What is the difference between someone who is naturally confident and secure in themselves, and someone who is insecure and full of self doubt? Sure, there may be external differences such as how they act, how they speak, or how they conduct themselves in situations. But if you really want to know how to go from someone who is insecure to someone who is confident, you have to dig a little deeper.
It really comes down to their self perception and self belief. Confidence is a mindset that is brought to life by actions and behaviors. All too often we are told to change our behaviors to “act” more confident, yet that doesn’t address the cause of insecurity.
As someone who has conducted hundreds of sessions helping people to increase their confidence, I’d like to break down the real keys to increasing confidence and help you understand how to become the most confident version of yourself.
Increasing Confidence starts in the Mind
The real key to increasing confidence and self-esteem lies in your subconscious mind. Essentially, the subconscious mind is a massive storage bank containing the beliefs and programming you’ve collected over your lifetime.
If we could imagine taking a peek inside the subconscious mind of someone who struggles with confidence and is plagued with self-doubt and insecurity, we would see that somewhere along the way they’ve collected the belief that they are not good enough.
A lot of the time, this programming started in childhood. Perhaps there were times when you were made to feel bad about yourself, or times when influential people in your life (your parents or caregivers) caused you to question your worth.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you suffered trauma, a lot of the time it’s seemingly insignificant events that pile up over time, causing you to see yourself as less than. This could be a parent that withholds love, causing you to believe that you aren’t good enough, or living in a household where you were constantly unfavorably compared to your siblings, causing you to feel like you never measure up.
As a child, you don’t have the ability to think critically about these kinds of experiences, and instead simply accept them as the truth. If your Mom makes you feel like you’re a nuisance when you’re trying to get her love and attention, you don’t question whether she’s just overwhelmed or stressed, you simply accept that you are annoying and unloved.
Over time, this becomes a core belief, impacting your self perception, and ultimately, your behavior. Perhaps by the time you start school, you’ve already been conditioned by your experiences to believe that you’re unworthy of love, or that you’re not good enough. Now when it comes to interacting with your teacher or classmates, you’re afraid to be rejected in the same way you felt rejected by your parents, so you don’t raise your hand, or you don’t seek new friendships.
Any time you feel that sense of rejection, whether it be from a friend making you feel bad, or your teacher pointing out your mistakes, your subconscious logs that as evidence to strengthen the belief that you really aren’t good enough, further enforcing your insecure self perception.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more evidence you have to support the belief that you aren’t good enough, the more insecure you feel.
Releasing Shame to Increase Confidence
The root of insecurity is shame. It’s the reason changing your behavior to match that of a confident person don’t heal insecurity in the long term. Shame is the underlying emotion that fuels the belief that you aren’t enough. To heal self-esteem in the long term, you have to address the underlying shame, and change your self perception.
In Hypnotherapy, we use a strategy commonly referred to as ‘regress to cause’. This means that we can get straight to the root of the shame and release it on a subconscious level. This is what makes hypnotherapy stand out from other forms of therapy.
When you go into hypnosis, you are connecting to your subconscious mind with less interference from your conscious mind. This means that you are more open to new ideas and new ways of seeing things, helping you to release feelings of shame, (even as far back as early childhood) and change the way you see yourself.
The biggest difference between regressing to cause in hypnosis, and trying to find the cause in a conscious state (such as talk therapy) is that in hypnosis you are accessing more of your mind. That means you have access to earlier memories, and more deeply suppressed emotions. Simply put, you might not remember where the shame and insecurity came from in a conscious state, but when you go into the meditative state of hypnosis, you can access the memories and emotions.
Hypnotherapy is a powerful tool for healing and personal growth for this reason. You have all the answers already, going into a trance state simply allows you to access them.
Confidence Becomes Your Natural State
The real kicker is that confidence is your natural state. When you are at peace with yourself, you are naturally confident. After healing the root cause of your shame and negative self perception, you start to see yourself differently, and without having to “act” like a confident person, you find that you simply ARE confident.
That’s the incredible thing about healing. No more “fake it till you make it”. You simply start to see yourself in a new light and have a more positive belief in yourself. This change is echoed in the way you conduct yourself, in the way you speak, and the way you behave.
Because you’re no longer carrying that underlying shame about yourself, you naturally want better for yourself and are more willing to go after it. Soon, you are building all kinds of new evidence to support this new belief that you are worthy, valued and enough, and that positive self belief gets stronger and stronger.
The Next Steps
While all of this information is great, it doesn’t help you increase your confidence unless you actually put it to use. If you’re new to hypnotherapy and are curious to see if it could be a good fit for you, check out this post which talks all about the process and answers some of your burning questions like ‘how many sessions will I need?’ and ‘how effective is it?’.
If you’re ready to take action and really change your life in a major way, then be sure to check out my Hypnotherapy Services page. You can choose an option that works best for you, or even schedule a Free Consultation to speak with me directly.
And there you have it. Remember, information isn’t power; it’s potential. You have all the potential you need to increase your confidence and reprogram your self perception, the key is action.
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