This blog post is the second in a series of four on building self-confidence. In this article, you’ll learn how to make changes that will help you feel better about yourself.
Self-confidence is believing in your skills, abilities, and judgments. Having high confidence can significantly improve your well-being. When you are confident, you take healthy risks. You believe that you can achieve things and reach out for them.
On the other hand, when you feel bad about yourself, it lowers your sense of self-worth. You might doubt yourself at work or feel like you don’t deserve the good things in life.
The good news is that confidence isn’t something that you are born with — or without. It is something that is learned. You have a good amount of control when it comes to increasing your confidence and there are many easy changes that you can make to improve confidence.
Therapists use a model developed by famed psychologist Albert Ellis to help you make positive changes. This model is called the ABC Model of cognitive behavioral therapy. I discussed this model in the last blog post. Click herefor a breakdown of it.
How Does The ABC Model Help With Making Changes?
According to the ABC Model, understanding the following three elements can help you make a change:
A: The Adversity or problem
B: How your Beliefs affect the problem
C: The Consequences of your beliefs
Although you might not be able to change the adversity or problem, you do have control over your beliefs about the issue. Your beliefs impact your feelings and behaviors. These factors affect the outcome of the problem.
The beliefs that you hold — whether they are true or not, control your feelings and direct your actions. Consider this scenario. You are searching for a job and come across one that seems to fit with your experience. When you see the posting, you immediately think “I bet they won’t hire me. Since I got laid off from my last job, I must be a lazy worker.” As a result of this thought, you feel discouraged and sad. You give up on the job hunt.
In this situation:
A = Seeing the job posting
B = “I bet they won’t hire me” and “I must be a lazy worker.”
C = Giving up
Now, consider the same situation, but instead of thinking the above negative and likely not even true thoughts, you think “I have all of the skills for this job,” “It’s a perfect match” and “I bet I will get hired.” What do you think your actions might be in this scenario? You’ll probably go ahead and apply for the job since you feel pretty good about it. Just by applying for the job, you increase your odds of success significantly.
Your counselor will use the ABC model in therapy to help you make positive changes that will positively impact your self-confidence and well-being. Use this ABC model with situations you face and after identifying negative beliefs try to replace those with accurate positive beliefs and take action. Changing your beliefs can change your life.
