Has anyone ever told you to be confident? If you suffer from a lack of confidence, then such advice might not appear all that helpful.

Let your positivity become a habit

How do you become more confident? Confidence is a fascinating phenomenon, and the subject of much study by psychologists and sports psycho-logists in the fitness realm.

Confidence can drive us to achieve anything from modest, personal goals to great things. It can fill us with pride and satisfaction or even be an inspiring force for all those around us.

The question I like to put to people is this: do you need to achieve lots of great things before you can be confident and proud of yourself, or is it the other way round? By the other way round I mean, starting with being proud and confident from the outset and achieving things precisely as a result of your positive and productive state of mind.

Adding healthy measures of confidence and pride into absolutely everything we do makes us better and leads potentially to the achievement of great things. For anything from cleaning the kitchen to writing a curriculum vitae, be the best you can be and don’t sell yourself short.

There might be other people out there you would do your best for, so why not start at home and do the best you can for yourself too? Positivity is a general feedback loop that spills out into everything we think, feel and eventually do.

Changing our thinking patterns to more positive ones might be a tall order when we’re not used to it, but here’s something much easier to start off with. If suddenly reprogramming your mind from one day to the next and only thinking positive thoughts sounds a little too dramatic, then why not start by at least eliminating the negative thoughts?

Here’s some thoughts you can eliminate right off the bat; negative thoughts about your own body. Making negative or self-abasing remarks about ourselves, particularly our weight, has come to be known among other terms as ‘fat talk’, and is something pychologists have begun investigating in more depth.

Have you ever cursed your hips or thighs? Or grabbed your tummy in disgust? Beware, you just might become a ‘fat talker’, and according to researchers at the University of Notre Dame, nobody likes a fat talker. A study surfaced this month from the Notre Dame’s Body Image and Eating Disorders lab, investigating the dangers of fat talking.

College-aged women were enlisted into the study and shown a series of images of both overweight and underweight females. The females in the images are engaged in either fat talk or positive talk about their bodies.

Later, the participants were asked to rate the women in a variety of areas, including how likeable they were. So how did fat talk affect their likeability? Did the participants sympathise or associate with the fat talkers?

In short, no. Not only did they not sympathise or associate, they disliked them. Whether or not the females were overweight, those who made negative fat talking comments about themselves were found to be less likeable than those who were more positive about themselves. This is surprising since self-abasing comments were previously thought by many psychologists to represent a form of social bonding between females.

So not only can fat talk lead to dissatisfaction with oneself, but apparently it even makes you unlikeable. It seems participants were more drawn to females who thought more highly of themselves and made positive remarks about their bodies, even if they were a little overweight. Some time ago, we discussed on this very page what constitutes the ideal motivation to begin exercising, and self-dissatisfaction or even self-hatred are certainly not the best foundations on which to build a new and positive direction in life.

What psychologists call ‘body dissatisfaction’ could result if your fat talk is left unchecked, and has been linked to the development of eating disorders. And just as risky as fat talk is another negative type of discourse investigated in separate studies in the UK: ‘old talk’. This becomes more prevalent with age and might involve commenting about being too old or past your prime rather than about being too hefty round the hips or thighs.

Continue down the road of self-dissatisfaction and later on you could risk indulging in emotional eating or unhealthy weight control behaviours. In severe cases, it could also lead to stress, low self-esteem, or worse, depression.

Break the cycle today and start being more positive in word and thought. Use positive motivational factors instead of negative, think of the benefits you will gain from working out and enjoy your post-exercise endorphin rushes.

Charter your progress and when you look in the mirror, rejoice in the achievement of your results instead of fixating on your perceived weaknesses.

If you’re not already working out, next time you feel the temptation to comment negatively about your body, bite your tongue and instead turn your attention to pursuing positive action and a resolution to your dissatisfaction.

Let your positivity become a habit and, with a bit of luck, it will spill out to all other facets of your life. If nothing else, it’ll make you that little bit more likeable.

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