This is a guest post from Allison Nelms

If you’re like me, you have trouble feeling confident sometimes. Slowly but surely, I’ve been learning how to gain confidence over the past few years, and I finally feel ready to write about it to help others do the same. Maybe calling these statements “truths” sounds too bold, but I have chosen to personally believe in them out of faith, simply because it helps me. All attitudes in life seem to be like that – beliefs we choose to take on can either help or hurt us. My life has greatly improved from choosing to try out new beliefs and end old habits. If you want to know how to be more confident, please consider the following statements that I’ve found to be extremely helpful in my own life.

1. You can be your own best friend or your own worst enemy.

You might’ve heard the saying, “You’re your own worst enemy.” This is often true – we tend to judge ourselves much more harshly than anyone else would. Try to give yourself a break! Instead of putting yourself down, build yourself up. You can be your own best friend by telling yourself the things that you would tell a dear friend or loved one. If someone you knew was going through a rough time, how would you support them? What would you say? Start doing these things for yourself. There’s no reason why you don’t deserve encouragement and support, so if no one is providing that for you right now, try to provide it for yourself.

Example: Talking yourself through anxious feelings before a challenging situation:

Best friend: “Okay, I want to [talk to this person/give this presentation/go to this party], but I feel pretty nervous. I guess I’m afraid of what kind of impression I’ll give… But there’s nothing serious to worry about. I’ll probably do better than I think. It’s worth a shot.”

Worst enemy: “Okay, I want to [talk to this person/give this presentation/go to this party], but I feel pretty nervous. Every time I do this, it turns out the same. I’ll look [stupid/lame/ugly/etc]. Why would anyone want to listen to what I have to say, anyway?

Photo by bingramos on flickr.

It’s pretty obvious, I think, which type of inner dialogue is going to hurt you. Trust me, I’ve engaged in plenty of negative self-talk, and I still struggle occasionally. It’s an on-going process. I know how hard it can be to break out of the habit of bashing yourself, but let me assure you that it’s absolutely possible.

If you wonder how it’s possible to be your own best friend, consider how it’s possible for you to be your own worst enemy. What are some of the negative thoughts you tell yourself? The fact of the matter is these are just beliefs you are choosing to accept based on faith, self-fulfilling prophecy, or some outside source. Fortunately you aren’t stuck with these thoughts – it is possible to let them go over time.

When you decide to start building yourself up rather than breaking yourself down, you will inevitably gain more experience that will strengthen you and build your confidence. One way to gain more experience is to consider the next new belief.

2. Failure is all about perspective.

How you identify failure and what you do with it can greatly affect your confidence. You can either see failures as failures, or you can see them as experiences that didn’t go the way you hoped or planned for. Failure can be such a harsh word. I’ve only called myself a failure once or twice in my life, and I remember I felt terrible as soon as I said it. No matter what you decide to call it, what really makes a difference is how you process the experience and what you do with it. There are various perspectives you can choose to take on failure.

Example: Using failure as a learning experience rather than a reason to discourage you from living freely.

Failure setting you back: “Well, I knew that was gonna happen. I’ll never try doing that again… why even bother? I’m a failure.”

Failure moving you forward: “Well, that sucks. I feel pretty disappointed. But maybe [this wasn't my fault/the odds were against me/it'll go better next time/etc]. At least I took a chance, which is better than not doing anything at all. I know what it’s like to not try, and that doesn’t ever feel good.”

Do you see how it’s more helpful to use failure as a tool for your own success? Nothing great can come from giving up and calling yourself a failure. Instead, use perceived failure to your advantage. If you try something and mess up, so what? Did the world end? You might as well take it as a learning experience and opportunity to grow. When you can accept this idea, it’ll be easier to acknowledge and act on the next new belief.

3. Confidence will come from facing your fears.

Think about it – if you were already absolutely confident about everything, you wouldn’t have a single fear! Confidence comes after you face your fears, meaning there’s no quick and easy way to total confidence. The type of confidence you can have right now, however, is the kind that propels you to taking risks and facing your fears. There has to be some part of you deep inside that believes, “I can do it.” Find this voice. You wouldn’t be reading this article right now if that courage didn’t exist within you.

During my time in therapy, I’ve come across some very powerful and inspiring quotes shared by my therapist and others that moved me forward and continue to today. I’d like to share one that I find particularly moving and relevant:

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”   Mary Anne Radmacher

This is a popular quote for a reason. You will be more confident after you decide to listen to that quiet voice. Have the strength to face whatever makes you feel afraid, knowing that you will survive. You could come out of the experience learning that you can handle the situation in the future.

