This short article in Men’s Health has an awesome list of five reminders in boosting self-confidence. Every person has areas where he/she may be lacking in confidence, and if left unattended, these feelings often develop into harmful insecurities that can hurt personal relationships or an entire career. In fact, I would venture to speculate that the vast majority of interrelationship troubles can be attributed to some sort of insecurity in one or more of the individuals involved. My favorite bullet point in this article is:

“Self-image is the mental picture you have of yourself. It is not fixed, it is not objective, it can be changed and you can change it.”

Even as a firm believer in trying to find the objective part of any problem, I believe this cannot be said any better. It reminds me of something a friend recently told me about a recent blind dating encounter, where it was mentioned that the other person became magnitudes more attractive as they conversed. Granted, this story didn’t come with a visual reference point and may sound a bit superficial, but the point is proof in the power of changing one’s persona.

My second favorite bullet in this article deals with the issue of boredom in developing a lack of confidence. While I’m not a fan of busy work or delegating work for the sake of image, there is a good memento for managers hidden in this idea, because people with nothing to do or with mundane work will often become paranoid about their value to the organization and ultimately themselves.