Streamline your expenses

In addition to finding leaks in spending, you can save money (or help pay off debt) by consciously streamlining your spending. So much of our spending is unconscious—a few lattes at Starbucks, an impulse purchase at the mall, a few extra grocery items because we shop while hungry. By cutting out these unnecessary purchases, you'll not only save money, but also you'll feel more disciplined and mindful about your spending decisions.

Action Steps:The best way to streamline expenses is by creating a budget. You have some fixed expenses like a mortgage payment, but other expenses can be cut back or eliminated entirely. Review your bank statements and credit card bills to see any expenses you can eliminate from your budget. Determine your budget for variable items like entertainment, travel, food, clothing, etc. Consider a cash-only system for spending on these variable items. Whatever budget you create, be sure it is less than the amount you earn. 

Investing is putting your money to work for you so you can make money from your existing money. People are often intimidated by investing, so they avoid learning or hand off the responsibility to someone else. However, if you don't know anything about investing, you won't feel assured your advisor is doing a good job or if they understand your financial goals. You might not know if you're being charged fairly for financial services or racking up too many investment fees that benefit the broker rather than you. Learning the basics of investing doesn't need to be intimidating—it will give you the confidence to make sound decisions about your investments.

Action Steps:Start by learning some basic terminology of investing by doing some online research. Learn the differences between stocks, bonds, mutual funds and certificates of deposit (CDs). Understand more about compound interest. Research basic financial theories such as portfolio optimization, diversification and market efficiency. Here's a great list of basic investing books from the Wall Street Journal.

Finances

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish,
but it will not replace you as the driver."

~ Ayn Rand

Low self-confidence is one of the main impediments to financial success. It makes us doubt our abilities and judgment and prevents us from actualizing our potential. One reason confidence is so important is its impact on ambition and motivation. People with a positive attitude who believe in themselves have more ambitious goals, and they regularly act on those goals, leading to more opportunities and higher incomes.

Whether someone is highly-educated and working in a prestigious profession or as a blue-collar employee, confidence has been proven to be a determining factor for making a better income.

However, simply taking control of your financial habits can boost your confidence and improve your financial position. According to a survey by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc., Americans who have a financial plan of any sort feel more confident and are more optimistic about their futures, and they are more likely to save money and have fewer financial difficulties.

Whether or not you are earning a great income or enjoying the career success you aspire to, practicing smart financial habits will give you clarity, put your money to work for you, and place you in the driver's seat of your financial future. As you master your financial goals and habits, you'll feel more confident in all areas of your life.

Confidence will improve your financial situation—and good financial knowledge and planning with improve your confidence.

 Get organized.

Nothing makes you feel more out-of-control than disorganization. If your financial system involves bills and important documents scattered around the house or stuffed in drawers, it's hard to feel confident about yourself and your skills at money management. Having an organized financial system can save you time and reduce the stress of not being able to put your hands on something when you need it. To get organized, you need to create a workable system to track your financial information—everything from spending to retirement plans. A system will help you pay bills on time, track your expenses, and easily see how your investments are performing.

Action Steps:Begin by gathering all of the paperwork, bills, receipts, and documents you have scattered in various  places. Create stacks for each type of paperwork (bills, mortgage document, insurance, etc.), and arrange them by date. Organize these stacked piles into separate file folders or boxes, labeled with what they are. If you have some information or documents on your computer, write a list of all of these. Here is a good outline for setting up a basic filing system for all of the documents you've gathered. Consider reducing paper by setting up online bill pay and banking, and learn to use an online personal finance system like Quicken, so you can view all of your accounts in one place.

In a culture driven by consumerism, getting into debt can happen without much thought or effort. It's easy to convince ourselves we need the latest and greatest of everything, from iPhones to cars. Our bad spending habits are compounded by high interest rates, making it even harder to stay on top of debt. Having financial debt not only impacts your confidence and financial future, it also can make you sick. According to an Associated Press-AOL Health poll, the stress from being in debt can cause migraines, anxiety, ulcers, severe depression, and even heart attacks.

Action Steps: Paying off debt will require living below your means and perhaps finding other sources of income until the debt is paid. Start with your smallest debt first. It will be the easiest to pay off, and checking this debt off your list will give you a boost of confidence and motivation to tackle the rest. Read this article by finance expert Dave Ramsey on paying off debt

Confidence Hacks

"Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence.
Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear."

~ Norman Vincent Peale

Action is the cure for low confidence. Unfortunately, low confidence has a tendency to immobilize us. When you doubt yourself and your abilities, the last thing you want to do is put yourself out there to fall flat on your face. It's much easier to remain in the safe confines of the status quo and not expose yourself to the possibility of failure or rejection.

There's a reason your confidence has taken a hit. It could be a legitimate reason, like recently getting fired or suffering from acute shyness. Or it could be some relatively minor event from the past that no longer applies to you—but it has grown to monstrous proportions in your mind, and you keep feeding this monster with negative thoughts.

