Personal Development - How to Give Yourself a Boost To Your Self Esteem

I was listening to a Jim Rohn CD yesterday on Confidence building. I just love Jim's Idaho drawl, he was truly a man of great wisdom. In this CD Jim said the most important thing to listen to is what you say to yourself.

Your internal dialogue is key to success, it is what you feel and say to yourself that will project itself and manifest itself outwardly. NLP or neuro linguistic programming is based on the same principles, so is the law of attraction. Funny how they all begin to tie in together once you start down the road to self development.

Confidence can be knocked out of you through one reason or another. But the important thing is how we are able to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and hold our heads up high and go get our dreams and goals.

When you lack confidence you tend to be unsure of yourself, your body slouches, your head held down your shoulders droopy. Your voice shaky, unsure, hesitant. All these visible signs are outwardly projected to those around you.

Instead position yourself to mimic self confidence, stand up tall, head held high, if your body posture is more positive you will begin to feel just as positive and confident. Talk with an air of authority about you, people will begin to notice what it is you have to say. Smile and be friendly, people are more open to approaching a smiling friendly person that someone who is miserable or frowning to themselves.

Now that we have boosted your self confidence externally, lets look at the internal stuff that you can do to gain confidence in yourself. Self affirmations I find are extremely helpful to help improve your mental state. Self affirmations are daily thoughts which you verbalise to yourself several times throughout the day. For instance each morning I wake up and spend roughly 10 minutes talking to myself. Yes, you heard right talking to myself, now I don't consider myself a 'mad' person, but talking to yourself is key especially if you begin to listen to what you are telling yourself. Try it and see.

Imagine yourself as someone who you respect immensely, someone you would love to emulate or be like, how would they stand in front of the mirror, what do you think they tell themselves, what to you think their attitude to life is? How do you think they feel, and what would they do in the circumstances you are presented with. Sometimes being in someone else's shoes helps you to see things from a different perspective.

There are also Audio CD's you can listen to or self development books you can read. Some great books I have read can be found on my blog here.  Reading self development books not only gives you a boost, but helps you to help yourself.  They give you positive thoughts and suggestions which you can then take forward into your life and make changes.

Sometimes for things to change, we have to change, another of Jim's famous sayings, which again is so true.  If you find you have a certain mindset, how are you going to get what you want if you have the same mindset in place and haven't managed to change.  If you see things the same, but wonder why you don't have success in your life, is it because you have not really changed your outlook on life.