Raise Your Self-Confidence

I come across many individuals who ask me for tips to increase self-confidence. I am sharing tips that helped individuals to increase their self-confidence. The word ‘confidence’ comes from the Latin word to trust or have faith. Self–confidence is belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities. Self-confidence allows you to feel secure, makes you realistic, and helps you manage relationship, career, social and spiritual life successfully. Self-esteem is one’s judgment of self-worth as well as an attitude toward the self. It is how we feel deep down about who we are.

Low self-confidence is about fear of performing. For example, you have to give a presentation to a large group of people, and you are extremely nervous, because you are afraid of making a mistake. This would mean you lack confidence, because you question your ability.  On the other hand, you are afraid of how people will judge you, which questions your own self-worth. This would mean you lack self-esteem.

I have realized after several years of  helping others that self-confidence and self-esteem go hand in hand. As you start to love and trust yourself, your self-esteem improves. And as your self-esteem improves, you feel good, start taking decisions and actions, and hence your self-confidence improves. You start doing things you’ve wouldn’t have done before. The same thing happens when you start increasing yours self-confidence.  As your self-confidence builds, your self-esteem improves, because you start counting your success, which make you feel good about you.

First, let’s start building your self-esteem.  I believe, when you build your self-esteem your self-confidence builds automatically. Everyone has their own strengths, abilities and skills to enhance their self-confidence and become who they want to eventually be.  Just focus on being the best.  Following steps may help you raise your confidence.

1. Stop your inner critic.

We all have an inner critic. It is important to learn to manage and to replace the voice of your own inner critic. This inner voice whispers or shouts destructive thoughts in your mind. Thoughts like for example:

·         I am lazy and sloppy, now get to work.

·         I am not good at job at all.

·         I am uglier than my friend/co-worker/partner.

You need to stop the train of the thought driven by the inner critic, negativity and replace these critical voices with more positive and helpful thoughts.

·         Be aware of your self-talk, the thoughts you have about yourself and what you’re doing. While doing my doctoral research, I often come across negative thoughts, “This is too hard. I can’t write… want to stop. I am not good”

·         Simply to say stop whenever the critic pipes up in your mind.  You can do this by creating a stop-word or stop-phrase. As the critic says something – in your mind – shout: STOP! No, no, no, I am not going there!

·         Replace negative thoughts with positive one. Refocus your thoughts to something more constructive. Like planning what you want to eat for dinner or your study or writing journal (personal diary about reflections of the day). I replaced negative thoughts with positive ones, “C’mon, I can do this! Only one mile left!”

2. Act positive.

More than just thinking positive, you have to put it into action. Action, actually, is the key to developing self-confidence. You are what you do, and so if you change what you do, you change what you are. Act in a positive way, take action instead of telling yourself you can’t, be positive. Talk to people in a positive way, put energy into your actions. You’ll soon start to notice a difference.

3. Set a small goal and achieve it.

People often make the mistake of shooting for the moon, and then when they fail, they get discouraged. Instead, set a goal you know you can achieve, and then work to achieve it. You’ll feel good when you achieve your goals. The more you achieve small goals, the better you’ll be at it, and the better you’ll feel. Soon you’ll be setting bigger (yet achievable) goals and achieving those too.

4. Increase competence.

Identify skills you would like to strengthen and practice diligently. Just do small bits at a time. If you want to be a more competent researcher, for example, don’t start research at once. Just begin to reading articles you like, and write. Read about research methodologies, identify your preferred methodology and write summary of your readings. The more you explore, the better you’ll be. Set aside 30 minutes to an hour a day to read and write. Sincere practice will increase your competence.

5. Motivate yourself.

A simple but powerful way to motivate yourself and to keep that motivation up daily is focus on doing what you really like to do. When you really like doing something then the motivation to do that thing tends to comes pretty automatically. But sometimes, we feel lazy to do what we like. Push yourself to do even if your mind resistance yourself doing it or feel not to do. So if you lose your motivation, ask yourself: Am I doing what I really want to do? If not and if possible, then refocus and start working on that very important thing instead.

6. Appreciate yourself.

Take a 2 minute self-appreciation break daily. It’s simple and fun habit.  Take a deep breath, slow down and ask yourself this question: what are 3 things I can appreciate about myself?

A few examples that have come up when I have used to this exercise are as follow:

·         I help quite a few people each day through what I write.

·         I can make people laugh and forget about their troubles.

·         I am very thoughtful and caring when it comes to maintaining friendship/relationship.

·         I follow what I plan.

These short breaks do not only build self-esteem in the long run but can also turn around a negative mood and reload you with a lot of positive energy again.

