How to Build Confidence

 How to Build Confidence

Confidence is not an innate, fixed characteristic. It’s an ability that can be acquired and improved over time. Confidence can be developed by practicing in social settings. One can gain a sense of confidence from personal and professional accomplishments. Continuing to set and meet goals can enable the belief that one is competent and capable.

How can I improve my confidence daily?

Being confident means knowing you can handle the emotional outcome of whatever you’ll face. Begin by acknowledging every emotion, including difficult emotions, rather than avoiding them. Speaking up for yourself, limiting self-criticism, and other strategies can help build emotional strength and confidence. 

Confidence is not all-encompassing: You can have high confidence in some areas and low confidence in others. In whatever new domain you choose, hone your skills and foster self-efficacy by watching others, practicing yourself, and taking advice from the experts.

Overconfidence and Underconfidence

A realistic appraisal of one's abilities enables people to strike a healthy balance between too little and too much confidence. Too little confidence can prevent people from taking risks and seizing opportunities—in school, at work, or in their social life.

Too much confidence can come off as cockiness, arrogance, or narcissism. Overestimating one’s abilities might also lead to problems such as failing to complete projects on time.

What’s the difference between confidence and narcissism?

Narcissism can be due to insecurities and defence mechanisms, while confidence comes from self-awareness and the ability to tolerate and reflect on one’s insecurities. Confidence instils a personal sense of being capable and competent, while narcissism encompasses a sense of superiority over others. 

What are the reasons someone might have low confidence?

What are the costs of underconfidence?

How to Raise Confident Kids

Children—and especially adolescents—can struggle with insecurity and self-doubt as they navigate academics, friendships, and romantic relationships. But parents can play a part in providing their children with the tools they need to develop self-confidence.

How do you raise confident children?

Although parents may understandably be tempted to help children solve every challenge that comes their way, stepping back and letting kids solve problems on their own can hone executive function skills, teach motivation, and help instil a strong sense of self-agency and confidence.

How do you raise a confident teenager?

To instil self-confidence, parents can support adolescents’ goals, treat mistakes as learning experiences and failure as evidence of trying, encourage practice and persistence, and avoid unloading their worries onto their children. These and other responses can help teens believe in themselves. 

How do you raise a confident daughter?

Acknowledge, reflect on, and trust your daughter’s feelings. By empathizing with her emotions and trusting them, she will learn to do the same. If she trusts how she feels, she will trust who she is. This will ideally allow her to verbalize how she feels and work through challenges, rather than acting out.

How do you raise a confident son?

Societal stereotypes still dictate that boys be tough, strong, and stoic. But denying emotion and vulnerability can be harmful. Validating boys’ feelings, teaching them to channel anger into healthy outlets, and encouraging them to ask for help when necessary can set boys up to be confident and successful.

 Ways to Build Confidence

• Throughout our development, confidence is cultivated.
• Increasing confidence is an inside job that takes concerted effort, practice, and persistence.
• A willingness, taking risks, and trusting in yourself, among other things, contribute to confidence-building.
• We aren’t born with confidence; we cultivate it over time. Some factors contribute to it and directly take away from it. Socio-cultural and familial constructs communicate subliminally and overtly about who we are and how we’re expected to be. How we navigate our relationships and how successful we perceive ourselves to be in all realms of life also impact our self-concept. The degree to which we acquire self-efficacy, self-love, and self-compassion is are further factors that contribute to our overall confidence.

 “Is this behaviour or action going to contribute to my confidence or take away from it?” Pondering this question helps to establish whether or not a particular decision is guided by intrinsic formative values.

Decisions that are guided by fundamental values are often more effectively processed. There’s increased consideration as to the possible conflicting values that are causing decision-making to be challenging, and there tends to be less residual negative emotions that get evoked, such as regret, guilt, and shame. Proactively and mindfully making sound decisions greatly impacts our confidence.

Throughout our development, confidence is to be built upon, fortified, and integrated. There are significant ways to focus and directly work on it.

15 Ways to Build Your Confidence

1.   Notice, observe, and show compassion to your inner protector.

2.   Avoid putting yourself in a position of victimhood. 

3.   Celebrate all moments you lean into your values. All wins are wins.

4.   Slow down. Creating space for contemplating, grounding, and re-regulating your emotions is critical. Expanding your mindfulness and present-moment awareness has been proven to increase personal health, mental health, and general well-being.

5.   Look within, rather than outside of yourself. Don’t rely on others for confidence-building; take personal strides toward creating a life you're proud of and satisfied with.

6.   Be accepting of all thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, no matter what. You can’t control thoughts, feelings, and body sensations—Your hurt, fear, and anger are just as humanly poignant and important as your joy and contentment. Take pride in the many facets of you.

7.   Embrace your humanness. These contribute to what makes you incredible. Your perfectionism lends to your conscientiousness, your hypervigilance lends to your thoughtfulness, etc. Practicing self-compassion will assist you in recognizing when you’re trying your very best despite your human challenges.

8.   Never give up. Mistakes are lessons, not failures. Every circumstance helps you to learn more about yourself and what you want more or less of. It gets you closer to living the life you want.

9.   Make and take the time for you. Accept that all things worthy require your time, energy, persistence, and continual practice. This includes moments of self-care, nurturance, and self-compassion. Treat yourself as if you’re the most important and special person you know.

10.           Trust in yourself. The more you do, the more you prove to yourself that you’re capable and can do what you set your mind to.

11.           Build strength in your inner and outer worlds. Being focused, organized, and thoughtful impacts the way you approach the setting in which you live, how you treat your body, and how you connect in your relationships.

12.           Be willing. Willingness is pivotal. In a state of willingness, you’ll be more flexible and expansive and will avoid the pitfalls of denial, avoidance, protectiveness, and disconnection that can often lead to stagnation. You'll approach your life more fully and openly, rather than excuses, rationalizations, and illusions of work.

13.           Continually challenge yourself and take risks. It helps to grow your resilience, coping skills, and self-efficacy. The more you put yourself out there, the more you’ll prove that your preconceived notions, narratives, and false beliefs aren’t absolutes and can ultimately change with new corrective experiences.

14.           Don’t take things personally. It reminds you that you need to give up your insistence to control and understand that people's behaviour is typically a reflection of where they're at, rather than based on something you said or did.

15.           Cultivate a healthy inner circle. Being surrounded by healthy people and relationships directly reflects how you think, feel, and act toward yourself. The way you’re treated and treat others is an indication of where you’re at in your personal development and self-growth.

Proactively take the steps to increase your confidence so that life is more meaningful and fulfilling. The choice is up to you—stay where you’re at or thrust forward with greater personal power.