Emotions are motions with energy: it defines your actions and results

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former award winning body-builder, once said that in a body-building contest, the top 5 contenders all look the same, they look good, have amazing muscle mass and strength. But one thing that separates the winner from the rest is his confidence. He moves, he acts and he smiles like a champion, in his mind, he IS the winner. Confidence and self-belief is the 'cutting-edge' attribute that makes him outshine others and take home the trophy. The good news is that, this also applies to our every day lives! Ever met someone that radiates confidence, exuding signs of success? You don't even need to talk to that person, you can feel it. Confidence is something you cannot fake, but it is something you can work towards and build. Being successful begins with building your self-esteem and confidence. Follow these four steps to boost your confidence in all venues of life. 

1. Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Learning who you are doesn't happen overnight and will require a lot of soul searching. A good start is to write down your strengths and weakness on paper. Be brutally honest with yourself and dissect every part of your life to really understand who you are. This is the first step, really knowing who you are. Focus on your strengths, magnify, amplify them and try to utilise your strengths in every day life. If one of your weakness is a vital flaw that restricts you from being happy or successful, you must learn to accept it. This is the second step, learn to accept your weaknesses. There is nothing wrong with having weaknesses -- nobody's perfect! If you want to improve and be a better self, accept your weaknesses and work on it. Share your flaws with your close friends and family, brainstorm ideas how you can improve, learn, take courses and be proactive. This step one of knowing and accepting your strengths and weaknesses will separate you from others who live a life of mediocrity and self-negligence. 

2. Trust Your Capabilities

Either you succeed or learn, there are no real failures in life. Being humble and having low self-esteem are two very different things. Do you feel like you are not confident? Feel like you are always falling short at something? Don't worry, no one in the world knows everything and be good at everything! After you have identified your strengths and weakness, trust your capabilities to learn. Use the opportunities of shortcomings and learn. One trap that many fall into is that they have the tendency to compete with others and evaluate themselves based on others' successes and performance. If you see yourself doing this, you will never be able to build confidence. Compete with yourself not others. Define your strengths and weaknesses, then trust you capabilities to refine those attributes and become better selves. Your goal should be to become the best person, the best teacher or the best salesperson that you can ever be, not better than him or her. 

3. Practice Confidence

Just like anything else in life, confidence can be practiced. Most of your confidence is felt by others by sensory and visual ques. The vocal tonality in a conversation, your posture during that important meeting, the scent of your perfume that shows that you care, and your firm grip when you shake your business partner's hand for the first time. 

Above all, remember that you are fully capable. Let them know that you are a successful person and ooze all the confidence you have onto them. If you see yourself not doing the above things, practice. Practice until representing yourself with confidence becomes a habit. They are the little things that go a long way. 

4. Take Risks

Anyone who is rich have lost money at some point in their life. But many people who are poor have never lost a single dime. They don't take risks. When you first learn to ride a bicycle, you fall down, over and over. Your confidence may be crushed on your first few attempts, but as you continue to take risks with that next pedal, you realise that you can ride. Soon, you are riding your bicycle without any falls, feeling that breeze against your face. You feel good and you become confident.

ave you been living in your comfort zone, never really thinking outside the box? Repeating the same old routines in life, never exploring and adventuring what life really holds? Sometimes it helps to get out of your comfort zone to fully understand what life has to offer. Take risks, win in life and build confidence.