My previous article 5 Things You Should Do Once A Year garnered many Google searches that I was encouraged to do this post. Please use the comment form below to tell us about the things you think are vital to do at least once a month. It’s important for us to learn from each other’s experiences so we can build confidence together.
As we know, feeling good physically and emotionally makes us feel confident in ourselves, in our judgment and in our lives in general. Confidence should come from within, but it’s also helped by the things we surround ourselves with, and the circumstances in our lives.
Detoxing is very important for ironing out the little flaws the body inevitably experiences from time to time. This is especially true for men and women in their 40s when hormone levels drop significantly and the body finds itself struggling to cope. And if we’re struggling health-wise, our confidence will generally follow.
Just one day in the month can be kept for eating less/eating only fruit and drinking lots of water. Detox the system in the way that’s best for you. Spend time also concentrating on your strengths to harness them, then focus them on situations and events in your life causing you stress and limiting your confidence.
In these really difficult financial times, not many people can afford to pay off their credit cards every month. If you have one with 0 percent interest this is not so essential. Credit card companies make millions in profits from poor people. Don’t be part of this statistic. If you can, pay off your credit cards and other debts in full.
If you’re buying something big like a sofa or kitchen, many store chains offer these on a hire-purchase method, with no interest to pay. Your money is better off in your bank earning you interest, so paying by this method is ideal – but obviously only worth it if you’re not charged any interest.
Debt can cause mental illness, strokes and anxiety disorders. It can also lower your confidence in your financial situation and future. Don’t allow your lifestyle to put you in this position. It’s better to wait and save up for things, than to have everything we want – at the price of financial stability.
If you have a general yearly expectation of what you may or may not do at the gym, in all likelihood, you’ll fail. Having a more short term plan about what exercises you’ll do each week is more productive because it allows you to change the things that do not work for you.
This approach also helps you to feel like the power for change is in your hands. You can weed out the activities you don’t like, add more of the ones you enjoy, and plan your life (and kids) around the exercises you think work best for you.
Don’t get caught in a futile up-hill struggle to get ‘whatever’ and ‘everything’ done. 10 minutes on the first Sunday of each month is all it’ll take (of planning) to give you back that power and focus into finally getting the exercise (activity) routine worked out. With this approach, imagine the body confidence you’ll build up bit by bit – at a steady pace.
Dust your smoke alarm once a month to keep it functioning to the best of its ability. It won’t even take a second, but this is a life-saving device and any such apparatus needs to be checked for their efficiency on a regular basis.
Once you’ve cleaned the smoke alarm, press the button to see that it still works. If you set aside one special day in the month to do this, it’ll soon become routine.
Create good practices for your family, so that when you’re out and about, you have confidence that your home is a safe place for them to be.
Harbouring grudges and envy is like giving yourself a small dose of poison each day. The grudge/envy grows and festers in your soul, making you bitter and unlovable. The best thing you can do for kids, your loved ones, and indeed yourself, is to let go of one grudge each month.
It won’t hurt you. You may feel like letting go means you don’t care that the person has hurt you. Of course, you care and it gnaws at your insides, but harbouring this is in effect, letting that person win. You’re destroying yourself – by yourself – without their help.
Letting go will be hard at first, but like everything else, practice makes perfect. By the time you’ve done it 3 times, it’ll be easier to do.
What else do you do once a month? How does it help you to achieve your goals? Have a look at these 5 things you should do at least once a year.
Modern living means we spend more and more time checking our Facebook friends’ photos of their cousin’s birthday bash. Twitter updates also take away that precious time we once found to play monopoly with the family, or arrange to meet up with ‘real’ friends. We collectively have longer lives, but progressively fewer hours to spend on living. Here are some necessary things you should take time off to do at least once a year.
Remember that a free, uncluttered life is a more confident life.
Essentially, give back some of your time. Do a sponsored run, raise money for a charity your friend supports (building up your relationship for life), or help a colleague get over a difficult period. All of these take away the focus from yourself and validate your humanity and lust for life.
Although these efforts may seem like giving, they’re actually exercises in self-enrichment.
If you’re one of those people who never take your holidays or allotted days-off because you can’t be bothered to – change this now. You don’t have to have an expensive (or foreign) holiday planned. Taking a holiday can simply mean spending time away from your normal routine.
Two weeks at home, playing with your nephews and nieces, going for walks, going to the cinema etc, all inject fun and youthfulness into a life that’s become automatic and frankly – automated. Ditch the iPhone for a while. You didn’t have it 6 years ago and you did just fine.
