here to subscribe to the Free Self Confidence Course now.

“Self Confidence Tips”

1) How to Feel Good When You Need to

Because self confidence and feeling good has a major 'hormonal' element, you can change the way you feel by re-living good times. If you can remember a time you felt really self confident, then excellent - use that!.

If not, then use a time you felt contented or happy. Taking deliberate control of your thoughts and emotions will have an huge impact on your self confidence and other areas of your life.

2) Beating Self Consciousness, Confidence Enemy No.1

Although useful for learning about the impact you have on others, too much self consciousness is the No.1 enemy of self confidence. The trick is keeping your attention off yourself when you need to. Here's how...

a) When you feel self-conscious, (you can usually tell because you start to feel anxious), choose something outside of yourself to focus on and study it in detail. For example: examine a door, look at the different textures and shades of colour, wonder about who made it and how and so on. The important thing is that you're learning how to keep your attention off yourself.

It is a good idea to practise this technique in private first. Just sit quietly, practising focusing firstly on your own thoughts and then deliberately focusing outwards onto a picture or piece of furniture.

b) Social self confidence can be difficult to find sometimes because it is unclear what you are 'supposed to do'. In this event, concentrate on what your purpose in the situation is. Whether you're there to:

- find out if you like the other people present

- make others feel comfortable

- find out some information

- make business contacts

- and so on...

It's much more difficult to feel self-conscious if your mind is occupied with a task.

People are often most comfortable with others when working towards a common goal. The common goal of socialising could be making friends, the exchange of mutually beneficial information, expanding your knowledge of different types of people... it could be whatever you want it to be! The key is to have an aim.

3) Watch Out for Undue Criticism - Especially Your Own!

Have you noticed that people will speak to themselves in a way they would never speak to others? You know the sort of thing - you break a glass and it's "You stupid idiot. You can't do anything right can you?"

Criticism that leaves the receiver feeling upset or depressed is rarely useful.

Challenging your own assumptions about yourself and other people can really help build self confidence. Here's a few to get you started:

1. Those confident-looking people have bad moments too - you just don't get to hear about them!

2. If you feel under-confident, it doesn't mean other people can tell. They're often too caught up with their 'own stuff' to notice!

3. If you catch yourself saying things to yourself like "I'm no good at anything" then rest assured, you're wrong about that. Everyone can compose a sentence, get successfully to the store, eat without choking and do a million other things. Emotion can make things seem hopeless when they rarely are.

Don't let yourself make sweeping statements about yourself - in the long run it is this sort of thing that can really damage your self image. If this happens, say to yourself calmly and gently, "Hold on a minute, that's not true". If you can come up with some evidence that disproves the sweeping statement, then even better. It may take a bit of effort at first, but the impact on your self confidence levels is huge.

Building self esteem is not just about thinking good of yourself, it's about not thinking bad for no reason!

4. Just because you have felt bad about yourself in the past doesn't mean you're always going to feel that way. I have seen hundreds of people surprise themselves once they have learned how to build self confidence in a way that it stays built!

The important thing is to get away from thinking "Why did that happen?", or "Why do I feel this way?" and towards "How would I like to feel?", "In what situations do I feel confident?" or, "What do I need to learn in order to have better self confidence in this situation?"

This change in thinking is so important that we devote quite a bit of time to it on the Self Confidence Trainer.

5. Persevere and don't expect everything at once. Really learn how to develop your self confidence by following the tips from this site and the free Self Confidence Course and notice the small differences as they happen. Building good self confidence is a wonderful thing, and it's much easier than you'd imagine.

Article by Roger Elliott, author of the Free Self Confidence CourseClick here to subscribe to the free self confidence course now!.

“Self Consciousness - What Is It Good For?”

Sound like a strange question to you? Since most parts of a human have evolved to be useful, apart from the appendix, perhaps, what is self consciousness for?

First, let's look at what we mean by self consciousness. Here's an example...

