How can we help with Confidence & Self Esteem?
Enabling Confidence & Self Esteem
Self confidence relates to your belief in your own abilities. Self esteem is about how we feel about ourselves whether in a positive or negative way.
Self confidence is hugely beneficial in all areas of our lives and the good news is that it is a skill that can be learned. We can support you in increasing your levels of confidence until it becomes second nature.
How we feel about ourselves can have an enormous impact upon how we live our lives. If we have a negative view of ourselves, we are likely to lack motivation, feel depressed or feel ‘not good enough’. The messages we received while growing up, particularly during early years and adolescence, and those we continue to receive can have a huge influence on our self esteem.
We can then find it difficult to recover from setbacks and challenges. Improving our self esteem is something that we have to address ourselves; it cannot be given to us by others, we have to actively pursue it. Learning to change your self perception and gaining self respect will enable you to have increased self esteem and self confidence.
We can help you find the cause and identify ways to recover both. With hypnosis and psychotherapy, we support you in exploring and modifying belief systems, replacing negative thinking processes with positive ones. You will be able to overcome barriers and perform at your best whatever the situation.
Areas of Confidence & Self Esteem
Personal Development
We all have goals: the things we would like to achieve, experience or have. But how do we reach them? The three main ingredients to making positive progress during our lives are self-esteem, self-confidence and motivation. If you are unhappy with any aspect of yourself, you will struggle to be able to look forward positively and identify where you want to go or what you want to achieve. Likewise, if you lack belief in yourself and your abilities, you will have no belief in your ability to achieve your goals. If you lack motivation, you may have identified your goals and believe you can achieve them, but you will not have the desire and drive to put in the effort needed to keep going through difficult times or even procrastinate. We need to acknowledge the things that are important to us and that have helped us enjoy success in the past. However we also need to be able to rid ourselves of the fear of failure or indeed the fear of success. The final element is to set achievable short-term goals that will help us achieve our goal; a small success provides additional confidence and convincing proof that we are moving in the right direction, giving extra motivation.
Performance Enhancement
Performing to the best of our ability is something we all strive for, whether it is within our jobs, hobbies or on the sports field. Having the appropriate skills, knowledge and abilities are vital, but that is only part of the puzzle. Research has indicated that performing at the highest level has as much to do with our mental abilities as with our physical abilities. Having a positive mindset to performance will help overcome nerves and enable a relaxed, confident approach. The brain cannot tell the difference between physically doing something and imagining doing it. Visualising yourself performing to the best of your abilities and being successful can help your mind be attuned for success; what the mind can conceive, the body can achieve. The more confident we are, the more likely we are to experience the desired outcome. Hypnotherapy, in particular, can help achieve this.
Public Speaking
Fear of public speaking is a form of social anxiety which can trigger our ‘fight or flight’ response, making us feel that there is a threat which we must escape from, hence the increased heart rate, nausea and sweating (amongst many other possible symptoms).
The fear can come from several sources: lack of self-esteem / confidence, being uncomfortable with being the centre of attention, being worried about making a mistake or making a fool of ourselves or even forgetting what we want to say. It is possible to overcome this fear; re-educating our minds to no longer see speaking in public as a threat, but to induce as more appropriate and beneficial response.