Dating can be stressful and nerve wracking. You might feel like you are under a microscope and all your failures and faults are exposed in the open. But you can make things easier on yourself by boosting your confidence. You’ll be much more attractive to any date when you exude self confidence plus you’ll be able to enjoy yourself more and get much more out of the dating experience.

Since the whole point of dating is getting to know someone better, most people are nervous about making a good impression. Self doubts can creep in – are you smart enough? Attractive enough? Successful enough? That coupled with the threat of rejection is enough to make anyone’s confidence go south.

So how can you increase your confidence for your next date?

First off, don’t blow the date all out of proportion. It is just a date – one afternoon or evening. The rest of your life does not depend on it, although of course, you could be meeting your future spouse! Whether you are just looking for a fun night out or desperately trying to find Mr or Mrs right, it is best to just focus on the date itself. Take it for what it is and don’t put a lot of pressure on the event. Enjoy the person you are on the date with and the meal, movie or whatever – don’t have any great expectations other than a fun date.

Go into the date thinking of yourself as a person that has a lot of confidence. We’ve all seen them, the person that sweeps into the room and turns heads even when they might not be the most attractive or best dressed. If you picture yourself as confident then you will act this way – even when you don’t really feel it.

You’ve heard it before but the best way to have confidence on a date is to be yourself. Don’t try to impress your date by acting like someone you are not because you will not have the confidence to pull it off. If you hit it off with your date, you’ll be glad you weren’t pretending to be someone else as it will only be exposed later and could really much things up for you. Plus it just takes too much effort to pretend to be someone else and you won’t be able to enjoy yourself as much. And anyway, why wouldn’t your date like you for who you are?

If you feel insecure about yourself, focus on the other person. Become interested in their hobbies, likes dislikes and really think about what they have to say. When you put them in the spotlight it takes the spotlight off of you, plus you get to learn a lot about them. Ask questions and really hear the answers then ask more questions about the answers. Of course, you want to do this in a conversational way and not make your date feel like you are grilling them! While you don’t want to talk just about yourself the whole time you also don’t want to make it seem like you are avoiding answering their questions. When you do talk about yourself highlight your positive points.

Another way to take some of the pressure out of a date is to do something different instead of sitting at dinner and feeling insecure about coming up with 3 hours of conversation with someone you don’t know. Find a common interest, perhaps hiking or bird watching and make that date to do that. This way you can talk about your experiences related to t his interest and it will take a lot of the pressure off as well as boost your self confidence as you will be talking about something you know a lot about!

The main thing when dating is to remember that you are a valuable and special person. Don’t feel inferior to anyone and be confident – this will help win you many friends and, maybe even that special someone!

You capture those confident feelings when you have a small or short-term success. This success may be as big or as small as you want it to be.

There is no known rule that says for anything to be a success it has to be something huge, titanic or long-term.

Success is success! And that is how your mind will see it.

Make it your role to daily feed success after success to your sponge of a mind. And as surely as a seed grows into a plant, you will grow more confident after each seed that you plant, and that confidence will grow even more and gain momentum as the plant gets bigger and stronger, fertilised by each and every success that you achieve.

Take advantage of all your small or short-term victories. Make the most of all your short-term successes; particularly when you are feeling pessimistic, feeling low or insecure about your future.

Remind yourself and profit from your past successes to lift you and help you regain and secure that confident feeling again from deep within.

I am pretty sure you have daily short-term successes that you can be proud of. For example, you had a project to complete and were given a tight deadline. You managed your time effectively and you confidently worked through it until completion.

Or perhaps you had to make a presentation and were given short notice. You had to gather all the relevant information and facts and relay them in a confident and assured manner.

These were two examples of success, where you had that confident feeling. . I am sure when you sit back and go through the past few days or weeks you will remember many more successes.

And when you do, relax and think about them. Recreate and stimulate the confident winning feelings again. Relive the moment of every success and accomplishment.

Use that surge of confident feeling to fuel you to your next success; to the one after that, and to the one after that. Gradually building a portfolio of successes.

Perhaps you could set aside an hour for the next few days to write down as many successes as you can. And next to each one, describe in detail how you felt; how much of a winner you were.

Focus on how you believed you were confident, and how you communicated with supreme confidence. Remember how you psyched yourself up to increase your confidence prior to, during and after the event.

Write as much as you can on how fantastic and strong and confident you felt. As you write, recapture the winning feelings, the pride, the confidence and the satisfaction.

By being a successful, confident winner once, you can be a winner again and again; as many times as you like throughout your life.

Anytime you feel unconfident or nervous, apprehensive or anxious, regain that confident winning feeling by emotionally remembering your past successes.

A winning feeling is a confident feeling, one that reinforces success time after time.