How To Build Confidence

If you’re struggling to get to where you want to be in life because of a lack of confidence, we understand how frustrating it can be. No matter your age or position in life, if something has knocked your self-esteem, it can seem hard to build back up. Often, low confidence can be linked to mental health issues.

What exactly does it mean to have confidence in yourself? Self-confidence can be defined as having a strong level of faith or belief in your own abilities. Whether this is applied to your personal or professional life, many people struggle at some point or other. It is even possible to be perfectly confident in one area (work for example), but struggling with low confidence in your social life.

Whatever it is you’re struggling with, there are steps you can take to build yourself up to be a happier and more confident person.

Are you ready to grow your confidence? Let’s go!

Try to reframe negative self-talk

First things first, we recommend you take stock of the way in which you talk to yourself. By this, we mean the tone of voice and type of words used when you’re thinking to yourself. Someone with low confidence levels may experience negative thoughts and may berate and ridicule themselves. On the other hand, a confident person’s internal narratives are often a lot less harsh.

For example, you may have stumbled on your words during a work presentation, only to spend the rest of the day going over this in your head, calling yourself out for being a failure.

Studies show that the way in which we talk to ourselves has a powerful impact on our psyche. If you talk to yourself in a negative manner, you’re much more likely to suffer as a result of these words. The end result is you take all the negative thought patterns onboard, resulting in lower self-esteem.

Instead, when you experience errors in the future, flip the narrative in order to highlight what went right. There are always positives to a situation, even if the only positive is that you learnt a lesson for future experiences!

Ultimately, to build up your confidence ensure you monitor your self-talk, focusing on positives, no matter how small. Do this and you will see a change in confidence off the back of this newfound behaviour.

Review your lifestyle & ditch any unhealthy habits

When it comes to building confidence levels, small changes to your habits and lifestyle can have the biggest effects.

Exercise has been proven to release feel-good endorphins which in time can boost your mood and self-esteem. Getting enough sleep and water are also simple areas that can easily be adjusted, reaping huge rewards.

The amount of sleep we get can seriously affect cognitive abilities and poor sleep patterns can influence our mood. Waking up in a bad mood can get our day off to a poor start, which we often then take out on ourselves. On the other hand, when you have had enough sleep, you wake up feeling refreshed, automatically getting your day off to a more positive start.

As well as focusing on the amount of sleep you get, spending the day well hydrated and headache-free can do wonders for your morale. These simple steps are just some of the lifestyle habits you can adopt to help build up your confidence.

To make initial changes, start by reviewing your current lifestyle and identifying areas that could be negatively impacting you. Try to set yourself small goals of improving these key areas, making sure to monitor the results of these changes. Lots of small tweaks to your unhealthy habits will have a major impact on your overall confidence.

Speak to friends & family

When confidence is lacking, it can be very hard to see your strengths and positives. It’s times like this when speaking with friends & family can give you a much-needed boost.

The New York Times state that talking to friends & family can have powerful psychological effects caused by releasing pressure from unloading our concerns and issues.

Friends and family can also do wonders for highlighting blind spots and helping us to see ourselves for who we really are. After all, these are the people that know you best!

Think about your friends and family as a free resource for understanding yourself better, they may be able to push you in a new direction or highlight some of your assets that you had brushed over.

With the evidence showing that you can grow confidence by doing something as simple as talking to your loved ones, this is one of the easiest tools available in your self-help toolbox.

Push yourself out of your comfort zone & try learning something new

Sometimes, the best way to learn and grow is to jump way out of your comfort zone. Improving our skills and learning something new can go a long way towards improving your confidence.

This is because not only does exploring new skills and territories heighten confidence levels, it also helps keeps our brains fit and healthy, giving us a cognitive boost. This optimum cognitive zone can help us to feel lots more positive and confident.

Whether you decide to pick up a new book or you try out a new language, learning something new can be just the ticket to boosting confidence levels.

There are lots of free and helpful resources online where you can learn new skills from the comfort of your home. Once you’ve taken the time to learn and improve, you may also find new doorways have been opened for you, which in itself can be a very helpful self-esteem boost.

Keep a journal

Journals can be especially useful when trying to grow confidence as they can be helpful guides for identifying the causes of low confidence. By keeping a daily journal you may start to pick up trends and triggers for your confidence issues. Once highlighted, it is a lot easier to deal with.

In addition to understanding what may be hindering your self-confidence, pouring out your feelings onto paper can create a sense of emotional release. Releasing your emotional burdens can be hugely beneficial for mental health, which is a major factor contributing towards poor self-esteem.

You can start a journal by simply putting pen to paper each evening to detail what happened to you that day, along with your mood. With time, you will start to see patterns that you can start to tackle head-on.

Work with a life coach or mentor

Finally, in addition to trying out the above tips, harness the benefits of a more experienced individual and take the plunge with coaching and mentoring.

Mentoring and coaching relationships can help you to cultivate a sense of confidence as you regularly check in with an expert who has been there and done that. As your own personal sounding board, a coach & mentor can help you identify your strengths and will hold you accountable on your personal growth journey.

Get started in just a few minutes by finding the perfect support based on your background and needs with our Expert Matcher tool.

Get lots more helpful tips to aid you in becoming the best version of yourself on our blog here.