Improving your Self Confidence Part 3

This is the conclusion to my 3 part series entitled “Improving your Self Confidence.” Let’s get down to it then!

Be Benevolent. The greatest thing you can do for yourself is to know that you are doing good in the world. The warm glow that comes from helping others spills out from within you and strengthens and builds upon your self confidence. A great starting place for this is community service. One of the best ways to start this is by networking with a local church – they usually need some help, and if not they will usually have ties to the community that you can use. I strongly recommend physical community service – it’s a fantastic experience to actually construct something that you know others will be using. However, I would advise not limiting benevolence to a few hours donated. Be benevolent in all walks of your life. Help someone with packages, hold the door, anything that benefits others around you. Put in a good word for others, and stick up for your friends. Be kind, happy, and positive. You’ll see it makes a difference in the way you feel and the way people treat you. It may be difficult and feel false at first, but the longer you do it for the more natural it will feel.

So via those 5 points, I truly believe anyone can achieve greater self confidence. But instead of building on this further, I’d like to conclude with a warning. There are two forms of confidence you will see – true confidence possessed by truly great people, and false bravado used by the weak to protect their selves. Please, please, please don’t become one of these people. Probably most of the confident seeming people you have met fall into this category. If they do, don’t use them as an example as what to become. The thing about an illusion like this is that it can only be maintained for a certain amount of time, before your true self comes out again. To truly achieve confidence you must cause a lasting change within yourself from inside out. And believe me, most people can figure out the difference, given enough time. So while it may be easier in the short run, becoming the “jackass” type of confident person is in the long run not very rewarding at all. So get out there and make a positive change in the world around you and in yourselves!