It is never too late to be what you might have been. —George Eliot

Do you feel that life would improve for you if you had more confidence and self-esteem?

When you’re confident and have good self-esteem, you believe in yourself; your decisions, your actions and your abilities. You face life with optimism; you believe that you can cope with challenges and difficulties and that events are likely to turn out well. You value yourself and feel good about yourself. You feel at ease around other people; able to join in, speak up and speak out.

It’s a positive dynamic: learn to be more confident in one situation and you’ll find it boosts your confidence and self-esteem in other situations; at work, in public, with family and friends and in social situations.

Confidence is life’s enabler; life really does improve as your self-confidence and self-esteem grow. So, clearly, confidence is something that’s worth pursuing. But how do you begin to improve your confidence? The Confidence Pocketbook can help!

There are three parts to the Confidence Pocketbook:

• Part 1: The Foundation Stones of Confidence
• Part 2: Personal Confidence
• Part 3: Social Confidence

Self-confidence and self-esteem are built from a sound base of foundation stones. Part 1 of this book explains what those foundation stones are and how you can establish them. The foundation stones involve principles – fundamental truths – which apply in a wide range of situations, both personal and social.

Part 2 – Personal Confidence – addresses specific aspects of your life where you may want to feel more confident and better about yourself and your abilities. Whether you want the confidence to take risks and make mistakes, to travel or return to learn – whatever the issue – simply pick out the ideas, tips and techniques that appeal to you and give them a try.

Part 3 of this book – Social Confidence – addresses a range of issues related to interacting with other people; colleagues, friends, family etc. Whether you want the confidence to speak up or speak out, be treated with respect or make new friends, simply pick out the ideas, tips and techniques that appeal to you and give them a try.

Confidence and self-esteem aren’t fixed, they increase and decrease according to the ups and downs you experience in life. Although the way other people treat you and behave towards you has an effect on your confidence, other people can’t force you to be confident and feel good about yourself. You have to take responsibility and be prepared to work at developing and maintaining your confidence and self-esteem.

The Confidence Pocketbook has over 100 simple confidence tips, techniques, ideas and suggestions for a wide range of situations where you’re likely to want to be more confident and capable. The more often you use them, the more you’ll develop your confidence and self-esteem.

Keep this book in your bag or your pocket whenever and wherever you need to feel more confident. You’ll find that the tips, techniques, ideas and suggestions in this book really can help you act with confidence and feel good about yourself.

It’s not about becoming a different person; it’s about becoming more of the real you!

Success comes in cans, not can’ts. —Author unknown

Confidence is a belief that something can and will happen. You may be confident that your team will win. You could be confident the train will arrive on time. Whether the team does actually win or the train does arrive on time is another matter!

Self-confidence is believing that you can do things.

Self-confidence is not about what you can or can’t do. It’s what you think and believe you can or can’t do. You might believe that you can sky-dive or pass an exam. Whether, when the time comes, you can jump out of the plane or pass the exam is also another matter!

When you’re feeling confident, you have a positive attitude towards yourself and your abilities and you believe that events and experiences are likely to turn out well. But when you’re not feeling confident, you’re likely to believe that things will turn out badly. And because you believe things won’t turn out well, you often feel that there’s no point in even trying.

Furthermore, you only see or even look for evidence that confirms that you can’t do something while avoiding or ignoring evidence that, ­actually, you could do something. So if you weren’t feeling confident about ­passing your driving test, you’d focus on the weaker aspects of your driving abilities – reverse parking or three-point turns – as evidence that you weren’t going to do well.

And, when setbacks do occur, if you lack confidence you’re likely to feel discouraged and give up. Whereas if you’re feeling confident, you’re able to work at overcoming the difficulties, believing that things can get better.

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on. —Maxwell Maltz

Just as your self-confidence is affected by what you believe about yourself, so is your self-esteem. Confidence rests on what you believe about your abilities. Self-esteem rests on what you believe about your worth and value as a person.

Confidence and self-esteem influence each other. If, in a variety of situations, you don’t have confidence – if you don’t believe you are capable of doing something – you may also feel bad about yourself; about your perceived inability to do something. You’ll have low self-esteem. When your self-esteem is low, you see yourself in a negative and critical light; you see or even look for evidence that confirms that you’re not a worthy person while ignoring evidence that you have worth and value. You’ll also feel less able to take on the challenges life throws at you, and that just undermines your self-esteem further and you feel bad again. It’s a negative dynamic.

On the other hand, building your confidence helps you feel good about yourself. And if you feel good about yourself, you feel more confident about your abilities and life in general. It’s a positive dynamic; a win-win situation.

Are you born with self-esteem? Not exactly. You’re born with the ability to think and therefore to judge your worth and value; to feel good, bad or somewhere in between about yourself. As you live your life, what happens to you – your experiences, what you do and don’t do, and how other people treat you and behave towards you – will influence your self-esteem, for better or worse.

Comparison is the thief of joy. —Theodore Roosevelt

Confidence and self-esteem are concerned with what we believe about our abilities and our self-worth.

But how can we judge our worth and abilities? Using what standards and criteria? By comparing our abilities and worth with those of other people.

The problem is, there’s always someone you know, meet, see, listen to or read about in magazines, newspapers and on Facebook, who you could see as being ‘better’: more successful, better looking, more capable or who has more and has done more than you.

You can always find ways that you don’t match up. Of course, it’s natural to want to know where you fit into the scheme of things. But measuring your worth and your abilities against other people and concluding you don’t match up can only lead to feeling inferior, disappointed and even ashamed.

How often, though, do you compare yourself with someone less fortunate than you and consider yourself blessed? Too often, we compare ourselves with someone who we think is ‘better’ or has more; better skills, abilities or personal qualities and better or more resources and possessions. We compare what we think is the worst of ourselves to the best we presume about others.

You may even look for further evidence to support and confirm what you’ve decided is true; the negative ways in which you don’t match up, what you don’t have, can’t do or will never be. But these sorts of negative comparisons only create resentment and feelings of unfairness and deprivation.