Self-confidence is self-respect and belief in your own capabilities and knowledge and a sense of comfort with yourself. Self-confident people can even invite trust and inspire confidence in others.
It can be situation-specific and you may have self-confidence in one area of expertise while having less – confidence in other areas of your life. People usually are confident about the areas they are passionate about in their lives, for example in their cooking abilities if they are fond of cooking and less confident in their athletic abilities if they are not into running.
If you are naturally self–critical and people can influence your thoughts easily and put you down, you can easily become an individual with low self-confidence.
However, being self-confident is very important and can add many benefits to your life, like loving and respecting others and loving yourself, tackling new job tasks with ease, trying and accepting new things in life easily, acknowledging your mistakes, and using them as learning opportunities.
Everyone has a chance to build their self-confidence in life, although it might take some time and can involve a lot of ups and downs and in this article, we offer you some tips that you keep in mind and start using and become a new version of yourself.
How Can You Build Your Self-Confidence?
Self-confidence along with the feeling of security, identity, sense of belonging, and feeling of competence is one factor that defines self-esteem.
Your self-confidence may be impacted by your age, disability, genetics, illness, physical abilities, socioeconomic status, thought patterns, etc.
Before starting building your self–confidence, you can check whether your self–confidence is healthy and you are not overly self-confident or your self-confidence is rather low.
If you have healthy high esteem you:
- openly express your needs and feel confident
- have a positive outlook on life
- say no when you want to
- believe that you are equal to everyone else
- can understand your overall strengths and weaknesses and accept them
- never let others manipulate you
- see life realistically and accept things and people as they are
- love and respect your partner
- enjoy everyday activities and grow as a person and easily find meaning in their life
- do not take it very seriously when someone criticizes you and do not depend on other people’s opinion
But, what if your self–esteem is low how you can recognize it?
There are a lot of ways to improve your low self-confidence. First of all, you need to find out the reason why your self–confidence is low.
People with low esteem do not believe in their capabilities and never put their worthiness on themselves.
People with low self-esteem will usually:
- Have low confidence
- Try to please anyone and have a hard time saying no
- Are very indecisive
- Get angry and irritated very easily
- Do not take risks and try new things in life
- Experience self–doubt, worry, and fear pretty often
- Believe that other people are better than they are
So, you should make a plan and start practicing the ways that suit you well and your lifestyle. One of the best practices you should do is not to take yourself so seriously, or your current problems. You should always keep in mind that nothing is permanent and you need to make decisions that make you feel good about yourself.
You can use these 4 strategies and build self-esteem activities that are effective and as building a self – esteem is a matter of concern today, thanks to the scientific research and advancement in literature, there are books available on self–esteem that are practical and evidence-based. You can also find online some worksheets and activities for managing your self-esteem and download them for free. (1)
What Are 4 Strategies For Building Self-Esteem?
There are plenty of ways in which you can improve your self-esteem. Some of the strategies we propose are:
1. Improve your Mental and Physical Health
Taking care of your mental and physical health means that you always check up on yourself, listen to your body and make doctor appointments when it’s necessary. In order to improve your health you should take your vitamins, regularly go for a walk or take exercise at least three times a week or do yoga and meditate for one hour per day, and also drink a lot of water daily.
2. Identify and Challenge your Negative Beliefs
The key to positive thinking is to never underestimate the power of a positive attitude. You should identify and challenge your negative beliefs and keep working until you find their roots and what is causing them in order to work in your favor.
3. Become more Assertive and Learn to Say No
The key is to always know when, why, and whom to say no to and stand behind that decision without regrets. Making your time a priority it’s not selfish it’s part of building your self-esteem.
4. Build Positive Relationships – and Avoid Negative Ones
When you build positive relationships with yourself, your mind, and your body you’re doing yourself a favor. Only with a positive relationship with yourself, you can keep going and make positive social relationships with people, engage with friends, meet new people and work in your social circle without being exhausted.
How Can You Build Self-Esteem And Confidence Yourself?
You can work with the strategies mentioned before and also add some new habits in your everyday life just to keep sure that you are working on gaining more self-esteem and confidence.
