How To Get Your Confidence Back
One of the essential ingredients of a well-lived, enjoyable life is self-confidence. Confident people get what they want the way they want it, people enjoy being around them, and theyâre appreciated in the workplace. They encounter the same problems as everyone else, but they routinely rise above them, taking life in stride.
This seems innate from the outside, but itâs not â it is the product of a careful, intentional decision to build that confidence. And the simple truth is that everyone can learn to do it, regardless of circumstances.
We donât learn this in school. They focus on self-esteem, but they donât understand how it works, so they canât teach it to others. They focus on the participation award method of instilling self-confidence, but that doesnât produce real self-esteem, it sets their students up for a rude awakening when they encounter real life after school.
Too few parents are effective at teaching it at home, because itâs widely thought to be a personality trait thatâs just automatic. For a few people, it seems to be, but itâs most effective when itâs taught or self-taught intentionally.
Real, lasting self-confidence comes from real, tangible achievements and successes. It doesnât matter how the rest of the world views these accomplishments, either â theyâve got to be valued by the person who did them to engender self-confidence.
It doesnât matter where you are in life, or what your circumstances are. You can start working on this part of yourself today, and you wonât have to wait long to see tangible, beneficial results.
Some of this may seem trite, shopworn, or even hackneyed. Thatâs okay. It got that way by being repeated over and over again because it works.
Here are some confidence building activities and actions you can take today.
1. You Decide How Other People See You
Most people are so focused on how other people see them that they donât have attention to spare for looking closely at others. Rather than putting the energy into carefully evaluating others, they accept everyoneâs projected self-image at face value.
Itâs a closed feedback loop. You project confidence, other people treat you as if youâre confident, and you accept that feedback and feel confident. Make this an intentional habit, and it becomes automatic very quickly.
2. Invent Yourself
This is a project that youâll want to spend some time on. Never mind who you already are, spend some time deciding who you want to be. Not the outward surface traits, but the inner, innate aspects of your personality.
Do you want to be thrifty, or spend open-handedly? Would you rather be selfish or generous? Kind or cruel? Honest or dishonest? Think about all of the traits of your personality now, and decide which ones to underline, and which to change. Make a list.
This isnât a one-hour project, and spending more than an hour at a time on it will probably be annoying and frustrating. Spend some time on the list every day for 3 or 4 days, then come back to it every few weeks or months.
When you stop being able to think of things to add to the list, wait a bit longer before you revisit it. Keep it in mind and work on checking off one or two items from the list steadily, but you donât need to add to it frequently.
Itâs tough to change a trait because people who know you will expect you to be what you were yesterday. It will take them some time to adjust their expectations, but they will. Be firm about the changes you make, and people will accept the changes.
Making dozens of changes at once is difficult. One or two at a time is much easier. When one of your changes has been locked in, and the people around you expect it, you can work on another change from your list.
3. Seeming Turns Into Being
Yes, âfake it until you make itâ sounds trite, but it works. This doesnât mean that you should have an unrealistic view of your skills today, but you can aspire to build your skills to whatever level you want. The top person in every field had to start at the beginning, too â but they kept on learning until they were as excellent as they wanted to be.
If youâre not enjoying learning a skill, try to cut that drudgery out of your life. Put your focus on skills that you enjoy learning and improving. Life is so much easier when youâre having fun living it.
4. Grooming Is Important
Itâs not difficult, and you are worth the trouble. Trim those nails, keep yourself clean, and primp some. Make a fuss about your appearance, and youâll find yourself more confident in all situations because of it.
If you donât want to spend the money on professional grooming, invest the time in learning how to do it well yourself. Itâs a small luxury that not only feels good, but it makes a big difference in how people treat and respect you. It adds to self-confidence more than many people realize.
5. Dress Like A Success
This doesnât mean that youâve got to follow the latest fashions if you donât want to or spend a small fortune on your clothes. Even if youâre wearing thrift-store garments, be picky about how well they fit you, and choose colours that work well for you.
Keep your clothes clean and well-mended. Threadbare works with a few things, but not often, and only when itâs intentional. If you want fashion advice, ask your best-dressed friend of the opposite gender. They wonât steer you wrong if youâre not competition to them.
This isnât shallowness, as some idealists will claim. Itâs tremendously practical. People will react to you based on your appearance, and youâre one of those people.
6. Happiness Is A Decision That You Make
You wonât always be able to control what happens, but you are still in control of how you react to it. If you look at it, thereâs a bright side to everything. If nothing else, it could have been worse and wasnât. You survived. Focus on the positive and be happy about it.
