Boost Your Confidence by Actively Working on Yourself
If you don’t have much confidence, you can work on yourself to build it up so that you can achieve what it is that you want out of life. Your confidence is built in many different ways and it is based on three main factors - your actions, your physical self and your mindset.
Your appearance, your thoughts, your emotions and even the shape or health of your body can either raise your confidence or work to take it away. The great news is, it’s all under your control.
Your Actions Boost Your Confidence
You might have heard that being around negativity breeds more negativity, and it’s true. But being around positivity also breeds positivity. If you have people or situations in your life that are negative, you need to do what you can to change that.
Most people have others in their lives who are negative. Not only do these people have a negative outlook on life, but they tend to minimize the positive in almost every situation.
That can cause your confidence to lag. When you have someone in your life who’s negative, stay away from them for a while and see how much better you feel without that.
You might be someone who’s not necessarily a positive person yourself. Maybe you’ve struggled with negativity all your life - but that still doesn’t mean that you can’t take steps to change that.
You have to stop paying attention to everything that’s gone wrong and pay attention to the things that are going right. Find something to be grateful about. Maybe you don’t have the career that you want, but it pays the bills and keeps a roof over your head.
Be thankful for things like that and it will help you learn how to cultivate positivity even if you don’t feel like you’re being positive. Sometimes people lack confidence because they doubt their ability to be able to handle something.
They don’t feel good about the work that they do because they don’t feel that prepared. They think they’ll fail in their career because they don’t feel ready to succeed. You have to get equipped to achieve your goals.
You need to keep on learning - keep on growing. As you learn everything you need to know about doing your job or the career change if that’s your goal, then your confidence will begin to soar.
It’s inevitable in everyone’s life that something’s going to go wrong. You’re going to fail and something’s not going to work out the way you’d hoped. During times like this, your confidence can take a huge hit.
You need to be prepared to boost it back up again. You can do that by having a card where you’ve written down all of your past successes, no matter how small. When you see what you’ve overcome and what you’ve had to go through to find success, you’ll feel empowered and that will boost your confidence.
Seeing everything that you’ve done well is a great motivator to help you keep trying during hard times. Fear is an emotion that can rob you of confidence. Everyone is afraid of something, but most people are afraid of failing.
They’re afraid to take a step for fear that they’ll fall flat on their face. You should do it anyway. You should take a risk by facing whatever situation or task or change that’s before you.
If you do what you’re afraid of, it helps you see that you have the courage to try - and that gives your confidence a boost. Many people struggle with confidence because they don’t have a firm set of boundaries to keep toxic people out of their lives.
They do their work at their job - plus some of their coworker’s tasks - then their boss piles stuff on them that’s the boss’s responsibility – and this doesn’t even count the favors friends and loved one dump on you.
You need to have boundaries and if you set these, people will respect you - but more than that, you’ll respect yourself and this helps you build confidence. Practice the way you speak.
When you lack confidence, you may speak quieter or hesitantly because you’re afraid. You’re worried that your opinion doesn’t matter. That makes you feel less confident and sound intimidated.
Don’t be afraid to speak up - and speak firmly. Take public speaking courses if you need to - even if you don’t plan on speaking in public events. It’ll boost your confidence for when you really need it.
If you’ve ever noticed someone who shuffles around a room, hands in their pockets, shoulders slumped, not making eye contact - you’d immediately peg that person as timid or lacking confidence.
That’s because the way you move and act is important. Keep your head up, make eye contact and project confidence outwardly -even if that’s not the way that you feel inwardly.
When you act confident, you’ll become confident. Make a list of whatever it is in your life that you’re dealing with that you know erodes your confidence and then fix it. Call for a time out.
Every single day of your life, take five minutes and tell yourself why you’re smart, funny, capable, worthy and loved. Hearing yourself talk about your worth out loud helps you to believe it.
Write down a new positive thing about yourself every week and place it where you can see it. Maybe you finished a difficult project. Or maybe you conquered a fear. Whatever it was, if it helps you to see yourself in a positive way, you need to see it.
Your Physical Self Can Promote or Deprive You of Confidence
You don’t have to be the mirror image of perfection to have confidence. Everyone has flaws and it’s what makes the person unique. But there’s a problem when you allow your physical self to diminish or do away with your confidence.
The people that you love and those who love you don’t notice your physical flaws and people that you meet usually don’t, either. But the ones that weigh on you should be addressed.
For example, if you feel that you can’t give someone a confident smile because you have problems with your teeth, then take care of that. By fixing a physical problem that can be addressed, you can boost your confidence.
You’re worth investing in! If you feel that you’re overweight and that it’s dragging your confidence down, you can either learn to dress to make yourself feel more confident or you can get in shape.
