Confidence is something that we talk about mainly in social occasions but often don't grasp the true importance of it. Confidence is actually more than just being able to talk to strangers or looking for comfortable at a party (although that is of course very important too). Confidence is also about your ability to go after your dream life.

Many people would say they are confident, but then I only have to ask them a few questions. Do you have the confidence to go for your dream job? Do you have the confidence to meet and be with the person of your dreams? Do you have the confidence to start your dream business? Do you have the confidence to keep on going, and do what it takes to achieve success in your life? The thing is, most people don't. Most people don't have the confidence to achieve greatness, even though they have so much potential.

Confidence is what you need to get anything you want in life. And yet most people seem to have accepted that their confidence levels they have now are what they are stuck with for the rest of their lives. I can tell you now that there are lots of people out there who have improved their lives by taking positive steps to address their self-esteem and confidence.

So how do you improve your confidence? The first thing to remember with building confidence is that despite extravagant claims that you can change yourself overnight, we still don't have a method of making you confident with a magic wand (Sorry). Your confidence level that you have now is a result of your genetics (inherited from your parents) your childhood and experiences that you had as an adult. That's not to say we have to focus on the past to make changes. It's just acknowledging that there is a lot of past conditioning there.

When we think of how to gain confidence, we need to think of something like learning a language. You can make good progress in learning a language in as little as 30 days. But to do that, you need to have the right teacher, you need to have the right method and you have to be willing to "immerse" yourself in the language for the 30 days, by which I mean let it become part of your daily life. Confidence is very similar. You need a good teacher and method and you need to immerse yourself in confidence. Practising greater confidence needs to be weaved into your normal day. And the most important thing is that you need to focus on making small gains every day.

When you look at your life, many of your major achievements like walking, talking, learning to read and write were not accomplished overnight. You made tiny improvements each day until you mastered them. You don't see babies getting upset when they can't walk after the first try. When they fall, they just dust themselves off (not literally!) and try again. They know that each time they try they are slightly better than last time. This is the key to any improvement. Don't go for the improbable overnight success. It doesn't really exist anyway. Go for smart improvement. Focus on the right areas. And make small gains each day. It will add up and the result will be confidence!

Doctor K is the editor of the How to Gain Confidence website at: www.howtogainconfidence.net/. This site is devoted to helping people build confidence through articles, tips and a 30 day program for incremental confidence building.