7. Appreciate others.

It important to observe others, listen to others and appreciate others honestly. It raises self-confidence of yours as well as who is appreciated. Complement at-least one person a day. A few examples are as follow:

·         You always help others.

·         You have very good communication skills and write well.

·         You are thoughtful.

·         You look graceful today.

 8. Replace the perfectionism.

Few thought habits can be so destructive in daily life as perfectionism. It can paralyze you from taking action because you become so afraid of not living up to some standard. And so you procrastinate and you do not get the results you want. This will make your self-esteem sink. Or you take action but are never or very rarely satisfied with what you accomplished and your own performance. And so your opinion and feelings about yourself become more and more negative and your motivation to take action plummets.

·         Go for good enough. When you aim for perfection then that usually winds up in a project or a task never being finished. So simply go for good enough instead. Simply realize that there is something called good enough and when you are there then you are finished.

9. Be your own best friend. 

Instead of beating yourself up, ask yourself: How would my friend/parent support me and help me in this situation? Then do things and talk to yourself  like he or she would. It keeps you from falling into a pit of despair and helps you to be more constructive after the first initial pain of a mistake or failure starts to dissipate. Be your best friend.

10. Speak slowly.

Such a simple thing, but it can have a big difference in how others perceive you. A person in authority, with authority, speaks slowly. It shows confidence. A person who feels that he isn’t worth listening to will speak quickly. Even if you don’t feel the confidence of someone who speaks slowly, try doing it a few times. It will make you feel more confident.

11. Groom yourself.

Dressing well can make huge difference in our self-confidence. You will feel good about yourself when you dress well. You’ll feel successful and presentable and ready to tackle the world. Now, dressing nicely means something different for everyone. I don’t mean here to wear expensive clothes, but mean wearing clothes that are nice, comfortable and presentable.

12. Keep trying.

If you are not able to work according to your plan, don’t feel sorry. Keep trying until you don’t do what you wanted to do. Learn from past mistakes and focus on opportunities. It might be a small thing like getting up from the couch and going to the gym. It could be to be understanding instead of judgmental in a situation. Or to stop feeling sorry for yourself and focus on the opportunities and gratitude for what you actually have.

13. Try something new.

When you try something new, when you challenge yourself in a small or bigger way and go outside of your comfort zone then your opinion of yourself goes up. You may not have done whatever you did in a spectacular or great way but you at least tried instead of sitting on your hands and doing nothing.

So go outside of your comfort zone regularly. Don’t expect anything; just tell yourself that you will try something out. And then later on you can do the same thing a few more times and improve your own performance.

14. Change a small habit.

Not a big one, like quitting smoking. Just a small one, like writing things down, waking up 10 minutes earlier. drinking a glass of water when you wake up or start an exercise. Something small that you know you can do. Do it for a month and then continue. When you’ve accomplished it, you’ll feel good.

15. Don’t compare.

When you compare your life, yourself and what you have to other people’s lives and what they have then you have destructive habit on your hands. There is always someone who has more or is better than you at something in the world. There are always people ahead of you. So replace that habit with something better.  Compare yourself to yourself. Focus on you on your results and on how you can and how you have improved your results. This will both motivate you and raise your self-esteem.

16. Spend time with positive and supportive people.

Identify positive and supportive people around you. Try to spend some time with them. Choose to spend less time with people who are nervous perfectionists, unkind or unsupportive of your dreams or goals. And spend more time with positive, uplifting people who have more human and kinder standards and ways of thinking about things.

You can spend more time in reading self-help books, blogs, websites, or  watch TV-shows or you tube that inspires you.

17.  Smile.

Smile works. I feel instantly better when I smile, and it helps me to be kinder to others as well. A little tiny thing that can have a chain reaction.  Always smile to everyone you meet. Make it a habit.

18Audit yourself.

Spend some time daily with self. Introspect and reflection on your day. It is reality check to your progress. If you have done well, reward yourself. If you have performed well, punish yourself in terms of being more focused on goals, reduce fun or social time.

19. Write down your experiences

Writing is very helpful tool. Write down your experiences, feelings and emotions. Try to cover following aspects of the day:

·         How was your day?

·         What you felt?

·         How you motivated yourself?

·         Where do you find yourself on self-confidence? (Rate on point 10 scale where 10 is improved, 0 is nor improved)

Make a habit of writing. If you cannot write daily, write on alternate day.

Hope this helps you. Do not forget to share your experiences.  If you need professional help, do not hesitate to write to us or call InspireLife. We will be happy to help you.