logical thinking?

by Leah
(Texas)

I lack self-confidence because I do dumb things sometimes. I don't reason or think logically and I have poor problem solving skills. How can I deal with or overcome this?

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Visitor's Comments

Date: March 6, 2008
Posted by: Catherine, www.Life-With-Confidence.com

Hi Leah,

Everyone does dumb things sometimes. It's how we learn. Making mistakes can show us that there are better ways of accomplishing tasks.

The important thing is how you react when you make a mistake. Lisa Nichols (she's a motivational speaker) says "They're not mistakes, they're feedback" which I think is a great way to view them. So, every time you make a mistake, you've just learned something incredibly valuable which means that the next time you come across a similar situation, you're going to have a much better idea of how to approach it.

So, forgive yourself for making mistakes. They can be really good things sometimes. I wrote an article on this you can read here

The next part of overcoming this is to listen to how you talk to yourself. It sounds like you're being really quite hard on yourself. Take a look at this article on how to change what you're telling yourself "How Do You Talk To Yourself?"

Sometimes, we're our own worst enemy in that we put ourselves down when really there's no need to. So, pay attention to what you're telling yourself and when you hear those negative thoughts, tell yourself something like, "cancel, cancel, cancel" and replace it with a more encouraging thought. Say what you would say to your best friend, "You're doing great" or "good for you trying this."

Also, as long as you continue to believe that you have poor problem solving skills etc. that's what you'll do. So, you need to start seeing yourself as someone who is good at solving problems. Take this situation for example, you realized that you'd like to improve your skills in a certain area so you started asking "how can I?" questions. That's exactly what someone with good problem solving skills does. They figure out what the issue is and then find the solutions. So, you do have good problem solving skills, you just haven't been giving yourself credit for it.

So, keep asking the "how can I?" questions and you'll find lots of solutions to your questions.

Someone else asked how they could start to build their self confidence, so you might want to read the answer to that one as well. You can read it here.

So, hopefully that's a start for you. Please feel free to ask more questions if you have them. Building your self confidence isn't as hard as you might think it is. You're already doing a great job in starting and you'll find that it just keeps building and building with each little step you take. You're doing great in that awareness is the first step so you're well on your way.