How to Deal With Toxic People

If you have chronically low self-esteem, then there’s a good chance that this came from other people. 

 

The nasty thing about insecurity, jealousy and low esteem is that they are contagious. If you aren’t confident in yourself, then it will often cause you to become destructive and mean. You might put other people down in order to feel better about yourself and you might try to prevent others from fulfilling their potential because you don’t want to be left behind – even if this is happening in an unconscious way.

 

At the same time, low self-esteem can mean you talk other people out of taking chances or following their dreams. This is not out of malice: in this case it simply comes down to the fact that you don’t have much faith in the ability that anyone has to change their fate.

Chances are that you’ll know people like this in your life and that they could be the reason for your low self-esteem and confidence. Most upsettingly, there is a better-than-average chance that this came from your parents.

 

The number one way to raise a happy and confident child is to love them unconditionally and to believe in them 100% and support them 100%. You need to be confident in yourself to do this.

 

So, what do you do now if you’re trying to fix your low esteem but you’re surrounded by people who are dragging you down?

 

The Best Advice

 

The tip you’ll often read is that you should simply cut off contact with toxic or destructive people.

 

I’ll say that you should take this advice if anyone is being purposefully cruel or belittling. You don’t have time in your life for malicious people.

 

But if someone is doing it unintentionally, you shouldn’t just write them off: chances are they simply need help.

 

What you do in the meantime is to surround yourself with more people who are positive, supportive and who do love you unconditionally. And you always remember to view what the toxic, negative people say through a lens of logic and reason. If they are putting you down, is it because they have a genuine point? Or is it because they themselves have low esteem?

 

Finally, try to build them up too. That means you should ask them why they feel the way they do and do everything to support them. You can pull each other out of this funk, that is what friends are for after all!

 

How to Get a Physique That Will Make You Confident

If you struggle with low confidence and esteem, then you should see a therapist such as a cognitive behavioral therapist. They will be able to talk you through the deep-seated issues that are causing you to feel low in esteem and will build you back up.

 

This is the most fundamental and effective way to address what is really a very serious mental health issue. But in the meantime, that isn’t to say that there aren’t smaller and easier changes you can make to boost your esteem.

 

And sometimes, this means focussing on the external aspects. It means looking at surface level aspects of your self that you might not be happy in.

 

The bottom line? Transforming your physique can offer a massive confidence boost. That’s because it will impact on the way that other people react to you, it will fill your system with more positive hormones and neurotransmitters to make you feel good about yourself and it will mean you can take care of yourself physically.

 

So how do you do it?

 

The Best Physique

 

In order to get the kind of physique that will make you feel highly confident, you need to focus on an aesthetic physique. Whether you are a man or a woman, you want a body that you can feel good about and that will make itself known even through clothes.

 

For guys, that means focussing on the inverted triangle physique. That means wide shoulders, big arms and a narrow waist. This makes you look physically intimidating and it is a shape that women are naturally inclined to find attractive.

 

For women, it means developing the hip to waist ratio. This suggests strong genetic material. They should also try to develop a tone physique, so that they are proportionate while slim.

 

In both cases, the best way to accomplish this is with a combination of resistance training and cardiovascular training. And that can even mean combining the two in a manner that is known as concurrent training.

 

The point is, you shouldn’t focus simply on one or the other. Men who only focus on weights will risk looking strong while still carrying a gut. Women who focus only on CV will find they actually don’t burn fat as quickly as they would if they combined it with weights. And in fact, women who squat are so well proportioned that it has become a meme!

 

How to Walk With Confidence

Have you ever seen someone walk into a room and immediately demand attention and respect? This is a truly quite amazing thing to witness and it demonstrates an incredible amount of confidence and poise to be able to pull off.

 

Partly, this comes down to the way we walk. Even this seemingly innocuous activity can drastically change the ‘vibes’ that we give off, and so it’s important to recognize what kinds of signals we’re putting out.