Self Consciousness In Action

You're standing with a group of friends, happily chatting away, the conversation going along nicely. Then someone says to you, "John, you're good at that, why don't you tell us how you do it?"

And Bang!, the way you feel changes completely. It's as if a spotlight has been turned on you and the rest of the room lights dimmed.

All of a sudden, your cheerful, easygoing nature of 10 seconds ago is nowhere to be found! What happened?

Well basically, your focus of attention has shifted to yourself, otherwise known as self consciousness. You may also have received a shot of adrenaline as a stress response.

Now we have 2 potential problems:

If your adrenaline levels go too high, your brain will cease functioning in a way that allows you to think clearly, and you will feel like running away. Obviously not what is needed for a social situation!

If your focus of attention gets 'stuck' on yourself, i.e. in self consciousness mode, you won't be able to discuss the topic you've been asked to talk about. High adrenaline levels will make it more difficult for you to shift your focus away again.

What is Self Consciousness For?

Strangely, the ability to be self conscious may well help in socialising, in the long run. To be good socially, we need to be able to empathise with others. And to do that, we need to put ourselves in others' shoes.

When you do this, you imagine being them and then check how you would feel if you were in their position. So, you are using self consciousness for a good reason, rather than self consciousness using you!

So What Can You Do About Self Consciousness?

OK. Well let's look at the adrenaline first. If you're getting this sort of stress response then it would be wise to learn some relaxation techniques, for 2 reasons:

Used correctly, relaxation will 'decondition' your anxiety response. To explain - if you are reacting with anxiety very quickly in this sort of situation, it may be because you have had similar experiences in the past, and your body has learnt to respond this way, faster than you can think.

There are 2 main things to do:

1. a) Rehearse the situation whilst deeply relaxed, so that your brain learns a new response.

2. Create a 'trigger' to allow you to 'fire off' your relaxation response when you need it most.

You can do this best by learning how to relax very deeply. If you do meditation, or yoga, you probably already know how. Otherwise, you could use the sessions on the Self Confidence Trainer created specially for this purpose.

Once you know how to relax quickly in the situation itself, your anxiety response will soon stop occurring at all. You will also have the reassurance of knowing you can calm yourself if need be, further increasing your self confidence.

Now let's look at your focus of attention.

As we discussed above, self consciousness is the state of mind that occurs when your focus of attention is on yourself. But to talk smoothly about a subject, your focus needs to be on the subject! The more deeply focused on the subject you are, the more eloquent and flowing you will be.

So, self consciousness gets in the way of socialising because it stops you focusing on what you need to focus on: the topic of conversation.

Self Consciousness Tips

So what can you do to change your focus of attention?

A few things

• The first thing to understand is that adrenaline and anxiety 'lock' your attention, making it more difficult to switch what you're focusing on. Why? Because if it was a truly dangerous situation (which is what this response evolved for, it would be no good if you just drifted off and started thinking about what was for dinner!)

So, becoming calmer will make it much easier to change your focus when you need to. (See '1' above.)

• Learn a discipline such as self hypnosis, tai chi, autogenics, or meditation. This all focus around teaching you to become calmer, and involve taking deliberate control of your focus of attention.

• Practice switching your focus of attention on a day to day basis. You can do this whilst walking, sitting at work, anywhere really. Simply focus in on one thing as tightly as you can, then switch to something else. They could be objects in your environment, or ideas or thoughts.

It's particularly good if you do this whilst a little emotionally stimulated, such as watching an exciting TV program, or a film at the cinema. At the most tense moments, deliberately switch your attention away, and don't allow yourself to switch back until you have focused fully on the new object or thought.

These 3 tips will make it much easier to control self consciousness. It may not happen all at once, but you will notice the difference if you persevere.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article, and I hope it helps you or others with any self consciousness difficulties you may have been having.

Article by Roger Elliott, author of the Free Self Confidence CourseClick here to subscribe to the free self confidence course now!.

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