SELF-CONFIDENCE: 10 PRACTICAL TIPS TO INCREASE IT - ARTE - 2025

Self- confidence is the feeling of believing in yourself and your own abilities, qualities, and judgment. It is a characteristic shared by the happiest and most successful people; and it is able to predict with some validity other factors such as a person's economic level or if they will ever marry.

Having good levels of self-confidence can help you be successful in both your personal and professional life. In addition, it is essential for your mental health, but it can also affect your physical. It is, without a doubt, an element that must be cultivated in order to have a really good life.

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However, most people have a much sub-optimal level of self-confidence. Fear of failure, lack of goals, and inability to believe in themselves keep many individuals anchored in situations that do not make them happy. Therefore, learning to improve this situation is essential.

In this article we will tell you what are the most effective ways to increase your self-confidence. If you start applying them to your own life, little by little you will notice how many of your doubts disappear and you are able to really believe in yourself.

10 tips to improve your confidence in yourself

1- face your fears

One of the things that most differentiates people with self-confidence from those who do not have this characteristic is the ability to act despite being afraid. Contrary to what many people think, this emotion never goes away; not even people with higher self-esteem stop feeling it.

On the contrary, what characterizes these individuals is that they are able to go for what they want even when they are scared. If they have a goal, they won't let their emotions get in the way of achieving it.

What not many people know is that, even if we start out with low self-esteem, if we face our fears it goes up automatically. So if you think you need to improve in this area, choose something that scares you but that you think you should do, and work on it every day.

Little by little, you will realize that your emotions have no power over you; and your mind will reward you with increasing levels of self-confidence.

2- Set goals and go for them

Our brain is prepared to reward us when it thinks we are likely to survive, and to punish us when it perceives that we are not. In our past as a species, this meant that we only felt positive emotions when we pushed ourselves, made progress toward our goals, and became better in our abilities.

Although today our survival is practically assured, our unconscious mind has not yet found out. So it continues to reward us when we improve and punish us when we get stuck. Unfortunately, most people tend to fall further into this second category.

If you want to improve your self-concept, therefore, you need to set yourself a series of goals that motivate you and start working on them. They may have to do with acquiring a new skill, improving a situation that you do not like in your life, getting in shape… The key is that it is something that depends on you and that it is a challenge.

Of course, when you start working on your goals, it will be very difficult to do so. However, little by little you will see how you feel better and better about yourself, while you will be improving your life in a tangible way.

3- Accumulate reference experiences

Do you know what is one of the main reasons why your self-concept is not as high as you would like? Because you have spent your whole life receiving messages that you are worthless or that you are unable to do anything. They teach us not to risk, to be careful, that everything can go very wrong if we are careless.

However, although it is true that it is impossible for us to be perfect in everything, it is also true that each of us has a series of innate strengths and the ability to improve if we really put our mind to it. Therefore, to improve your self-concept, you just have to remind your unconscious mind of this.

Do you feel very shy and think that you do not know how to talk to strangers? Make a point of talking to someone you don't know every day and you will see that most of the time you don't have any problems. Little by little, as you accumulate many of these experiences, you will feel more and more comfortable in similar situations.

This technique can be applied to practically any field. You just have to find a way as easy as possible to start working in the fields in which you do not feel safe, and increase the difficulty as you become more comfortable with the initial challenge.

4- Set your personal limits

One of the most common characteristics among people with low self-esteem is that they are not able to set their own limits. They have a hard time saying no to others so as not to make them feel bad, and they tend to accept all kinds of commitments that they know at first will make them unhappy.

If this is the case, learning to set boundaries between what you are willing to tolerate and what you are not will make a huge difference in your life.

Before saying yes to a proposal or commitment, think about whether it will benefit you or not; and avoid getting into any situation just because "it's what you have to do" if you really don't want to do it.

Although at first it may be difficult for you to say no or avoid some commitments, in the long run this will have a very positive impact on how you feel about yourself and your level of happiness.

5- Remember your past achievements

People with great confidence in themselves are usually those who have faced all kinds of obstacles and have been able to overcome them time and time again. However, we have all accomplished something important in our own lives; and we can use these experiences to improve our self-concept.

How does this work? The next time you have to do something that scares you, or that you think that you cannot achieve what you have set out to do, stop for a second and think about something similar to what you have already faced in the past. For this technique to work, it has to be something that you can successfully overcome.

If there is nothing similar to what you have been able to do so far, search your memory for a situation that at the time you thought you could not overcome but from which you ended up victorious. Realize that you are usually able to surprise yourself; Why should this time be any different?

