Building real confidence is a process, not an event. It is true that people sometimes have a major shift at some point in their life (I've had a few of these myself), but most change happens gradually, in a very up-and-down fashion.

Think about the stock market: it is much, much higher today than 20 years ago. But the path has not been a straight upward curve-there were ups, downs, twists and turns all along the way. But overall, there was tremendous progress.

Developing confidence works the same way. The path is seldom a straight 45 degree line moving ever upward. It looks more like a graph of stock market results. Up, down and occasionally all over the place. But overall, you will see tremendous progress, as long as you don't give up.

None of this is meant to discourage you, or make you feel that you cannot progress quickly, because you most certainly can. I only point out that persistence is necessary, because even when your overall direction is upward, you will still have days where the trend is downward. Everybody does. The key is to not define yourself by your worst days.

A mistake I must have made a million times was assuming that I was only as confident as my worst days. Today I see this as complete rubbish! We are NOT our worst days, and associating "who we are" with our lowest moments is a huge mistake. It blocks progress and reinforces the same old limiting beliefs we're trying to eliminate in the first place.

So how should we view those "off days" we can all have from time to time? Easy--as just "off days," and nothing more. It is not only unnecessary to attach a meaning to them, it is downright counterproductive. An off day is an off day-that's all.

So why is it so tempting to attach some kind of meaning to every low-point in our lives? I suspect it has to do with the over-analytical mind and a desire to 'control" our circumstances as much as possible. Assigning a meaning to our bad days is just another way of trying to control our situation, when what we really need is to begin "letting go."

Learning to let go can seem scary at first, but all real change involves letting go of something-old habits, behaviors or even beliefs. And when we let go of the obsessive need to "control" outcomes, real change comes remarkably fast.