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Before I can even start an article about confidence, I think it’s important that I define the meaning of confidence and self-confidence.

What does it mean to have confidence, or rather self-confidence?  Wikipedia defines self-confidence as “The concept of self–confidence is commonly used as self-assurance in one’s personal judgement, ability, power, etc. One’s self confidence increases from experiences of having mastered particular activities. It is a positive belief that in the future one can generally accomplish what one wishes to do.”  

And KidsHealth says “Confidence means feeling sure of yourself and your abilities — not in an arrogant way, but in a realistic, secure way. Confidence isn’t about feeling superior to others. It’s a quiet inner knowledge that you’re capable. Confident people: feel secure rather than insecure.”

So in other words, confidence in yourself, to have self-confidence, has nothing to do with arrogance, narcissism or delusions of grandeur, but very simply it’s a feeling of trusting yourself and your own abilities, a sense of self-believe and self-esteem.  I write some more on self-esteem further down this page.

Importance Of Self-Confidence

Before I start talking more on how you can build your self-confidence, I want to briefly talk about why it’s important in your life.  Self-confidence is important not just for our mental health but also for our quality of life. 

An obvious and easy example of high self-confidence is that you are more likely to ask for a promotion or a raise at work, therefore have more money to spend on a bigger house or nicer car or just go on a nice holiday once a year. You are more likely to speak up in a relationship when you are unhappy, or less likely to end up in a toxic or abusive relationship.

When you have low self-confidence (which is as good as having low self-esteem, more on that further down) you are more likely to end up being a door-mat for others, letting them walk all over you, always subjugating your own feelings and wants and needs for others.  

Low self-esteem leads all kinds of other issues such as depression and anxiety, which in turn can lead to you not being able to go to work, losing your job and maybe losing your house, all of which will most certainly be very bad for your physical health.  In fact, Olivia Harvey at hellogiggles writes a nice article explaining how low self-esteem affects your physical body.

So to summarize, it’s bad for your health, your mental health and your physical health, and can definitely lead to an early death.  But more importantly, even if you do live to be a 100 years old, what would be the point? How could you enjoy life like that? No-one wants to live like that, always unhappy and anxious and depressed. I certainly don’t want to live like that and I do not want you to live like that. 

I want you to be happy and relaxed and enjoying life, every moment of that. 

But to do that you need to have a good level of self-confidence and self-esteem!

Luckily, you’ve come to the right place.

Build confidence and self-esteem

Because self-esteem is the opinion we have of ourselves, it means that our levels of self-esteem and confidence go hand in hand. If you have low self-esteem, your confidence will be low. If you have high self-esteem your confidence will be high.  

So if you build your self-confidence, you will also build your self-esteem.

How do you improve or gain self-confidence?

But how do you build self-confidence?  Where does it come from? Can you improve on your levels of confidence in life, romance and work? 

The good news is you can. And it’s not as difficult as you think, but you need to make a bit of an  effort. Like trying to lose weight you have to make a few changes, like eating better and exercising a bit more, and you have to do that regularly, small changes often that you can keep up over a few weeks or a few months. Don’t worry if you have a bad day, we all have those, just get back on track as soon as you can and above all forgive yourself and be kind to yourself.

Confidence Building Exercises

7 Practical Tips for Building Confidence and Self-Esteem

1. Forgive yourself.
   Forgive yourself for all your perceived faults, mistakes, failures and flaws. You are human, and like me, you will make mistakes. It’s a natural part of life, don’t try to avoid it, and don’t berate yourself for it. Accept yourself as you are, then forgive yourself.
2. Be kind to yourself.
   Don’t say things to yourself you wouldn’t say to a small child. 
3. Don’t bully yourself or be mean to yourself.
   We all hate bullies, we tell others to stand up to bullies, but we forget to also apply that same advice to ourselves.
4. Set more realistic goals.
   Don’t try to be perfect, otherwise you will just always set yourself up for failure. Having an unachievable goal will only make you feel like you are constantly failing, no matter how well you do.
5. Make a list of all your SUCCESSES and ACHIEVEMENTS.
   You can add anything, a great meal you cooked last night, organising a lovely day out with friends that you all enjoyed, helping a cat out of a tree, add anything and everything. Make the list as long as possible. Go back to it and add more things every week.
6. Write down one thing you are afraid of, then write a positive affirmation to fight it with.
   For example, I often worry I am fat, I know that I am not, but I still fear it.  So my positive affirmation to fight that fear is “I am beautiful. My body is amazing, strong, healthy and perfect. I love my body. It is the best body I could have asked for.”
7. Set aside a time of day to repeat your affirmation to yourself.
   I use the HABIT app to remind me to take a few moments for deliberate positive thinking. In fact, I do this every morning on my way into work. I close my eyes, relax my body, and repeat my affirmations to myself silently. You can also do this before going to bed, going to bed with positive thoughts in your head is always a good thing.

Where does low self-esteem come from?

The causes of low self-esteem are complicated, and can stretch back all the way to childhood so I’m not going to go into it in this article, as I feel this article is already very long. But I promise to write about this on a later occasion as I think it’s important to understand where self-esteem starts so we can avoid it getting worse, or causing it in others.  For now, mind.org has an article on low self-esteem that is good place start.

For today, I want you to practise the exercises I listed for building confidence and self-esteem.  It will not be an overnight process, not when you have had low self-esteem for years and years. It’s a bit like trying to lose weight, you have to do a little bit each day, and you have to at least start. If you don’t, if you keep putting it off until tomorrow or next week, then your life will never improve, it will just keep on getting worse, the problem will just get bigger and bigger.  So start today, and start small, and keep it up as regularly as possible. Don’t worry if you have a bad day, we all have bad days, just keep going, just keep trying, and I promise you, you WILL get better.

Why do I feel so passionately about this topic?

If you haven’t yet, please go read my About Me page. I go into a bit more detail on who I am and how I got here.  My own journey to becoming more confident took a long time and was full of stops and starts.  So I really want to share my mistakes so that you can have more of a fast track experience. I want to be your mentor, your guru, your AA sponsor, your psychologist and your personal life coach. I want you to have the most amazing life that you possibly could have. I want you to learn from all of my mistakes so you can proceed straight to GO and collect 400 dollars. I want you to be the best self that you can be.

Confidence and Perfectionism

I want to bring up the link between confidence and perfectionism.

In my opinion, confidence has nothing to do with perfectionism. Being perfect does not lead to confidence, in fact, it’s probably the exact opposite that is true. Striving to do everything “just so”, perfect, or pretty, will only ever lead you to feel like you didn’t achieve what you set out to do. Perfectionists tend to set the bar so high, that they themselves cannot achieve it, making them feel like they have failed no matter how well they accomplish a task.  You can do something better, faster, more efficiently than anyone else you know, but still feel like you failed because your standards are unrealistically high.  

So if you are a perfectionist, you perhaps have bigger problems than just a low self-esteem or lack of confidence.

But don’t worry, you can still build your confidence same as everyone else, as long as you realise your progress will likely be slower until you address the root causes of your need to be perfect all the time.