Confidence can be a tough thing to build up. We’ve put together some handy tips to help you out. If you’re still having a hard time even after trying these self-help ideas, don’t worry! We’ve also listed the ways you can find extra support and work on boosting your confidence with the help of others. Confidence comes from feelings of well-being, acceptance of your body and mind and belief in your own ability, skills and experience. Confidence is an attribute that most people would like to possess.
Someone who lacks self-confidence, however, is less likely to feel that they can achieve their goals, and tends to have a negative perspective about themselves and what they hope to gain in life. The good news is that self-confidence is something you can improve! Here we are suggesting various ways to overcome low self-confidence.
Enhancing self-sufficiency
1. Eat healthy
A well-balanced diet provides all of the: energy you need to keep active throughout the day. Nutrients you need for growth and repair, helping you to stay strong and healthy and help to prevent diet-related illness, such as some cancers. The best energizing foods are those that are rich in complex carbohydrates, protein, antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and other health-promoting substances. Put these foods together along with small amounts of healthy fats for a balanced diet that is sure to provide you energy all day long.
Eating healthy is not just about losing weight, it’s about feeling better both physically and mentally. Eventually, you will feel more self-confident.
2. Sleep well
Getting 7-9 hours of sound sleep every night can help you look and feel better. It can help you have a more positive attitude, self-confident feeling and more energy. Plenty of sleep also helps you moderate your emotions and deal with stress more effectively.
3. Exercise regularly
Part of taking care of yourself is getting exercise. For you, this may mean a brisk walk outside. For someone else, it may mean a 50-mile bike ride Start where you are now. Exercise does not have to be complicated.
Many studies have shown that exercise is essential to a positive outlook on life, and a positive attitude contributes to self-confidence.
4. Think of your expertise
Everyone has strengths and talents. What are yours? Recognizing what you’re good at, and trying to build on those things, will help you to build confidence in your own abilities. When you get an idea about your knowledge or strength at which you are good, then you will appear to be more self-confident and worthy.
5. Get useful hobby
Try to find something that you’re really passionate about. It could be photography, sport, knitting or anything else! When you’ve worked out your passion, commit yourself to giving it a go. Chances are, if you’re interested or passionate about a certain activity, you’re more likely to be motivated and you’ll build skills more quickly.
6. Know your strength and weakness
Write a list of things that you are good at and things that you know need improvement. Discuss your list with friends and family as, inevitably, they will be able to add to the list. Celebrate and develop your strengths and find ways to improve or manage your weaknesses.
Instead of saying you “hate” public speaking, use a milder work like “don’t like,” and remind yourself that “everyone has strengths and weaknesses.”
Know your strengths and play to them. Seek work in an area which makes the most of your strengths, knowledge and skill set. It increase your confidence and you will feel self-confident.
7. Be dressed up
How you dress can affect how other people perceive you, but it can also affect how you perceive yourself. Wearing different clothes can prompt you to think or behave differently. This effect isn’t just limited to feeling good about yourself. In other words, when people dressed like a doctor, they behaved more like a doctor, or at least how they thought a doctor might behave. If you want to feel more self-confident, dress the way a confident version of yourself would.
8. Take care of body
It’s hard to feel good about yourself if you’re abusing your body. On the other hand, if you practice self-care, you know you’re doing something positive for your mind, body, and spirit, and you’ll naturally feel more confident.
9. Adjust posture
Much like how you dress, the posture you adopt can affect how you feel about yourself. While it might feel a little silly at first (remember that tip about stepping outside your comfort zone), trying out powerful stances can help adjust your frame of mind. Research from Ohio State University suggests that something as simple sitting up straight can make you feel more confident in what you’re doing.
Upholding positivity
10. Take yourself up
You’re never going to feel confident if you have negative commentary running through your mind telling you that you’re no good. Think about your se;f-talk and how that might be affecting your self-confidence. Treat yourself like you would your best friend and cheer yourself on.
11. Accept compliments
Accept compliments and compliment yourself. When you receive a compliment from somebody else, thank them and ask for more details. What exactly did they like? Recognize your own achievements and celebrate them by rewarding yourself and telling friends and family about them.
12. Take criticism positively
Everybody sees the world differently, from their own perspective, and what works for one person may not work for another. Criticism is just the opinion of somebody else. Be assertive when receiving criticism, do not reply in a defensive way or let criticism lower your self-esteem. Listen to the criticism and make sure that you understand what is being said so you can use criticism as a way to learn and improve.
