Being confident in yourself and your abilities isn’t always easy, and if you often doubt yourself and fall victim to low self-confidence it is important to know you’re not alone. A lot of people go through this and it is really common. But everyone deserves to be confident within themselves, and there are some great benefits to building your confidence.
Openness to try new things
When you’re more confident and have more belief in yourself and your abilities you’re more likely to throw yourself into new things, whether this is trying a new hobby, going somewhere new, putting yourself forward for a new job or gaining a new experience. Believing in yourself and putting yourself out there can be nerve-racking but with self-confidence you’re more likely to do it and know that if it doesn’t work out exactly how you would like, it will be ok.
Better performance
Alongside trying new things you’re often more likely to perform better. This may be due to the fact you can handle your nerves better, confidence breeds confidence and being confident in your ability is likely to show up in your performance.
Resilience
This is so important. Being confident doesn’t suddenly mean you’re going to be great at everything, it simply means that even if you don’t succeed at something you are able to take the positives from it and bounce back from any setbacks. Being more confident allows you to accept that things may go wrong, but that is ok and that is life.
Improved relationships
Confidence is important in every aspect of our lives, relationships being just one. If you believe in your own ability and are able to prioritise your needs and emotions as well as set clear boundaries, this is likely to help build healthy relationships. Confidence also gives you the ability to walk away from a relationship which isn’t serving you anymore.
So, now we have looked at the benefits, how can we help boost our confidence?
Put a stop to negative self-talk
This may seem impossible at first and may take a while to really change but it has so many benefits. Remember that your thoughts aren’t facts, they are just your thoughts, you don’t have to believe or even give any time to certain thoughts if you don’t want to. Start by simply changing the way you talk to yourself, stop using negative language towards yourself and call yourself out when you do – is this helping me? No, then let’s not say this.
Think of it this way, if you wouldn’t talk this way to a friend or family member, why say it to yourself?
Try reframing your thoughts e.g. ‘I’m not good at this’ to ‘I’m learning and I’m getting better’, try to make your thoughts having a positive impact on what you do.
Understand that we are all human, we all will have good and bad days and this is ok, you’re not a failure because of this and speaking harshly to yourself at this point will not help. Instead cut yourself some slack, talk kindly to yourself and get on with your day.
Take care of yourself
Often our own needs and caring for ourselves can fall to the bottom of our priority list. But it is important to set time aside to look after yourself and embrace self-care, doing this can really help to boost your confidence. It can be hard to feel good about yourself if your actions are doing the opposite, and knowing you’re putting time aside to work on yourself can be really positive.
Self-care can include a lot of different things. Some days, self-care may be allowing yourself a lie in as you are feeling really tired, on other days it may be setting an early alarm and getting up to go for a walk before work as you know you will feel better once you have done this. Work out what feels good to you and put time aside to do this.
Stop comparing yourself to others
Comparison really is the thief of joy and with the age of social media it has become increasingly easy to do. We can never compare situations as we are all so unique and comparing yourself to someone else is likely not to be helpful. So, what to do?
Clean up your social media, mute those people that don’t make you feel good and try to reduce your time spent looking at other peoples photoshopped lives.
Remind yourself of your strengths and successes, no matter how small. Think about what success means to you, as this will be different for everyone. Keeping something like a gratitude journal may be helpful for this.
Remember that you never know what someone else is going through and therefore comparing one point of your life to theirs is pointless.
Finally, be good and do good for others. Being our best selves and helping others, whether this is volunteering, speaking kindly to others or just helping where you can, can boost our self-confidence and reduce that comparison.
Set yourself up for wins
Repeatedly thinking you’re failing can be a real hinder to your confidence levels. Are you doing everything you can to help yourself? Whether this is batch cooking at the weekends, organising yourself for the week ahead, doing some extra work to prepare yourself or scheduling in social contact throughout the week, setting yourself up to be in the best position possible can help you achieve those wins and in turn help boost your confidence.
