A timeline to pinpoint confidence
Your timeline
Another effective way to look for clues about why you lack confidence is to write a timeline of your life. Especially a list of significant events in your life, with one column describing positive events, and another column describing negative events.
Once you have completed this, a good therapist can then show you how to take your time to look at each negative event and positively change your perspective on it, slowly and systematically. Dealing with past life events helps to lift an emotional weight that you may not even realise you are carrying. Once this weight is lifted, you will be able to stand taller and face the world with confidence every single day.
It is equally important to be aware of all the positive things that have happened in your life, which should include:
Your achievements
Times you have laughed uncontrollably
Been somewhere exciting
Fallen in love
Been loved by a person, or pet
Carried a task out confidently
Said or done something that was appreciated by others
Experienced an amazing date, or a fantastic concert
Re-read your positive events on your timeline regularly, to remind you of the great things you have done, seen, achieved and experienced.
With the negative list, it is also important to consider events from childhood and school:
When you may have been bullied, targeted or embarrassed
An occasion when you felt you had been publicly humiliated
When someone may have said something unkind, or undermined something that you did
Times were you have felt belittled, chastised or mimicked
Also, consider your parents, family and siblings. Sometimes small and seemingly unimportant comments can have a big impact on us.
Did they do or say something that still hurts you today, or is still vivid in your mind as an adult, despite it occurring when you were a child?
Were you the eldest or middle child? Consider how you felt with the arrival of a new younger sibling. Were you fostered or adopted?
It is important to consider how you felt about things when they happened. As you begin to work through and challenge each negative event from your past, it is better that you focus on just one event a time, ensuring that you read your positive list before and after.
