I'm Awesome. Here's Why...: 110 Lists, Activities, and Prompts to Remind You Why You're Amazing

PART 1

CONFIDENCE BEGINS WITH YOU

What is self-confidence, and how can you cultivate and improve your own confidence? This part is here to answer those questions—and more! You’ll discover why self-confidence isn’t necessarily an end goal, but more of a journey. You’ll also learn about the six key elements involved in building self-esteem, including recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, practicing self-care, embracing failure, and building positive resilience. So let’s get started!

WHAT IS SELF-CONFIDENCE?

Something many people don’t realize is that self-confidence isn’t really a destination. You won’t wake up one day having reached this point of always feeling confident and awesome about yourself all day, every day. It’s simply not possible. As corny as it may sound, self-confidence is actually a continuous journey of resilience and self-discovery. Each day you work toward building more and more self-confidence, discovering so many awesome things you didn’t know about yourself before. You might find out that you have a natural talent for something unexpected (like cooking French cuisine!), or maybe you’ll find your passion in volunteering at an animal shelter! Each amazing part of you helps fill your internal well of self-love, and aids in your ability to handle anything that life may throw at you.

Everyone experiences self-doubt and uncertainty. Even those who may seem self-assured all the time will falter at certain points throughout their lives. There are a few common reasons for feeling this uncertainty throughout your life, including comparing yourself to others, experiencing failure, and setting unrealistically high expectations for yourself. Do any of these sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. It’s normal to struggle with self-esteem when you’re faced with these types of challenges.

Confidence is a constant work in progress, combining your perceptions about yourself with how you interpret and handle others’ opinions of you. If you work toward strengthening your self-confidence throughout your life’s journey, you’ll realize that even the struggles that come with comparing yourself to others, experiencing failure, and setting unrealistic expectations are an important part of self-discovery and being the awesome person that you are. If you believe in yourself, you’ll develop a much stronger sense of resilience and self-love.

But how do you reach this point?

CULTIVATING SELF-CONFIDENCE

There are quite a few important elements that contribute to your ongoing self-confidence journey, from acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses, to learning how to take pride in yourself and prioritizing self-care. Each of these elements help you build a solid foundation, while ensuring that you are mindful of the beliefs, thoughts, or behaviors that may be limiting your self-confidence.

RECOGNIZE YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Many may believe that having a strong sense of self-confidence means focusing on your strengths and using them as much as possible. However, if you ignore your weaknesses, you’ll never have a full sense of your entire self and your potential.

It’s hard to truly understand who you are and how you can grow if you aren’t aware of the areas that may need a little more attention. When you’re truly self-aware, you can embrace all of your imperfections, and take the time to work on improving yourself in these areas. Plus, these weaknesses make you human. Everyone has them, so there’s no reason to ignore or feel ashamed of these parts of who you are!

For example, say you’ve known that writing is a strength of yours ever since you were younger. You may feel very confident in your abilities, but it isn’t until you are older that you realize one of your biggest weaknesses: your fear of failure.

At first, you may think that acknowledging this weakness isn’t connected to your strengths in writing. However, when you start subconsciously making excuses to not write or procrastinate on a writing project, it’s usually because you’re afraid. You may be afraid of writing something bad, or that you’ll experience writer’s block and have no clue what to write about at all. Or perhaps you fear what people who read your writing will say.

The root of this procrastination and worry is your fear of failure. While writing is your strength, your fear of failure is keeping you from actually writing and also from feeling confident in the work you produce. Once you understand this connection, you will be able to find ways to overcome those fears in order to strengthen both your writing skills and your confidence in these abilities. Fears and insecurities like these are something you will need to work on every day. They are a continuous work in progress, just like your journey toward self-confidence and loving your awesome self.

TAKE PRIDE IN YOURSELF

Can you really be self-confident if you aren’t proud of yourself? Feeling proud of yourself is often very difficult for someone who struggles with self-confidence. However, there’s so much you can be proud of—even if you don’t realize it yet! You’re here, right? You’re taking the time to learn and grow by choosing to read this book. You might be rolling your eyes, but it’s truly an accomplishment to be able to do this. Many people struggle with taking the first step toward improving themselves and their current situation. By choosing to read this book, you’re already ahead! That’s pretty awesome. Having a sense of pride in yourself will push you forward when times get tough, allowing you to believe that you have what it takes in order to overcome these challenges. After all, how can you face