13. Positive approach
Try to stay generally cheerful and have a positive outlook on life. Only complain or criticize when necessary and when you do, do so in a constructive way. Offer others compliments and congratulate them on their successes.
14. Be assertive
Being assertive means standing up for what you believe in and sticking to your principles. Being assertive also means that you can change your mind if you believe it is the right thing to do, not because you are under pressure from somebody else.
Assertiveness, confidence, and self-esteem are all very closely linked, usually people become naturally more assertive as they develop their self-confidence.
15. Keep calm
There is usually a correlation between confidence and calmness. If you feel confident about a task then you will likely feel calm about doing it. When you feel less confident you are more likely to be stressed or nervous.
Trying to remain calm, even when you are under stress and pressure, will tend to make you feel more confident. To do this it is useful to learn how to relax. Learn at least one relaxation technique that works for you and that you can use if you are feeling stressed.
16. Avoid arrogance
Arrogance is detrimental to interpersonal relationships. As your confidence grows and you become successful, avoid feeling or acting superior to others. Remember, nobody is perfect and there is always more that you can learn. Celebrate your strengths and successes, and recognize your weaknesses and failures. Give others credit for their work, use compliments and praise sincerely. Be courteous and polite, show an interest in what others are doing, ask questions and get involved.
Admit to your mistakes and be prepared to laugh at yourself!!
17. Avoid comparison
When you’re being your best self, you may be less prone to compare yourself to others or focus on the things that you lack. Helping others (altruism), especially those less fortunate than you, can provide a great perspective on how blessed you truly are in life.
Pay attention to times when you compare your wealth, possessions, skills, achievements, and attributes. Thinking that other people are better or have more will erode your confidence in yourself. When you notice you are drawing comparisons, remind yourself that doing so isn’t helpful. Everyone is running their own race and life isn’t a competition.
18. Practice self-compassion
Self-compassion involves treating yourself with kindness when you make a mistake, fail, or experience a setback. Speaking to yourself harshly, won’t motivate you to do better. In fact, studies show it tends to have the opposite effect. Thinking, “Everyone messes up sometimes,” as opposed to, “I’m so stupid. I ruined everything,” is an example of having self-compassion and can help you feel good even if when you don’t perform as well as you hoped.
19. Embrace self-doubt
Sometimes, people put off doing things like inviting someone on a date or applying for a promotion until they feel more confident. But sometimes, the best way to gain confidence is by doing. Try doing things that your brain tells you that you can’t. Practice facing some of your fears that stem from a lack of self-confidence. If you’re afraid you’ll embarrass yourself or you think that you’re going to mess up, try it anyway. Tell yourself it’s just an experiment and see what happens. You might learn that being a little anxious or making a few mistakes isn’t as bad as you thought.
If you have a big speech coming up, practice in front of your friends and family so you’ll gain some self-confidence. But don’t wait until you feel 100% confident before you proceed. You might never get there.
20. Smile and look people in eyes
It sounds obvious to state that a smile will help you build rapport with others. It also sounds obvious to state that when you smile, you feel happier and more self-confident. When you smile and make eye contact, it shows that you have a certain ease and warmth about you. This enables others to feel more at ease in your presence, hence improving quality of interactions.
Those who lack self-confidence are fearful of reaching out and connecting with others. A simple smile and some eye contact can open doors.
Seeking for ambition
21. Look at what you achieved
It’s easy to lose confidence if you believe you haven’t achieved anything. Make a list of all the things you’re proud of in your life, whether it’s getting a good mark on an exam or learning to surf. Keep the list close by and add to it whenever you do something you’re proud of. When you’re low in confidence, pull out the list and use it to remind yourself of all the awesome stuff you’ve done.
22. Set goals
Set some goals and set out the steps you need to take to achieve them. They don’t have to be big goals; they can even be things like baking a cake or planning a night out with friends. Just aim for some small achievements that you can tick off a list to help you gain confidence in your ability to get stuff done.
23. Make principles and live them
What are the principles upon which your life is built? If you don’t know, you will have trouble, because your life will feel directionless. Think about your principles. You might have them but perhaps you haven’t given them much thought. Now think about whether you actually live these principles, or if you just believe in them but don’t act on them.
