The Secret of Self-Confidence

Doubts. We all have them. At work, we know we’re only as good as our latest success. If we’re in a relationship, we worry that we’ll screw it up, or that perhaps our partner doesn’t care about us as much as they say they do. We worry about failing our kids. We worry about finances. We worry about failing in general. We simply lack the self-confidence to believe in ourselves. This is natural and human.

Then we run in to that person who just doesn’t seem to have those doubts. They are confident and secure. They seem to know exactly where they are going and how they’ll get there. But where did they get that kind of self-confidence?

We All Have Doubts

I certainly have doubts, but I also have something going for me that helps me to deal with them – to put them in the corner where they belong and not allow them to distract me from my goals. It’s the self-confidence I get from having set fitness goals for myself and actually having met them. This may not be your method, but the secret to self-confidence is hidden there. I’ll get back to that later.

In a previous post I talked about how our body, and the shape it’s in, is the only thing we can really control. I exaggerated to make my point of course. We have limited control over many things in our lives, but not total control. We don’t even have total control over our bodies, as I found out two years ago when I got Stage 4 throat cancer from an HPV infection I’d unknowingly contracted 20 years before. I survived obviously, but I lost almost 15 kilos of muscle in just 5 weeks and it took over a year to gain it back after my treatment ended, but I never doubted for a minute that I would make a full recovery to my pre-cancer shape.

Where Does Self-Confidence Really Come From?

I said I’d get back to the secret of self-confidence. Some people mistakenly think that confidence in ourselves is an act of will. We simply have to have faith in ourselves. Forgive me, but that’s pure BS. Self-confidence is something we build by setting goals for ourselves and achieving them. The harder the goal, the more confidence we gain from reaching it. For myself, a lot of my self-confidence comes from meeting my fitness and body image goals.

If you’re suffering from a lack of self-confidence and searching for a way to improve yours, try setting some simple fitness or weight loss goals. When you achieve them, you’ll gain the confidence to believe you can do more – and not just with your body, but in other aspects of your life as well.

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Will Dove

Author
Will is a lifelong fitness nut. He started exercising religiously at the age of 16. Now 52, he still works out 5 times per week and maintains a body fat percentage in the single digits. Will is passionate about helping others to achieve their fitness and body image goals, and believes that most people fail to achieve these goals, not through a lack of self-discipline, but through a simple lack of knowledge.