Confidence is the belief that one is capable of successfully meeting the competence of a task. Is a feeling of trust in your abilities, qualities, skillfulness, and judgment. Self-confidence is the belief that you can trust in yourself and your abilities to work hard, skills, decisions, way of thinking, perspective, and knowledge. Confidence in someone is seen as high when you see that the person can accomplish tasks or is skilled enough to be able to manage one or multiple things, comparatively better; the person feels good about it. It’s a feeling about self, based on self-evaluation. Further, because the person feels good about it, this increases his probability of success, which further boosts his level of confidence, in himself.
Confidence is also a general sense of trust in your ability to be able to control your life or you can manage a specific situation or task, much better. One may feel confident because of one area of expertise, even when the person is just average in other areas. On the contrary, this is also true that you might have high self-confidence in a particular area of expertise but feel less confident in other areas. Confidence is important to health and psychological well-being.
Having a healthy level of self-confidence can help you become more successful in your personal and professional life. You would have experienced that more confident people generally tend to achieve more academically or in other aspects of life. It is your level of confidence which affects how you present yourself to others.
General traits of confident people :
- They are optimistic
- Are willing to learn and grow subsequently
- Are open to putting in more effort
- Willing to take risks
- Accept responsibility
- Are open-minded
- Are decisive
- Admit mistakes and make a note of it
- Take mistakes as learnings and move on
- Do not shy away from even laughing at self
- Are focussed, goal-oriented
Reasons behind low confidence
Successive attempts, whether wholeheartedly or when adequate effort is not put in may produce results of inferior quality and may put you down. This has the tendency to put you in the back seat and thus robbing of confidence from you. Eventually, you may not feel very confident because of your past efforts. This also impacts your belief system and resists making fresh attempts to succeed, due to successful attempts of the past. Along with this are other factors like, what would others think about you, self-doubt, unwillingness to take risks again, fear of failure, etc may make you feel low in confidence.
What does lack of confidence mean?
Well, at times it becomes difficult to see if the person is genuinely confident or if is it all fake unless the person is put to a task or test. Someone lacking confidence isn’t necessarily easy to spot, because humans can pretend. However, there are sometimes more obvious signs that someone is not confident.
A few symptoms and signs of people with low confidence can be:
Anxiety: People with low self-esteem and lack of confidence may seem anxious in unfamiliar situations. Situations that have not been experienced before. Anxiety can make you doubt your faith in your abilities and as we know, confidence is often a matter of belief.
Worrying what others might think: Those who have low self-esteem will often worry about how others look at them, and judge them. Often, they’ll project their feelings about themselves onto how they think others will feel about them.
Avoiding challenges: People with low or no confidence are often unwilling to try new things as they don’t trust in their abilities to succeed. Generally, meeting new people and at times even familiar ones can be tough when there is a lack of confidence. A lack of belief in social skills will often mean avoiding social settings as well. If someone is feeling negative about themselves and their abilities, they may also neglect to take care of themselves. This could mean a poor diet, lack of exercise, or mentally chastising themselves.
How to Become More Confident
Several ways are using which you can increase your self-confidence. Whether you lack confidence in one specific area or struggle to feel confident about anything, presented below are a few tips that can make you feel more confident, eventually.
- Confront your apprehensions and fears
Do not run away from things, tasks, or people or avoid them. Instead, choose to confront, eventually basis the outcome, you shall start to gather courage and feel confident, eventually.
Practice facing some of your fears that stem from a lack of self-confidence. If you are afraid you will embarrass yourself or think that you’re going to mess up, try anyway, that’s fine. At least you would not have regret, which I had tried, confronted. A little self-doubt can even help improve performance. Tell yourself, it is fine, let me still try and see. Sincere attempts are in your hands but not the result, in totality.
You might learn that being a little anxious or making a few mistakes isn’t as bad as you thought. And each time you move forward, you gain more confidence in yourself. In the end, this can help prevent you from taking risks that will result in major negative consequences.
2. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Human beings do make comparisons and this is natural. But it isn't likely to help boost your self-confidence. It may even have the opposite effect. Research findings suggest that when people compare themselves to others, they experience envy and the more envy they have, the worse they feel about themselves. Thus, comparison is not a good idea, not a noble thought.
