We have seen previously a lot of tips about self-confidence; many of them are about mindset or taking action; but if you are looking for a self-confidence breakthrough, we have to dig deeper. And this is where emerging popular approaches to self-confidence are going.
The past and present of self confidence: the behavioral approach
We have seen in a previous post (From Just a Child Problem to The Primary Survival Skill – The Key to Self Confidence Nowadays) that the approach to self-confidence has greatly changed in these years.
Once confidence was just a child issue, so in some way “just” a parenting problem. Today it’s a problem even for adults and the current approach to self-confidence has to factor in also resilience.
Dealing with self-confidence in this way will give you the basic recipe for successful action that will build your self-confidence with time: take action with courage, deal with the outcomes with resilience.
When you have the confidence that you will act with courage, and you will respond with resilience, your self-confidence will be strongly grounded. Will reach a new level. We are dealing with both in my 30 days self confidence challenge below.
However, this is still a behavioral approach.
What you have to do if you want to get over the behavioral approach and get a true self-confidence breakthrough?
You must resort to your “inner you”. What does it mean?
Subpersonalities create your behavior
Current research in the self-improvement arena is more and more looking at the concept of “parts” or “subpersonalities” or “aspects”.
All these approaches share a common theory that sees our mind and our personality composed of many independent parts that act as independent but interrelating actors, have their own purposes and motivate you on those directions. Therefore, your behavior will come from these subpersonalities.
They formed with your growth and all have the final purpose to help or protect you in some ways. So they are always “positive” parts, as they are always trying to do your good. You can see your subconscious mind as the sum of these parts. And these parts are the key for your self-confidence breakthrough.
This approach is widely used in modern techniques and coaching systems, for example:
- in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming, for example the Six Steps Reframing process);
- the Silva method (where you create inner assistants);
- the Core Transformations by Connirae Andreas;
- Aspectics by Zivorad Slavinski;
- the Super Achiever Coaching Program from Stuart Lichtman (where you come to set up collaborative teams of subpersonalities to empower you in specific competence areas)
- …many others…
Subpersonalities and your self-confidence breakthrough
You can have of course contradicting parts with contradicting purposes and this will lead to procrastination, ineffective action and, of course, what we call “self-sabotage”.
When your self-confidence isn’t lasting, it means that some subpersonalities promote purposes or behaviors that they think are for you safety but that are contradicting your self-confidence.
Fear of failure is a classic example: if a part of you thinks that if you’ll fail you’ll lose your self-confidence, than he’ll will hold you back from taking action. This will lead to procrastination and missing results by not taking action, and of course, this will undermine your self-confidence too.
If it was possible to deal with this subpersonality by reeducating it to a coherent supporting purpose, your self-confidence would express naturally and automatically.
Dealing with subpersonalities
When you use affirmations or hypnosis, you are somehow talking with these parts of you. The deeper the communication level, the more effective is the result.
How we are going to communicate with subpersonalities?
The basic approach is relax and establish a communication with these parts. Depending on the specific approach, you are going then to discuss with these parts, forgive them, give them the love they need, get an agreement on a new purpose, and so on.
On way to exploit this is with imaginative talk with other people or a past or future version with yourself. This engages your mind in a kind of communication when, in reality, you are talking with the involved parts.
I exploited this in a couple of my posts:
- We did the first in: “How to rebuild self-confidence after a confidence crisis in 3 mindset steps” in the section “How to Rebuild Self Confidence by Letting Go of the Worry and Get Control Back” – (see someone doing this and doing the same way – is a way to evoke your subpersonalities able to cope with that).
- And the second in my “self-confidence Q&A” post in Question: How can I overcome awful things I did in the past? (There you meet your younger self and forgive him – is a way to cure your subpersonalities involved in that).
Your subpersonalities will affect most of your thought patterns and your behaviors. It should come not a surprise that subpersonalities training is a core tool to deal with self harming behaviors, like what comes from your inner critic (the voice in your head that always tells you that you are not good enough). Check this article to find out how managing subpersonalities will help you repurpose your inner critic.
Reach your Genius subpersonality and get your self-confidence breakthrough
A couple of stronger examples of this are the approaches from Borrowed Genius by Wim Wengers and the Raikov Effect by Inspire3.
With their approach, you work with inner subpersonalities to evoke abilities that help solve your problems.
In the basic process, you reach your Genius subpersonality and get help from him. To do this you relax, call an imaginary genius on the topic you are dealing with. You discuss with the genius and get suggestions about your issue.
The mechanics behind this is that you awake in your mind the subpersonality able to express your inner genius, and make this part talk with you using your imagination.
Well, you can try this first hand for free right now. Imagine a problem you would have an advice about and try it with the free mp3 you can get at the Raikov Effect website.
The full Raikov Effect process starts from this basic application to greatly improve on the original technique, that is now more effective and is as simple to apply as listening to a 10 minutes MP3, which will help you to “wear” your new skills. This audio is available for self-confidence and other topics (other sessions include brainpower, wealth, health and law of attraction).
Expressing courage, energy, resilience and reeducating fear, procrastination, approval and another ton of things that are sabotaging your self-confidence, is essentially matter of aligning the subpersonalities that are expressing them and is what will get you your self-confidence breakthrough.
Towards a self-confidence breakthrough
A first consequence of the subpersonality theory is that the more you address specific subpersonalities, the more effective your results will be. This applies also to other classic method such as affirmations or self-hypnosis. Taking the previous fear of failure example, if this is what is finally holding your self-confidence back, a self-hypnosis download about fear of failure will be more effective of a generic self-confidence download.
This means that if you have self-confidence issues, is more effective to deal with the single sub-issues underlying your lack of self-confidence instead of working on getting more self-confidence as a whole. A very effective way to get this is with a wide spectrum self-hypnosis program, that works with the possible underlying issues that are undermining your self-confidence (see my easy self-hypnosis post).
For the same reasons, my 30 days self-confidence challenge is organized as a sequence of mini-challenges of a few days each, that will address single points about your self-confidence (in sequence, after a resourcing part: negativity, positivity, resilience, courage, goals).
Personally, I believe that the future of the development of self-confidence is going towards tools that engage directly your subpersonalities and train them to express empowered abilities. New tools and ideas based on these concepts are coming out every week, each one with its own slant.
The more these new processes are tested, the more they are tweaked and become easier and more effective. We’ll stay in touch with that.
And you, what do you think? Did you try the free Raikov Effect genius process? How did it go? Let us know!
And don’t forget to engage in our free 30 days self-confidence challenge – click on the image below!
To your success
Mark Tern
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