24. Clear your desk
This might seem like a small, simple thing (then again, for some of you it might not be so small). But it has always worked wonders for me. If my desk starts to get messy, and the world around me is in chaos, clearing off my desk is my way of getting a little piece of my life under control. It is the calm in the center of the storm around me.
25. Volunteer yourself
Related to the “be kind and generous” item above, but more specific. It’s the holiday season right now. Can you find the time to volunteer for a good cause, to spread some holiday cheer, to make the lives of others better? It’ll be some of the best time you’ve ever spent, and an amazing side benefit is that you’ll feel better about yourself, instantly.
26. Empower yourself with knowledge
Empowering yourself, in general, is one of the best strategies for building self-confidence. You can do that in many ways, but one of the surest ways to empower yourself is through knowledge. This is along the same vein as building competence and getting prepared by becoming more knowledgeable, you’ll be more confident and you become more knowledgeable by doing research and studying. The Internet is a great tool, of course, but so are the people around you, people who have done what you want, books, magazines, and educational institutions.
27. Work on small things
Trying to take on a huge project or task can be overwhelming and daunting and intimidating for anyone, even the best of us. Instead, learn to break off small chunks and work in bursts. Small little achievements make you feel good, and they add up to big achievements. Learn to work like this all the time, and soon you’ll be a self-confident maniac.
28. Focus on solution
If you are a complainer, or focus on problems, change your focus now. Focusing on solutions instead of problems is one of the best things you can do for your confidence and your career. “I’m fat and lazy!” So how can you solve that? “But I can’t motivate myself!” So how can you solve that? “But I have no energy!” So what’s the solution? It improves self-confidence.
Changing lifestyle
29. Be honest
Being “hyper honest” with yourself as a simple, everyday way to exercise your confidence. This doesn’t mean you have to share every part of your personality with everyone you meet. You can share your geeky hobbies with your geeky friends but stick to work topics at work. However, you can find someone to share yourself with. When you stop hiding parts of yourself from other people, you’ll find you feel more confident in who you are.
30. Stand up for rights
Standing up for your rights starts with knowing that you have the same rights as everyone else. It then means responding to situations where those rights are being compromised. Remind others who are contravening your rights that you have those rights.
31. Change your perceptions
More than just thinking positive, you have to put it into action. Action, actually, is the key to developing self-confidence. It’s one thing to learn to think positive, but when you start acting on it, you change yourself, one action at a time. You are what you do, and so if you change what you do, you change what you are. Act in a positive way, take action instead of telling yourself you can’t, be positive. Talk to people in a positive way, put energy into your actions. You’ll soon start to notice a difference.
32. Kill negative thoughts
Goes hand-in-hand with the above item, but it’s so important that I made it a separate item. You have to learn to be aware of your self-talk, the thoughts you have about yourself and what you’re doing. When I was running, sometimes my mind would start to say, “This is too hard. I want to stop and go watch TV.” Well, I soon learned to recognize this negative self-talk, and soon I learned a trick that changed everything in my life: I would imagine that a negative thought was a bug, and I would vigilantly be on the lookout for these bugs. When I caught one, I would stomp on it (mentally of course) and squash it. Kill it dead. Then replace it with a positive one.
33. Get to know yourself
When going into battle, the wisest general learns to know his enemy very, very well. You can’t defeat the enemy without knowing him. And when you’re trying to overcome a negative self-image and replace it with self-confidence, your enemy is yourself. Get to know yourself well. Start listening to your thoughts. Start writing a journal about yourself, and about the thoughts you have about yourself, and analyzing why you have such negative thoughts. And then think about the good things about yourself, the things you can do well, the things you like.
Start thinking about your limitations, and whether they’re real limitations or just ones you’ve allowed to be placed there, artificially. Dig deep within yourself, and you’ll come out (eventually) with even greater self-confidence.
34. Be generous
Know that being kind to others, and generous with yourself and your time and what you have, is a tremendous way to improve your self-image. You act in accordance with the Golden Rule, and you start to feel good about yourself, and to think that you are a good person. It does wonders for your self-confidence, believe me.
35. Increase competence
How do you feel more competent? By becoming more competent. And how do you do that? By studying and practicing. Just do small bits at a time. If you want to be a more competent writer, for example, don’t try to tackle the entire profession of writing all at once. Just begin to write more. Journal, blog, write short stories, do some freelance writing. The more you write, the better you’ll be. Set aside 30 minutes a day to write (for example), and the practice will increase your competence and self-confidence.
