Being self-confident impacts many areas of your life, including professionally, academically, and in your relationships. Unfortunately, for a surplus of reasons, many people struggle with a lack of confidence.
If you’ve struggled with feeling confident in yourself and your abilities, you’re not alone. Many people struggle with a general lack of confidence and imposter syndrome, which may be more directly linked to a skill or role.
While low self-confidence is common, especially in younger individuals and people going through transitional life periods, it’s not something you need to live with.
Why do people struggle with self-confidence?
There are many reasons individuals may struggle with lowered self-confidence. These may include events from their childhood, such as highly critical teachers or parents, experiences of abuse, or poor performance. In addition, recent life events like a break-up, loss of a job, or other stressful experiences can also negatively impact self-confidence.
What are signs you may have low self-confidence?
There are many signs you may have self-confidence. These are often more obvious to those around you than to yourself. However, building awareness of the warning signs and reflecting internally can help you not only evaluate your levels of self-confidence but also improve them.
Some common signs of low self-confidence include:
- Feeling like you have no control over your life and that things happen to you vs. you making things happen on your own.
- Frequently talking down about yourself and your abilities.
- Doubting your achievements and hesitating when you’re provided with opportunities.
- Struggling to accept compliments or positive feedback of any kind.
- Constantly second-guessing yourself before speaking up or taking action of any kind.
Why build your self-confidence?
Regardless of the cause, low self-confidence can get in the way of many things in life. Meanwhile, improving your confidence and self-image can have a surplus of benefits, including:
- Easier to make friends & build meaningful relationships.
- Take risks and experience new things you may enjoy.
- Execute tasks and interests more effectively without worrying if you’re skilled enough to do so.
- Improve your resilience and ability to bounce back when things don’t go your way.
How can I build my self-confidence?
Every individual is unique, and you may find that specific exercises work better for you than others. It’s important to remember that building your self-confidence is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to plan for the long-term and prepare yourself for a growth journey.
Experiment with implementing some of the below strategies that focus on different aspects of your confidence. If you feel specific activities work well for you, make them part of your daily routine.
Improve Your Mindset
To get off on the right foot, consider shifting your mindset. It can be easy to get caught up in the doom and gloom of life. If one thing goes wrong, you may start to feel like everything is going wrong. Alternatively, it can help to internalize the mindset that in most cases, everything will ultimately be okay. Things like rejection and failure can actually be positive experiences you can grow and learn from, instead of ones that knock you down
Don’t Compare Yourself to Others
Drawing comparisons isn’t helpful for anyone and often leads to self-doubt. If you want to compare yourself to anyone, compare to your past self and how far you’ve come.
Take note of when you find yourself drawing those comparisons. For many people, it happens on social media. It’s important to remember that what you’re seeing is almost always a curated feed. People aren’t as likely to show the negative side of things. Similarly, magazines and online ads are edited, models get their makeup professionally done, and filters can shield reality from view. If you find that exposure to certain types of media makes you feel worse about yourself, avoid consuming it.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Unfollow accounts on social media that make you feel bad about yourself.
Eliminate Negative Self-talk
It can be easy to speak poorly about yourself to others. If you often rely on self-deprecating humor or talking down about yourself in conversations, try to speak positively about yourself instead. Build yourself up when you can and share the same compassion with yourself that you would with your friends and family.
If it helps, create a set of affirmations or mantras you can repeat to yourself daily that reaffirm a positive self-view.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Implement daily self-affirmations.
Focus on Solutions to Your Concerns
Don’t let yourself get wrapped up in worries, fears, and problems. Instead, look on the positive side of things and make a plan to accomplish your goals, overcome obstacles, and eliminate problems.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: The next time you feel like complaining, make a list of three possible solutions instead.
Take Care of Yourself
When you feel depressed and down about yourself, it can be difficult to complete regular tasks like brushing your teeth and bathing. However, making these activities part of your routine can do wonders for your self-confidence.
Make Grooming & Self-care Part of Your Daily Routine
A shower can make a world of difference in your self-confidence. Develop a care plan that includes all the personal care tasks you need to complete daily to feel good about yourself. You can also consider less frequent tasks that are also impactful, such as getting your hair trimmed every few months and going to the dentist bi-annually.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Build daily routines that include skincare and drinking 64oz of water each day.
Exercise Regularly
Exercising regularly is an effective way to improve your self-image and strengthen your body. Additionally, getting outside and enjoying nature can do wonders for your overall mood.