The things we fear are often dramatized in our heads. Did you ever get through an experience you feared and thought, “That’s wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be!”? Remember that experience and use it to give you more confidence. Even if an experience turns out to be just as scary or even worse than you expected, that’s okay. You got through it, and you should acknowledge that as a success regardless.

As you face your fears more and more, the anxiety will decrease over time as long as you persist through it. If you bail on the experience early, the anxiety can come back stronger in the future. The key is to persist. It can take some time for the brain to learn that these situations are not worthy of fight-or-flight responses. (Check back soon for an article on this concept in greater detail.)

The thing about this belief is you have to act on it to gain confidence, and you will be more willing to act on it if you can believe in the next idea.

4. You can’t compare to anyone, and no one can compare to you.

This is a tough one. I would guess that this is one of the hardest concepts for people to accept, but once they do, it is life-changing. I admit that I’m still learning to live by this belief today.

Photo by pinksherbet on flickr.

You are an incredibly unique person, and your uniqueness is what makes you a valuable person. Everyone is valuable! It can be thrilling to imagine how truly unique every single person is. We all have different personalities, appearances, voices, perspectives, hopes, fears, and dreams. We come from different cultures and families. There are so many variables that make each of us unique, and that’s beautiful. So how can we compare ourselves? It’s one thing to say Bob is better at playing basketball than Bill, but it doesn’t make sense to say Bill is inferior, or Bob is a better person. And that’s exactly what we do when we compare ourselves to others and base our value on things like appearance and achievements.

When you acknowledge your uniqueness and inherent value, you can let go of the need for others’ approval to feel good about yourself. You can also let go of the pressure to meet other people’s standards. It’s difficult to do this, because it’s become a habit. Most of us have been conditioned since our childhood to seek approval and meet certain standards. Acceptance from our parents, teachers, and friends could have come from how well we did at something, for example. Then as we grow older, we learn about societal values and the importance of wealth, success, and power. We also learn that other people have expectations, and combined with whatever type of habits and beliefs we developed as children, these standards can make us feel overwhelmed.

It’s important to realize that you don’t need to meet other people’s standards or gain their approval in order to be a valuable person. You already are! Don’t get caught up in the superior/inferior mindset – remember that you are unique and not measurable.

Summary

Try out these new beliefs and see how they work for you. Chances are the beliefs you’ve been holding onto are dragging you down, one way or another. If you can start encouraging yourself, using failure to your advantage, facing your fears, and valuing yourself without comparing yourself, you will be more confident. I wish you the best with these new ways of thinking.

Do you agree or disagree with something you read here or want to comment in general? Please join in the discussion below!

Written by collegehumor
Breaking up with someone is the worst. They get all sad and start crying. Then they’re like, “But I thought you loved me.” Awkward! Who wants to deal with that? Not me. Here are five fool-proof ways to kick someone out of your life without having to watch them turn into an emotional wreck. Note: Although these all say “girlfriend,” they’re sure to work on boys, too.

Written by Be Scofield

Despite their emphasis on reason, evidence and a desire to see through false truth claims, many atheists hold surprisingly ill-informed beliefs about religion. Many of these myths go unquestioned simply because they serve the purpose of discrediting religion at large. They allow for the construction of a straw man i.e. a distorted and simplistic representation of religion which can be easily attacked, summarily dismissed and ridiculed. Others who genuinely believe these false claims merely have a limited understanding of the ideas involved and have never thoroughly examined them. But, myths are myths and they should be acknowledged for what they are.

I’m not saying that atheists aren’t knowledgeable when it comes to religion. To the contrary, atheists in general know more about the particularities of religion than most religious people do. A recent study confirmed it. I have no doubt that they can rattle off all of the myths, falsities, fanciful claims, dangerous ideas and barbarous actions committed by the religious. It makes sense as a targeted group will generally know more about the dominant group than the other way around. But of course simply knowing more than other religious people about their traditions doesn’t preclude holding to false beliefs of their own.

There are certainly more than five myths about religion that are perpetuated by some atheists (and in some cases the religious). However, I’ve chosen what I feel to be the most significant false claims made by atheists to help provide a more accurate understanding of religion and to pave the groundwork for dialogue between these seemingly two opposing groups.

Now, let’s examine these myths.

5. Liberal and Moderate Religion Justifies Religious Extremism

While this often repeated claim seems logical at first glance, upon examination it is nothing more than another simplistic idea that provides a feel good rallying cry for those who want to denounce religion in its entirety.

