For the last 35 years I’ve been in practice, people have been answering the same question on their Client Intake Forms: “What would you like to achieve?” Before anything else, people write one thing and one thing only, and that’s ‘confidence.’
While no one explicitly comes to see me for “confidence boosting,” people do come to me to treat specific issues like drug addiction or weight loss.
So why are they writing confidence on their forms? How does one achieve that?
There’s no magic confidence pill, and it’s a tall order to think that talk therapy or even hypnotic treatment might give you that elusive and illustrious Confidence.
Where do you even start?
Luckily, my clients who come to see me are an enlightened lot. They already realize that you can’t strive for confidence directly, but you can attain it through indirect treatment of issues that get in the way of becoming confident.
Maybe your claustrophobia is debilitating in certain social circumstances and that makes you feel inferior or damaged in some way. Maybe your obesity is just destroying your self-esteem. Maybe your smoke breaks make you reek, while your coworkers whom are vying for the same position, smell like Dolce & Gabbana.
So, just as there are subtle ways confidence can be impeded, these issues are points of entry to get you to a confident place.
It’s improper thinking to assume that confidence can be tackled head-on; confidence, rather, is a symptom of proactive treatment of specific issues. So let’s heal your body and mind in palpable ways, and then watch your self-respect sprout.