Not only will losing weight and getting physically fit boost your confidence, but it also boosts your sense of accomplishment and you’ll feel better. You’ll feel better physically - but also psychologically.
Most people - whether they’d like to lose weight or not - have a shaming relationship with their body. They hate what they see reflected back at them in the mirror - even if they are a healthy body weight.
If you have poor body image, that can lead you to feeling less confidant. You can learn body positive techniques that help. You can start by paying attention to what your body language is.
When you act like you’re ashamed of your body, you will be - and that will tear down your confidence. You don’t have to hate your body – after all, it’s gotten you this far. But you can be analytical about what you’d like to change and work on that.
Body language can tell you if someone loves themselves or not. You can tell by their posture - how they sit or how they walk. People who lack confidence don’t walk assertively and their posture reflects how they feel about themselves.
They don’t project an air of confidence because they don’t have it. You can build your body confidence by practicing correct posture, by looking people in the eye and by simply smiling.
How you dress can matter with your confidence, too. This is one reason that so many articles tell people who work at home to get dressed and act like they’re going to the office.
When you sit around in your pajamas all day, you don’t feel as confident. Wearing slouchy T-shirts and sweatpants can make you feel slovenly. Dress for yourself. You deserve the best version of you when it comes to what you wear and it’ll make you feel confident.
Not only that, but when other people see you dressed confidently, they’ll treat you like they have confidence in you, too. Don’t forget to make sure that you get a haircut before it becomes shaggy or unkempt.
When your hair needs to be cut or colored, it can erode your confidence. You should make sure that all your grooming needs are done on a regular basis. The reflection that you see in the mirror can make you feel good about yourself - or it can make you feel bad about yourself if you don’t practice self-care.
The Right Mindset Can Boost Confidence
What you think can easily become what you believe. If you fail at something, and you think it’s the end, then it will be. If you have a habit of letting a negative track play in your mind, it will drown out the positives.
By controlling what you think about, you can boost your confidence. It all starts by putting a mental muzzle on your inner critic. This is the part of you that puts yourself down.
It tells you all the things that are wrong and when you listen to that track playing, it wears you down. After a while, you’ll find yourself agreeing with the critic. The critic will tell you that you’re stupid and you’ll repeat to yourself, “I’m so stupid” and it’ll continue happening unless you stop those thoughts.
The good news is that an inner critic can be made to work for you instead of against you. When the negative stuff starts, you catch it, and you rephrase it so that it’s something that’s good and positive.
What this does is it causes you to retrain your brain so that what you tell yourself builds you up. When you think good thoughts about yourself, your view of yourself will improve and that can raise your confidence because your inner critic is silenced and proven wrong.
The second that you recognize that your inner critic is talking again - and you can be sure the talk isn’t favorable - replace what you’re hearing within. If the inner critic tells you that you stay in bed too long because you’re lazy, immediately replace that with the thought that you slept in because you worked hard and you’re being good to your body by letting it rest.
These negative thoughts from your self-critic are one of the easiest ways to lose your confidence and positive thoughts are one of the easiest ways to build it. Remember that your inner critic rarely speaks the truth, if ever.
In your mind, create a mental image of the person you want to act like, dress like and speak like. This visualization can lead to you having a better viewpoint of yourself as a successful person.
You can do this with all areas of your life to build your confidence. You can see yourself getting in shape. You can see yourself gaining confidence. You can see yourself reaching all the goals that you’ve set for yourself.
If you can think it, you can take the action steps needed to achieve it. Some people refer to that as faking it until you make it - but there’s nothing fake about silencing your critic and thinking more positively so that you gain confidence.
Ask yourself if someone you loved was the one listening to your inner critic, if you’d stand by and not say something while that person was mentally berated. You wouldn’t - because you’d recognize that the critic wasn’t being kind.
Give yourself that same kind of love. You have to change your mindset when it comes to who you are versus who someone else is. This is the comparison game and so many people play this mental game.
They’ll compare themselves to others in the area of careers, relationships, finances, material possessions and more. The problem is that you see a snapshot of other people.
You don’t get to see everything that makes up the picture of their life. So you could be comparing the treacherous, painful mountains that you’ve climbed in your life to the sweet meadows that they’ve had to walk through.
When you compare yourself to others, you always lose. That’s the way the game is played and when you think that someone else is better than you are or has something you think you could never achieve, then it steals your confidence.
What you’re really asking when you play the comparison game is, “Am I good enough?” And your mind will always answer that with, “No” when you compare. Perfectionism is something that can cause your confidence to plummet.
Get out of the mindset of perfectionism. This can tear down self-confidence because you will never be perfect – no one is. Perfectionism can make you afraid to make big changes in your life, but it can also prevent you from ever being happy enough in anything that you attempt to do.