Write your emotions on paper or in your diary every day or at the end of each week. So you can keep track of how your emotions impact your self-confidence.
Practice positive self-talk, also is more gentle and patient with yourself. Dance to your favorite playlist, work out, go swimming or hiking to take some deep breaths, and fulfill your mind and body with energy, more oxygen, and positive thoughts.
You can also ask for some feedback from people that know you and appreciate you and you can even write down the feedback and refer it to it when you have a hard time struggling.
10 Ways To Build Your Self -Esteem Yourself
Here are 10 ways you can use to build up your self–confidence yourself:
- Be curious about new things in life
- Fight and stand up for your own ideas
- Step out of your comfort zone
- Learn from your failures and see them as learning opportunities
- Never compare yourself to others
- Have respect for yourself
- Have some positive self–talk
- Pursue passions that make you feel happy
- Set up big goals in life
- Strive for the best, but accept that nobody is perfect
In addition, you can use the following activities whenever you feel like having low self–esteem:
7 Activities To Raise Your Self-Esteem
Everyone deserves to be happy and have healthy self–esteem to enjoy their life and feel good about themselves, so here are 7 activities to achieve it easily:
1. Use positive affirmations
This is a very well-known tool for improving your self–esteem and confidence. You can always go for some gentle affirmations and do not use exaggerating ones such as:
“I am capable of doing hard things.”
“I will carry on and survive this.”
“I can always grow and learn from my mistakes.”
You can even write them down and place them somewhere to look at them while at home or work.
2. Set a goal and work towards it
Probably the best way to boost your self–esteem is by reaching a goal in your life. This will make you feel proud and will certainly boost your self–esteem even a little bit.
The important thing is that the goals should always be realistic and important for you. For example, if you like running, you can sign up for a race.
3. Practice mindfulness
One systematic review has shown that mindfulness can have a very positive effect on the self – esteem. Still, more research is needed to relate this research to low self–esteem because they had some methodological weaknesses. (2)
Mindfulness is a 2500-year-old Buddhist practice. It is about having a clear mind, being fully present and aware of what you are doing, without any interference in the past and in the future. It has already been deployed in Chinese psychiatry as a method for reducing stress, anxiety, and even drug addiction. (3)
4. Stop comparing your real life to other people’s highlight reels
Sometimes you may feel bad because of the achievements in the life of some people, especially those who are on social media. But, you must know they have real lives as well, and everyone experiences hardships, vulnerability, and imperfections, and nobody is perfect.
Start having your own life and spend more time on self–care. You can even start volunteering to see that there are people less fortunate than you and with even bigger problems. When you start some positive and meaningful difference in the world you live in, it will surely boost your self–esteem.
5. Keep a self-esteem journal
You can start keeping a journal and write down all the positive things that happened during the day. It is very simple and it takes only a few minutes of your time.
Cultivate your gratitude as well by writing down things you are grateful for in life, giving some compliments about yourself when you look in the mirror, make some gratitude expressions like “I am grateful for my health and all the great people I have in my life”.
6. Spend more time with people who boost your self–esteem
Self–esteem can be affected by people and events coming from outside. If you spend time with people who criticize you very often, it will be hard for you to improve your self–esteem.
Try to spend some time with people who motivate and inspire you, and tell all of your friends who criticize you that criticizing is not acceptable and that you will no longer spend your time with them.
7. Always accept compliments
According to one study, people with low self–esteem have problems with accepting positive feedback and it is more likely that they will accept negative one. (4)
Just practice saying “Thank you “ or “That means a lot, thank you “ when someone gives you a compliment, and do not be shy and have that good feeling most people have when receiving a compliment. It will sure make you feel better.
How Can You Stop Being So Insecure?
When you feel insecure your self-esteem probably is very low for some reason. Keep in mind that your insecurity is caused by some reason, try to identify why you feel that way. There is no one given answer which will make you stop being insecure instantly. You should work on lowering insecurities until no longer you have them. The best way to feel more secure is to believe in yourself, your capabilities, and your powers. Remember that no one is you, we all have different paths and you’re responsible for your life decisions. Waking up in the morning with the attitude that life is beautiful, worthwhile and everything is possible if you truly want, is far away the best decision you can make to feel less insecure.