No one is born with confidence. Confidence or the lack of it is a learned experience. If your parents, teachers and peers were constantly praising your accomplishments and encouraging you to try new things then their is little doubt you would be well endowed with self-confidence. If however, your parents constantly used negative motivation, told you things like, “That’s not the way you do it. Can’t you do anything right? Why are you not more like your brother or sister?” Then the chances are this would have had a negative effect on your self-esteem and confidence. Most parents especially those of a decade or two ago had no idea of the power they had in shaping their child’s future based only on a few simple words. They certainly didn’t mean to do a bad job they simply did the same things they saw their parents do to them. The same is true of teachers some are great and build your confidence in a particular subject while others are horrible and belittle you for you supposed “stupidity”.
Many people have risen beyond the handicap of a negative up brining. Churchill had a very unhappy childhood, as did Martian Luther King. Einstein was classified as mentally retarded and Edison was thought too slow as a learner. All of these people overcame poor upbringings and are well remembered today.
If your childhood experiences were negative with regards to self-confidence there is obviously nothing you can do to change the past. You can however begin to recognize patterns of behavior that stem from your past and take the next steps in reforming what you believe to be true about your levels of confidence. Just because someone else’s opinion was that you were not particularly good at something certainly doesn’t mean you have to accept it. Getting good at anything is merely a matter of education and practice. This in itself is the first step to self-confidence.
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