6 Ways to Improve Your Self Confidence (and Why it’s Important)

What is Self Confidence?

Self confidence is a feeling of trust in your own abilities, qualities and judgment. For example, knowing you can ace an exam or job interview. Related, but slightly different, is self esteem: a belief in your own high intrinsic value. For example, thinking you are loveable despite your human imperfections.

It’s possible to have high self confidence and success in certain areas of life, but low self esteem. In fact, many type A, high-achievers are familiar with this imbalance. This can result in feeling inadequacy and less-than-healthy coping strategies. It can mean you’re highly motivated to work (or date), but primarily to prove you are good enough, rather than to add something to other people.

I’ve personally been surprised that the most successful, beautiful and wealthy people I know often don’t love who they are deep down.

The Benefits of High Self Confidence and Self Esteem

Healthy self confidence and esteem can support productive levels of assertiveness, autonomy and resilience in challenging situations. Research also suggests benefits for our relationships. Low self esteem makes us more likely to put others down in an attempt to feel better about ourselves!

Buoyant self confidence can make the winning difference to the outcome of a client meeting or date. Also to trust yourself to make good decisions under pressure. Studies have shown that high self esteem also positively correlates with reported happiness levels.

Six Ways to Boost Your Self Confidence and Esteem:

1. Notice and turn overly self-critical thoughts around. Observe when your thoughts are self-critical or self-doubting. Then ask yourself whether you would speak to a close friend in that way. Try reversing negative thoughts when you notice them. For example, “I am so bad at…” might become “I am getting better at…” or “I can do…”. Regular mindfulness meditation practice can help you become more aware of thought patterns.
2. Try positive affirmations. Before you go to sleep or when you wake up, practice repeating a positive phrase to yourself. Examples include: “I am powerful / intelligent / safe / energised / enough”. The positive affirmation which is the most challenging for you to say, is likely the one you need most right now. Replace the phrase you tell yourself with a new one, once you feel like you fully believe it.
3. Feel gratitude for yourself and your life. Start by noting down three things about yourself or your life you’re grateful for. You could also make growing lists of: “wins” you had; meaningful compliments you received; ways you helped someone else; and instances in which you felt supported (no matter how small). Over time, you’ll likely feel more spontaneous gratitude throughout your day. As you train your mind to notice the positive aspects of life and celebrate your wins. This helps tackle our natural human negativity bias.
4. Be kind to others. For example, smiling at strangers, giving gifts, volunteering or donating to charity. Altruism has been shown to boost our self esteem, confidence and feelings of social connectedness. Just as deliberate wrong-doings can damage our self esteem – even if nobody else finds out. Being kind can help grow your self-belief by evidencing (to you) that you are an intrinsically good person.
5. Check in with yourself regularly. When you feel negative emotions come up, ask yourself what you need. Whether that’s more rest, social connection, fun, exercise etc. This can help with emotional self-efficacy – your belief in your ability to regulate your emotions – and your self esteem. Notice whether certain situations or people tend to make you feel uplifted or not-so-great afterwards. And then adjust your time accordingly where you can. This will help you trust that you can give yourself (or request) what you want and need, and politely decline what you don’t.
6. Hang out with people who take care of themselves. Start to notice who around you seems to have good boundaries, and is able to nurture themselves. As well as those who seem more confident in their abilities. Note how they show up, and think about which habits you might be able to take on yourself. You may naturally start to distance yourself from those who display poor self confidence and esteem as you build your own up. After all, we are all influenced by the beliefs and behaviours of those around us.

In Conclusion

Being honest with yourself to recognise any self confidence or self esteem issues is a first step to improve. You can achieve this by speaking to a mental health professional; asking honest feedback from those you love and trust; or journaling and meditating on this. Most of us have some improvements we could make in this area of our lives.

My hope is that with better self esteem, we can learn to treat ourselves better. This can, in turn, improve how we let others treat us; as well as giving us capacity to nurture those around us from a stronger and more empathetic place.

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