How to Build Self Confidence in Relationships

It is so important to learn how to build self confidence to have better relationships. As I am moving through this life, meeting more and more people, from different backgrounds, with different belief systems, as I'm going through a process of intense meditation, I am beginning to realize how this world is operating and what the "right" mindset is to approach it. I want you, dear reader, and every one else to hear these words. So, please go ahead and comment on this post. I want to hear your opinion! Also, I ask you to share this with as many people as you can. So, how did I come to this conclusion about how to build self confidence in relationships?

Before I used to go around and judge everything and every one that came into my sight. I came from a background, where judging was a very common behavior. I judged people around me, I judged situations, I judged myself and my mistakes. Yes, mistakes happen (some bigger than others), and yes people create unexpected situations in our lives, and yes, if blame every one (including yourself) for your mistakes, you WILL be influenced by them and you WILL lose your confidence. This is called giving your power away. So how to build self confidence and regain your power? And by assuming responsibility for our actions AND seeing every mistake as an opportunity to learn and every one in our lives as a teacher (directly or indirectly) we are able to take our power back and live a happier life.

So, what are some of the things I have learned? As I go further on my journey, I see how some ways of thinking can be damaging and other can be uplifting. I an realizing now that judgment is one of those damaging ways. If you judge it means that your insecurities are showing. Every person has his greatness. Every person also has his or her dark side. If we keep judging the dark side, we are indirectly disowning our own dark side and giving away our power. This way we lose confidence and it will take us more effort to learn again how to build self confidence.

It seems like a paradox: if we stop judging, we might encounter people that will hurt us, but if we keep judging we will never find happiness. However, this seeming paradox is not correct. In fact, stopping judgments, does not mean becoming more vulnerable to other people hurting us. Stopping judgments, means accepting the world for how it is and knowing whom to let into your life and whom not. This is a very confident thing to do. Here, self respect and knowing your boundaries comes into play. The latter are closely related to awareness. When we respect ourselves and know our boundaries, we can relax and go with the flow of life, without being a control freak. The interesting thing about this is that in this case most potentially "dangerous" situations that can hurt us will DISAPPEAR out of our lives. For example, people who see that we are confident won't try to breach our boundaries. And even if we encounter such a situation, we'll learn from it, rather than assume a victim mentality.

With this I keep coming back to a very powerful model of how to build self confidence in relationships that I have learned from Johnny Soporno, who is one of the most experienced relationship experts I know (not just with women but in general too). He calls it expectation management. It consists of three stages.

1. How to build self confidence in relationships - Don't expect from yourself, what you are not capable of doing right now. This means that here we have to know what we are capable of doing. It is very important here to respect yourself in this case and know your boundaries. When you respect your boundaries, you will not end up in situations where you are overwhelmed and have to struggle to get out from. Having said that, it is always good to be aware of the possibilities to EXPAND your comfort zone, so doing baby steps outside of the expectations is not only ok, but necessary for a successful personal development. Also, there are tools out there that help us expend our comfort zone faster and create new expectations for ourselves. You can read about that in my guide or try a coaching session with me.

2. How to build self confidence in relationships - Don't allow others to expect more from you than you are capable of right now.  This part is not always easy. Especially here it is crucial to know your boundaries and respect them AND making clear to other people what they are and that they are not to be violated (in a respectful way of course). Again, this way you will not put yourself in situations that you can not handle and will struggle to get out of. Of course without knowing or respecting your own boundaries it will be hard to follow this aspect of expectation management. I can give you an example from my own life. Last year, I started a business project with my father. I was still fully immersed in exploring the land of women and unconsciously did not want to go astray from that.

However, I had a business mentor, who was pushing me very hard to achieve something that I did not want, nor was ready for at that time. At that time I wasn't very aware of my boundaries in this case. I thought that I should follow what other people tell me because they have more experience and I don't (which is a wrong way of thinking, every one has his own intuition about things). I violated the first and the second stages of expectation management. So, I ended up creating a very difficult situation for myself. I had to pull myself out of the project, without having to create a big family drama and respecting every one's needs. Why? Because I was not ready for this project. I didn't manage my expectations properly and had to invest a lot of energy into saving the situation. At the end I managed quite well to get everything to its normal state. However, this cost me a tremendous amount of energy AND most importantly confidence. I ended up in an emotional slump that took me a while to get out of. Now I see this as a great learning experience. Want to learn about this part? Get a coaching session with me:

3. How to build self confidence in relationships - Don't expect from others what they are not capable of. This is the latter stage but in reverse. When we deal with people, we have to be aware who they are and what they are capable of. It is then important not to expect from them, what is our of their capability. If we know that some one is never on time, we should not expect him or her to be on time next time we want to meet him/her. Also, if we expect some one to have a certain characteristic, we should not be surprised when it appears next time. Of course people change, but we should only change our expectations if we have seen enough evidence about the new changed characteristic of that person (although this one is subtle, please comment on this one with your opinions).

Once we master the above model of how to build self confidence in relationships. We can abolish judgment and just relax and follow the flow of life. Because we know exactly what to expect from ourselves and from others at any time (in a perfect scenario). The further we explore this model, the easier it becomes. We can also meet and interact with many more people and have greater relationships with women.

As mentioned before, there are ways to accelerate the above learning process and I strongly recommend to try a coaching session with me to find out more about it.

To your Success,