 

Walking with confidence is something that isn’t easy but you can develop it over time if you know how.

 

The Basics

 

Walking with confidence does not mean swaggering your shoulders like those kids that want to be gangsters. It doesn’t mean being aggressive and it doesn’t even necessarily mean walking quickly or walking with ‘purpose’.

 

What it means, is walking as someone who is very confident and very happy and comfortable with who they are. 

 

And as is so often the case with body language, this often comes down to the direction you’re looking and just how much space you take up. Walk with your chest pointing upwards and your chin slightly raised and you will beam happiness and confidence.

 

Walk in a hunched manner with a shuffle and you will find you look naturally shy and retiring. 

 

Often what is recommended is that you imagine a ray of light is bursting out your chest as you walk – which can transform your entire stance.

 

One more important tip? Smile as you walk. Smiling is one of the signs of confidence.

 

The Hard Part

 

Simple. Done and done!

 

Right?

 

Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy. Because I imagine you’ve been walking for a long time. Probably since you were about 1…

 

Which means some habits will be deeply ingrained and they can be hard to shake.

 

And remembering to do these things is very hard indeed. It comes down to mindfulness and of being a little bit aware of how you act and what you do. 

 

One way to instil this new behavior then is to look for a trigger or a prompt. A good one is passing through thresholds and doorways. In other words, every time you walk into a new room, remember the chest trick!

 

Another way is to practice mindfulness in general. This is a powerful and very useful skill that makes us more aware of ourselves in a non-judgement way.

 

Top Tips for Boosting Your Self-Esteem

Having low self-esteem is no fun. Not only does it make you retract into yourself and become less outgoing and less likely to succeed, but it also means you’ll be less happy with who you are. The reality is that ‘you’ are the only constant in your life. Friends, relatives, jobs and health will come and go.

 

But if you don’t like who you are. If you can’t live with yourself. Then you’ll be stuck with that and you’ll never be fully happy.

 

So how do you go about changing this and building yourself up? Let’s look at some powerful, transformative strategies. 

 

Make Notes of Positives

 

It is often said that humans have a tendency to focus more on failures and more on insults and to give less mental energy to wins and successes. This is of course a negative trait and will only lead to an imbalanced view of the world and ultimately, a lack of success and happiness.

 

To get around this, make a conscious effort to focus on positives. Focus on the things in life that make you happy and that you are grateful for, but also focus on the things that you have accomplished already, your old wins and all the positive comments that people have made. Think of one of each of these things every day and commit some time to focussing on it!

 

Improve Yourself

 

Find the things that you aren’t happy with about yourself and then focus on improving them. That might mean losing weight, adding muscle or fixing up your style so you feel more attractive. Whatever the case, simply the act of starting to make positive progress can often be enough to make you start to feel better and happier.

 

Surround Yourself With True Friends

 

Often our low self-esteem is really the self-doubt of other people that has been projected onto us. Unfortunately, this is simply human nature and it is something that many people do entirely unintentionally.

 

The best way to combat this? Surround yourself with people who won’t do that. That means true friends who believe in you and who support and encourage you no matter what. True friends are the people who you spend time with to feel much better. You should come away feeling empowered and uplifted. 

 

If your friends are making you feel small or low, then they probably aren’t real friends.

 

Why Kindness and Generosity Make You Seem Confident

Many of us will mistakenly associate confidence with aggression and even cruelty. Unconfident people are all those bullied kids, the friendzoned guys and the trampled-upon office worker. Confident people are the jocks, the ‘bad guys’ and the ruthless CEOs. Right?

 

Wrong.

 

Often, being aggressive demonstrates nothing more than a lack of self-esteem and a defensiveness. Meanwhile, being genuinely kind, friendly and generous can make you seem incredibly confident.

 

Friendliness is the easiest of these to understand. When you are friendly, that means you are outgoing and willing to approach people as friends. This means you must be somewhat extraverted and confident and it means that you aren’t just looking for a way to ‘get ahead’. You’re hanging out with nothing to gain, of your own volition, because you’re confident enough to do that and because you don’t need anything. Do you see the difference?

