If you peruse the internet looking for information on what it takes to be confident, you will find images of perfection and messages that impel that if you have this haircut, wear this cologne or drink this beer, then you are attractive, and then you can be confident.

Some of us buy into these impelled points of view, and we do our best to match the images that are portrayed. Let’s face it, everyone wants to feel good about themselves. Others look at the images portrayed, judge themselves as not good enough and give up.  They quietly sink into the background, feeling anything but confident.

Regardless of what you have been told, confidence is not the result of how you look or what you do. Confidence is the by-product of choosing to be you.

Confidence Destroyer #1: Pretending to be something you’re not

Trying to be something you think you are supposed to be completely destroys your confidence. Every day we’re faced with a barrage of images that reinforce stereotypes.  Confidence comes when you embrace all aspects of you. When you acknowledge that you are kind, caring and also potent and sexual.  Someone else’s idea of who you are supposed to be is nowhere big enough for who you really are. It’s time to stop pretending to be something you’re not, and just be you. It’s so easy to be you.

Confidence Destroyer #2: Creating an image

There are a lot of people that would tell you that in order be somebody in this world, in order to be successful and to be important, in order to win and not lose, you have to create an image. An image is something that you portray, that you try to get people to see you as.

Here’s the trouble with image, when you create anything based on an image, whether it be family, business, relationship, money, fame, your body, or anything else, to maintain and uphold these things, you have to maintain and uphold your image. That’s a lot of work and when you don’t do it perfectly, you judge yourself and lose all confidence.

Vulnerability is the anecdote to maintaining an image. Vulnerability is the place of no judgment. It’s where you have total allowance for you. Total allowance for everyone you are with. Total allowance for everything that occurs. Vulnerability includes everything and judges nothing.

In vulnerability you stop pretending, you come out of hiding and you start to choose what actually works for you rather than trying to live up to the right and wrong of other people’s opinions.

Confidence Destroyer #3: Judging yourself

Truly confident people have one thing in common, they don’t judge themselves. They are grateful for who they are. What if you woke up in the morning, looked at yourself in the mirror without judgment? What if you practiced gratitude for You – all the time.

If you have struggled with confidence, if you have compared yourselves to others, if you have lived with a sense of wrongness for longer than you remember, to stop judging yourself can be a challenge. A great place to start is to ask, “What’s right about me that I am not getting?” Ask this question all of the time. You will begin to have a sense of the gift and contribution, your confidence will increase, and your life will get easier.

Confidence is available to you. No one can take it away. Choose to be you at all times, without apology, and your confidence will soar.

With gratitude for you,

Dain

P.S. For the full article at Ask Men, go here.