If for no other reason, being happy is more fun than being unhappy is. Happy people are more fun to be around, so they get more support and positive feedback from people. This makes it easier for happy people to recover from setbacks, and easy is good.
7. Results Are Lousy Goals
Setting goals is an important life skill, but predicting the outcomes doesnât always work very well. So make your goals something that you do have complete control over â the amount of effort youâre going to invest. Itâs not âIâm going to run a 3-minute mile todayâ, itâs âIâm going to run my hardest today.â Not âIâm going to ace the test tomorrow,â but âIâm going to study for at least 90 minutes for tomorrowâs testâ.
Achieving goals automatically boost your confidence, so only set goals that you have complete control over. Running can be a fantastic way to set a goal you can control. Jill has a lovely blog about running here.
8. Being Angry Is No Fun
Anger is usually a response to frustration over someone not meeting your expectations, and if that someone is yourself, this is related to goals. If itâs someone else, then keep in mind that their behavior is not your job to control.
If other people treat you poorly, itâs better to make a note of it and adjust your expectations toward more realism in the future. Itâs okay to ask them to do it the next time differently, but what they do is up to them. Being angry about it is a decision, and if you decide not to get mad, youâll be better able to deal with the situation calmly and rationally.
Yes, things didnât go as you wanted them to. Being angry about it cannot possibly improve the situation, so save your energy for what will improve the situation. Being angry is not enjoyable, and far too many people make a habit of it. Donât be one of them.
Indignant outrage can be remarkably addictive, but itâs not an improvement, ever. Donât let it be one of your habits.
9. So Smile, Already
It may seem bizarre, but it works anyway. Smiling will improve your mood, and often the spirit of the people around you. Your brain is already wired to associate smiling with feeling happy, and it doesnât matter which one comes first â the other will naturally follow.
If you make a conscious effort to smile, youâll soon see things to laugh about, because they come into better focus. The people you deal with will often smile back, and it becomes contagious. Confident people are happy, so it follows that happy people are assured. The two traits go together.
10. Use Affirmations
Affirmations are statements of what you expect, and we all use them regularly, so keep yours positive. There is a whole field of psychology that focuses on affirmations because theyâre a method that has proven itself useful. Paying attention to your declarations helps them work for you instead of against you.
Affirmations are a topic too broad to cover in depth here, but many people find them fascinating. One place to start looking into them is this article.
11. Letâs Be Honest
One of the problems with lying is that you have to keep track of the lies to avoid being caught doing it. It is much, much easier to remember the truth and being honest means never being trapped in a lie. Being caught lying is a small but constant worry, one that we can happily live without.
Confident people have no reason to lie. The truth is something that will do the job for them just fine. Of course, this will mean avoiding behavior that youâll feel a need to lie about.
Focusing on being honest wonât always lead to people trusting you, and thatâs okay. Their opinions are their business, not yours. What it will always lead to is you trusting yourself, and thatâs an essential ingredient in being confident and self-assured in life.
12. Eat On Purpose
We canât all expect always to enjoy perfect health, but we can work on being as healthy as possible, and itâs an effort that pays off in many ways. Nutrition has a lot of influence over how we look and feel, so itâs worth learning about and paying attention to.
This doesnât mean that we need to become fanatical about our food (unless you want to), but it does say that we need to learn something about nutrition and apply that knowledge to our diet.
This doesnât mean that you have to give up junk food either, entirely. It just means that we canât let junk food be the majority of our diet. There are a lot of false myths about food floating around, so youâll need to do some research, here. For example, non-fat is popular, but itâs not healthy â you need some fats in your diet to thrive.
If most of what you eat is healthy food, then those things that you eat that arenât as healthy donât need to be guilty pleasures. They can just be pleasures without any guilt.
13. Pay Attention To The Details
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying âWatch the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves,â and this concept doesnât just apply to finances. Careful attention to detail is one ingredient in excellence. Itâs hard to be confident about something in which the particulars have been ignored.
It is remarkably easy to be self-confident about having achieved excellence. The excellence does not have to be about other peoples achievements, either. It can just as quickly be in comparison to your work in the past.
You donât have to play guitar as well as Jeff Beck to be proud of learning a new chord or song.
14. Expect To Win
Donât always expect to win easily, but you can expect to win every time. This isnât about competition with other people, this is about achieving your goals.
There is no confidence in saying âI have failed,â but âI havenât succeeded yetâ is the essence of self-confidence, and anyone can say it. When you say it, mean it, and follow up on that.
