This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t heal those darker aspects of ourselves, but it is impossible to heal something that you’re unwilling to see.
Building true self-confidence, therefore, is rooted in a healthy, positive and loving relationship with yourself comprised of the following 5 keys:
5 KEYS TO TRUE AND RADIANT SELF-CONFIDENCE
1. Self-acceptance
Self-acceptance is all about accepting yourself for who you are in each moment of your life, as well as accepting ALL parts of yourself no matter how dirty, ugly, or bad. It’s about accepting yourself even when you make a mistake, act foolish, or don’t do your best.
The opposite of acceptance is resistance, therefore when you don’t accept yourself, you resist yourself, which in essence means that you are rejecting who you are.
The key is to simply allow yourself to be who you are in each moment of your life without any hatred, judgment, resistance, and criticism toward yourself.
The great paradox of personal growth; accept yourself for who you are, but also strive to improve yourself, truly applies here. It might seem contradictory yet it points us to the ultimate truth. You can only start to work on yourself once you’ve come to terms with who you are. And that means self-acceptance.
So self-acceptance doesn’t mean that you’re okay with, agree with or that you give yourself permission to act like a fool. It simply means that you’re not fighting with yourself about being this way. You have no inner resistance. Just a simple acceptance and acknowledgment that this happened or that this is the way you are. Once you can have this inner alignment, you can work out these kinks about yourself so much more LOVINGLY and EFFECTIVELY.
2. Self-love
So once you can accept yourself, you can move into self-love. Self love is about appreciating and honoring yourself how you are and for who you are. Self-love really intertwines with self-forgiveness. It’s about forgiving yourself for all that you’re not proud of and loving yourself unconditionally. Self-love has no bounds or restrictions. It’s not “I really love that I’m a nurturing person but I hate that I have a short temper.” That is conditional love. True self-love is about loving yourself REGARDLESS of your flaws and unattractive qualities.
The closest thing I can relate to unconditional love is the love we have for our children or pets. Even though they make a mistake, we love them anyways. Even though they bite us or scream at us, we love them anyway. We might get angry at them, but we love them the same.
This is the type of love you need to have for yourself. Even though you lost your temper, even though you’re a control freak, and even though you screwed up, you LOVE yourself anyway. Because you forgive yourself for not being perfect, and you forgive yourself for being HUMAN!
Another very important aspect of self-love is loving your darkness. It’s about loving your crazy, psycho, irrational, annoying, “unlovable” side. It’s about loving the side of you that you’re ashamed of revealing to the world. It’s about loving the parts of you that you’re afraid to see.
Related article: “15 Questions to Identify Your Fears”
There are many facets to our being, many layers to who we are, and if we are picky about which parts we love, we are not honoring our FULL selves.
The beauty with this is that when you’ve learned to love and accept the parts about you that you’re insecure about, it’s no longer an insecurity and other people no longer have the power to break you.
Related article: “How to Forgive Yourself – A step-by-step guide with guided meditation”
3. Self-compassion
Self-compassion is a form of self-love and is a key player in self-confidence. Self-compassion is about being kind, warm, caring and compassionate towards yourself even when confronted with personal shortcomings. It’s about taking care of yourself; mind, body, and spirit, talking to yourself in a positive way, listening to your needs, and treating yourself as if you were your own best friend. It’s about making sure that you feel good and are inherently happy and satisfied. It’s about giving yourself comfort and safety when you feel scared. It’s about giving yourself support when you feel down. Self-compassion is about self-acceptance, self-love, self-forgiveness, and about genuinely caring about your health, happiness, and well being.
Related article: “11 Self-Care Habits I Practice Regularly”
4. Self-trust
Self-trust is really really important in becoming more self confident because it’s all about BELIEVING IN YOURSELF! It’s about believing in who you are, in what you do, and in what you want.
Self-trust is trusting that what you want, what you have to say, and what you want to do is important and worthy. It’s about believing in yourself and trusting that you matter. It’s about believing in what you have to say and trusting that other…
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