Don’t force yourself to go jogging every day at 5 am if you hate running. Instead, find ways to stay active that keep you healthy and make you happy. For example, consider going for daily nature walks, implementing a morning yoga practice, or trying out a new sport.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Make a habit of exercising for at least 20-minutes each day.
Get Good Sleep
Not getting enough sleep or sleeping poorly drastically impacts your mood. While just one day of sleeping poorly may lead to you being grumpy and irritable the next day, lasting poor sleep quality can have even worse impacts on your mental health.
If you struggle to sleep enough, build a routine for yourself. Make a plan to be in bed at least eight and a half hours before you need to be awake. Use activities like reading, bathing, or meditating to calm yourself down and get ready to sleep at night.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Prioritize getting enough sleep for your body – typically between 7-9 hours per day.
Become Self-aware
Many feelings of self-doubt come from a place of uncertainty. So it can be incredibly beneficial to think about and document the ways you’re feeling.
Get External Feedback
Try as you might, it’s hard to be introspective. One of the best ways to learn more about yourself is by talking to your support network. Your friends, family, and those around you have the best understanding of how you carry yourself, interact with others, and operate in uncomfortable situations.
Actively pursue feedback from your support network. Be open to what they share with you, and work to make changes where you’re able.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Ask your support network for input and then apply it.
Build a Brag Sheet
List your achievements, document your wins & accomplishments, save any feedback that makes you feel good. Then, revisit this list anytime you’re feeling down about yourself. This will also be a great resource anytime you’re looking for a raise, promotion, or new job.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Use the notes app on your phone or a Google Doc to build a list of your achievements & positive feedback. Reference this frequently.
Recognize Your Strengths
Build a list of things you’re good at. These should include both hard skills — such as gardening, coding, and writing — and soft skills — such as empathy, teamwork, and critical thinking. It’s beneficial to know yourself, what you’re good at, and what you enjoy doing.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Build a list of your strengths.
Identify Opportunities to Improve
While you may think of areas you’re struggling in as weaknesses, it’s better to view them as opportunities. Explore different areas you can work to improve yourself or your skills and make a plan to do so.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Build a list of your growth opportunities.
Outline Your Goals
If you don’t know what you’re working towards, it can be hard to feel confident about yourself and excited to do new things. Define what you’re hoping to achieve and when you want to achieve them. This should include small tasks as well as large ones. Take time to visualize yourself achieving these goals. How do you feel?
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Make a goal timeline including easy and more challenging goals.
Optimize Your Environment
While growing your self-confidence has a lot to do with the work you need to do on yourself, there are also many ways you can optimize your environment for success.
Create Frequent Opportunities to Try Out Something New
It can be scary to do something for the first time. However, when you’re more accustomed to trying new things and succeeding, you won’t be as scared to explore new hobbies or interests.
If you’re struggling to face your fears, try to realign how you think about things. For example, you may feel your heart racing and your palms growing sweaty as you prepare or think about doing something new. Instead of seeing these responses as anxiety and fear, see them as excitement for the opportunity in front of you.
You can also consider building a self-confidence playlist that gets you in the zone and pumped up about whatever you may be working on.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few ideas to consider:
- Reading — There’s always a new and exciting book to read and once you’ve finished, you can lend it out to a friend and discuss it together. Expand your knowledge, explore new worlds, and challenge your imagination.
- Traveling — There’s more to traveling than just spending money and going places. Traveling involves planning, looking forward to the act itself, and finally experiencing things away from your ‘normal’.
- Music — Music brings people together and is played, heard, and loved worldwide. Being a music lover can also include making music as a hobby. Learn an instrument, practice singing, and play with others.
- Gardening — Some people work in the garden to produce food, others appreciate that it passes the time and offers a sense of accomplishment. Give others the excess produce that grows from your garden or even sell it for extra income.
- Yoga — Build muscle and work on your balance, concentration, and core strength through the mind and body activity that is yoga. You can begin almost anywhere, without the need for a gym or equipment. Decide for yourself how difficult you want it to be as you become more experienced at yoga.
- Hiking — Appreciate the great outdoors and feel the wind blowing through your hair. All it takes is finding the nearest hiking trail and taking the first step.
- Cooking — When you cook as a hobby, you gain the patience to make mistakes without feeling frustrated and giving up. Follow recipes or improvise as you need to, soon you’ll see cooking as both parts art and science.
NextSelf Self-confidence Tip: Try something new weekly.
Grow Your Self-confidence with NextSelf
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