36. Get active
Doing something is almost always better than not doing anything. Of course, doing something could lead to mistakes but mistakes are a part of life. It’s how we learn. Without mistakes, we’d never get better. So don’t worry about those. Just do something. Get off your butt and get active physically, or active by taking steps to accomplish something.
37. Try to experience uncomfortable activity
Stepping outside your comfort zone is, as you might expect, uncomfortable. Confidence is ultimately about being comfortable in a wide variety of situations that would make most people feel uncomfortable,” he said. “So if you stretch your comfort zone every day, very quickly you’ll have a large comfort zone and be able to feel more comfortable even when outside of it.
This can involve more daunting changes, like taking a new job or confronting someone you usually avoid. However, it can also take smaller forms, like striking up a conversation with someone new if you’re normally shy, or trying a new food.
38. Accept imperfections
When you learn to accept your flaws, you learn how to fight your own battles and win and you learn how to shield yourself from unnecessary wars. When you learn to accept your flaws, you won’t ever live questioning if you’re good enough for others as long as you feel good enough for yourself.
39. Be prepared
It’s hard to be confident in yourself if you don’t think you’ll do well at something. Beat that feeling by preparing yourself as much as possible. Think about taking an exam: if you haven’t studied, you won’t have much confidence in your abilities to do well on the exam. But if you studied your butt off, you’re prepared, and you’ll be much more confident. Now think of life as your exam, and prepare yourself.
40. Strive for balance
Like everything else in life, building self-confidence is about maintaining balance. Too little self-confidence can keep you from achieving your goals and feeling good about yourself. On the other hand, it’s important to be realistic, you don’t want to underestimate the time and effort needed to achieve your goals.
41. Help others
When you’re being your best self, you may be less prone to compare yourself to others or focus on the things that you lack. Helping others (altruism), especially those less fortunate than you, can provide a great perspective on how blessed you truly are in life.
Therapies
42. Cognitive behavioral therapy
If you’ve read any self-help books, you’ve likely heard of CBT, as it’s one of the most widely-used types of treatment for depression, anxiety, and many other conditions.
Here’s one principle of CBT in action: Imagine you’re walking down the street and you see someone on the other side walking toward you. You get a little closer and recognize the person as someone you know from your Zumba class. You look up, smile, wave, and shout “Hi!” The other person keeps walking and doesn’t acknowledge you. There are many ways you could interpret this situation.
43. Acceptance and commitment therapy
ACT teaches you not to avoid worry, fear, or doubt, because negative feelings are just a natural part of life. Struggling against your anxiety can often make it worse.
When you find yourself thinking, “I can’t do this,” or “This is going to be a disaster,” you can learn to notice the thought and let it pass without deciding it’s the gospel truth. Detaching from your negative thoughts helps prevent rumination, which is linked to anxiety and depression, and lessens the urge to run from discomfort by indulging in harmful behaviors such as binge-drinking or overeating.
You may not be able to evict your inner critic from your mind, but you can learn to tune out its relentless negativity and move forward or “act” with confidence.
44. Exposure therapy
Exposure therapy sometimes falls under the umbrella of CBT, as it is a behavioral therapy aimed at helping people overcome anxiety and fear. This type of therapy helps people identify thoughts and situations that trigger the most fear and then gently exposes sufferers to them. It’s been shown to help people overcome spider phobias to stage fright and it can help you develop confidence, too.
45. Mindfulness based therapies
Mindfulness is intentionally paying attention to the present moment with an attitude of openness and curiosity. There’s also a spirit of non-judgment to this process. Learning mindfulness exercises can help bring your anxiety levels down so you can face your biggest confidence challenges.
Moving forward with Psychotherapy
Fortunately, Ahealo.com offers a global ePsychotherapy platform that allows clients to book an online anonymous private appointment with a broad skill range of psychotherapists at an affordable cost and desired schedule.
Alternatively, if you need to seek psychotherapy, be sure to check out ahealos.com. Ahealo is an online psychotherapy platform with a diverse range of psychotherapists for many different fields of mental challenges. Ahealo provides ePsychotherapy at an affordable price, confidential, convenient (through a web page 1-1 private video call), and at your comfortable schedule.
With these options, we believe your low confidence with depression issues can be resolved soon.
Stay well.
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