1. Give up your ideas about "sophisticated": anything you do to try to be some way you've imagined that you should be actually undermines your self-confidence... it's like constantly telling yourself "how I am is no good, I must be more sophisticated". 2. What ideas or images do you have about what confidence is? Write them down so you know exactly what they are, and where they come from. Once you have a good idea about your beliefs regarding confidence, go burn the list. 3. Take a look at your self-doubts: what thoughts do you have about that? Usually what people will find when they're working on this issue is that they have beliefs like "I'm not good enough", or "I'm nervous around certain people", or "I don't think I have anything worthwhile to say", etc. In other words, there's some negative belief(s) which are playing in an endless loop, usually triggered by certain situations. You want to be able to become aware of what is on those tapes: to hear them as repetitive, automated, habitual thoughts, rather than believing them. This means you're shifting your relationship to the thoughts: when you're not aware of them, they just run on "autopilot" all the time. But when you are aware of them, and notice them when they come up, you can challenge them. Challenging those negative beliefs is something you have to persist with, but over time if you keep at it, the tapes will become less insistent and fade in intensity. Many people advise some form of "positive affirmation" to reprogram the mind for confidence instead of doubt. I think this is a mistake... while it may produce some limited improvements, it makes the problem of conditioning worse -- you're substituting "good tapes" for "bad tapes" -- but you're still running on tapes at the end of the day, and that's not true confidence. True confidence is being able to be FREE to act appropriately, creatively, and boldly, and no amount of positive thinking will ever give you that. Only true freedom (which I define here as "freedom from conditioning") provides that kind of confidence. So burn up the negative tapes, but don't replace them with "positive" tapes. Just be yourself, without the crippling effects of self-doubt, and you'll be fine.

All you can do is really live and learn. Confidence is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. I think for most of us, it just comes with time. Sophistication is knowing about stuff. Some of that happens naturally, but much of what you learn is done on purpose. Keep your mind active with classes, hobbies, read a newspaper every day (even the "boring" sections) and listen to differing points of view. Just being on AB will help! :)

7 Helpful Tips To Immediately Increase Your Confidence 1.) Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Too often, we place excess importance on potential problems. We all have a certain amount of energy so let’s apply it to creating extraordinary relationships, advancing our careers and meeting our goals INSTEAD of wasting that energy worrying. Take action on what you have control over and minimize risks for what you don’t. Then invest your energy wisely. 2.) In doing something for the first time, imagine that you have already done it in the past. Close your eyes, then vividly imagine you succeeding wildly at what you are really going to do for the first time. The mind does NOT know the difference between something VIVIDLY imagined and something real. Make it vivid by involving all 5 senses. 3.) Find someone who is already confident in that area and copy them. Model as many of their behaviors, attitudes, values, and beliefs for the context you want to be confident in as you can. How can you do this? Talk with them if you have access to them. If you don’t have access to them, get as much exposure to them as you can. This could be talking to people who know the person and/or buying their products if they have some. 4.) Use the “as-if” frame. I literally love this frame of mind. If you were confident, how would you be acting? How would you be moving? How would you be speaking? What would you be thinking? What would you tell yourself inside? By asking yourself these questions, you are literally forced to answer them by going into a confident state. You will then be acting “as-if” you are confident. Now just forget you are acting long enough and pretty soon you’ll develop it into a habit. 5.) Go into the future and ask if what you’re faced with is such a big deal. This might be a bit morbid and yet this works tremendously well. Imagine yourself on your deathbed looking back over your life. You are surrounded by your friends and family. You’re reviewing your life. Is what you’re faced with now even going to pop up? That’s highly unlikely. Keeping things in proper perspective really diminishes fear. 6.) Remember that you lose out on 100% of the opportunities that you never go for. To get what you want, ask for it. I fully believe that if I ask enough people for whatever I want, I can get it. This is not necessarily true and yet it’s a useful belief. As you think about your goals and what you are striving for, how effective would it be for you to believe that all the people out there want to help you if you only ask? Whether that is true or not in the “real world” does not matter. If you find that belief empowering, I invite you to adopt it as your own. 7.) Disarm the nagging, negative internal voice. That negative internal voice can keep anyone stopped. To disarm the internal voice, imagine a volume control and lower the volume. Or how about changing the internal voice to Mickey Mouse? Do you think you could take Mickey Mouse seriously if he were criticizing you? Change the voice to a clown voice. The point is to disarm the voice by altering the way it nags at you. If I hear my own voice nagging me, it stops me. If I hear a clown voice, I laugh and continue onward.