Self-Confidence For Women - Part Two: Building Self-Confidence Starts with an Honest Assessment

In Part One of this series on Self-Confidence for Women, I defined what self-confidence is and then talked about how the lack of it manifests in a woman’s life. I concluded Part One by saying that self-confidence can be learned but first it takes recognizing that the lack of it underlies the current undesirable results in our lives. Once we acknowledge and accept that, the next step is to commit to a program of building self-confidence.

Starting a program of building self-confidence begins with doing an honest assessment of where you currently are and then identifying what you need to build on and what you need to let go of.

Here are ten questions to get you started on self-assessment. For each of these you will be listing as many positives as you can think of and then as many things you’d like to change.

1. What are personality traits in yourself that you admire and what are those you’d like to change?
2. What are the things you do to take care of yourself and what are the things that don’t serve you well?
3. What do you like most about your appearance? What do you like the least?
4. When you talk positively to yourself what do you tend to say? When you talk negatively to yourself, what do you tend to say?
5. Do you find yourself saying a lot of self-limiting things (like I can’t or I shouldn’t). If so, give a few of your examples.
6. How do you use your time most productively? What are your time wasters?
7. Do you try to solve problems or do you avoid them? List an example if your answer is yes and/or no.
8. Do you set realistic goals or do you tend to set perfectionistic, all-or-nothing goals?
9. What do you keep doing over and over that you want to stop doing?
10. If nothing were stopping you right now, what would you be doing in your life? (work, interests, ambitions)

Think of this assessment as an inventory of your talents and strengths and use the answers you gave for things that need to change as guidelines for setting goals to improve your life. Part Three of this series will highlight ways to start building your self-confidence.