If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero 

For most people, meditation is an uncomplicated way to connect with their spiritual self, manage stress and create a more balanced and peaceful way of living. Having practiced meditation for many years myself I have noticed several other tangible benefits that come along with my daily meditation practice, including feeling emotionally stronger and more self-confident.

If you are looking for ways to strengthen your confidence or improve your productivity there are many ways that meditation can help because on a fundamental level it helps you develop a better connection with the deeper, core part of yourself.

What is it about going deeper that makes the difference? 

I’m sure you would agree that most of us are used to listening to and connecting with our thoughts more than any other part of ourselves. So much so in fact that it’s easy to forget that there is more to us than our wondering, chattering minds.

Regular meditation helps you transcend that chatter and creates a bridge between your thinking mind and ‘higher silence’ that connects to your true inner essence. Whether you want to call it your spirit, your soul, your higher self, or even divinity, the more you connect with this inner core, the more you tend to live your life from a calmer, deeper perspective.

As a result, you naturally become less engaged with those inner voices that generally spout inane drivel or negative self-talk and gradually you begin to notice that your inner self-critic settles down and becomes silenced too.

In the freedom of that silence you get to live each moment with a greater awareness of your true spirit, and in that space, like a rose bud opening, you get to realise that you are valuable simply as you are – not because of anything you do.

Gently, and before you know it, your confidence reveals itself to you and you find yourself feeling more open and courageous, willing to take bigger steps, and taking the occasional risk is something you so in your stride while happily overriding any previous perceived or predicted failure.

Through meditation the very sense of yourself, your true essence if you like, has become untangled from failure programming and false perceptions of your own inadequacy, and like leaves in autumn, imperceptibly begin to fall away.

Though much of this process happens automatically through regular practice practice, there are also a number of things you can do to help things along:

Build yourself up with positive self-talk.

Before, or after your meditation sessions, spend a few minutes speaking positively and kindly to and about you. For this exercise I like to think that I’m sitting with the 6 year old me and giving her gentle, caring words of encouragement.

It’s always best to keep your statement in short sentences and in simple language. Say things that you can effortlessly agree with so that your subconscious mind will be more likely to accept your words without protest.

Try statements like these:

“I am proud of myself. I feel clever and smart today”. “I can do whatever I focus my mind on”. “I believe in myself and my abilities”. It’s fun to be me” “I feel confident and popular”. “I have many gifts and talents”. “I thrive on challenges”. “I accept myself even though I sometimes make mistakes.” “I do my best.“ “I believe in my dreams.”

Envision empowerment.

Visualization is a perfect complement to meditation and can dramatically improve your results. Here is how to get the best out of it:

1. Spend a few minutes each day seeing yourself as completely strong and confident in whatever you do.
2. Next ask yourself what would it feel like to be super strong and purposeful every day?
3. Generate the confident feeling by remembering a time when you felt that way.
4. If you cant remember feeling confident to that degree then think of a character in a book or the movies that embodies that quality. Then imagine yourself playing that role, feeling how confidence feels at the same time.

This is powerful because your mind really does not know the difference between tangible reality and your imagined reality. It loves to practice for success, so the more often you imagine yourself feeling and acting confidently, the easier you’ll find it to be confident in your day to day experiences.

Redefine failure.

One common cause of low self-confidence is pervasive memories of past failures. However, the problem lies not in the failed attempts themselves, but how you feel about them. More often than not it is the self-judgments you made and the conclusions you came to that undermine your confidence and scupper your efforts now.

You see, once you have convinced yourself that trying new things ends in embarrassing or painful failure, every new attempt at success becomes tainted with discomfort and that glaring memory blinking at you in your rear view mirror.

You can’t move forwards looking back

How can you expect to create a new outcome by playing out the old one over and over again? It just doesn’t make sense does it? So, perhaps it’s time to re-engage your imagination and play out better a better scenario using the “what if” principal.

The “what if” principal allows you to see “failure” as an experiment and opportunity to try again?

Think of it like this:

What if you were to use your pre-meditation time to play out different possibilities and outcomes that end in you feeling successful and confident?

What if you already have all you need right there inside you waiting for permission to come out?

What if you followed this advice and had a more powerful meditation sessions?

What if once you affirm and confirm, in the ways described above, that you are courageous and confident – and discovered that you really are?

I would say that without a doubt, as soon as you begin, you will begin to see, feel and reap the benefits of your own inner success whether you know it yet or not.

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