Confidence isn't something you gain overnight, and to use the old cliche metaphor, it's a journey rather than a destination.

If we're talking *real* confidence, confidence you keep with you, that becomes a part of you (rather than a momentary spur of confidence brought on by some guy asking you out, for instance), then it starts with a decision...an intention. You have to look around at where you are and realize that it's not good enough, that you deserve better, and that you're going to *get* it.

To ascend to any higher state of being means that countless changes all have to be made simultaneously, a lot like what happens in the body to fight off an infection or to have a baby. Some of these changes are changes you can preside over, but most of them happen outside your sphere of direct influence. You have to actively decide what you want to look like. You have to decide what you want to feel like, to sound like, to act like. You have to decide exactly what you want other people to see when they look at you, what they feel when they look at you. You can control all of this. Once you decide these things, you can introduce them into your body and into your awareness.

You have to be a little bit detached....but you also have to *feel* it. This is key.

What I've seen is that changing bad self esteem to good self-esteem and powerful confidence is sorta like pushing a really huge snowball. Bad self-esteem is like that really big snowball sitting still at the top of a hill. You have to get behind it, throw all your weight behind it, and coach it along as it slowly gains speed. You can't expect it to fly down the hill at sixty miles an hour the second you *think* about it, but after just a little while, you can clearly see a difference. It's moving. Now it's easier to just touch it, coach it along, and it moves faster and faster with less and less of your influence. Soon you don't have to act at all and it moves faster on its own, getting bigger and bigger. Once it gets big enough, it would be harder for you to get in the way and stop it than it was to get it started to begin with.

The really amazing thing is that our bodies actually respond to our thoughts. Your brain and nervous system is wired in a specific way to transmit chemicals and electrical impulses most efficiently based on the sort of thoughts you think and the sort of emotions you routinely feel. That's why a certain imbedded way of thinking always seems to get its way.

Like...say for instance this is the way you think on any given day:

I look fat

I look fat

I look fat

I look fat

If you try to insert a "hey, I look good!" in there, the "I look fat" will probably cancel it out.

I look fat

I look fat

Whoa, I look goo-

I look fat

But all that is is conditioning. You can just as easily begin to counter-condition. Like I said, it's like getting a snowball moving at first, but as your brain literally rewires itself to accomodate the chemicals and electrical impulses associated with that particular mindset, it gets easier.

I look fa-

I look-

I lo-

I look good

I look good...!

I look good!!!!

The work takes care of itself after a while, and your brain isn't called the "central nervous system" for nothing. Those chemicals and impulses rewire the neurons throughout your body, and those neurons carry information to every tissue and organ in your body, every cell. Your cells - every last one of them - have receptors for certain chemicals produced by your brain, associated with different emotions. With time and with changing those neural patterns, you can also change the receptors. So you can literally teach your cells to think the way you yourself want to think. That means your body will start to back you up, you'll get more powerful...and your appearance will start to change.

Are you ready to work at it?