Either way, your immediate or distant past doesn't define you now or your future potential. Change and growth are always possible when you're motivated and determined, regardless of your past, your personality, or your self-perceptions. If you want to be confident, you can be—if you're willing to take action. And not just one action or a few actions, but repeated actions until fear and doubt no longer have a grip on you.

All success begins with thought and culminates in action. It is possible action will result in failure, but inaction always leads to nothing—guaranteed. An essential component of confidence is the ability to be comfortable with the uncertainty of action and the sting of failure. Failure will happen on occasion. Sometimes it happens many times.

Abraham Lincoln had two business ventures fail, lost eight different elections, and had a complete nervous breakdown before becoming president. Thomas Edison, who has 1,093 US patents to his name, was told by a teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything. He performed nearly 10,000 failed experiments before creating the first successful light bulb. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team for a "lack of skill." Even after becoming a pro, he says he missed more than 9,000 shots, lost almost 300 games, and missed the game-winning shots twenty-six times.

More than likely, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and Michael Jordan went through periods of low self-confidence. But instead of letting failure completely derail them, they tried again and again and again. They took action and learned from their failures, re-calibrated their efforts, and eventually claimed success. Failure is a temporary state, fraught with potential and opportunity—but only if you get up off the ground, dust yourself off, and start moving again.

The fear of failure and rejection is the only thing standing between you and confidence. The only way to beat that fear is to take action on the very thing you that holds you back. It doesn't take much action in the beginning. Small, manageable actions in the direction of your goals and dreams are enough to get the ball rolling. Every successful small action will give you an immediate boost of confidence to try again. Even setbacks can show you the value of action and reinforce your ability to break through inertia and fear.

  I've created this book to help you take small and manageable actions to jumpstart your confidence in ten different areas of your life. You may not lack confidence in all of these areas, but the actions can further cement your existing confidence and provide skills you can utilize for related situations that arise in the future. You never know when you might step into the quicksand of insecurity and doubt and need some tools to help pull you out.

I encourage you to read through the entire book once, making notes about the ideas and actions that apply to you and your difficulties with confidence. Then go back to these specific areas, prioritize them, and begin working through the recommended Action Steps. You may find the actions for one area help boost your confidence in another.

As Abraham Lincoln reminds, "You can have anything you want—if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose." If confidence is your purpose, offer no more power or energy to thoughts and behaviors of self-doubt and fear. Take action now, and become the person you want to be.

             

Who Am I?

My name is Barrie Davenport, and I run two top-ranked personal development sites, Live Bold and Bloom and BarrieDavenport.com. I'm a certified personal coach, former public relations professional, author, and creator of several online courses on self-confidence, life passion, and habit creation.

My work as a coach, blogger, and author is focused on offering people practical strategies for living happier, more successful, more confident lives. I utilize time-tested, evidence based, action-oriented principles and methods to create real and measurable results for self-improvement.

As a coach, I've learned through countless sessions with courageous, motivated clients that each individual has the answers within them. Every person has the wisdom and intuition to know what is best for themselves. Sometimes we simply need someone or something to coax it out of us and encourage us to move forward.

That's what I hope this book will do for you—help you to move forward to a confident life where you become the best version of yourself, enjoy the success you want to achieve, and live to your fullest potential. Thank you for choosing my book to support you on your journey.

Relationships

"To grow in our ability to love ourselves we need to receive love as well."

~ John Gray

When asked on their deathbeds what they most regretted during their lives, dying people consistently expressed one of their top regrets was not spending more time with family and friends. Your close relationships are the most important aspect of your life, and relationships are a vital component to good health and general well-being.

Studies show healthy relationships help you cope better with stress, feel healthier and more satisfied with life, and even live longer. Through relationships with other human beings, you grow and evolve -- and you deepen and expand your experience of love and meaning.

When you aren't confident in your ability to create or sustain a healthy relationship, you undermine your confidence in every other area of your life. In fact, having positive interactions with those around you is the cornerstone for success and happiness in nearly all other life pursuits—from your career to your social life.

Your romantic relationship is the laboratory for understanding more about yourself, as well as learning valuable life skills. Whether you're in a long-term relationship or just dating, your relationship confidence is vital to your self-esteem and the way your partner perceives you. If you don't feel confident in your ability to connect, communicate, and interact with others, improving your skills in this area will have a trickle-down effect, improving your health, motivation, productivity, and general happiness.

Know your relationship value.

Often when we don't feel confident in a relationship, we assume we don't have many desirable qualities to bring to the relationship. We look to the other person to define our value and reinforce that we're "good enough" to be in the relationship. In dating situations, you might focus on your flaws and feel insecure about them. But you have many positive qualities you can offer another person. If you aren't aware of those qualities, or if you choose not to focus on them, then you're sending a signal to those you want to attract that you don't feel valuable enough to be in the relationship.

Action Steps: Mentally visualize gathering up all of your flaws and putting them in a big box. Then visualize putting a lock on the box so you can't access it. Now that your flaws are out of the way, you can only focus on your good qualities. Write down everything positive about yourself that you can offer in a relationship. Spend some time on this, and even ask a close friend or family member to share what they see as your positive qualities. Place this list where you can see it daily.