How to increase your self-confidence in 6 steps

The confidence in yourself (self-confidence) is necessary for you to achieve the goals you set for yourself and is key to your well-being, as it is closely related to self-esteem.

People who have confidence in themselves manage to develop their life projects or projects professionals, because they are individuals who know how to take certain risks, make difficult decisions and are have high resilience, namely, they know how to overcome negative situations that may arise throughout their lives.

Self-confidence and self-esteem are not the same

Many people think that self-confidence and self-esteem are the same. But although both concepts are related, are two different terms with clearly differentiated implications.

Self-confidence or self-confidence is the appreciation of the abilities you possess and focuses on the beliefs you have regarding the ability and the ability to succeed in a given context. While self-esteem is the general feeling of how valuable you are as a whole and refers to the appreciation you have for yourself.

If this difference is not clear to you, imagine a salesperson or salesperson who knows that he does his job very well. He has no doubt of his great ability to seduce clients and he knows that he possesses the gift of people that not everyone has. Thanks to this, he performs his work perfectly, so he fully trusts himself when carrying out this task.

Now, this person has low self-esteem, because when he comes home after a long day at work, he thinks: “I don't have a partner, nor can I save enough money to buy a house. I am a failure ”. As you can see, he trusts himself and knows that he is a great commercial. Now, he is not comfortable with himself, and regardless of whether this assessment is correct or not, the overall image he has of himself is negative.

• Related article: "The 4 types of self-esteem: do you value yourself?"

Confidence in yourself: the theory of self-efficacy

One of the great theorists of self-confidence is Albert bandura, who formulated his theory of self-efficacy (meaning, roughly, something a lot like self-confidence) as part of your Social Learning Theory.

His research on human social learning enabled him to identify other cognitive components that facilitate the process of change and influence the formation of intentions and on the motivational self-regulation. One of these components is perceived self-efficacy or the perception of self-confidence.

Bandura states that developing self-confidence is made up of four components:

• Execution achievements: Past experiences are the most important source of self-confidence information, since they allow us to verify the real domain.
• Vicarious experience or observation: refers to modeling, that is, seeing (or imagining) other people successfully perform certain activities
• Verbal persuasion: Verbal persuasion is important, especially for those who already trust themselves themselves and just need a little more confidence to go the extra mile and achieve the success.
• Physiological state of the individual: Individuals often interpret states of great anxiety as signs of weakness or poor performance. On the contrary, humor or positive emotional states will also have an impact on how one will interpret experiences.

How to improve your confidence in yourself?

But, What steps can you take to improve your self-confidence? Here is a list of 6 steps to improve your self-confidence:

1. Live situations positively

As you have seen, for Bandura, verbal persuasion is a very important element in the development of self-confidence. Therefore, Be positive even if you are going through a period where you feel that things are not going your way. Stop focusing on problems and focus your energy on solutions and positive changes.

Low self-confidence is often associated with thoughts of failure and negative thoughts that mediate between you and your goals. If you are constantly repeating to yourself that you are not up to the task, all you will get is the "self-fulfilling prophecy." So even in unpleasant moments, be self-motivated.

• Recommended article: "The 30 best motivational phrases"

2. be prepared

It may happen, for example, that you have to give a presentation at the university and you notice that you do not have enough confidence in yourself. In this type of case, what really works is to prepare the presentation well so that, when the day arrives, you fully trust in your possibilities.

Another example may be that you have started working with the public, and as part of your job you have to give a welcome speech to customers. Since you have never done this type of task, you may not have full confidence in yourself. In this case, you can prepare the speech well, and, in this way, you will feel comfortable and safe in front of the clients.

Whatever is on your to-do list, being well prepared and feeling that you master what you do increases your self-confidence.

3. Make a list of what you have already achieved and remind yourself

As in the first point, difficult times can make you doubt and cause your self-confidence to be undermined.

And it is that life is full of changes, and sometimes it is difficult to stay up. In such cases, it is ideal to have a list of what you have achieved so far Regarding the goal you have, because visualizing your progression can help you motivate yourself in difficult moments.

4. Act

The engine of self-confidence is action: if you dare to act, then you gain self-confidence. Bandura, in his theory of self-efficacy, talks about the "achievement of execution", that is, experiences are the most important source of self-confidence information.

It may happen that, even before acting, you are already visualizing failure. Well remember: if you do not act, you lose 100% of the opportunities to achieve what you want.

5. Accept any failures from the past

And what happens if you act and it goes wrong? As well, execution achievements are our own perception of our victories and failures. By perception, I mean your assessment of the events that have happened. If it has gone wrong, you have to accept it and also see the small successes, which surely there are, even in the failures.

Self-confidence only develops if we manage to overcome the obstacles that we set ourselves: on the one hand, resignation (which has to do with acting), and on the other hand, criticism. Seeing successes as the sum of our failures can help us gain self-confidence.

6. Watch successful people

Bandura's theory of self-efficacy states that vicarious experience or observation is another of the key elements of self-confidence. Observing or imagining other people carrying out certain activities successfully can positively influence your self-confidence.

This is one of the techniques used in the coaching to increase the confidence of clients, as it is useful when the latter do not have great knowledge of their own abilities or have little experience in the task to be carried out.