Discovering Genuine Confidence through Meditation

Confidence is a belief in yourself and your abilities. It makes you feel good about yourself, and it allows you to perform better at any activity.

When you’re confident, you can talk to anyone about anything. You can play sports at a higher level. And you can do more productive, creative work.

Benefits of Meditation (for Confidence)

There are countless health benefits to meditation (all proven in scientific studies):

But how does meditation build confidence you might ask?

The #1 reason meditation builds confidence is because it stops negative self-talk.

You see, meditation essentially trains your brain to dissociate itself from the constant “mental chatter” going on inside your head. And this “mental chatter” is what causes you to lose confidence and get anxious in the first place!

In other words, meditation allows you to realise that you don’t have to listen to the voice inside your head… especially when it’s being negative and focusing on “bad” things about yourself (e.g. how you look, what people think about you, etc).

Think of it this way: when you’re feeling confident it’s almost always accompanied by a complete lack of thinking. You’re in the zone… you don’t think, you just DO. When you’re feeling anxious or insecure, it’s almost always accompanied by A LOT of thinking… and it’s usually self-destructive thinking about how you’re going to fuck things up.

By meditating regularly, it becomes easier to “get in the zone,” turn your brain off, and stop negative self-talk. This is why studies have found that meditation “increases social self-confidence, sociability, general psychological health, and social maturity.”

Other studies have performed MRI scans and found that meditating can actually increase the concentration of grey matter in areas of your brain associated with regulating emotions, introspection, and empathy… while decreasing grey matter in regions of the brain associated with anxiety, fear, and stress. Put simply: meditating can physically alter your brain to be less anxious and more confident.

Here are the 3 easy steps you can follow to build confidence through meditation;

Step #1: Learn How to Meditate

Let’s get one thing straight: there is no “right” way to meditate.

That being said, basic mindfulness meditation is probably best because of how easy it is to pick up. In a nutshell, mindfulness meditation revolves around being “mindful” (i.e. focusing on the physical sensations of the present moment). The easiest way to do this is to focus on your breathing. This works because when you focus fully on each inhalation and each exhalation, it’s very difficult to simultaneously think about anything else.

Here is a quick and easy way to put this into practice:

Sit down on the floor or in a chair (maintain tall, erect posture)
Note: I prefer to lie down as shown in the picture above
Set a 5-minute timer on your phone
Begin breathing through your nose
Feel the cool air enter your nose (and your belly rise) with each inhalation
Feel the warm air exit your nose (and your body relax) with each exhalation

Step #2: Build the Habit of Meditating

Meditation is not something that you can do just once or twice and instantly reap all of the benefits. The same way you need to brush your teeth every day to keep them clean and healthy, you need to meditate consistently to keep your mind quiet and confident.

The studies I linked above were conducted on subjects who meditated every day for an 8 week period. Personally I think that you’ll see a noticeable difference (in terms of your ability to stay out of your head and feel more confident) after about 2 weeks… but don’t expect to meditate today and wake up with superhero-level confidence tomorrow morning.

The most effective way to build the daily habit of meditation (and see quick results) is to make it a part of your daily routine. At Inbloom, we are HUGE advocates of morning routines, and we strongly recommend that you create a morning routine right now if you don’t already have one.

Step #3: Use Mindful Breathing

By following steps #1 and #2 above, and successfully building the habit of meditation, you’ll develop quiet confidence that will stay with you no matter what you’re doing. You will naturally have fewer self-destructive thoughts and generally feel more confident. But believe that you’ll sacrifice an amazing benefit of meditation if you don’t consciously apply mindfulness to your life in times of stress.

The key to taking advantage of this fact is to learn how to do a simple meditation that works for you, and then turn it into a daily habit.

Once you’re comfortable sitting in silence with your thoughts for 5-10 minutes, it becomes very easy to catch yourself getting anxious and overthinking things at the moment. Then you can quickly practice mindfulness, stop the negative self-talk, and turn on your natural confidence!

Here at Inbloom, we believe that offering a Virtual Corporate Mindfulness Meditation Session to your team will make a big difference in their day. Email us and we’ll discuss!

Learn more about Virtual Mindfulness Meditation

Reference:

https://www.howtobeast.com/build-confidence-meditation/