Our editors have independently chosen the products listed on this page. If you purchase something mentioned in this article, we may earn a small commission.
November 3, 2021 — 16:04 PM
Confidence—everyone wants it, and we can easily spot it in others. But when it comes to summoning our own confidence, it can feel like an impossible task. The good news is this sense of confidence isn’t as elusive as it might feel. There are ways to develop self-confidence.
Where confidence comes from.
Confidence is self-trust in your skills, choices, and values. It comes from within yourself and feels like an inner knowing of your strengths and weaknesses while still thinking positively about yourself.
“Self-confidence comes from the information and ideas we take in through the world that support a positive perspective about ourselves,” says licensed psychotherapist Rameya Shanmugavelayutham, LCSW. “Often we enter into the world with an abundance of self-confidence. Consider the young child who feels confident taking risks like jumping off the swings or dances without a care in front of a crowd. When a young child is affirmed and encouraged, they strengthen their sense of self and begin to hold cognitive schemas that confirm they are worthy, valuable, beautiful, intelligent, etc.”
While many people often have a strong sense of confidence as a child, life often throws curve balls that can diminish confidence. Low self-confidence can feel like being unable to handle other people’s criticisms or difficulty trusting yourself and others.
The great thing is, every moment is a chance to build evidence toward your self-confidence. To make up for what was lost, you can rebuild confidence over time through small and large moments that ladder up toward more self-trust.
Notably, although they look similar on the surface, being shy or introverted does not equate to a lack of self-confidence. Shyness is a personality trait where some people are naturally timid around others. Being an introvert is also a personality trait, first described by Carl Jung as someone who prefers to turn inward to their internal world for reflection and insight. This is in contrast to extroverts, who prefer to engage with other people. (Here’s a quick quiz to find out if you’re an introvert or extrovert.)
What causes low confidence?
Just as you can build positive self-confidence, there are things that can erode it. According to Shanmugavelayutham, the way people are socialized and seen by those around them, in addition to difficult transitions in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, can all lead to lower self-confidence.
She says some factors that can contribute to a negative sense of self include:
Caregivers that are overly critical or reprimanding
Caregivers that limit a child’s exploration
Feeling rejected by peers
Difficulties transitioning into a constructed idea of “adulthood”
Media representations and data from the world about what’s “ideal” in a person
Varying levels of confidence can also show up in different situations. You may feel very confident in math because you were socialized and praised to succeed in your academic studies. You may feel less confident when it comes to public speaking because you’ve previously received criticisms from peers and haven’t yet processed their feedback in a useful way.
Again, the good news is that low self-confidence is fixable, and you are totally in charge of making it happen.
13 ways to build confidence:
1. Figure out where your lack of confidence stems from.
Finding the root cause for low self-confidence can provide a map of how to build up more positive self-confidence. A good place to start is through self-reflection and journaling.
Try this exercise to help you get to the possible root cause of your low self-confidence:
For one week, record any low self-confidence thoughts or sayings that keep showing up for you.
For each thought or saying, ask yourself “Who or what told you that?”
Decide if you want to allow that voice to have authority over your thoughts in this stage of your life.
Journal out your reactions and create a plan of action to move forward.
If you’re struggling with this, it can also help to work with a therapist or coach to identify and transform the unhelpful low-self-confidence thoughts.
2. Understand what self-confidence feels like for you.
Take some time to figure out what confidence feels like in your body. A good question to ask is “How will you know that you’ve reached a satisfactory level of self-confidence?” Perhaps you will start speaking up more at work. You might finally wear that outfit you’ve always wanted to. You may even introduce yourself to your crush at your co-working space. This will be different from person to person, so it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else. This is your personal measurement of confidence.
If you find yourself frequently using the word “should,” (for example, I should be married by 30, I should have a house by next year, or I should have my life together by now), take a step back and reflect. Where is this “should” coming from?
Many of the “shoulds” in life stem from cultural or familial expectations. With all of these statements, it’s helpful to always ask yourself: Is this what I truly want for myself?
You have the power to reclaim your life at any point. The more that you make decisions aligned with your true self and your desires, the more confident you will become in your decision-making.
Most of us don’t like experiencing a ton of change at once. A very important key for self-improvement work is starting small.
Shirin Eskandani, life coach and founder of Wholehearted Coaching, says one way to build self-confidence is to make small promises to yourself and then follow through. “And the key word is small. Do things that are a stretch but also realistic for you. So perhaps if you’re not a morning person, not committing to waking up at 6 a.m. every day to do a morning routine but instead trying out an evening routine.”
5. Adopt a growth mindset.
A growth mindset encourages you to explore beyond your current skills and knowledge, keeping the possibility of improvement open. Instead of using phrases like “I’m not confident,” just add “yet” to it, which transforms the old belief into “I’m not confident yet.” This adds the qualifier that you are in the process of gaining skills to become confident.
A 2019 study found that growth mindset interventions led to better math grades for high schoolers and improved even more when students were immersed in environments that encouraged growth mindset principles. So it’s worth exploring your new growth mindset with like-minded people.
6. Know you will fail, and that’s OK.
We live in a failure-averse culture where people mostly just talk about their accomplishments. Rarely do you ever get to hear about people’s accounts of failure. Understanding that failure happens and is a part of the process of living will help you to live more fully.
“For a lot of us, we were usually taught that self-confidence comes from achievements,” certified life coach and leadership coach Nicole Cruz tells mindbodygreen. “However, this means that when we achieve, we feel great about our abilities, but when we fail, our self-confidence takes a hit. I truly believe that self-confidence comes from our own thoughts about our abilities rather than external achievements. So that regardless of whether we succeed or fail, we have the power to retain our self-confidence.”
