Stop Feeling Self-Conscious

Firstly, if you are looking into personal development, personality type, or psychological state management, you need to take a look at our free MP3 designed to 'tune' your brainwaves. To get it, click here.

Do you know why you feel self-conscious? Some people worry about their appearance. Others think about smarts, status or funds. You need to get to the root of your feelings for self-consciousness and realize why you are so concerned about external opinions. This article will teach you how to find ways to decrease your feelings of self-consciousness. Start to live again!

Pinpoint Your Self-Consciousness

1. Identify what you are self-conscious about. Is it your accent, or a certain feature in your appearance? Do you have a disability or eye twitch? Make a list of all the things that make you feel self-conscious. Beside each one, write what you can do to make yourself feel less self-conscious in relation to each one.

2. Who are you trying to please and why? What expectations are making you feel self-conscious?

Do you feel like this in front of your spouse, boyfriend or crush?
Are you comparing yourself to airbrushed magazine models? They really are airbrushed!
Do you think that nobody else has flaws?
Are you involved with people who have toxic personality types? These people often make it difficult for you to feel confident about yourself because they bring negative energy.
Realize that your insecurities haven’t done you any good.

Reality Check

Do you dream of a world with perfection? Do you perceive yourself as “imperfect”? Only in fairy tales is a world perfect with no blemishes.

Go online to see how many imperfections the most “perfect” people have. Everyone has bad hair days, blemishes, acne or makes bad choices.
Confident individuals let go of imperfect complexions, mistakes, disabilities and funny habits. They embrace it, accept it and look at it in a positive aspect. They won’t let external people turn it into an issue or weakness. Confidence is a skill that must be learned.

Managing Reactions

1. Consider if you would harshly judge others. Don’t say something about yourself if you wouldn’t say it about your best friend. Be your own best friend by:

At least pretend you don’t need to worry and eventually, you won’t!
It is your choice to feel sad or happy. It isn’t the words that hurt, it’s the response to the words that do. Take control of your responses.
Always feel like you feel and look good when you are in front of others.
Catch yourself comparing yourself to other people and putting yourself down. Tell yourself it is necessary to find better ways of thinking about yourself.

2. You are yourself. Accept your personality, the way you are, your humor, your looks, your mistakes and, most important, yourself. If you like your vulgar sense of humor, then don’t worry about who doesn’t like it. Only change if you really want to. Take responsibility for your interests, mistakes and your actions, regardless of whether they are good or bad. For example, if you have anxiety, accept it and try to fix it.

3. Send your attention in a different direction.

4. When you’re feeling self-conscious, locate an object and concentrate on it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bug crawling around. Think to yourself, what color is the bug? How many legs does it have? Think about anything to distract yourself.

5. Challenge yourself and push yourself. Do something that makes you feel excited and confident when you are feeling anxiety.

6. Instead of feeling anxious and nervous, use those feelings and thoughts to do something scary or stupid instead. Our irrational insecurities make us feel uncomfortable and jammed, which is why we feel self-conscious. The trick is to do something scary or stupid immediately when this happens, like dancing in front of everyone or doing a push up. Think about what you value more between what others think about you and your inner peace.

7. Make fun of yourself. This is a witty and humble way to acknowledge that you don’t care and you aren’t perfect. Laugh at how clumsy you are, or crack a joke.

8. Don’t worry about your self-conscious triggers. Note how you are feeling, whether you are observing them or experiencing them and don’t let them get you down.

Work from the Inside

Understand your self-worth and replace your worries with your achievements, goals and progress.

Write your milestones and goals to help you get motivated to work towards them.
Let your progress be known! This will help others continue to support your efforts and you to keep your motivation. Don’t share with unsupportive people.
Celebrate your achievements!

Be completely truthful and overall, work on changing you from the inside out! You deserve to be your best person. Regardless how others look at you, accept yourself. Don’t think about what others are thinking about you. Surround yourself with positive and supportive people. This is not anyone else’s life, but yours!

- Erin