 

Likewise, when we are generous, this suggests we have ample resources. It suggests that we are not worried about our scant supply and it suggests that we are easy going.

Even just smiling is a gesture that puts us out there and lets us be vulnerable. And by doing that, we again demonstrate a lack of fear or anxiety.

 

Finally, complimenting people, supporting them and building them up can massively improve our apparent confidence. That’s because it suggests we aren’t threatened by their success and we don’t have anything to prove ourselves. It’s as though you’re saying, I’m doing well and so I’m glad to help you do the same and to welcome you when you get here.

 

Conversely, when someone is cruel or jealous, it often suggests they have low self-esteem and they need to be that way to make themselves feel better.

 

How to Convey Friendly Confidence

 

To see for yourself just what a difference all this makes, try exercising this the next time you’re in a social setting. Walk up to someone in a bar and instead of asking for their number or dancing near them and staring at them, try introducing yourself in a friendly manner. Now introduce yourself to their friends, chat with them and try to have a good time.

 

You won’t believe how confident, up-together and attractive all that makes you seem right away. It makes a massive difference and guess what? It makes you feel good too. So, start being confidently kind!

 

Body Language for Confidence

There are many different things that will both influence your confidence and also be influenced by your confidence. Confidence is often a somewhat circular subject matter and this can often make it hard to know where to start.

 

This is the case with body language. Being confident gives you better body language. But having better body language also makes you more confident!

 

What Does Confident Body Language Look Like?

 

Confident body language basically involves looking relaxed and calm. Many of us assume that confident body language will necessarily involve looking menacing or intimidating, but the reality is that this makes us look defensive.

 

Likewise, attempting to look aloof or cool will simply make you look like a try hard. Remember the kids at school who smoked in their leather jackets and were just kind of tragic?

 

Being truly confident means you have nothing to prove, it means you aren’t overly concerned what other people think and it means you’re able to relax because you feel unthreatened. 

 

For instance, while some people might think that having their arms crossed makes them seem aloof and indifferent, the reality is that it makes them look guarded and uncertain.

 

In contrast, if you have your arms apart and your legs apart, you are allowing yourself to be vulnerable. This instantly makes you seem far more confident because you aren’t concerned about threat from others and because you’re allowing yourself to take up lots of space!

 

Look comfy and you look calm. Look calm and you appear confident!

 

More Signs of Confidence

 

There are other signs that you are confident that go beyond comfort of course. One example is the subtle indication of ownership. There are many ways you can subtly imply ownership but the most common is touching. If you learn against a doorway, or if you put your arm across the back of the sofa, it creates the impression that you feel almost as though you own that thing. 

 

That’s why leaning on a wall or doorframe is a surefire way to communicate a lot of self-confidence.

 

The same actually goes for touching people. And this is why touching someone on the shoulder can make you seem much more confident – especially if it is done in an encouraging and non-threatening way.

 

Remember though: body language is best read as a whole. It’s not so much a matter of each individual aspect of your body language that will convey a sentiment as it is the entire package. 

 

Each Baby Step Forward You Take is Still a Step Forward

Let’s get one thing clear, we have been conditioned by society and technology to expect big results in as little time as possible. Anything from 15-minute pizza delivery guarantees to 2-day prime Amazon deliveries to instant online downloads, we want the biggest and best things in life in minutes. In fact, some of us have become so impatient that we expect the very best things life has to offer delivered yesterday. Talking about setting ourselves up for a letdown.

 

There are many challenges in your life that will take quite a bit of effort, attention and energy. You may be going through school. You may be trying to earn a degree. You may be trying to get your dream job. You may be trying to convince your boss to give you a well-earned raise or promotion.

 

Whatever form the challenge takes, please understand that it's something you have to work on. It's something that often takes a long time. This is what trips many people up.