Sam Harris states that moderates are “in large part responsible for the religious conflict in our world” and “religious tolerance–born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God–is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss.” And Richard Dawkins states, “The teachings of ‘moderate’ religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism.” Christopher Hitchens has called liberation theology “sinister nonsense” and compared the liberal Unitarian tradition to rats and vermin.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it leads to some unwanted logical conclusions when applied equally to other ideas. It is hypocritical to selectively apply the principle where it suits one’s needs but not elsewhere.

We can ask whether or not all liberal and moderate expressions of something are responsible for their most extreme forms. Are the people who casually smoke marijuana in any way responsible for the death of someone involved in a violent heroin drug trade? Is a social drinker of alcohol creating the environment that leads to alcoholism? Should they be shunned for supporting conditions that cause tens of thousands of alcohol-related unwanted deaths? Is a pediatrician responsible for Nazi medical experiments simply because he or she participates in the field of medicine? How about politics? Is a liberal democracy responsible for forms of government such as totalitarianism or fascism? Is a very progressive Democrat like Dennis Kucinich responsible for George Bush’s torture policies because he merely participates in the U.S. political system? If so, it means that one’s participation in a political system should be blamed for the worst crimes of any government leader.

I could list example after example, but to state my point simply, the more rational and tolerant uses of science, religion, medicine or government cannot be blamed for the destructive and harmful uses of them.

4. Religion Requires a Belief in a Supernatural God

This claim, expressed by Christopher Hitchens as “to be religious is to be a theist” seems to be a difficult myth for some atheists to abandon. Many seem content with this intellectually inaccurate definition of religion. However, if you open any “Religion 101? textbook you will find a variety of traditions that don’t require belief in any god, miracles or supernatural entities including Taoism, Jainism, Confucianism and Buddhism. Unitarian Universalism doesn’t require belief in any divinity either. And of course there are non-theists such as deists, pantheists and panentheists who are practicing members of Christianity, Judaism and Islam as well as other progressive traditions. There are many Christians who don’t literally believe the stories of the Bible. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of them. Thomas Jefferson, as well as other “founding fathers” are prominent examples of deists within American history. Jefferson created his own Bible in which he removed all references to miracles and supernatural claims. But yet he was still religious. He stated,

“The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. –Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Others simply describe God as the natural order, the healing and renewing power of existence or the creative principle in life. Yet, despite all of these non-supernatural God forms many still attend religious services, draw inspiration from sacred texts and enjoy the benefits of a spiritual community.

I understand why anti-religious atheists are so reluctant to accept the fact that being religious doesn’t mean belief in the supernatural. The simplistic and convenient myth they’ve constructed would be shattered. It would be much harder to attack religion as it would mean a more sophisticated and refined critique, one that would be more difficult to arouse the passions of dogmatic religion haters.

3. Religion Causes Bad Behavior

A common way for atheists to denounce religion is to simply list all of the horrors that have been done in the name of religion and then say, “Look how awful religion is!” Religion becomes synonymous with all of the bad things done by religious people. But is religion the cause of bad behavior or simply a mitigating factor? Christopher Hitchens provides some surprising insight: “What’s innate in our species isn’t the fault of religion. But the bad things that are innate in our species are strengthened by religion and sanctified by it… So religion is a very powerful re-enforcer of our backward, clannish, tribal element. But you can’t say it’s the cause of it. To the contrary, it’s the product of it.” Amen! Hitchens says that religion is not the cause of bad behavior! Many of us religious progressives have been making this point for a long time. Of course religion is also a very powerful re-enforcer of our most beautiful, inspiring and profound aspects as well. It can inspire the best and worst in us.

This point is very important because it focuses the attention on the real source of bad behavior which is human nature, not religion. Understanding this is important when defending against attempts to dismiss religion because of the bad things done in its name. Certainly, religion plays a role in conflicts but it is just one factor among many such as ideological, political and sociological ones. If religion were the cause of bad behavior getting rid of it would simply make all divisiveness and conflict disappear. But of course this would not be the case. And, if religion were to be eliminated other forms of associations with the same group dynamics and dangers would arise.

Religion is like a knife which can be used by a surgeon to save lives or as a dagger to kill someone.

2. Atheists are Anti-Religious

This false belief stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what atheism and religion are. Atheism is not in any way shape or form related to an opinion about religion. It is simply the assertion that god does not exist, nothing more and nothing less. Religion is a broad category that encompasses traditions which include supernatural belief and those that do not. And, as I’ve already stated there are many atheists who are already religious practitioners.

