When the topic of how to become more confident comes up the answers are often put in ways which just scare people off. People wanting to be more confident are often advised to gain it by doing a variety of things such as walking right up to people in Shopping Malls and starting a conversation with them, practice saying ?hello? to strangers and all that kind of thing.

To my mind, this kind of 'help' shows a real lack of understanding of human nature. It works for some people; but for many people the tackle-it-head-on approach misses the point and causes a lot of completely unnecessary fear and trauma.

In fact, for many people the kind of 'helpful advice' they are offered to become more confident actually damages what little confidence they already have. They know that they just cannot do. They cannot take the actions they are told the 'should' take and so they end up feeling even worse about themselves as they feel a failure before they even start.

I suggest that there is a way to develop confidence, which is not scary for even a very shy person.

It is a two-step process:

Step 1: Encouragement - learn how to encourage yourself and reward yourself.
Step 2: Stretch not strain - stretch your current limits, don't strain them.

Lets look at what these steps means:

1) Encouragement - Learn how to encourage yourself and reward yourself.

There is 'nothing succeeds like success' as the old saying goes. In order to develop greater confidence we must be wiling to acknowledge any success we have no matter how small.

Most people do the opposite of that. They keep comparing themselves to some absolute ideal and putting themselves down when they don't match up to it. Self-blame erodes and destroys confidence it does not help to build it. To develop confidence, stop self-blame. That will in itself make a huge difference.

Look at the meaning of the word 'encourage'. When we encourage ourselves we say 'Well done'. We tell ourselves that we did good. The dictionary defines 'encourage' like this: 'To inspire with hope, courage, or confidence;'

Did you get that? Do you see what that definition is telling us? It tells us that to 'en-courage' is to actually 'make courage' and to 'make confidence'. In other words when we encourage ourselves we make ourselves more courageous and more confident.

Self Encouragement is the secret key to self confidence. (Hey - you didn't even have to buy a book to find out!)

Say you managed to say 'hello' to someone we would have been too shy to say hello to before. It is important to seize on that and tell yourself 'Well done'. This helps inspire you to greater confidence. What you must not do is give yourself a hard time for not living up to extreme expectations; such as being down on yourself for not being able to sweep the person of their feet with a few words - like what happens in movies. Your life is not a movie - not yet anyway.

You can even reward yourself with a small treat of something you like such as an ice-cream or something (but don't pig out though) when you have a breakthrough.

Step 2: Stretch not strain - stretch your current limits, don't strain them.

This means working with the life you already have and taking small steps forward. Think about any particular social skill you would like to develop and practice on easy targets.

For example: Say you want to be better at giving compliments. Practice on people you already know (but no more than one compliment each time you meet someone). Don't save it all up till you meet some babe or hunk that you are really into. Develop your skills (i.e. your compliment muscles) well before then you will be able to handle the babe/hunk with natural ease.

Give compliments to your mum, sister or brother, friends or colleagues. Notice the friendly old lady at the grocery store queue with the nice jacket and tell her how good it looks. Notice things you admire about people you like and gradually start to tell them.

To begin with only do this with people that you have little or no investment in how they respond. If this feels to scary to do one particular person then pick a less scary target and try it out on them. Once you get used to the idea you will do it with more and more ease till you can do it with just about anyone.

Whatever level you are at in being confident Self Encouragement will help. If you confidence is normally pretty good, but you have hit a low patch then encouraging yourself will turn it around.

Simple arithmetic shows that you can't make something positive by adding something negative to it. Likewise you can't become a better person by being negative about yourself. Give up any form of self-blame and start encouraging yourself and see all sorts of 'problems' and 'issues' you had just melt away. Don't worry your therapist will find another client!

You can use Self Encouragement to boost your ability to develop any social skill be it; making eye contact, telling jokes or finding the love of your life.

Have you spotted the key yet? The secret key to self-confidence is Self Encouragement. Practice Self Encouragement and watch your self-confidence - and your life - blossom.