NLP & Self-Hypnosis CD's Can Eliminate Your Social Phobia

A social phobia is a fear of interacting with others on a social level. Examples would be talking in front of other people, waiting in line at the checkout imagining others are looking at you, or even fear of talking on the phone.

Self-confidence is a demeanor, which allows people to have confident, yet realistic views of themselves and their circumstance. Self-confident people have faith in their own skill, have a general sense of control over their lives, and have confidence that, within reason, they will be able to do what they need and want to do.

Self-esteem is a state of mind that is conditioned through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect success at his/her endeavors. And that very expectation itself will cause a feeling of confidence.

As an example: A young man wants to be a prizefighter, so he takes lessons, and gets a manager. His manager will not put him into the ring until he has acquired proficient skills. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a rival that he knows his fighter can hammer. When his fighter beats the contender, he is successful, and starts to gain confidence in his capability.

With each encounter, the manager puts his fighter up against an adversary who is only a little bit better of a challenger then the last, but not good enough to beat his gladiator. By the end of the third fight, the young fighter begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to escalate. This series of events continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter man continues to win, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to evolve.

As another example: A young lady who is fearful of heights wants to learn to dive into a swimming pool from a very high diving board. So she finds a diving coach and he asks her to take a dive into the pool from the first rung of the ladder up to the diving board. The first step of the ladder is not terribly high, so the young lady is completely confident, and she jumps from that rung, and lands in the water unharmed.

Next, the tutor has her jump from the second rung of the ladder, and so forth. I guess that you are beginning to get the picture. With each new step up the ladder, since the girl was able to jump without being harmed, and the next higher step is only slightly higher then the last, the fear of being hurt factor is negligible, and the girl expects to be successful. When she dives in and lands unharmed, the girl's self-confidence increases, and her expectation of success on the next step up the ladder increases.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-esteem does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the confidence arena fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having true self-confidence doesn't mean that individuals will be able to do everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are attainable. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be confident and to accept themselves.

People, who are not self-confident, tend to rely disproportionately on the recognition of other people in order to feel self-confidence. They avoid risks because of the fear of failure. They often put themselves down and tend to discount or ignore compliments that are offered to them.

Conversely, self-confident people will risk the disapproval of other people because they generally count on their own capability. They tend to believe in themselves; and they don't feel that they have to conform in order to be approved.

Just because one feels self-esteem in one or more aspects of their life, doesn't mean that they will feel self-confident in every arena of their life. For example, a person might feel overconfident about their mathematical talents, but not feel confident where members of the opposite sex are involved, such as in a dating situation, or social relationships.

HOW IS Confidence Initially created?

Many powerful and effective truths impact the growth of self-esteem. Parents' attitudes are all-important to the way children think about themselves, particularly when they are very young. When parents provide admiration, children receive a good foundation for self-esteem. If one or both parents are unreasonably critical or demanding, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children may be found to believe they are incapable, inadequate, or inferior.

However, if parents encourage a child's moves toward self-reliance, and they are not overly critical when the child makes mistakes, the child will learn to accept herself, and will be on the way to developing self-confidence.

A person can have plenty of abilities, but still lack confidence. A lack of self-confidence is often the result of focusing completely on the ridiculous expectancy of other people mainly friends and parents. The control of peers can be more effective than that of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Conclusions That Continue to Have an Influence on Confidence

In response to external influences, people develop assumptions. Some of these are good and some are not. Several assumptions that can interfere with confidence and alternate ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: It's imperative that I am successful at everything that I do. This assumption is totally unrealistic. In life each person has his strengths and his weaknesses. While it is important to do the best that you can, it is more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and imperfect. Let yourself feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that you don't know everything and you don't need to be an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this is a totally unrealistic assumption. All human beings are not perfect. It's preferable to develop standards that are not dependent on the approval of others.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially subject to external influences when you were a child as you grow to adulthood consciousness and perspective on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don't have to be helpless in the face of past events

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Give yourself credit for everything you can do. And give yourself acknowledgment for every new adventure you are willing to undertake.

Take risks. Adopt the attitude of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I find out what does not work and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can try out something else.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a technique to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting yourself to be perfect, remind yourself that no one can do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself while still improving.

Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in the scenes that you currently have inadequate levels of self-confidence in. But see yourself behaving in the way that a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are many Self-hypnosis and NLP processes that you can use to instill a tremendous amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that are lacking self-confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to appraise yourself as an individual. Refrain from the perpetual sense of discombobulation that comes from relying on other people's opinion.

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About the author:
Alan B. Densky, CH. has been a certified hypnotist and NLP Practitioner since 1978. His website offers hypnosis CD's that will build a towering amount of self-confidence from within your unconscious mind. His Self-confidence CD's were recently reviewed by Personal-Development.info in England.