15. Tackle The Problems As Soon As Possible
Sometimes, problems go away all by themselves, but counting on that is a recipe for disaster. Confident people donât shy away from challenges, they deal with them as quickly as they can, before the problem has a chance to grow and become harder to deal with.
16. Kill Your Television
At least kill the habit of watching all night, every night. Few activities are as passive as watching television, and passivity does not build confidence.
You donât have to quit altogether, but you can at least be a careful consumer. Minimize what you watch, and be careful only to pick the very best shows and movies. Use the time youâll save by doing this on the other things on this list. Game of Thrones may be a great show, but the books are even better, and reading is not a passive activity.
17. The Negative Isnât Important, And This Is Important
Bad things happen to everyone, even confident people. We all have setbacks, and sometimes, theyâre difficult to overcome or accept. How much you focus on them is something that you do have control over.
The more time you spend focusing on the positive in life, the more positive your life will look to you. The less time you dwell on the negative, the more confident you will be of the positive parts of your life.
18. Stand Out From The Crowd
One way of dealing with a lack of self-confidence is to mimic your peers. The downsides of this are that it prevents confidence and it helps you fade into the background. To enhance your confidence, you must remind yourself and others that youâre an individual, not merely a member of some group.
If you have a secret passion for something unusual, donât let it be hidden. Own it and be proud of it, and it becomes one more thing that you can feel confident about.
19. Donât Let Anyone Else Decide
Insecure people feel better if everyone around them is doing the same thing. Donât let anyone else decide this for you. Decide for yourself, every time.
You donât need to argue with them or convince them otherwise. Smile, nod and do what youâve chosen to do your way. Sure, on the job youâve got to do it the way the boss wants it done, but donât lose track of the fact that youâre in that job because you decided to be.
20. Different Isnât Always Better But Being Yourself Is
Be genuine. You donât need to pretend, because what you are is good enough. It doesnât have to be good enough for anyone else, as long as itâs good enough for you to be proud of.
Itâs impossible to blackmail someone who doesnât have something that they need to keep a secret. Youâre allowed to (and should) keep some things private, but donât ever make the mistake of being ashamed of those secrets. Theyâre none of anyone elseâs business and are your decisions to make. Itâs your life, after all.
21. Be Kind
Everyone makes mistakes and being gentle with someone who has made one will not only be appreciated but being kind improves your experience of it, as well. Unkindness is unpleasant to experience, so thereâs no benefit to be had in adding some to your day.
This is another thing that becomes a feedback loop. The more often youâre kind to others, the more chance that theyâll find a reason to be helpful to you. Confident people donât need to look for things to be unkind about.
22. Being Wrong Is Wonderful
Nobodyâs always right, but too many people donât handle being wrong gracefully. There are not many things as annoying as someone who refuses to admit when theyâre wrong, or who always finds something else to blame it on. You donât need to be that person.
When you realise that youâre wrong, admit it, and apologise if thatâs called for, but donât feel sorry about it. Nobody is always right, so donât expect it from yourself.
If someone shows you that youâve been wrong, thank them â theyâve just given you a bit of education, and now youâre wrong about one less thing. Itâs a positive thing, and youâll be surprised at how pleased people are when they see you react that way.
23. Life Isnât A Game
Other than for recreation, you donât need to compete with or beat anyone. Nobody wins a dance, but everyone can enjoy dancing. Fighting with others isnât what confident people spend their time on.
Confident people work toward being their personal best, and how well others are doing doesnât threaten them. If Joe is better than you at billiards, thatâs okay â you can focus on enjoying the game anyway while your skills improve.
24. Perception Decides Experience
Keep yourself positive by focusing on the positive aspects of every situation. If youâre asked to put in overtime on Friday, donât focus on missing what youâd planned to do, focus on the extra pay and the boss owing you a favor.
The result is the same, either way, but youâll enjoy the positive option more. Itâs a part of being confident that you can handle whatever surprises come up.
25. Life Is A Game After All
In the long run, weâre all dead, so donât take it too seriously. Enjoy the triumphs and good times, but donât make the defeats and bad times more significant than they need to be.
If it werenât for bad weather, nobody would enjoy the good weather. Confident people know that theyâll get through the clouds and that the sun will shine for them later, so donât sweat the petty stuff. On the cosmic scale, itâs all trivial things.
26. Donât Just Hear, Listen
What you get out of an experience is directly proportional to how much attention you put into it. Not only do you enjoy things more when you focus on them, but keeping a high level of care makes you appear and feel more confident. You have a better handle on things when you pay attention to them.
27. What Doesnât Matter As Much As How Well Does
Who do you have more confidence in â the janitor who does an excellent job, or the top executive who makes mistakes regularly? Even mundane, low-skill tasks like sweeping a floor can add to confidence if theyâre done well.
