Confidence Recovery Process:

I recently became re-aware of why people refer to life as being a roller-coaster ride… although I prefer to think of life as being a cloud with a silver lining. It has many seemingly unending ups and downs. When we reach those painful down times, we start to believe that things will never turn out the way we want or need them to. Then life gives us something perfect and beautiful and we love it and start praying that it never ends and then one day... boom… it ends, and we are at loss again and grieving. The pain we feel makes us believe that all is lost, we even start fearing the next opportunity to be happy, in fear it too will end. We lose confidence.

I love horse riding, when I started I was fearless. After falling off and a few scary encounters later I realized I am now too scared to attempt the flight feeling I crave. It wasn’t so much the horses fault, but I also realized just like with trusting the horse, I sometimes trust the wrong kinds of people. There’s this saying. You can’t trust others if you don’t trust yourself. Or we don’t trust others because we don’t trust ourselves. Of course, in saying this we should understand we must only trust the right people and even then, people will disappoint us. God says to trust Him, He never said to trust people. But trust is the cornerstone of how our relationships with other people start. Its how we start pursuing things we love to do.

I found that although I call earth my home, Heaven is my real home. We are only passing through. That’s why we struggle to fit in, we aren’t really meant to stay on earth forever. We have work to do here, and work is no pick-nick. We have the gift of friends to lessen the blows of this earth and our work in it, but they are only borrowed to us. I have a bit of a radical belief, that I found little proof of except when I investigate my own past. My past prepared me for today, today I am being prepared for tomorrow. So, to me that means tomorrow is preparing me for eternity. I don’t believe that when we die we are going to float on a cloud some where and sing songs all day. I think we are going to have a job of some kind to fulfill. I think the pain and challenges we face today is preparing us for eternity.

So, while I’m here I need to make the leaps of faith and take chances even when I’m scared that it will result in more pain, and sooner or later because we live on planet earth, it probably will, but how do I restore confidence to take these chances:

Confidence Defined: the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something

1. Allow yourself time to grieve. Put some distance and people outside of the situation between you and your pain to gain fresh perspective on it and to recover from the hurtful emotions you are feeling.

2. Keep a self-esteem journal, what gets measured gets managed. If you understand your own thoughts and emotions it is easier to control them.

3. Role play that you can recover and try again, envision how you are going to take that step. And then tell yourself you will succeed, as if you already did it.

4. Celebrate small victory’s, set small goals that’s achievable but helps you to take the first step into trusting your own ability or the person that disappointed you, rebuild the relationship in a different light.

5. Try again- failure is only a lesson and you won’t necessarily win the pain if you give up.

6. Just close your eyes, take a deep breath and do it.

I found that none of these steps are easy to do when you are in pain, but all of them help. A friend of mine says that all I need to do is trust in the process. We aren’t saying you don’t have to trust that you can try again, we are saying that you can trust the process of trying again. And yes, there will probably be another let down, so as with shampoo or conditioner, lather, rinse and repeat the process.

Keep Improving,

The Ameliorate Team

#Confidence; #Trust; #Faith; #Recover; #Fear; #Pain; #FirstStep