confidence

The Ultimate Guide To Confidence

“To establish true self-confidence, we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives.” — Denis Waitley

I know what you’re thinking … easier said than done, right?

Nobody is born with high or low self-confidence. Confidence is a feeling that people develop and work on over time. For most people, confidence is something that comes and goes.

Think about it in terms of a cycle: When someone is at the top of the cycle, they are focused on their successes and accomplishments, meaning they might feel confident and strong. But when they are at the bottom of their cycle, they are focused on their failures and may feel low self-confidence or even defeat.

If you can identify with the feeling I’m referring to at the bottom of the confidence cycle, know you’re not alone. Everyone struggles with self-confidence every now and then. The key is realizing that confidence is like a muscle — the more you work on it, the easier it will become for you to use and maintain.

This article will teach you why everyone should work on their self-confidence, and it’ll provide you with ways to build your self-confidence.

But first — what is self-confidence?

What Is Self-Confidence?

Self-confidence is the feeling you have when you strut into a job interview knowing you’re going to impress the hiring manager. A person feels confident when they believe they can successfully do something by applying their judgement, knowledge, and prior experiences.

How Does Self Confidence Impact Your Life?

Think about a time when you felt extremely confident in your ability to do something.

Did you feel an adrenaline rush? Did you feel strong and powerful? Did you feel as though you could conquer the world?

Self-confidence does a lot of things for us. It boosts our self-esteem, diminishes stress, and often pushes us to act. But most importantly, it makes us feel good about ourselves.

Let’s dive into a few more ways self-confidence impacts our lives:

Your happiness and self-esteem will increase

Self-esteem is closely related to confidence but has a slightly different definition — it is a person’s evaluation of their self-worth and value.

There is a direct correlation between confidence and self-esteem. When you believe in yourself — your talents, capabilities, worth, and potential — both your self-esteem and confidence increase.

When your self-esteem increases, you believe you are worthy of the life you dream of and the success you desire. Not only will you become more confident, but you will more easily accept your failures, give yourself the credit you deserve, accept new challenges, and become happier.

In fact, self-esteem always exists with happiness — and there are studies to prove it. In almost every instance, people who feel good about themselves are significantly happier than those who lack self-worth. When self-confidence increases, your self-esteem and happiness do the same.

Think about it in terms of the following chart. Most people would feel high self-esteem, sure about their abilities, and good about standing up for their beliefs when behaving confidently — as listed in the left column. They are doing what makes them happy. The opposite is true about the right column.