28. Do Your Homework
Thereâs a reason for âBe Preparedâ being the motto of the Boy Scouts. Being prepared is a large factor in doing something well. Take the time to do enough research to know how to do something well, or practice a skill until youâre good at it.
Itâs hard to feel anything but confident about something that youâve mastered.
29. If Itâs Not Worth Doing Well, Itâs Not Worth Doing
Itâs hard to take this too seriously. If itâs worth your time to do, itâs worth the time to do it well.
Sometimes, getting it done quickly is more important than taking the time to do your best job, but try to do your best as often as you can. Doing your best is something thatâs easy to feel confident about.
30. You Donât Know It All
Nobody knows it all, and confident people donât need to pretend that they do. Be willing to admit when you donât know â thatâs the only way you can be open to learning about it.
Learning something new automatically increases your confidence.
31. Try Something New
It may not have worked out as well as youâd have liked it to, but youâve won anyway. Now that you know how it worked out, youâve learned something.
You may have never had an interest in square dancing, but youâll never know if itâs fun to do until you try it. It, or any other new activity, may not be your cup of tea, but a confident person welcomes the challenge of a unique experience, and sometimes, it works out even better than you expected it.
32. Enjoy Your Achievements
When something you do goes well, stop and pay attention. Even if nobody else notices, you know you did well, and you deserve to bask in that feeling for a while. Itâs just one more thing to feel confident about.
33. Look Busy
Everyone needs some downtime occasionally, but confident people spend very little time being idle. Donât overcrowd your schedule, but keep occupied.
There are only 24 hours in everyoneâs day, but confident people donât waste much of that. There is always something to be done, so see that it gets done. Achievements build confidence.
34. Expect The Best
Itâs incredible how much people will live up to or down to your expectations. Assume that people will do their best for you, and they usually will.
Be confident that youâre worth their best, and that theyâll see that in you. This works more often than you might think.
35. Do The Healthy Things
Drink plenty of water. Get enough sleep every night. Itâs easy to put things like that off until later, but confident people know that theyâre worth taking good care of.
36. Learn Something New
Few things keep our minds in top working order better than learning something new. It doesnât have to have an immediate practical use, either. Knowledge doesnât take up much storage space.
Donât wait for something to catch your attention. Pick a subject at random, and learn something about it. Confident people arenât afraid to tackle a new topic and add it to their knowledge base.
37. Youâve Got This, Every Time
You might not succeed at first, or even the tenth time you try. This doesnât matter at all. If you keep working at it until you succeed, you will.
Persistence is a trait of confident people. Only people who lack confidence give up if it doesnât work the first time.
38. Think Slow
Many mistakes are caused by not thinking things through carefully beforehand. Work on avoiding problems caused by acting impulsively.
Give your actions enough thought before you act. Youâll have fewer regrets and more confidence that your efforts will work out as you expect them to.
39. Clean Your Desk
Itâs harder to do well at something in the midst of clutter or mess. Itâs a time saver to clean your work area before starting work, no matter what field youâre working in.
You wonât be distracted by the mess, and it wonât get in your way or leave you feeling claustrophobic. Every project is easier if started on a clean slate.
40. Exercise To Energize
Itâs easy to understand why some people get hooked on going to the gym. The more physical energy you use, the more you have. Being fit (or at least fitter) comes along with unexpected benefits.
It doesnât have to be doing sets at the gym, either. Some activity of any sort helps, even walking for a half-hour every day. People with active lifestyles sleep better, have more energy, and feel more confident in themselves.
The hardest part is starting. If you can force your way through the first two weeks, the rest is much more comfortable.
41. Walk Tall
Thereâs a good reason that mothers used to nag their children to keep good posture. It has a definite effect on how we think of ourselves, and how others think of us.
Someone who slouches around with poor posture looks (and probably feels) like they lack self-confidence. Someone with good posture looks self-confident, and feels that way, too.
Pay attention to your posture for a couple of weeks. It doesnât take very long before it becomes an automatic habit.
42. Donât Tell Them, Show Them
People brag about their good qualities because theyâre afraid that nobody will see them otherwise. This is not a habit of confident people, and it doesnât look like one, either. Braggarts earn the poor reputation that they get for doing it.
Other peopleâs opinions arenât important to confident people. They assume that if other people look for their admirable qualities and accomplishments, theyâll be able to find them.
Confident people know that the only opinion that matters is their own.
