Home »  Beauty »  Beauty in the Mind »  Self Confidence and You Self-confidence and beauty are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. Many times, we equate beauty with physical attractiveness. But beauty is more than skin deep! Beauty comes from within. It comes from the knowledge and confidence of self-worth. It comes from the confidence of accepting yourself as you are.

Here are some excerpts from the book Self-confidence and you from Sitagita and Rupa. A tribute to all Indian women, to help them enrich and empower their lives. To make them lead a life filled with beauty and confidence.

"Go after the thing you want, with all your capacity, strength and sagacity, faith, hope, confidence and stern pertinacity. You will get it."
- Bertrand Russell

Crisis of confidence

Who can forget the lovable Julie Andrews in the all-time hit movie 'Sound of Music', prepared to face her new life as governess to seven children? Brought up in a convent, with no experience whatsoever of life outside it, she experiences a confidence crisis as she steps out of the convent and into an unknown future.



What remains etched forever in our minds is the sight of Julie Andrews bolstering her confidence by singing a song to encourage herself and give her the much-needed impetus to face up to what lies ahead.

"I have confidence in sunshine, I have confidence in rain.
I have confidence that spring will come again.
But above all, I have confidence, confidence in me."

She marches forward with nothing more than a guitar in hand, wearing a drab, brown skirt, but with a song on her lips and confidence in her self. All of us, like Julie Andrews in the movie, at some time or the other, go through a confidence crisis.

A confidence crisis can be caused by normal transition such as getting a new job, moving to a new city, starting a new business, struggling with relationships or even starting new ones. As women, we find ourselves in the eye of the storm much too often in every aspect of life, in all the roles that we are expected to perform. It's no wonder that we find ourselves on the shifting sands of confidence more often then not.

Life's losses too can cause confidence to sink - the loss of a relationship, the loss of a job, the loss of a dream we come to realise will never happen.

At times, our confidence is already shaky as a result of loss or change and a single incident like missing a deadline, getting a bad haircut or spilling coffee on a document can send us storming out of the confidence 'café.'

The truth is when we crash, it is usually because our daily diet has not included enough confidence eating foods. Confidence is the vitamin 'C' of our diet. Our bodies can only store it for some time before we need some more.

It is up to us to take up responsibility for planning our confidence meals and making sure we have large enough potions of it.

When you have a confidence crisis (all of us do - even the so-called confident people), don't despair. Don't reach for the hanky, or the bottle or the bon-bons or someone's shoulder.

Instead, begin to use some of the confidence-boosting techniques illustrated in this little book. Put the punch back into your life. Begin with at least two, than add a third and a fourth, and before you know it, you will have already taken big strides in your self-confidence journey. Above all, you will learn to love, honour and appreciate yourself even more.