Self-confidence is just a bit like the running water in your house. You may not know where it comes from, but it’s painfully obvious when it’s not there available. Just like when your water is shut off, a dearth of self-confidence has a huge negative impact on your health and lifestyle. Fortunately, there are things you can do to shore it up.
But before we even talk about it, let’s try to know first what exactly is self-confidence.
What is self-confidence?
Self-confidence is essentially defined as a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment. Research confirms that it is important to your health and psychological well-being.1
Generally, confidence can refer to a general sense of belief and trust in your own ability to control your life situation, or it might be, as such, more situation/time-specific. For example, you might have high self-confidence in an area of expertise but feel less confident in other areas.
Having a healthy level of self-confidence can help you become successful in your personal and professional life. It can play a major role in your motivation to pursue your goals and affect how you present yourself to other people. Research has proven that people who are more confident are also, more like to be, more academically successful.
Benefits of Self-Confidence
Having self-confidence can bring many benefits at home, at work, and within your relationships. Here’s a look at a few of the positive effects of self-confidence:
- Better performance: Rather than waste time and energy worrying that you aren’t good enough, you can devote your energy to your efforts.10 Ultimately, you’ll perform better when you feel confident.
- Healthy relationships: Having self-confidence not only impacts how you feel about yourself, but it helps you better understand and love others. It also gives you the strength to walk away if you’re not getting what you deserve.
- Openness to try new things: When you believe in yourself, you’re more willing to try new things. Whether you apply for a promotion or sign up for a cooking class, putting yourself out there is a lot easier when you have confidence in yourself and your abilities.
- Resilience: Believing in yourself can enhance your resilience, or ability to bounce back from any challenges or adversities you face in life.
Best Self-confidence tips for life
So, when you know, it’s very crucial to have a lot of self-confidence in one’s abilities, it is important to know how to boost it up further to reach the true potential of your life.
1. Build Confident Habits
To develop and improve your self-esteem and ultimately, self-confidence, aim to develop good habits – and break bad ones! Closely related to this thing is to take regular exercise and a healthy diet that can dramatically improve your physical and mental health And studies have clearly shown that getting a good night’s sleep is linked with increased optimism and self-esteem and obviously self-confidence.
2. Review Past Achievements
This makes a lot of sense; your self-confidence will increase when you’re able to say, “I can do this, and here’s the evidence.” As part of your Personal SWOT Analysis, you’ll have already identified things that you’re good at, based on your past milestones.
Start with listing the top 10 things that you’re most proud of in an “achievement log.” Then use them to make positive affirmations about what you can do in the future. These statements are especially effective if you tend to undermine your confidence with negative self-talk.
3. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Whether you compare to your friends on Instagram or you compare your wealth to your friend’s wealth, comparisons aren’t healthy for your happiness. In fact, a 2018 study published in Personality and Individual Differences found a direct link between envy and the way you are feeling about yourself.
Researchers found that people who compared themselves to others experienced envy. And the more envy they experienced, the worse they felt about their lives.
Therefore, if you’re feeling envious of someone else’s life, remind yourself of your own strengths and successes. Always focus on your own life and not the lives of others.
4. Surround Yourself With Positive People
Pay attention to how your friends make you feel because that’s very important. Do your friends lift you up or bring you down? Are they constantly judging you or do they accept you for who you are?
The people or space you spend time around influence your thoughts and attitudes about yourself more than you think. If you feel bad about yourself after hanging out with a particular person, it may be time to say goodbye to him/her.
5. Health is wealth
It never feels good about yourself if you’re abusing your body. On the other hand, if you practice self-care, you know you’re always doing something positive for your mind, body, and hence you’ll naturally feel more confident.
Here are a few self-care practices that are important for boosint self-confidence:
- Diet: Eating well comes with many benefits, including higher levels of self-confidence and self-esteem. When you fuel your body with nutrient-dense foods, you feel healthier, stronger, and more confident.
- Exercise: Studies consistently show physical activity boosts confidence. A 2016 study published in Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment found that regular physical activity improved their confidence due to healthir body image.
- Meditation: More than just a relaxation practice, meditation can help boost self-confidence in several ways. 1) it helps you to recognize and accept yourself. 2) teaches you to stop negative self-talk and disconnect from unhelpful mental chatter interfering with your self-confidence.
- Sleep: Skimping on sleep can take a toll on your emotions, whereas good, quality sleep has been linked with positive personality traits, including optimism and self-esteem.
6. Be Kind to Yourself
Self-compassion is treating yourself with kindness when you make a mistake, fail, or experience a setback. It’s a way of relating to yourself that allows you to become more emotionally stable and be able to go past challanging emotions, s. Researchers have linked the ability to relate to ourselves in a compassionate way to self-confidence.
A 2009 study published in the Journal of Personality found that self-compassion leads to more consistent confidence. So the next time you’re in a tough situation, remember that being imperfect or falling short at times is a part of life. Do your best to navigate through these experiences with self-kindness.
7. Face Your demons
Stop putting things off (like asking someone on a date or applying for a promotion) until you feel more confident. The best way to build your confidence is by facing your fears upfront.
If you’re afraid you’ll embarrass yourself or you think that you’re going to mess up, try it anyway. Tell yourself it’s just an experiment and see what happens.
You might learn in the process that being a little anxious or making a few mistakes isn’t as bad as you initially thought. And each time you move forward, you can gain more confidence in yourself, which in the end, will help prevent you from taking any risks that will result in any major negative consequences for you.
