Self confidence is one of the keys to personal and professional success that I discuss in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Your Success GPS and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. If you want to become self confident you need to do three things. First, choose optimism. Second, face your fears and act. Third, surround yourself with positive people.
The other day, I saw quote about self confidence and success from Dr. Joyce Brothers…
“Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.”
Great common sense advice. And, a great starting point for success.
I find that affirmations are a great way to begin thinking of yourself as a success. Affirmations are positive self talk. The idea behind affirmations is that if you think of the things to which you aspire, like being successful in your life and career, and tell yourself that you are successful, then you will believe that you can become successful. More importantly, you will be more likely to do the work it takes to make that aspiration come true.
My eBook, Star Power, was my first attempt at writing about career and life success. It is based on a model that has five points. I use a star to depict this model. In Star Power, I discussed how to become a career and life star. I like the star metaphor, so I created an affirmation for myself around it. Daily, I repeat the following affirmation to myself: “Bud Bilanich is a star.”
I’ve done a lot of working in making this affirmation a reality – writing more books, redoing my website, developing better promotional materials, blogging etc.
I’ve also done something a little unusual. In 2006, I went to the Name a Star website and named a star after myself. Now I can say “Bud Bilanich is a star” and really believe it, because Bud Bilanich really is a star.
Bud Bilanich, the star, is Catalog Number TYC 868-1011-1 in the constellation Leo. Bud Bilanich, the star, has a Visual Magnitude indicator of 11.2. Right Ascension is 11h 58m 21s. Declination is 11degrees, 43,’18.”
I don’t have a clue what all of these things mean, except the constellation Leo, which I chose because my birthday is August 14. But I do know one thing. Bud Bilanich is a star!
How’s that for an affirmation?
Affirmations work. And you don’t have to go to the lengths I did to make them work. Just decide what you want, visualize yourself as having it, and tell yourself you have it. Then do whatever it takes to make that affirmation come true. The last part is the most important, so I’ll say it again…Do whatever it takes to make your affirmations come true.
The common sense point here is simple. Successful people are self confident. As Dr. Joyce Brothers points out, success is a state of mind. Self confident people create a positive and successful state of mind because they think of themselves as successful. When they feel their confidence slipping, successful people use affirmations to reinforce their belief in themselves and their positive state of mind. A positive state of mind, self confidence and affirmations create a situation where you’ll be more likely to do the work you need to do to succeed. In other words, start with a positive state of mind, use affirmations to maintain your self confidence and keep working hard – and you’ll become a personal and professional success.
That’s my take on a positive state of mind, self confidence and success. What’s yours? Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us. As always, thanks for reading.
Bud
Yes - confidence is a state of mind and we can manage our states of mind in order to increase confidence.
One way to increase confidence is to increase self image. Your physical appearance is a component of your self image. To be congruent with your self image, you must keep your physical appearance up.
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Posted by: Bi Sadong | July 09, 2010 at 10:26 PM
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Posted by: Peg Perego Primo Viaggio | December 15, 2010 at 01:09 AM
Positive Daily affirmations need to be powerful, after all you are giving yourself a subliminal pep talk and these daily positive affirmations need to be energetic and emphatic.
Posted by: self esteem affirmations | January 26, 2011 at 09:53 AM
Very interesting post!
Posted by: Alnikolic | March 10, 2011 at 12:11 PM
I completely agree about affirmations, and I find myself using them frequently even when I don't realize. I just started writing a blog about how to get yourself into a Positive State of Mind, and positive affirmations will certainly be on that page at some point! I'm sure I'll pull a few ideas from your article and include them!
Check out my blog:
positivestateofmind.wordpress.com
Posted by: Scott | May 06, 2011 at 05:00 PM
Excellent, and yeah of course that's why weak people (sadly) will not survive in this world and if they make it, they will suffer for all life.
Posted by: pharmacy | August 30, 2011 at 11:02 AM
I'd say this is confidence, that quotation made feel better because we have to trust in ourselves because that's the only one way to reach our purposes.
Posted by: pharmacy | August 30, 2011 at 01:45 PM
This is a great post, so true and accurate what was written, it is all in our heads.
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