7. Stand up to your inner critic.
Sometimes you might hesitate to trust yourself because you’ve received critical feedback from authority figures earlier in life, like parents, teachers, or community leaders, and you have adopted their criticisms as your own beliefs. But there comes a point when this feedback no longer serves your current life. Standing up to those old criticisms can unlock a new level of confidence.
“Confidence can also be built by rewriting the narratives in our heads about our worthiness. This involves identifying self-limiting beliefs and reframing them,” Shanmugavelayutham explains. “Often the voice in our head that tells us we are not good enough is not our authentic voice but an aggregate of all the voices of those who have criticized us in the past. When we talk back to the inner critic enough, the confident inner-child that we lost touch with can reemerge.”
8. Understand that emotions and feelings are temporary.
In the bookCome As You Are, sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., writes, “Emotions are tunnels. You have to go all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end.”
Emotions go through a cycle of beginning, middle, and end. Although emotions can feel really intense in the moment, they are only temporary. At the very basic level, emotions are physiological responses to stimuli in your environment. If your Wi-Fi goes out right before your work presentation, you may experience an acute pang of stress. If you receive a surprise package from your sister, you may be overcome by heartfelt joy. If you get a text from your ex, you may feel a sharp streak of hot sadness. Whatever the stimuli and paired emotion, they’re all data points to inform your next action step.
In terms of confidence, any emotion like anxiety, stress, or fear that is holding you back from taking action is only temporary. Once it subsides, you can make your next move. As the saying goes, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
9. Focus on what you can control.
“A lot of times, we base our self-confidence on things we actually have no control over—what other people think, the outcome of a project, others’ reactions, etc.,” Cruz explains. “To build self-confidence, we need to release our attachment to the things we can’t control and start basing our self-confidence on what we do have control over.”
Take, for example, when you’re working on a presentation, she says. You might invest a lot of energy into other people’s opinions, the outcome of your project, or your peers’ reactions to your work. To build self-confidence against things you don’t have control over, Cruz advises to focus on the things you can control—for example, how prepared you are, your passion for the presentation topic, and how much work you’ve put into it.
“Remind yourself of these things consistently and repeatedly until they become your new beliefs,” she adds.
Grounding yourself in things you can control, even just one aspect of your goal, will provide you with more stability to move forward. And remember: Building confidence builds more confidence. By starting in the places you have control over, you can ensure that you build confidence from a place of inner strength.
10. Build a like-minded community around you.
Research suggests that our views of ourselves are usually inaccurate. Whether you underestimate or overestimate your abilities, you can’t create a more accurate level of self-confidence in isolation. You need to interact with your environment, hobbies, and other people to build confidence.
Curating an intentional environment to develop your budding confidence is crucial. Share your experience with a few close friends who are on the same self-development journey. Find resources in your community like therapists, coaches, podcasts, blogs, and books to help build a foundation for your new confidence.
11. Take a break from social media.
A 2018 study published in Europe’s Journal of Psychology found that people who have lower self-esteem tend to gravitate toward building a “false self” on social media, which can lead to an inaccurate sense of self and self-worth. So consider taking a break from social media to reconnect with the person you truly are, free from comparisons and trying to impress others.
“Compassion is key in cultivating self-confidence,” Eskandani says in an email interview. “Holding on to past ‘mistakes’ or ‘failures’ really affects how confident we are. If we can be kind to ourselves and allow ourselves to let go of these moments, then we allow ourselves to trust ourselves.”
13. Find professional support
If building self-confidence has become a discouraging pursuit, it might be time to lean on professionals for some guidance.
“There are many ways to build self-confidence. One approach involves processing and uprooting the formative experiences that may have contributed to a negative sense of self. While this can be done through personal reflection and journaling, it can often be more effective when done in relationship with a safe support person such as a therapist,” Shanmugavelayutham says.
The benefits of boosting your confidence.
While it may feel unnatural and like a lot of work, there are plenty of benefits of building self-confidence, such as:
Building resilience to try new things
“Confidence is the life source for much of what we seek in life. It gives us the fuel we need to try new things and take risks,” Shanmugavelayutham says.
Whether at work, in sports, or in personal endeavors, having confidence can help you accomplish tasks with more ease and, therefore, success. “Confidence in one area can beget confidence in other areas,” Shanmugavelayutham adds. “Confidence has even been proven to be a higher predictor of performance than competence!”
Creating the life you want
“When we don’t believe in ourselves, we tend to take actions that actually create the exact outcome we’re fearing,” Cruz explains. “By boosting our self-confidence, we can take actions and create outcomes that better reflect the incredible power that’s within us.”
Discerning other people’s motives versus your own desires
In a study exploring the relationship between self-confidence and social interactions, economists note that, although many people tend to derive confidence from other people’s compliments, other people benefit from your ability to produce. For example, a manager may praise your event-planning abilities because your efforts also make her job easier. You can be good at a lot of things, but with self-confidence, you’ll be able to determine which things you want to become good at, not just build confidence in the things you get external praise for.
Making your own decisions according to your true self
When you’re confident in yourself, Eskandani says, “you start making decisions that are in line with what you truly want. You listen less to the well-meaning advice around you telling you what you should do, and you start doing things that you truly want to do.”
While most of us are born with a healthy level of confidence, life throws us challenges that can derail our sense of confidence. However, reclaiming that self-confidence is possible and worth every effort for living a more fulfilling life.