6- Exercise

According to evolutionary psychology, our brain detects how capable we are of taking care of ourselves and gives us a level of self-confidence or another based on this. Therefore, any activity that increases your survivability will also make you feel better about yourself.

One of the activities that can help you the most in this regard is physical exercise. When you train, what you really do is prepare your body to face different threats and situations. This is especially true if you do strength training, like going to crossfit classes or lifting weights.

Various studies show that when a person trains regularly, the levels of serotonin and dopamine in their brain rise. So don't be fooled by those who think that exercise is only good for the body; your mind will thank you very much if you go to the gym.

7- Modify your negative thoughts

One of the biggest sources of insecurities is our beliefs. These are opinions that we take as true about how the world works, how we are and how we relate to others. Most of the time we do not choose or are aware of them, but they largely determine how good our life is.

The problem is that, for most people, many of the beliefs they hold are negative. When faced with a challenge, for example, they often automatically think something like, 'Why try? I'm going to fail anyway. This, of course, makes it much more difficult for them to be successful in any field.

However, the good news is that we can greatly control these automatic thoughts. Next time you have one of them, try to disassemble it in a rational way.

To continue with the previous example, the way to deal with that negative belief would be to say something like this to yourself: "How can I be sure this is going to go wrong?"

Your new positive thoughts will be hard to believe at first, and your mind will keep sending you all kinds of limiting beliefs. However, with time and practice, each time you will get better in this regard and you will be able to enjoy better self-confidence.

8- Accept your inner critic

That said, it is practically impossible to completely get rid of all the limiting beliefs we have. Therefore, apart from trying to change all the negative thoughts that you can for more optimistic ones, you will also have to learn to accept that internal pessimistic voice in the best possible way.

When you are faced with a very powerful negative thought, which you cannot easily change, take a deep breath. Remember why you are doing what you do: what will facing your fears help you? What if you gave up beforehand and did nothing that you set out to do?

Next, thank your mind for trying to take care of you (which is what it does by keeping you from taking risks), and take action anyway. Remember what your goals are, and begin to gradually move towards them no matter what your inner critic tells you. After a while, his power over you will have diminished.

9- Stop comparing yourself to others

One of the biggest sources of insecurity for most people is the habit of constantly comparing ourselves to others. We look at the people around us and think, "I'll never be as tall / handsome / rich / interesting / brave as him." This makes us feel terrible about ourselves, and ends up destroying our self-esteem.

It is obvious that there are people much better than us in almost any field. However, this does not imply that we have less value than others. We all have strengths and weaknesses, advantages and difficulties of our own; and the only thing that matters is getting the most out of them.

Instead of comparing yourself to other people, a much more useful technique is to see how much you have changed from how you were a while ago. Have you improved in any important aspect for you? If you haven't or haven't done it enough, how can you have done it in a year or two?

Asking yourself these questions instead of thinking about whether others are better or worse than you will help you regain control over your life to a great extent. Thus, your self-concept will improve, and you will be able to focus on how to make your own existence more pleasant every time.

10- Practice self-compassion

Self-compassion has to do with treating yourself with love and respect when you make a mistake, fail in something you have proposed, or suffer any kind of setback.

Otherwise, speaking harshly to the minimum will not help you do better next time. In fact, studies suggest that doing so causes just the opposite.

A 2009 study published in the "Journal of Personality" found that self-compassion contributes to developing more consistent levels of self-confidence. Thoughts like "Everyone is wrong" instead of "I'm a failure" will help you feel better even when you haven't achieved what you set out to do.

The secret to developing self-compassion is this: talk to yourself how you would address a loved one. Would you tell a friend that he is stupid, that he is worthless or that he will never get what he wants? So why do you allow yourself to direct yourself that way?

References

1. "25 Killer Actions to Boost Your Self-Confidence" in: Zen Habits. Retrieved on: October 25, 2018 from Zen Habits: zenhabits.net.
2. "10 Things You Can Do to Boost Self-Confidence" in: Entrepreneur. Retrieved on: October 25, 2018 from Entrepreneur: entrepreneur.com.
3. "Building Confidence and Self-Esteem" in: Psychology Today. Retrieved on: October 25, 2018 from Psychology Today: psychologytoday.com.
4. "Building self - confidence" in: Mind Tools. Retrieved on: October 25, 2018 from Mind Tools: mindtools.com.
5. "5 ways to boost your self - confidence" in: Very Well Mind. Retrieved on: October 25, 2018 from Very Well Mind: verywellmind.com.