What You Should Know About Confidence and Self-Esteem And Corellation With Shyness and Social Anxiety

Have you ever turned on a light switch? If you have, how well do you think you do it? I bet you think you're pretty good at turning on the light. That is what confidence is, it's the way you feel about accomplishing a task.

However confidence not only applies to what you've done before but also to something you've never done before. For instance, let's say you've never tied a shoe lace, your ability to learn how to tie a shoe lace will depend on how confident you are that you can accomplish the task. If you think it's nearly impossible (unconfident) then it'll be very hard to learn. If you think it'll be easy (confident) then you'll pick it up easily.

What is Self-Esteem
Self-Esteem is confidence in oneself, it's related to your self-worth. Having a healthy sel-esteem is essential to a happy more fulfilling life. There are two primary elements to developing self-esteem. Firstly you have to face your fears, feel the fear and do it anyway. Secondly you have to persavere, it's no good facing your fear and running away at the first hurdle. The act of overcoming your fear is what will improve confidence and build self-esteem.

What is Self-Image
Your self-image is the image you see when you imagine yourself in your minds eye. Do you see a positive, healthy, attractive and popular person or do you see a negative, unhealthy, ugly and unpopular person. This image you hold yourself will affect your self-esteem and self-worth. Change your self-image and you'll change how you feel about yourself whether it's for the better or worse.

Take the extreme case of someone suffering form anorexia. This persons self-image is of a fat person, even though they know intalectually that any person of their height and weight is too skinny the self-image they hold of themselves is of a fat person. It doesn't matter how much they weigh they will always see themselves as a fat person. If you can change their self-image into someone who is ugly because they're too shinny then the anorexia will be cured. However this is easier said than done and could have the opposite effect which could result in the person over eating and becomes fat.

What is Self-Worth
Self-Worth is how much you value yourself as a person. People with a low self worth tend to be depressed and unhappy with life. The sort of self-talk that they use would be something like this. Why does nobody like me, why would anybody want me, I'm a nobody nobody even knows I exist so they won't miss me when I'm gone This type of negative self talk sends you on a downward spiral and in extreme cases can lead to suicide.

Self-worth, Self-Image and Self-esteem are all related in one way or the other. Confidence is also related but on a lesser scale. Even a person with the lowest self-esteem still has the confidence to turn on the light switch but may not have the confidence to learn something new.

Shyness and Social Anxiety

Shyness and social anxiety are a fear of social situations. There are varying degrees of it and everybody has suffered from it some point in their lives. For most people it is limited to just a few situations such as nervousness around someone who you are attracted to or public speaking and other similar circumstances. For these people it doesn't really affect their lives in any significant way but for those with a more severe social phobia the effects are much worse.

This type of fear can have dramatic effects on your behavior and the things you say. You may find yourself mumbling, speaking too fast, and falling over your words as well as physical symptoms such as blushing, trembling and sweating. Whatever your symptoms are they're never pleasant.

Many people experience symptoms of fear even at he thought of being in such situations. They think that they'll embarrass themselves or be humiliated in some way and this makes them feel anxious and fearful. As a result of this many people try to avoid social situations as much as possible, which in turn damages their self-esteem making it harder for them to feel comfortable in social situations which damages their self-esteem even more. In psychology it's called learned helplessness. You actually learn that if your try to help yourself you'll feel some kind of pain and therefore will stop trying.

Learned helplessness is an ever increasing downward spiral, one which must be broken in order to overcome the anxiety. On a lighter note when you break the downward spiral the opposite can happen. You'll be on an ever increasing upward spiral. You do something in a social situation that you wouldn't normally be able to do which then increases your self-esteem, enabling you to be a little more daring next time which increases your self-esteem even more, up and up you go.

The hardest part is interrupting the learned helplessness pattern to put you on the right track up the spiral. The best way to achieve this is to start small. Do something that makes you feel a little anxious at first. A small victory like this will set you on the right path so you can go for the bigger things in the future. 

This is the only way you can overcome your anxiety. You must face your fear, feel it and do it anyway. It's a catch 22 situation, you're too scared to do the act but you can't do it until you overcome the fear. That's why I suggest you start off small and build up from there. Before you know it what once absolutely terrified you will make you feel only a little anxious because your confidence in your ability has increase as a result of an increase in self-esteem.

References:
Shyness And Social Anxiety System - Sean Cooper
https://plus.google.com/109078989589063801288/posts/eSJAFsNYnGq

Quantum Confidence With The Morry Method
https://plus.google.com/109078989589063801288/posts/cfohwaoyphe

Certified Selfconfidence Coach
https://plus.google.com/109078989589063801288/posts/S4Ae6p3AceC

Social Confidence System - Social Anxiety Solutions
https://plus.google.com/109078989589063801288/posts/ABPqUiCrVK5

Social Reprogramming Method - Eliminates Social Anxiety And Shyness
https://plus.google.com/109078989589063801288/posts/Yvri481v5mQ

Dissolve Social Anxiety Program
https://plus.google.com/109078989589063801288/posts/NdjzWZdWCvj