Self-confidence is an emotion, a state of mind. The question is how to be more confident? Specifically, you do this by establishing a continuous process to sustain and strengthen your self-confident. For more details, see article below that includes 11 tips and exercises you can do to further increase your self-confidence.
How To Be More Confident – How Is It Different From Arrogance Or Self-Esteem
In your quest for how to be more confident, do not confuse confidence with either self-esteem and arrogance. Indeed, self-esteem and self-confidence have some similarities, but are different. Also, all of us desire to be confident, but many of us can fall into the trap of being arrogant instead of confident. To detail how confidence is different, see explanations below.
What Is Confidence / Self-Confidence?
At its essence confidence is the feeling of trust in something. So self-confidence is the belief that you can trust yourself in terms of abilities and knowledge.
Self-Esteem Is Different From Self-Confidence.
Self-esteem and self-confidence are very similar, but different. For instance, self-esteem is all about liking yourself. Also, usually when you are self-confident you also like yourself. Nevertheless, you can like yourself, but not have self-confidence and visa versa. Hence, you can have both self-confidence and self-esteem, or just one, or neither.
The Difference Between Confidence and Arrogance.
Arrogance is characterized as someone having an exaggerated sense of their importance or abilities. Also, arrogant people have hidden insecurities. Whereas confident people feel self-assured. See Unvarnished Facts’ How To Tell If Someone Is Arrogant vs Confident.
See FutureLearn’s How to build confidence: 5 tips for being more confident for more on the differences between confidence and self-esteem.
A Process On How To Be More Confident.
To be confident is not an end result, but it is a process. Also, confidence is something to be learned and at the same time it is an emotion, a feeling or faith in yourself. At first glance, the ability to be confident is like a “chicken or egg” type situation. To be specific, for you to be happy, loved, or successful, you need to be confident. At the same time, how can be confident, if you are not happy, loved, or successful.
So beware there are many pitfalls to becoming confident. In particular, beware of becoming too self-centered, arrogant, and looking for quick fixes to get confident. In brief, confidence is a process and you need to get comfortable with yourself and your situation during this on-going process.
One effective process to improve confidence is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is a four step process to eliminate unhelpful behavior and change your thinking patterns. Below are the 4 steps of the CBT process to increase self confidence.
Step 1 – What Makes You Less Confident?
Identify conditions or situations that make you feel less confident.
Step 2 – Increase Your Self-Awareness.
Become mindful of your thoughts. Definitely, be watchful of your thoughts because becoming more self-aware brings you in contact with a whole range of emotions. See Unvarnished Facts’ Your Weird Self-Conscious Emotions: Shame, Pride, Guilt, Humiliation And Embarrassment for more information.
Step 3 – Identify Unhelpful Thoughts.
Challenge unhelpful or incorrect thinking. Specifically, this include things like having an “all or nothing approach”, focusing on negatives, assuming the worst, taking feeling as facts, and always putting yourself down.
Step 4 – Change Your Thoughts.
Here you can do a lot of things to include turning your negative thoughts into hopeful one. Also, just start forging yourself, get comfortable with failure as it will happen some times. Additionally, focus on the positive and viewing challenges as learning experiences. Lastly, give yourself positive reinforcement.
For more information on the process of being self-confidence, see WebMd’s How To Feel More Confident and MarkManson’s How To Be Confident.
11 Tips And Exercises To Make You More Confident.
Being self-confident is a continuous process. Indeed as it is an emotion, it can leave and escape you very quickly. To detail, below are some tips and exercises that can help you to sustain and optimize your self-confidence.
1. Stop Being Envious.
Envy is something that does not help your self-esteem or self-confidence. Also, each of us is unique and not perfect to include people who we may envy. So stop comparing yourself to others.
2, Connect With People Who Boost Your Confidence.
You need to surround yourself with people who are positive and have empathy for you. Also realize you are not alone, so reach out to people who love you and want the best for you.
3. Take Care of Your Body.
This means diet, exercise, meditation, and sleep. Definitely, your physical self affects your self-confidence. For instance, diet and exercise directly affect your body. Whereas, meditation to include prayer and self-reflection as well as sleep enables both your mind and body to be refreshed.
4. Learn To Like Yourself.
Your self-esteem does affect your self-confidence. So if you like yourself and are comfortable with yourself, this sets the stage for more self-confidence. Therefore, think of past successes, but live in the present not dwelling on failures.
5. Practice Being Positive.
This is a case of the “glass being half empty, or half full”. Look at things positively and challenge pessimistic self-talk.
6. Practice Self-Assured Body Language.
Some call this “fake it, till you make it”, but it does help to build self-Confidence. Adopt confident body language such as standing up straight, and making eye contact.
7. Do Things You’re Good At.
No one is good at everything. Find out what you are good at and what you enjoy. The more you practice things you are good at, the better you are and your self-confidence increases.
8. Know When to Say No.
Avoid activities that lower your self-confidence. This does not mean be a “wall flower”, but do avoid doing the same thing over and over again and fail everytime. If it is something important for you do, shift your perspective and find a new way to do it
9. Set Realistic Goals.
Do challenge yourself, but do not set high-reaching goals that are doomed to failure. See Unvarnished Facts’ A Superior Problem Solving Process: How To Produce Better Results to find out how to improve your problem-solving skills and set realistic goals.
10. Get Outside Your Comfort Zone.
Challenging yourself increases your self-confidence. At the same time you want to minimize failure. For activities that are important to you, the ways to minimize failure include practice, planning, and seeking mentors to help you.
11. Improve Yourself.
Lastly, keep improving your skills and your knowledge. Feed your mind, and learn new skills that are important to you.
For more tips on how to be more confident, see VeryWellMind’s How To Boost Your Self-Confidence, MasterClass’s How To Be More Confident, and TonyRobbins’s How To Be Confident.
For more information from Unvarnished Facts, see articles on values.
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