8 Habits That Will Make You More Confident Than 99% of People
Improve your self-esteem and become magnetic in 8 simple steps
In a world where you are bombarded with unsolicited information about everyone’s life, it’s easy to fall into the comparison trap.
It might seem natural, but it’s the easiest way to kill your motivation or progress. It’s moving the focus from your path, to countless other possibilities which might look shiny but might actually not be better for you.
Confidence is one of the abilities that it’s not coming to you as a gift at birth.
It might seem so for some people… But it’s not a talent, it’s a skill. A skill that can be honed, improved, polished, learnt.
I can’t give you a 30 hours, roadmap to confident, crash course. But I can give you a list of habits, pieces of advice, to cultivate tremendous amounts of confidence, within yourself.
Always do something, have an obsession
There are many enemies to confidence: self-loathing, feeling small, laziness, feeling unproductive, feeling a lack of accomplishment, embarrassment, guilt, etc.
People are self aware creatures, able to notice the results of what they are doing. We are naturally linking our value to the accomplishments we have, or the progress we make towards our goals.
The worst thing you can do for yourself, is to not have any goal that you are working towards. Lack of purpose will create a void that will be almost impossible to fill, doesn’t matter how “busy“ you might keep yourself.
Solution: Always have a goal to obsess over, track your progress, and achieve. Once you’ve ticked that one, find another one immediately. Some might feel like taking a break in between. It doesn’t work. Find the next one, then take a break.
Work on your fitness
Whether we admit or not, a big part of our world is related to physical appearance. We appreciate good looking people, we want to look better, we buy products based on how good they look.
So, instead of calling yourself superficial, and trying to take a moral highground, work on your appearance. The easiest way to improve that, is to improve your fitness.
You don’t need to become a body builder, or have dangerously low body fat. Just keep within healthy limits, focusing on how your clothes fit, your posture, and how good you feel.
Movement is our natural state. A sedentary life is unnatural.
Solutions:
Weightlifting will make the most impact on your looks, your metabolism, and studies show that it will prolong your life.
Sports, especially racket sports.
Running, Swimming, or even walking, are not appreciated enough.
Avoid becoming desperate
Confidence is hard to define when you look at a person, but you can feel it. You can see it or hear it as well, but still hard to explain or teach.
One thing people notice about a confident person, is the fact that they are effortless. They seem to throw some clothes on that seem to fit perfectly, they don’t overdo their hair or make-up, they are moving without a care in the world.
On the other side, it is equally easy to spot desperation. People that are trying too hard. How to spot it?
Outfits too complicated and thought through, which suggest they care too much about mundane situations, which in turn suggests they don’t have personal goals to focus their time on.
Highjacking conversations, especially out of jealousy
Trying too hard to attract attention through forced jokes and speaking too much
Being desperate means you are in a state of lack. That is a low vibration, that will only attract into your life situations where you will lack something.
Solution: Learn to accept certain situations and do not stress over them too much. Go for effortless approaches. No confident person has to force a situation, ever.
Avoid High GI Food
There is a full culture on glucose and how to eat in such a way that it doesn’t spike throughout the day. This was so overdue, that people are not giving it the attention it needs.
Big food companies, demonized fats, which are essential in hormonal regulation. They also built up cholesterol to be this big dangerous enemy, while in reality it’s crucial to our brain or even sexual function.
What it’s been confirmed now, and it’s what I recommend to you, is to avoid High Glicemic-Index foods, because glucose spikes at certain points during your day, will create mood swings or make you lethargic in the afternoon.
Improve Endurance and Stamina
A lot of people focus on how much they lift, but struggle to go up a long flight of stairs, or run to catch a train.
I fell into this trap…
I was working my ass off in the gym, looking defined, getting stronger, and then I noticed a few things:
I could not keep up with my dog when running around
I was not flexible at all
I looked in the best shape of my life but I could not swim even 20% of what I used to when I was 14
Yes, cardio is not the way to lose weight or fat. It comes 3rd after nutrition and weightlifting. However, cardio was not originally a tool for body fat torching.
Even the name suggests it. Its purpose is to improve your cardiovascular capacity. It’s improving your endurance, stamina, and for the alpha males out there, resilience.
Listen more, talk less
I know you are terrified of awkward silence. We all are. It’s one of the most uncomfortable things ever. Especially during a first date or when you just met someone.
But talking non-stop is not the solution. A confident person is a great communicator. And a great communicator is that good by achieving one single thing:
Making the other person feel heard and important!
How do you do that?
Talk less, listen more
Make it about them
Say their name out loud
Follow up question
Learn to be comfortable with rejection
This ties a bit here with the point of desperation, but seriously, any successful person in this world, has had to deal with rejection.
To be great, you need to sell something. Your company, your skills or even your persona. And when you sell something, it’s not going to be all buyers. You are going to get rejected. A lot!
A confident person is comfortable in situations where their ideas are not validated, where people do not like them or what they are saying.
You have a target audience. If your target audience it’s everyone, you are doing something wrong. You need to sample your audience, and focus on them.
Celebrate and Appreciate Yourself
A confident person takes time to stop, look back or in the mirror, analyze and appreciate what they achieved.
If it helps, shout it out loud. Say it to people. But never, ever, ignore a success. Even if it feel insignificant.
Celebrating the small wins is the fuel for the big wins!
You have to recognize, admit and be proud of your achievements. You have to internalize this in order to feel important. That way, you’ll naturally become confident.
Believe in yourself! Thanks for reading!
Alex