Hypnosis Can Create Confidence

A social phobia is a fear of interacting with others on a social level. Examples would be talking in front of other people, waiting in line at the checkout imagining others are looking at you, or even fear of talking on the phone.

Self-confidence is a feeling, which allows people to have positive, yet realistic views of themselves and their position. Self-confident people believe in their own potential, have a general sense of control over their lives, and have confidence that, within reason, they will be able to do what they want to do.

Self-esteem is an outlook that is learned through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful at his/her endeavors. And that expectation itself will cause a feeling of confidence.

For example: A man wants to be an extreme fighter, so he gets a manager and a trainer. His manager will not put him into a competition until he has developed proficient skills. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a competitor that he knows his fighter can batter. When his fighter beats the rival, he is successful, and starts to gain confidence in his abilities.

With each fight, the manager puts his contestant up against an adversary who is a slightly better challenger then the last, but not good enough to beat his gladiator. By the end of the third fight, the young prizefighter begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to grow. This series of events continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter warrior continues to win, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to increase.

As another example: A young lady who is scared to death 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 dive into the pool from the first step of the ladder that is going up to the diving board. The first step of the ladder isn't too high, so the young lady is totally free of fear, and she jumps from that rung, and lands safely in the water.

Next, the trainer has her take a jump from the second step of the ladder, and so forth. I believe that you are beginning to get the picture. With each further step up the ladder, since the girl was able to jump without being harmed, and this next higher step is only slightly higher then the last, the fear of being harmed factor is negligible, and the girl expects to be successful. When she dives in and is successful, the girl's self-confidence increases, and her expectation of success on the next rung up the ladder increases.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the self-esteem arena fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which usually becomes 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 highly on the recognition of others in order to feel self-assured. They usually don't take risks for fear of failure. They often belittle themselves and tend to discount compliments that are offered to them.

On the other side of the coin, confident people will risk the disapproval of other people because they generally rely on their own potential. They acknowledge themselves; and they don't believe that they have to conform in order to be acknowledged.

Just because one feels self-esteem in one or more parts of their life, doesn't mean that they will feel confident in every area of their life. For example, a person might feel self-assured about their mathematical talent, but not feel confident where members of the opposite sex are involved, such as in a dating situation, or social relationships.

HOW IS Confidence Initially developed?

Many powerful realities have an influence on the course of confidence. Parents' attitudes are fundamental to the way children think about themselves, especially when they are very young. When parents provide appreciation, children receive a great basis for feelings of self-worth. If one or both parents are excessively critical, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children may begin 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.

A person can have plenty of abilities, but still lack confidence. A lack of confidence is often the result of concentrating much too strongly on the ridiculous expectancy of others chiefly parents and friends. The affect of peers can be more powerful than that of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Beliefs That Continue to Have an Influence on Self-confidence.

In response to external influences, people develop assumptions. Some of these are constructive and some are harmful. Several assumptions that can interfere with self-confidence and better ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: I always have to be successful at everything that I do. This is unrealistic. In reality everyone has his/her strengths and weaknesses. While it's important to do the best that one can, it's more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and not perfect. Feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that no person knows everything nor are they an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this is totally unrealistic. All human beings are open to error. It's more desirable to develop personal standards that are not 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 subject to external influences when you were a young child as you gain maturity appreciation and outlook 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 in the face of past events

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Bestow upon yourself credit for everything that you can do. And bestow upon yourself credit for every new thing you are willing to attempt.

Take risks. Adopt the attitude of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I find out what doesn't work and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can test some other action.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a tool to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting perfection, remind yourself that no one can do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself as you are working towards improvement.

Make mental movies: Picture yourself in the various scenarios that you currently lack self-confidence in. But see yourself behaving in the way that a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are many powerful NLP and self-hypnosis techniques that can be used to create a tremendous 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 are lacking confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to assess yourself independently. Circumvent the endless sense of disturbance that comes from relying on other people's opinion.

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Article Source: http://www.fitnesshealtharticles.com.

About the Author:
Alan B. Densky, CH is an NLP Practitioner. He began his practice of NLP & hypnosis in 1978. He offers an interactive NLP Six-Step Reframing CD on his Neuro-VISION Hypnosis website. Also available are his Free NLP article library, NLP & hypnosis newsletters and MP3 downloads.