 

We live in a world that is increasingly impatient. As recently as 10 years ago, it was perfectly acceptable for pizza shops to deliver pizza in 30 minutes or else it's 100% free. Do you think that's still the case in most metropolitan areas in the United States? Absolutely not. 

 

Today, we have reached a point where if your pizza guy does not deliver your pie within 15 minutes, you expect a refund because you want that pie to be absolutely free. That's how impatient we have become.

 

This is why the concept of some sort of long journey towards expertise, credibility and authority is very irritating to a lot of people. 9 times out of 10, people would rather dispense with the process of paying their dues.

 

You have to understand that you can't become some sort of overnight expert. You can read all the books in the world regarding a particular subject, but you're not going to be an expert in that subject until you actually carry out that information.

 

For example, if you are a lawyer and you spent a lot of time in law school reading everything you know about personal injury, all the theory in the world, regardless of how many bits and pieces of information you have managed to memorize, are not going to help you when it comes to deposing the other side, talking to a huge number of claims adjusters and eventually taking your case to trial.

 

There's a big divide or disconnect between theory and practice. This is why it's always a good idea to not assume that just because you learned certain things that it will automatically or magically transform you. Focus instead on each baby step forward you take. Each step is a victory.

 

It may seem small and it may seem irritatingly long, but you shouldn't be impatient. Each baby step forward you take is still a step forward.

 

Refusing to Expect Big Starts is One of the Keys to Success

I remember the first time I learned how to ride a bike. After several false starts that involved me and my brother scraping our knees and becoming bloody messes, we were able to stay on that bike. It was one of the happiest days of our lives. There’s just something about that “I did it” moment when you push on one pedal then the other and it quickly dawns on you that you won’t fall off the bike (and hurt yourself again). I suppose it’s close to the feeling of a bird flying off its next for the first time. 

 

Sadly, far too many of us quickly go from the thrill of discovery and achievement to the expectation that now we can do the most extreme version of whatever it is we achieved. Talk about getting ahead of ourselves. But we do it anyway. 

 

The interesting thing about my biking experience was that we automatically assumed that the next day, we can race in the Tour de France. We basically racing all around the block. We were biking long distances. We shot out of the gate, so to speak.

 

Here's the problem. Regardless of how excited you may be when you first learned something, please understand that at first, there will be challenges. Don't expect things to go smoothly. They often never do. 

 

This should not be a surprise. After all, you just figured out how to do something. Does it really make sense to expect that you will be able to do it like an expert soon after you learn it? I know it sounds reasonable and this seems logical but let’s face it, people often throw logic and reason out the window when they get excited.

 

Instead, be prepared for hiccups down the road. Sure enough, I almost got hit by a car. I missed becoming a potential quadriplegic by mere inches. In fact, I could've been killed. There were so many close calls during that first week. How come?

 

Me and my brother expected to bolt out of that gate and become the best bicycle riders we knew. This is a serious problem because I was expecting big starts. It doesn't work that way.

 

Regardless of what you're doing, regardless of what you're focused on in life, don't expect big starts. Instead, understand that change happens in two ways. You can be making incremental changes externally and this is a good thing.

 

However, at the same time, you're also changing from within. You think you may be going on a process. In fact, you may be thinking that you're going on a simple journey from point A to point B. But, interestingly enough, this journey changes you. 

 

The process that you're in, regardless of how complicated it may be and regardless of its specific details, changes you. Allow it to happen. Allow the stage to sink in. This is how you become more self-confident because this is based on competence.

 

Competence is based on lived experience. It's not something that somebody gives you. It's not something that happens randomly. It's definitely not something that occurs to you magically, mystically or accidentally. You have to work for it. You have to sacrifice. You have to commit to figuring out how this all works out to create in you unstoppable self-confidence. 

 

Constantly Challenge Yourself to Maintain Your Confidence

You have to understand that if you want to build your self-confidence, you have to actually do something. When you do anything, you lay the foundation for increasing levels of self-confidence. How come?

