Boost Confidence with Self-Awareness

There is a close correlation between personal leadership and a high degree of personal maturity. A mature attitude toward the world, toward other people, and most of all toward yourself produces positive expectancy. Skeptics often scoff at the idea of maintaining a positive mental attitude. They consider it a facade – a superficial role people assume to deceive themselves or others. A genuine positive mental attitude, however, is an expression of maturity that comes as the internal characteristics of personal leadership gradually unfold much as the petals of a bud open to form a beautiful rose. All together, these traits – self-awareness, self-confidence, self-acceptance, self-respect and self-reliance – reveal the full beauty of your inner being.

Positive expectancy begins with a sense of self-awareness that banishes confusion by defining the goals you want to achieve. Self-awareness gives you a track to run on. It makes you predictable and reliable. It allows you to use your talents and energies in the full expression of your potential. Positive expectancy requires a no-limitations belief in yourself that comes from clear, calm and honest self-confidence. Belief in yourself rests on supreme confidence in both your present and future abilities. It demands that you be goal directed and progressively growing. Positive expectancy gives you victory over the fears that might otherwise accompany recognition of personal inadequacies; doubts and fear itself are never allowed to take root. Self-confidence is power.

Positive expectancy is also developed through self-acceptance. Choosing to accept yourself as you really are – your strengths and your weaknesses, your assets and liabilities– is the most vital and important decision you will ever make. Self-acceptance frees you from guilt feelings and discouragement and gives you the energy and drive to grow and use more of your potential. You must accept yourself as you are now before you have any desire to grow. Setting goals and working out a “Plan of Action” help you identify and overcome natural fears. Fear is a completely normal and healthy emotion to experience when you face the unknown. You can deal productively with such fear by setting goals and using visualization. The goal-setting process helps you gain mastery over fear by anticipating problems and formulating readily available solutions. Fear, then, is a signal for purposeful action rather than a warning for defensive protection.

You gain additional personal maturity as you grow in the development of the leadership essentials. As you crystallize your thinking to learn where you stand now and where you are going, you grow in personal maturity and understanding of life. You put behind you the feelings of threat, fear, or apprehension. You respond instead of reacting to events, circumstances, and people because you have a clearly defined set of values and goals. Defining your priorities moves you in the direction of self-knowledge and personal leadership. You grow in self-respect when you commit yourself to high values and then live by them. You develop self-confidence by listing the obstacles and roadblocks to achievement and figuring out ways to overcome them. As you discover more of your own potential, you gain the confidence that makes you self-reliant and determined to succeed. The exercise of personal leadership increases your level of maturity and gives you positive expectancy toward life and the people who share it with you. You expect the best; and because you expect it, the best is yours.

Positive expectancy produces an effect that is often called the self-fulfilling prophecy. People tend to do what they are expected to do – and that includes what you expect of yourself. If you harbor doubts and fears and expect to continue making the mistakes of the past, you will surely do what you expect. On the other hand, when you set challenging goals and devise a workable plan for reaching them, you expect success and your expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Success is yours. Be sure that you set your goals to reflect your true desires, for the goals you set predict what you will achieve.

As you develop your untapped potential and begin to expect more from yourself, you discover new depths of personal leadership. As you grow, others add their positive expectancy to your own and add to the upward spiral of achievement that marks your life.

LMI JOURNAL, VOLUME IV, NUMBER 2
Leadership Management® Institute
Reprinted with permission

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