Women are somewhat better at this than men. Besides, mammograms, cervical smear tests and thyroid tests are more common, thus less uncomfortable to talk about. Men should also take time each year to make sure they’re doing the male-specific tests recommended. Women are living longer, we want our male counterparts to grow old with us too. After all, who’s going to open the jars? 😉
This is self-explanatory. Your dentist will spot any decay before they require more intense and invasive treatment. Furthermore, frequent dental check-ups will identify the onset of gum disease. Remember that gum disease – if left untreated – can seep into the blood stream causing various other health issues.
A full and over-flowing wardrobe doesn’t give you more options, it limits what you wear. You can only find the things you’ve worn recently because all your classic pieces (which are excellent for mixing and matching) are forgotten all the way at the back.
You forget about them, so you continue buying more and more cheap pieces which you end up wearing once, then never again.
If you haven’t worn something in two consecutive seasons, face it – you won’t wear it again. Pack it up and take it to the charity shop. You have to be stern with yourself. Get rid of the pieces that don’t fit you anymore or the ones that look like something your mother/father wears – you won’t ever wear these again either.
Buy fewer classic pieces rather than several cheaper options. Update your wardrobe is updating your look. You don’t have to go ultra-modern, but don’t get stuck in the past.
What other things do you do think are important to do once a year? How have these helped you to better organise your life?
What does confidence and forgiveness have in common? At first glance they seem to be miles apart, but if you look closely you’ll find that forgiveness has a large part to play where your confidence is concerned. A lot of people live their lives in the shadow of what happened in their childhoods, in their past, with their exes, with their schoolmates etc.
Photographer: Tommy Chia
They can’t perform to the best of their abilities because they can still remember what their parents didn’t do to help them thrive. They can still remember the bullies at school and how they told them they would amount to nothing: they were too fat or too unattractive to achieve their goals – too short to amount to anything, or too tall to be accepted by their more ‘normal’ peers.
Not forgiving holds you captive to all the thoughts associated with feelings you had while being bullied. See how thoughts and feelings collide to strip you of confidence. The longer you hold onto the things ‘they’ did to make you feel useless and the things they said you couldn’t do, is the longer you’re stuck unable to do them. Free yourself from this captivity of inactivity by deciding to forgive. Once you do this you can make your own thoughts, your own goals, your own plans on how to live your life by your terms – not by the way others have designed for you.
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Do you think like a loser?
What’s your answer to these questions: Are you a finished product? Is your mind a space that’s already been developed – fully matured? Do you feel like you were born with a certain amount of talent – a talent that’s completely established? If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions you think like a loser.
Is there hope? There always is! At this particular point in time you may be suffering from a stagnant mindset – a mindset that infected you some time in your past, which tells you that everyone else is better than you because they’ve got (fill in the blank). It’s this loser-mindset that keeps you stuck in a low self-confidence mode, rather than your abilities.
You berate yourself constantly with phrases that you wouldn’t say to your friends if they had the same issues you do. You may be thinking, ‘Hey, look at her. She’s so much better than me. How does she make friends so easily? Why can’t I do that. I’m such a wimp.’
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I’m going through a very trying, tough period at the moment. There are lots of negative thoughts swirling around inside my head. Each time I take two steps forward I feel as though I’ve taken three big steps back. I think things are getting better but then I find out they aren’t.
I’ve been reading a lot on the Internet to help myself feel better. I came across these few paragraphs (below) on Facebook and knew I had to share them with you. They may not (strictly) have anything to do with building confidence, but are certainly a massive boost if you’re looking for one today. Make sure you read the entire thing.
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This was the climb of our life. Last year my family and I went to Paris for 3 weeks. We stayed in a beautiful little house in the middle of Paris. An added bonus was that it – surprisingly – came with a nice little garden. My husband was working at the Sorbonne while we were there but we took time off to visit the sites too.
We went to a beautiful garden in the middle of the city and noticed that there was a quaint little tower at the very top of a high hill (picture below). At first glance the hill seemed extremely rocky and impossibly unreachable. We weren’t even considering getting to the tower until we noticed that there were some people there. We couldn’t see them very well because they were tiny and very far away. However, on careful inspection, we realised that yes, there were bodies moving around up there and yes, they were real.
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Last year I published some confidence quotes on this blog and they received a lot of attention. I think it’s time for another instalment of confidence quotes so I’ve spent hours collecting these for you. I think quotes about confidence and confidence building are important because they carry such simple messages in a few words. I know that I feel stronger and more inspired after reading quotes like the ones below. I wish the same for you too.
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