Despite atheism being quite a straightforward concept, many continually misrepresent what it means. A prominent example comes from the atheist writer Greta Christina. She recently stated, “Atheists, by definition, don’t think any religion has any reasonable likelihood of being true.” Wrong. Atheists by definition assert that god does not exist. Besides, what does it mean for a religion to be true or not true when a religion doesn’t require any supernatural belief? Again, being an atheist has nothing to do with ones position on religion. A fellow atheist seminarian friend of mine at Starr King School for the Ministry clearly demonstrates this point:

First, I think there is a difference between being an atheist and being anti-religious. They are orthogonal. There is also a difference between being anti-religious and being opposed to the effects of particular religious traditions. These terms should not be conflated. Since when did not believing in God mean that you are opposed to other people believing in God and or practicing religion regardless of whether they believe? I am an atheist. Just to be clear, by that I mean I don’t believe that there is a god, a higher consciousness, or a spirit. I am also opposed to the effects of certain religious traditions. But I am not by any means anti-religious. I don’t deny the value that religion or religious practice, (whether actual belief in god and the afterlife, or simply liking the pretty candles at mass and multiple opportunities for community) brings to people including myself. Religion has a lot to offer and to deny that is to deny the complexity of the human condition.

The concept of an atheist who practices religion is hard to swallow for many. Yet, the simple facts reveal millions of people who practice religion and are simultaneously atheists.

Elsewhere there are examples of atheists and agnostics who support and work in relation to religion. Bruce Sheiman, author of “An Atheist Defends Religion,” has done great work on the subject. Chris Stedman of NonProphet Status is an atheist who has worked with Eboo Patel’s Interfaith Youth Core and is now working for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard as the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow. In fact, the silent majority of atheists are not militant, but because of popular anti-religious voices like Christopher Hitchens atheism becomes associated with the most stridently militant.

1. All Religions are the Same and are “Equally Crazy”

Many atheists often claim that they are wrongly accused of not understanding the differences between religions. “Of course we do!” I’ve heard them say. But yet this is meaningless unless they are willing to treat these differences differently. Case and point is the latest article from Greta Christina where she asks, “Are All Religions Equally Crazy?” and answers a resounding, Yes. She describes a number of strange Mormon beliefs and practices, but then realizes that other religions aren’t any better. If her point was to illustrate that some religions have strange beliefs, she succeeded. She concludes,

But all religions are out of touch with reality. All religions are implausible, based on cognitive biases, and unsupported by any good evidence whatsoever. All of them ultimately rely on faith — i.e., an irrational attachment to a pre-existing idea regardless of any evidence that contradicts it — as the core foundation of their belief. All of them contort, ignore, or deny reality in order to maintain their attachment to their faith.

This conclusion is simply false. Her reasoning sweeps up all religious expressions including those which aren’t reliant upon any supernatural beliefs, miracles or magical claims. For example, by using the term “all religions” she conflates a church attending atheist Unitarian Universalist with a Bible believing, homophobic theist. The venerable Vietnamese Buddhist religious leader Thich Nhat Hanh becomes synonymous with Pat Robertson simply because they are both religious leaders. Dr. King is in the same category as Osama Bin Laden. Deists are conflated with theists. Those who reject literal religious claims are placed in the same category who believe snakes talked in the Bible. Christina leaves no room for religious people who are tolerant, non-believers or those who view religion metaphorically. Writing an article that concludes all religions are equally crazy is like saying that all Americans are nationalists and imperialists and then pointing to the part of the population that supports U.S. wars.

Where is the evidence that many of these atheists can make any meaningful distinctions between religions? It’s one thing to make the claim but where is the recognition of humanistic, non-literal and progressive religious traditions? Hitchens calls Unitarianism rats and vermin. Christina calls all religions equally crazy. Dawkins says the teachings of moderate religion lead to extremism. Harris claims that moderates are responsible for much of the conflict in the world. If there were any serious attempts to show they know the difference between religions, these leaders in the movement would have exhibited it by now. But time and time again all we get from these prominent atheists something akin to “all religions are equally crazy.”

I think we can move beyond the religion = crazy/atheism = dangerous dichotomy that so dominates our day. To do so we must honestly examine the myths and misunderstandings of both positions. Genuine dialogue between the religious and non-religious is possible. We are better at finding points of agreement politically, socially and ideologically and seeking common ground to organize around. We certainly won’t agree on everything, but in the end all parties should leave more knowledgeable and better prepared to deal with the way religion impacts our everyday lives and the global sphere.

Be Scofield is a writer, founder of www.godblessthewholeworld.org and a Dr. King scholar. He writes and blogs for Tikkun Magazine and his work has appeared on Alternet.org and Integral World among others. Be is pursuing a Master’s of Divinity in the Unitarian Universalist tradition with a dual certificate in women studies in religion and sacred dance with a concentration in Buddhism

Bonus: My roommate doesn’t own an iron