You are the only one that can give confidence to yourself. I’ve learned this over many years of looking for recognition in all the wrong places, from other people. Like it or not some people in our lives don’t want us to succeed, and they can be the ones you closest to you.

People in our family or professional lives can have control issues, are insecure or saboteurs. They haven’t succeeded or are unhappy and they might want you to suffer with them. The first step to saying yes to you is to take an inventory of those you interact with day-to-day. Take a close look at your business associates, spouse, partner and relatives. Do you hear a lot of “yes, but” or “your wrong”? If so that’s a flag your self-confidence is being eroded. Do you propose starting a new business; job, relationship or friendship and you hear a negative response? Sounds like a naysayer; risk is an important part of self-confidence, you will never move forward if you have fear of failure.

Saboteurs appear like they support you, but really want you to fail, so they can tell you that they told you so. Saboteurs want things to stay the way they are, with them in control of you. Insecure people are control oriented; the power they receive from being in control of others feed that need. People that lack self-confidence are change-resistive, if you gain self-confidence they might loose you or you might succeed more than them. Many saboteurs rely on pecking order to justify their control; parents, spouses and supervisors can erode your confidence by qualifying their rejection of your proposed idea by just being your parent, spouse or supervisor. If you believe in what you want, disrupt the pecking order and take the risk. When you succeed they’ll say it was their idea and supported you from the beginning.

Developing self-confidence comes from within. Start to validate and recognize small and large achievements in yourself. Understand that success is defined by each of us individually and others might not be aware of your success goals. People will challenge your goals. Your determination to achieve self-confidence will be questioned many times, but the key to self-confidence is saying yes to you!