We’re so glad you decided to check out our book. It’s normal for everyone to feel insecure and experience self-doubt at times. But when you let insecurity, doubt, fear, or uncertainty win, what you really want to happen in your life doesn’t happen. With confidence, you can stop getting in your own way. Self-confidence means that you believe in yourself. When you’re confident, you feel good about the total package that makes up who you are: strengths, abilities, shortcomings, and all.
At different stages in your life it’s common to struggle with confidence. Upsetting, confusing, or challenging situations tend to test your confidence the most. New situations may cause some self-doubt at first. In all of these moments, gaining the upper hand is the result of believing in yourself and knowing that you have the tools that can help you confidently and successfully reach your goals. Knowing that you are your own best resource means you don’t have to journey alone. Fortified with self-confidence, you can get through anything and make the most of whatever life throws your way.
In this book, each activity is designed to help you understand a particular idea. You will learn more about yourself, what pushes your buttons, your self-view, and how you think, feel, and choose to act. Actively working on the activities will help you to learn, apply, and practice new skills first in the workbook and then in your everyday life. Each activity is designed to stand alone but systematically completing the entire book fortifies you to effectively face life’s challenges. That way you can benefit from all the exercises even though some will be more relevant to you than others. You can refer to specific exercises to cope more effectively in the moment you most need it. This workbook functios as both a resource and an emergency distress handbook.
The exercises are designed to help you grow true confidence by squashing the needless, nasty, untrue voice of self-doubt. These exercises help you put your confidence into practice. The cognitive, emotional, and action-oriented skills arm you with tools for success. To reach for your goals, you can learn to cut out your self-defeating strategies and instead use your confidence skills in everyday life. With practice, these skills will become easier to use when you need them. The ultimate goal is to view yourself in a positive, accurate, and realistic way that prevents self-doubt, second-guessing, and comments by other people from affecting the core of who you are. Nothing and no one should be able to ruin your day. The confident you believes in you!
Leslie Sokol, PhD and Marci G. Fox, PhD
P.S. If you’re a therapist interested in using this book in your work with your teen clients, we’ve prepared a supplemental guide for clinicians that outlines ways you can do this. Visit http://www.newharbinger.com/34831 to access it.