Communication Skills: Confidence, Essay Example

From a quietly confident doctor whose advice we take and rely on to a charismatic confidence of a professional public speaker, self-confidence is one of the qualities we admire about people. Self-confidence is a vital communication tool in our daily lives but, sadly, many people seem to lack it. Thus, people who do not have personal confidence may find it complicated to flourish. Self-confident individuals tend to inspire people, who surround them. Acquiring confidence from others is one of the ways people can get successful in life. Luckily, self-confidence can be learnt and adopted.

The level of confidence we have is seen in our behavior, body language and gestures, in the way we communicate and what we say. For instance, in the situation where lower confident person will stay in his or her comfort zone in order to avoid a possible failure, a highly self-confident individual will take the risks to achieve better results and outcome.

There are two elements of self-confidence – self-esteem and self-efficacy. Self-esteem is more of a sense of coping with what’s happening on in our own lives. It comes from people around us who approve us. Self-efficacy is a sense we acquire when we see ourselves achieving something and reaching our goals as a result of our own skills. It is a confidence what if we make an effort, we will succeed. Some people also suppose that confidence can be achieved by means of positive thinking and it is true.

Self-confidence can be acquired but it will take time, focus and determination. There are three major steps that one should take in order to become successful with themselves. It includes preparing for your own trip/reaching towards self-confidence, setting out and moving towards success.

When getting started, it is essential for a person to evaluate where he or she is now, where he or she wants to be, to set mind towards the goal and become very determined and concentrated. It might be a good idea to evaluate your current achievements and put them in top ten on a piece of paper. Another step is to think about your own personal strengths and weaknesses. Next is to understand what is important to you and where you want to be because setting the goal is one of the crucial elements of acquiring self-esteem. Your goal must bring about your own strengths, decrease weaknesses, open opportunities and control threats that might appear. While working on these steps, it is important to limit negative self-talk as it destroys the confidence. You must think positive and commit yourself to success. At the beginning of the process a person will start having doubts and it’s important to put them down on paper and analyze.

Self-confidence is about balancing yourself. On one side it can be a person with too much confidence and on the other side without any. Acquiring the balance and not jumping to the extremes is essential for an individual. With the right amount of self-confidence, an individual will take informed risks, stretch his or her abilities and struggle.

By doing small right things and easy wins, a person will put himself or herself on a path to success. Self-confidence will come along. Understanding one’s goals means analyzing what skills a person should acquire in order to reach success. It is important to take one step at a time and not to jump for the perfection. Individual must always have positive thinking. With time people start to set bigger goals and stretch their abilities as they start feeling more confident. But it is important to stay focused and grounded.

Communication is not only about what we say or how we say. Research has shown that body languages contributes 55% of what we speak, tone of voice 38% and what we say only 7%. Developing good communication without working on one’s confidence is like building only your upper body muscles. We have a growing resource on developing our confidence. And with time person understands that confidence is the product of our internal communication. It is mostly based on our self-talk. Therefore, developing your internal communication will be a major boost in creating your confidence.

Self-confidence is essential for every person because it allows us to perform to the best of our abilities. It opens to us our own strengths and skills that are at times hidden inside due to our shyness or anxiety. It teaches us to be at easy with ourselves. Self-confidence allows us to strive for perfection and not worry about what others think of us. It helps us relax into who we really are and gain our personal beauty.