Tips For Gaining More Confidence in the New Year

Come January 1, everyone it seems is on the “New Year, New Me” bandwagon. While I don’t see anything wrong with this, I tend to side more with the “New Year, Same Me, New Goals” side of things. With that, one of my goals over the past few years has been to work on my self confidence. Today, I am sharing some tips for gaining more confidence in the new year.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not an overly-confident person. However, my level of self confidence has dramatically increased over the last few years.

I use to be the type of person that would never try out for anything, because I just knew that they would say “no”. I hated to be turned down, or made to feel like I wasn’t good enough, so I just never tried at all. My lack of self-confidence throughout high school, and even after having my first babies, was terrible.

TERRIBLE. 

The fear of failure that I had was incredibly high and overwhelming. It was only until I started utilizing these tips personally that my confidence started to grow.

I hope that these tips for gaining more confidence help you and allow you to see how truly amazing you are, just by being you!

Tips For Gaining Confidence in the New Year

• Try something far outside of your comfort zone. One of the best things that I have done in the last few years is starting this blog. Going on four years now, it has become a huge source of community, comfort, therapy, and a lucrative career for me. It wasn’t anything that I thought I would ever do in my earlier years, and even when I started, I had no confidence that it would be anything outside of an online diary. Photoshoots? Events? Blogger Meet-ups? Communities? None of these things were comfortable for me in the beginning. Doing this has allowed me to do so many things that were far outside of my normal realm, and in turn, I have a self-confidence now that I never had before.
• Take care of yourself. As women, and moms especially, it is easy for us to let everything go and just forget to take some time for ourselves. The other day, I had realized that I hadn’t gotten ready for the day or allowed myself to feel beautiful on the outside in almost a week. I spent a few hours, got dressed, put makeup on, and made myself feel ready to take on the world (even if, lets be honest, I wasn’t going anywhere). I find the talking around every day in athletic wear or sweats can sometimes start to mess with my head in terms of self confidence. It’s essential for me to take time of myself so this doesn’t get away from me.
• Affirm what you already know. I have never been one for repeated positive affirmations out loud, but I do love to write. I am currently using the “Today I Affirm” journal, and I love it! To me, you can use positive affirmations in a ton of different ways. You can write them out, speak them out loud, tell them to someone else… the list goes on. As long as you hear them in your own head, those positive thoughts will help to crush the negative that might be holding you back.
• Let yourself fail. I fail A LOT! You have to be willing to try things that scare you, even if you know you may fail a them. There are a lot of things that I know with 89% certainty, I won’t succeed at. That. Is. OK! If I hadn’t let myself fail more than a few times over the last few years, this blog wouldn’t be where it is, and I wouldn’t be able to keep it going. My fear of failing the people who read this or not being as good as others in this field would have held me back. Granted, there are days when it does. I just have to remember that it is okay to fail, as long as you learn and move forward from that failure.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” Eleanor Roosevelt

What are your favorite tips for posting self-confidence?

*Heres to standing tall*