Comparison is bound to happen, but then, time and again when the thought comes in, you will have to remind yourself that doing so, isn’t helpful. Life is a journey, everyone is different and unique and everyone is on their path, so why compare? Instead, do something to better your own experiences of life.
If you’re feeling envious of someone else’s life, it's also helpful to remember your strengths and successes. You may have different qualities and attributes and others might not have it, that’s fine. Proceed in life with gratitude, count your blessings, and move on.
3. Surround yourself with positive people
You are always influenced in one way or another. Take a moment and think about how your friends make you feel. Do you feel being with them is helpful or do they bring you down, intentionally or basis who they are? Are they constantly judging you or do they accept you, the way you are?
The people you spend time with can influence your thoughts and attitudes about yourself, perhaps more than you realize. So, kindly pay attention to how others make you feel. If you feel bad about yourself after hanging out with a particular person or group, then it isn’t worth your time and effort, just move out.
Instead, surround yourself with people who care for you and wish the best for you. Seek out others who are positive and can help build your confidence. Self-confidence and a positive attitude go, hand-in-hand.
4. Practice Self-care
As you exist at the physical level, in a physical form, thus, you also need to pay attention to your body as well. Doing something positive for your mind, body, and spirit naturally makes you feel more confident. This makes you feel good, overall.
A few self-care practices to increase your level of confidence can be:
Diet: Physical health is very vital. A healthy and timely diet comes with many benefits, including higher levels of confidence and self-esteem. When you fuel your body with nutrient-rich food, you feel healthier, stronger, and more energized, which can result in feeling better about yourself.
Exercise: Physical exercise makes you feel good and thus boosts self-confidence. Regular physical activity improves body image, which again makes you feel good, from within and outside and you tend to feel more confident, automatically. This is a great stress buster too.
Sleep: It is imperative to have sound and good-quality sleep. You feel well rested, psychologically and feel refreshed, active, stay optimistic, Positive increases, and overall self-esteem also goes up.
Meditation: Helps boost self-confidence in several ways. For one, it helps you to recognize and accept yourself. Meditation also teaches you to stop negative self-talk and disconnect from unhelpful mental chatter interfering with your confidence.
5. Enhance Skills
Learn what you think needs to be learned. When you know there are opportunity areas to be worked on, then please go ahead and do the needful, with some focus and commitment. Nobody will do it for you if you need to gather certain knowledge, skills, communication, or the art of doing things. You need not have to declare to the world about your shortcomings, instead, just get going with some goal in hand through proper planning and execution methodology.
6. Set realistic achievable Goals
You need to have Goals and milestones. Pursuing your goals often involves failing several times until you figure out what works. This can make you wonder if you have what it takes to succeed. It can also leave you questioning how to be more confident while still achieving your dreams. The answer lies in setting realistic goals. SMART way of managing things, tasks, and life in totality.
Short-term wins and multiple small wins help you get charged and keep marching ahead. Thus, setting realistic goals is always a good idea. And the more you achieve your goals, the greater your confidence in yourself and your abilities. Write down your goals, prepare a road map, and milestones, and keep working to make it happen. Your success is in your hand only.
7. Practice Positive Self-talk
Start paying attention to what your most frequent internal conversations are. We are often shaped by our internal stories which we keep on telling ourselves, re-look at the same, and re-write it to suit our internal narrative. Remember, you are the co-author of your own life.
Remember, negative self-talk can limit your abilities and lessen your self-confidence by convincing your subconscious that you "can't handle" something or that it is "too hard" and you "shouldn't even try." Optimistic self-talk, on the other hand, can foster self-compassion and help you overcome self-doubt and take on new challenges.
8. Don’t be harsh with Self, take it easy
Do not take things too seriously, it's fine. Instead, start treating yourself with kindness when you make a mistake, fail, or experience a setback. It is fine to come across setbacks, this is life and things do happen. It allows you to become more emotionally flexible and helps you better navigate challenging emotions, enhancing your connection to yourself and others.
This may require doing a bit of research on your part. For instance, if you have a goal to lose weight, experts recommend losing maybe half a Kilos per week for healthy, long-term weight loss. Knowing this helps you set a goal in line with this guideline, boosting your self-confidence when you hit it.
Self-confidence is more about your belief in yourself and your abilities. Start small, no matter how big is the goal. It all starts small, slow but with commitment, gives results.
Coaches and Counsellors at edha, facilitate you and rebuild your level of confidence.
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