Recently I had discussed the issue of confidence with a friend, and I had also posted this on another forum. I thought I would share that post on this site to show the exercise that I have and do at times complete for finding out what’s “really bothering me” or even forgiving myself.
I had experienced severe confidence losses over a period of a year and a half. I never truly realized that it was my confidence I was loosing, I had several experiences happen that would have seemed to make anyone start questioning themselves, when they allow it (which I did). I started slowly loosing trust in anything I did to the point I couldn’t even make a choice about getting a hair cut.

The confidence issue was really dealing with an underlying problem for me. (Which I know that it is for most) I had to learn to “Shake it Off” and pay attention to what what was going on around me. I had to start asking myself questions to realize what and who I really am. Yes, some mistakes were made, but once I truly recognized what it was that was there, I was able to come forward from it and it has been a large instrument in my growing process.
Three things happened for me to really exercise getting this out…

1) I had to know why this was happening and recognize it and ask myself the questions.

2) The way the I expressed it and got it all out was literally writing it all out. I took a index card and wrote everything that I could think of, bad choices, mistakes, people who have put me down, comments that had been made to me, doubts, fears, failures, plans that didn’t go wrong, but didn’t go the way I planned, anything…I just wrote it down without thinking twice about it. Then when I ran out of room on the card, I kept writing over top of what I had already written. I kept writing on top of this card until everything I could think of was out. I set the index card down on the floor and walked about 5 feet away from it. I realized that whatever I was holding onto was so small and I was much bigger than that. (It may sound a little silly, but it is what helped me see it)

3) I had to completely forgive myself! Let go of it totally and recognize anything as growth in life. Then I was able to replace that index card with another index card of the truths of who I am, I was able to support confidence in myself by getting excited about who I am and I am becoming.

Best wishes for the new day and I hope that this exercise may benefit someone in dealing with anything that can weigh you down.