6 Ways To Be More Confident

What is confidence?

"Confidence means feeling sure of yourself and your abilities"

"It is a quiet inner knowledge that you are capable"

Confidence is a beautiful thing to have, being able to say I can rather than I can't or even I will try rather than I won't. With confidence, you open yourself up to more opportunities with belief in yourself.

I want to be confident. Who wouldn't want to be confident? However, I have learnt that you cannot force confidence. You can gradually exercise confidence, but overall confidence comes with time and patience.

Now of course, to actually be confident is a lot more complex than the definition appears because there is more to it than being 'sure of yourself and your abilities'. 

With fear of coming across arrogant, fear of judgement, fear of failure, actual belief in failure and many other self doubts, being a completely confident person seems almost impossible. 

But actually, I have learnt it isn't. The book 'the life plan' taught me a lot. It taught me that confidence isn't being constantly sure, never fearful, never doubtful and never worried. Confidence is recognising you're fears, recognising the doubts, recognising the worries, but pushing through them anyway or recognising that something may be too much but you will work towards it for the future.

- Celebrating your failures because you learn from them

- Recognising your weaknesses but focusing on your strengths

- Owning your emotions 

That is confidence.

How to be more confident?

Confidence is a journey and I am gradually become more confident in myself with practice, time and self care.

There is no quick fix and of course there are so many different areas of life to be confident in.

However I can share you the simple changes that have helped me find more confidence, which hopefully help you too:

Finding your passion: this one is really important to me. Finding something that you love and you're good at is amazing, it gives you something to work on, something to be proud of. For me, my passion is blogging. When I post content, I only post what I am proud of, to me, nothing feels better than pressing publish on a post that I have worked on for hours and being excited to hear peoples thoughts! But I also have a passion for running, when I run I feel on top of the world. I feel strong, able and energised. Both running and blogging are two things I am confident in. What is your passion?

Accept yourself: this takes time, something that I think a lot of us are working on. Accepting yourself is really important, you don't have to completely love yourself (amazing if you do!!) but realising that you are who you are and accepting that is enough to make you feel more self assured. You cannot live a happy or confident life if you are constantly trying to change rather than living true to yourself!

Test your boundaries and realise what you can do: we all have a comfort zone, push that comfort zone, even the tiniest bit, and you will feel empowered. I did not think I could stay on a plane for 7 hours to NYC. But I really wanted to go to NYC. So I did it, and it has made me realise that I can get on a plane for 7 hours. What I am saying is, if you push your comfort zone and realise you CAN do something, it will open up the door to so many new opportunities, which will grow your confidence.

Hold your head high and smile more: really, it works. Do it now. Stand/sit tall, roll your shoulders back, hold your head high and smile. When we hunch our shoulders and keep our heads down it resembles feelings of insecurity and shame, reverse that, you will automatically feel 'ready'. (I don't know what for exactly, but you will haha).

Focus on what you have achieved, not what you haven't: it is so easy for us to worry on what we haven't done and what we haven't achieved and what we didn't succeed at, but what about what we have actually achieved? That is what is important. Your achievements, no matter how small, should be celebrated. The more you recognise how incredible you are and how able you are, the more you will grow as a person and flourish in confidence.

Surrounding yourself by people who make you feel more confident, not less: social media has made this one tricky. Clicking that unfollow button is sometimes essential people. Honestly. If someone is making you feel insecure or down about yourself, unfollow. It is not rude or selfish but necessary. You will find yourself a lot happier and confident once you unfollow the people who make you feel insecure.

I really hope these tips help. If you have any tips, leave them in the comments for me and others to be able to follow!

I am going to end this post with a quote that I find really inspiring:

Ellie x

You may want to read my perfect pamper night: here