I need books to read to learn how to have high self esteem, be confident, and be carefree? Do you know of any?

it's called "don't sweat the small stuff", but i can't remember the author. look it up on barnes and noble. com or one of the other bookstores. most places carry it. good luck!

Confidence is the feeling that you are sure you can complete a complex or even dangerous task. Feeling confident means you are sure of your skills and ability to succeed in a given task. It is an internal determination of how sure you are of your skills. Lack of confidence means you are not sure that you can complete an activity successfully. Your confidence of being able to do something is based on your track record of succeeding in various similar tasks. The feeling of self-confidence is learned and can be passed from one task to another task.

People with low confidence level are people who are stressed out. They are so harsh and strict on themselves that they tend to bring their own self-confidence down without anyone else helping them to. So, the first thing you will need to do is to relax and de-stress in the evening after work or 3 times a week. Yoga is generally good; you can try that if you want. Self-hypnosis is fabulous too. But if you do not have a budget for all those fancy classes, switch on some relaxing music and just sit there, with your legs cross, concentrate of breathing. Focus on every single breath you take and feel the anger and the confusion disperse with every single breath you exhale.

One reason people are not confident after successfully completing a task or achieving a difficult goal is because they often do not acknowledge their achievement and may even demean what they have done. Another reason some people are not confident is they look at a task or a goal as a large entity. Success or failure is determined by the outcome that may come after days or months of toiling. Some people wontedly take on tasks that are way over their head, such that they are assured of failure. They do this to re-enforce their apparent lack of self-confidence.

The way to build confidence is to: Break tasks into smaller units; acknowledge your success for each step, and learn from your mistakes to re-enforce your confidence.

Break task into smaller steps: Before you set out to perform a task or try to achieve a goal, you must realize that the activity is in fact a series of smaller steps. This is a basic concept in any type of task planning. Thus, instead of waiting until the end to examine if you are successful, you have a series of successes, leading up to the finish.

Acknowledge success for each step: For each one of these steps, you must acknowledge your success. Congratulate yourself each time whenever you succeed. If you do not do well, correct your error. Take care about warning yourself, except in extreme cases.

Re-enforce overall confidence: This self-talk will re-enforce your acknowledgment of your abilities and increase your confidence as you go along on achieving the goal.

You can build your confidence by acknowledging your successes for each step along the way to achieve a goal. The self-congratulations will build and re-enforce your confidence along the way feeling like a champion.

Michael Teo
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/build-confidence-110424.html

Several similar terms describe the central attribute of a character that decides on the strength of personality and the degree of inner freedom:

- “self assurance” describes mostly the behaviour. Counterparts are insecure behaviour or shyness.

- “self confidence” is the mental and emotional state that causes the outer appearance.

- “charisma” is the effect that those have on others.

Self confidence doesn’t mean being perfect or presenting oneself in a perfect way, but realizing and accepting own strengths and weaknesses, using strengths to reach aims and considering weaknesses as challenges, not insurmountable limits.

It can be observed that some children are by nature more actively exploring their environment than others. So possibly self confidence has a genetic foundation.

Still, all experiences that include social interaction, with parents, relatives, friends and classmates, influence the development of self esteem. Appreciation has a positive, rejection a negative effect. But unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

False or fake appreciation can often be observed with parents and relatives. For example the adoration of even the smallest output of infant creativity, like crude drawings, and other approvals of a child’s intelligence and appearance can lead to a situation of over-confidence. Undeserved rejection, on the other hand, like punishing or disregarding a child out of an own bad mood, will confuse it and create insecurity.

Over-confidence, or the belief in own abilities and performance that are not real, can lead to arrogance. This can either turn into insecurity, if the person later realizes the truth, or it turns into an inconsiderate behaviour, which also isn’t making life easier. Insecurity or shyness are very common burdens and they tend to create a lot of problems. Aside from lacking social and personal success, the constant fear of the own inferiority creates barriers that are hard to overcome.

So what’s the secret of how to give a child a healthy self-confidence?

- Be realistic with appreciation. If you feel you should commend your child for something, consider what would be the ability at its age and then evaluate the outcome. If it deserves appreciation, give it. If you have the feeling that your child is putting to much effort in getting your attention, try to get it back down to reality carefully. Love and appreciation shouldn’t be goods that can be bought.

- Don’t criticize or reject your child out of a bad mood. If you come home after a stressful day and your kid comes up with a picture, show some interest – it might mean a lot more to it than you think.

- Keep an eye on the influence your child is receiving from its friends. But if you have a bad feeling, try to talk to your child before you call the offender’s parents and ask for a restraining order.

- Don’t do things for your child if it’s afraid of something. It might be hard sometimes, but how should it learn to be independent if it can always hide behind its parents? Later on, it will lack the confidence that comes from the experience of having to do things on its own.

- Always be there to give advice if required. There’s a whole new world of complex social systems out there, and it’s easy to get lost. Remember when you were a child probably you can learn a lot from that.

Brigitte Meier
http://www.articlesbase.com/relationships-articles/building-your-parenting-self-confidence-74727.html