 

When you decide to do something and try to get good at it, you start picking out the patterns. You start figuring everything out by breaking things and processes into parts. You start seeing the relationship of these parts and you're able to connect the dots. 

 

Sooner or later, you are able to know the process like the back of your hand. Now, here's the thing. Most people don't do things that way. Most people would rather take things on a superficial level and call it a day. What do you think happens when you get compared to those people?

 

You are able to do things more effectively and efficiently. Most importantly, you are able to optimize your skills so every single day you're at the job, at school or anywhere else, you increase the value you get from your daily interactions. You stand out from the crowd. It becomes obvious to anyone looking at you or looking at your co-workers that you are not just going through the motions. You are actually doing things to take things to the next level. You go beyond the call of duty.

 

You're constantly challenging yourself and this creates a competence that actually produces results. The more visible these results are, the more likely you’ll get rewarded with a raise or a promotion. It is precisely those results that enable you to become a more confident person. You have a higher estimation of your ability to get things done. You don’t let the small stuff or challenges get you down. You have a completely different emotional perspective about the things you choose to do.

 

The more you do this, the more you realize that instead of constantly crying and whining, moaning and asking “What happened?” you become the person who makes things happen. You become the person who takes personal ownership and responsibility over what's happening in your life. 

 

This enables you to develop direction. This enables you to feel that every single day you spend alive is spent pursuing some sort of purpose or calling. Do you see how this works?

 

The way to do this is to constantly challenge yourself. This means tackling new issues, going beyond what you already know, asking for more assignments, reading the employee manual to figure out the nitty gritty of whatever it is you're doing, networking better not just to boost your sales but to also know the movers and shakers of the industry. 

 

This goes beyond going the extra mile. This is about intentionally seeking challenges because you know that challenges are blessing in disguise. If you don’t think they are, then your mindset is holding you back.

 

The world rewards self-confident people. Be one of those people.

Achieve More by Refusing to View Challenges in Emotional Terms

I once had a friend who was having a tough time in graduate school. He was given a problem set that was so difficult for him that he thought the professor had it in for him. I know you're probably rolling your eyes and are thinking that this is the most ridiculous thing that you have read. 

 

You are well within your rights to think that because there's a lot of truth to what you're thinking. You and I live in a world that we did not create. You and I live in a world that operates on rules that we did not have a voice in. We live in a world that operates on a take it or leave it basis.

 

The world is rough. It's unfair. It seems like a lot of the wrong people are getting ahead in life while good people have all sorts of bad things happen to them. But this is the only world we live in. We can't change the terms. 

 

What we can change is how we respond to it. This is the only thing we have control over. If we were to take ownership over this control, we would be able to affect better changes in the world. We just need to step up and accept that even though the world may be spiraling out of our control, if we choose to respond the right ways, we may end up in an optimal place. This is a much better approach than constantly finding ourselves crying over spilled milk.

 

One of the best ways to come out winners in this world is to stop fantasizing about how it should be. Instead, focus on how it actually works. Once we get a clear understanding of how the world really works, then the next step is to figure out how we can make this truth work for us instead of against us.

 

This is why it's always a good idea to refuse to view challenges in emotional terms. The friend of mine that I told you about was having such a tough time because he was viewing everything in emotional terms. His professor probably didn't even know him. But there he was, thinking that the professor crafted this very devious test to somehow humiliate, embarrass and deny him the success that a great graduate diploma normally brings to the table.

 

In other words, he was looking at his challenges in purely emotional terms. He was taking personal ownership of this challenges and letting the process crush him from within. 

 

You don't have to do that. Refuse to view challenges in emotional terms. Instead, look at challenges for what they truly are. I know this is going to shock a lot of people, but challenges are actually blessings. They push you to be more resourceful, creative and imaginative. At the very least, they push you to change how you normally think about things so you can position yourself to become a more consistent winner and victor in life.

 

Figure out how to do this, as well as craft and adopt your own personal self-confidence plan.