43. Random Acts Of Kindness
People often encourage doing kind acts for strangers with the idea that it just makes the world a better place for everyone to live in. Theyâre not wrong, but theyâre missing an essential part of it.
How you make other people feel when you go out of your way to help a stranger is mostly incidental. The truth is that committing a random act of kindness will improve your mood, usually all out of proportion to the effort you put into it. It doesnât look like it until you look at it carefully, but itâs doing a favor for yourself.
Hereâs a list of random acts of kindness you can do today.
44. Unclutter
Studies show that our possessions donât make us as happy as our experiences do, as surprising as that may sound. The Swedish have a word for it, âlagom.â It translates to âjust right,â neither too little nor too much.
Remember Little Red Riding Hood. Too many possessions not only clutter your home, but they clutter your life, also. If you havenât used something in a year, itâs not doing you any good, itâs in your way. Confident people donât appear on an episode of Hoarders.
45. Take A Hint From The Japanese
Iâm told that when a mistake happens in Japanese companies, that there is very little attention paid to who made the mistake because that doesnât matter. The focus is given to how to fix the problem and ensure that it doesnât happen again.
Assigning (or dodging) blame doesnât do anything to fix the problem, itâs a waste of time and energy. If it was your mistake, own it immediately, apologize, and shift the focus to how to correct it. If it was someone elseâs mistake, the most efficient way to deal with it is still going to be to focus on the cure.
Confident people donât expect themselves to be perfect, but they do expect themselves to be able to handle problems when they crop up.
46. Uproot The Couch Potato
Everyone should get some downtime, but nobody thrives on making it a significant feature in their life. The physical activity isnât the only important part of this. The mental exercise is just as important.
Spending 2 hours on Facebook, for example, just scrolling through the newsfeed for entertainment is a pretty passive activity. Spending the same 2 hours on Facebook liking and commenting on all of the things that catch your attention is much more active and engaging. Thatâs the opposite of passivity. Confident people donât just observe, they engage and contribute.
47. Focus Is A Habit
If you see someone who seems self-confident, itâs a pretty safe bet that they also look like theyâre paying attention. Everybody can run across distractions, but confident people watch them go by without following them.
Even the most distractible person can make a conscious effort to focus on the matter at hand rather than follow the distraction. It may not be easy at first, but the more you work on it, the easier it becomes. The less you pay attention to distractions, the less theyâll crop up for you.
48. Do It Now
Everyone has some portion of their to-do list thatâs been there for a while. Itâs sometimes hard to notice it, but those unfinished projects are a terrible source of guilt and dissatisfaction. Confident people donât need or want that in their lives.
So grab the oldest project on your to-do list and either discard it and turn to the next-oldest or get it done. Youâll feel better for the shorter to-do list, and the sense of accomplishment youâll get from getting it done will automatically add to your confidence level.
49. Volunteer
Not every confident person volunteers, but almost every volunteer has plenty of self-confidence. You usually meet interesting people and learn things by volunteering.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your state of mind is to help someone else. Itâs also an excellent way to network with other confident, successful people.
50. Be Grateful And Aware Of It
This one is important. Itâs easy to focus on the negative things in your life, but itâs much better for your mood and confidence to focus on the positive, and be glad that theyâre positive. Youâre not (I hope) living the life of a crippled beggar on the streets of Calcutta, no matter how overwhelming your challenges may seem to be. Here are 60 things in life to be grateful for.
51. Positive Self-Talk
One way to improve self-esteem is through positive self-talk. Positive self-talk will give your brain a much-needed boost. You will feel better too. This is different from affirmations. How can you do it? Keep positive words in your mind and try to catch yourself when you hear negative words. Words like can vs canât will really help. Tell yourself things like âI have confidence in meâ or âI have confidence.â Always be mindful of the thoughts you keep in your head.
52. Build Yourself Up
Itâs vital that you are seen as confident. And one of the best ways to do that is to build yourself up. What this means is that you should build yourself up in every way. Iâm talking about the way you talk, walk, look and everything. Most of the points here tell you how to do them individually. This point is for your overall self.
53. Empower Yourself
Itâs indeed a great feeling when you feel empowered. Being confident has a lot to do with empowering ourselves and help make you the best you can be. Hereâs a neat post about how you can do that.
Conclusion
Despite all of the problems and worries that the media tries to bring to your attention, we are living in the best times in history. Poverty is lower, worldwide, than it has ever been before, and weâre surrounded by technological marvels that werenât even dreamed of 10 years ago. Pay attention to that, and enjoy it.
With those 53 actions, itâs your turn now! Which actions are you going to take today to boost your confidence? Start by sharing this to encourage others!