Strategies For Building Self Confidence

Develop Your Awareness

Change doesn’t happen until awareness is created. Off the top of your head, you might not be able to recognize the events or situations that can be triggering. These events often leave us with feelings of low self-esteem or low confidence. It may be helpful to use guided meditation to increase awareness for change and reflection.

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

There is nothing more empowering than stepping out of your comfort zone and, as Brené Brown would say, stepping into the arena. I encourage you to watch her talk on YouTube about why your critics aren’t the ones who count. The more you practice this, the easier it becomes and the more confident you’ll feel.

Give Yourself Encouragement

Take a nice deep breath and reflect on all who have stepped into the arena and outside your comfort zone. Whether you failed or not, what matters most is that you tried at the end of the day. So, stop and give yourself credit and recognize your efforts. It may even help to write down your achievements and display them somewhere you’ll see every day.

Visualize Your Success

When you imagine yourself succeeding and achieving your dreams, you can embody the feeling of success. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and envision yourself achieving your goals. Feel free to practice this as often as you need, and remember that there is no limit to how big your dreams can be.

Celebrate Your Successes

Gabrielle Bernstein shares in her teachings that there is enough to go around for everyone. She writes, “when you see others who have what you want, celebrate it! Let their success mirror what you’re ready to receive.” Believe in yourself, believe there is enough, and you will achieve.

Positive Self-Talk

Your subconscious is always listening to how you treat yourself. Your subconscious knows whether you speak negative things aloud or silently think them. Try to make it a daily practice to use positive self-talk. You can do this through daily affirmations, following positivity accounts on your social media, etc. I encourage you to surround yourself with as much positivity as possible. You don’t need to make it harder for yourself by being your enemy and bullying.

Increase Self-Care

Once you begin to include yourself in your routine of caring for others without feelings of guilt, you may see an increase in confidence and self-esteem. Begin by setting at least 5-10 minutes a day to do something you enjoy that helps you recharge. Like stepping out of your comfort zone, the more self-care you practice, the more routine it becomes.

Establish Healthy Boundaries

People with low confidence and self-esteem usually have a more challenging time saying no. It is common to want to please others and avoid discomfort or conflict. Nothing is more empowering than saying no to something when “old you” would have said yes. It may take time for you and everyone else around you to adjust but trust me – it’s worth it.

Reduce Social Media Use

For the sake of self-love – stop comparing yourself to others! As mentioned in tip number 6, there’s enough to go around. If you keep scrolling through social media and looking at everyone else’s success, you’ll never feel you’re doing enough. I used to be a chronic scroller, so I’m telling you this from experience. Stop trying to be something you’re not. Be honest, be true, and be authentic.

Comfort Your Inner Child

It’s always a good idea to have an inner look into yourself. Your life experiences might have brought you to many present-day thoughts and behaviors. Cognitive behavior therapy creates space to challenge and question your inner critic and communicate with your inner child. I strongly recommend you do this with a therapist’s help to help you work through your past traumas or negative experiences. Deep internal reflection can be heavy work, but eventually, it makes room for more self-love and self-appreciation.

Be Honest with Yourself

Lastly, admitting that you need help and learning something new is okay. This allows you room to grow and continue to expand your knowledge and abilities, which will improve overall confidence. However, admitting and asking for help is such a humbling experience. Be honest and ask what area in your life needs some improvement. If I were to guess, you’re here to gain confidence and self-esteem, and I applaud you for your honesty.

What Is Self-Confidence?

Self-confidence focuses on the ability to overcome daily life challenges. It refers to focusing on capability, achievement, and skill set. You can have good self-confidence, feel confident in certain areas of your life, and feel less secure in others. For example, you may feel self-assured about work or school, knowing you are organized and do well at meeting deadlines promptly. On the other hand, you may not feel as confident in your relationships or social life.

Self-esteem is your inner belief in self but can also incorporate your inner critic. You tend to have low confidence if you have a common faith in yourself. People can also possess what I call “Counterfeit Confidence,” where they may imitate someone with high confidence. They may use this apparent confidence as a mask to compensate for their low self-esteem and morale.

The Difference Between Confidence and Self-Esteem

Some people, including myself, use self-esteem and self-confidence interchangeably, although they can exist on varying levels and combinations. Your level of self-esteem dramatically influences your self-confidence. Bridget Webber, a former counselor and current writer for Medium, states, “lack of self-esteem exists on a primal level; it seeps into your psyche and influences everything you do. Lack of confidence is usually solved via gaining knowledge, expanding skills, and practicing until your ability increases.” 1

RMIT University compares them best: “both self-confidence and self-esteem relate to your perception of yourself…[self-confidence] relates to your perception of your abilities and [self-esteem] relates to your perception of your worth or value.” As mentioned, self-confidence is more of the outer focus and ability—what others see. On the other hand, self-esteem is more of the inner guide and how you feel about yourself.

Picture a Venn diagram: In comparing confidence and self-esteem, focus on the overlap or the link between the two. Notice that it all comes down to your perception of yourself and how others perceive you in that overlap. This is where the opportunity for change happens.

Why Does Confidence Matter?

Harvard Health explains that self-confidence usually follows a bell curve. The highest levels of self-confidence happen in midlife, reasoning that “midlife is when people typically occupy the highest positions of power, status, and importance.” Harvard Health supports this theory by explaining that self-confidence “gradually rises during the late teen years, peaks during middle age, and declines after age 60.”

Recall your awkward middle and high school years when you tried to understand who you were and what you wanted to be. For many, those years are when the lowest levels of self-esteem and self-confidence occur. To help my clients who suffer from this low level of self-esteem, I help them visualize themselves in positions of power without judgment or disbelief. That helps empower them to be honest about finding their life’s most accurate calling. Then, once the visualization is over, I work with them to go “backward” so that they can develop small goals that will help them to get to where they want to be.

What Keeps People from Being Confident?

It is essential to highlight that society plays a huge role in keeping someone from feeling confident. Marketing strategies are designed to aggravate or draw out insecurities and offer you a “solution” that the company just so happens to have developed for you. In today’s climate, the issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and many other systems of oppression may leave victims feeling powerless. Powerlessness may be the victims' ultimate feeling of low confidence and low self-esteem.

The feeling of powerlessness takes time to resolve. The victim may not overcome these feelings by merely taking ten minutes to self-care. Adopting a mindset shift would have to occur that allows the victim the space and ability to acknowledge, cope with, and ultimately overcome these feelings to reclaim their power and confidence.

The Link Between Low Self-Confidence and Other Mental Health Disorders

Studies show that people with low confidence tend to have more signs and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other interpersonal issues, though this relationship is not necessarily causal. According to NAMI, low confidence and low self-esteem are linked to anxiety, depression, addiction, and poor relationships. NAMI describes someone with low self-esteem as having “negative feelings about themselves, believing that they are not worthy of love, happiness or success.”

Low self-esteem and low confidence can reduce the quality of life, affecting your feelings. Ignoring feelings of low self-esteem and confidence can lead to anxiety and depression due to developing unhealthy habits to cope with. If you are barely functioning and things around us seem to be falling apart, it’s much harder to believe in Yourself. This can very quickly lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness.

It is common for people to use unhealthy methods to cope with ongoing life stressors and these negative feelings. For example, drugs and alcohol are commonly used to “help ease the negative feelings” (this is known as escapism), leading to addiction and a perpetuating cycle of negative feelings of self.

Relationships can be impacted due to low self-esteem and confidence, which can often cause negative interactions between loved ones. In addition, due to not believing in themselves, people often use defense mechanisms such as projection to push others further away out of fear of rejection or confirmation of their negative feelings about themselves.