With all of the flashy media available to us today, it’s sometimes easy to forget the pleasures of reading. Beyond being an enjoyable activity, reading can also bring you plenty of inspiration on your journey to self-confidence.

The most obvious source of confidence building in books comes from self-help titles. Whether your road to confidence includes losing weight, building better familial relationships or becoming more assertive, just to name a few, there’s a title out there for you. These motivational works often include detailed plans for turning your life around as well as inspirational stories and examples. While not every detail will work for you, they can provide a good base for your own personalized plan of attack.

Biographies and autobiographies bring the rich and famous to you. You can find out their secrets for success. Even if they don’t talk directly about the source of their confidence, you can draw inspiration from their achievements and the hard work they put into them. They may even admit that they really don’t feel that secure and confident, which can certainly make you feel better about yourself.

Why think poorly of yourself when you’re in a slump when even successful people don’t always feel confident? Just don’t use this as an excuse to stop working on your own confidence.

Memoirs are another source of true-life characters to emulate. Memoirs are often more literary in nature than autobiographies. Usually a writer publishes her memoir because she has faced compelling and universally-applicable struggles in her life. Sometimes memoirs can provide readers with a negative example of what not to do in seeking greater confidence.

You don’t need to confine yourself to true stories, though. You can draw confidence from the example of strong characters in even the most fantastical fiction. Simply look for the essential qualities that make a character confident or what is lacking in a character who does not display self-confidence.

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