9 Must-read Tips to Boost your Confidence.

You want to be more confident, but what even is confidence? It’s good to know what it is (and what it is not) before you dive into the journey of self-improvement.

This is how google defines confidence:

1. the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.
2. the state of feeling certain about the truth of something.
3. a feeling of self-assurance arising from an appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.
4. the telling of private matters or secrets with mutual trust.
5. a secret or private matter told to someone under a condition of trust.

We usually have confidence within something or someone but what people usually mean when they want to ‘be more confident’ is to have confidence within themselves. The keywords we see from the list google provided us with are; faith, belief, trust, self-assurance and appreciation. These are the feelings of a person who is confident in themselves. Luckily confidence is something that is learnt, it is a skill that you have to practice and turn into a habit.

Confidence is very closely tied to having high levels of self-love and respect. Usually, people who appear confident have high self-esteem, which is the perception you have of yourself. If you have a good perception of yourself on the inside, it will show from the outside.

Just because someone is confident doesn’t mean they are confident in all areas of life, we can normally have high levels of confidence in one area of life, for example, physical abilities, and low confidence in another, like social abilities. However, when you have high self-esteem, it will push you into uncomfortable situations (which ultimately lead to increased confidence) because you have an underlying belief that even if you fail, everything will be okay.

This usually means we can strive for our bigger aspirations and we go after the things we want. It means you take yourself seriously and you deserve all the good things that life has to offer. Our external world is a reflection of our inner world and beliefs. Imagine just believing you can do something means that you will do it, that is what having confidence in oneself means.

Let’s not get this confused with narcissism though. Confidence instils a sense of competence in one’s self, while narcissism is a mental disorder which can embody a sense of superiority over others. Narcissists actually have very low self-esteem and are incredibly sensitive to criticism. To put it simply, someone who is confident feels good about themselves and narcissists deep down feel bad about themselves.

So how do we cultivate a sense of increased confidence?

Firstly we have to build up that self-esteem, which is linked to self-love and self-respect. Here are nine tips on how to do that.

1. Discipline is self-love

Discipline is sticking to the choices which you know will favour you in the long run, instead of going for the easier ones which will hurt you in the long run. It is about delaying gratification. Having discipline helps you gain self-love and respect, which breeds confidence. You are telling yourself that you are worth the hard work and that you care about your future self. When you start caring for yourself, your confidence naturally grows with it.

2. Don’t break promises to yourself

Think of someone you respect and the way they act. Someone who is respectable keeps their promises, does what they say they’re going to do, is kind, smart and looks after themselves.

We always respect and have confidence in those who respect and have confidence in themselves. You have to treat yourself like someone who is respectable. By keeping your promises, you gain self-respect and are telling yourself you are worth the time and effort to become the best version of yourself.

3. Do something hard

Confidence is comfort with vulnerability.

When we don’t feel confident it can prevent us from putting ourselves out there and trying something new or hard. This is a protective mechanism from the feeling of vulnerability. If you never try, you can never fail. But you will also never win. What if I told you even if you fail, you will feel more confident?

If something is easy, there would be no doubt of failure. But it is actually in failure and learning how to deal with it that builds character and confidence.

It is only natural to fear vulnerability because our natural instincts kick in and tell us we are more likely to get hurt. The more comfortable we get with vulnerability, the better we get at dealing with our emotions in those situations. This builds confidence in our ability to deal with hard situations.

This will look different to everyone but a few examples of what things you can practice daily which are hard include:

• running
• a cold shower
• talking to strangers
• doing something you’re scared of

4. Confidence is consistency

Beliefs are programmed by past experience. If you believe you can do something well, it is probably because you have done that thing many times in the past. If you want to grow confident in a particular thing, you have to start by being a beginner at it and with practice (consistency), you will get better.

5. Do something you’re good at

If you’re really struggling and need a quick boost of confidence, do something you know you’re good at. We all have one thing we know we can do, it’s our thing which we can do a little better than others. Remind yourself to do this thing every so often. It reminds us who we are and gives us that kick of confidence that we can carry through the rest of our day.

6. Positive self talk

How we feel about ourselves massively affects our confidence. Whether we realise it or not, we are constantly talking to ourselves in our heads. When we have negative self-talk, this knocks our confidence further.

This was not the starting point because it is easier to take action, rather than consciously trying to think positive thoughts. However, implementing positive self-talk alongside taking action can have a greater effect. Whenever you catch yourself talking negatively about yourself, stop and affirm three positive thoughts to yourself.

The practice of affirmations actively works on improving our positive self-talk.

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7. Fix your posture

Stand up straight, look forward, broaden your chest and put your hands on your hips. This is called the superman pose. It can improve confidence at that very moment. When we have good posture, not only does it trick others into thinking we’re more confident and respectable but it tricks our own brains too.

Our brains are incredibly gullible, they can’t tell the difference between thoughts and reality. How many times have you thought back to a memory when you were nervous and your heart starts racing? Just acting out gestures can influence our emotions. For example, smiling can improve your mood and listening to sad music can make you sad. It is the same for our posture.

8. Wear yellow

In psychology, it is a well-known fact that colour influences our moods. It is used everywhere from marketing strategies to mental hospitals. Every colour has a specific mood it induces and yellow happens to be the colour of confidence. In Buddhism they have a chakra system, seven energy centres that go through the body and they are the colours of the rainbow. Each colour is associated with a main endocrine organ and specific emotions.

Confidence is found in the solar plexus (the stomach) and is associated with the colour yellow. These energy systems can become blocked by certain negative emotions. The solar plexus is blocked by shame. This means it can also have an effect on that area of the body, so in this case, you may experience stomach and digestive problems. By wearing the colour or eating foods of that colour, it balances out the energy centre.

9. Look after yourself

This post has been largely pointing you towards looking after yourself. When you look after yourself, you produce good-feeling hormones in your body. At the end of the day, we are made up of chemicals and compounds. If you can ‘hack’ into that and alter your body’s composition of compounds to feel good, in the most natural way, then you’re winning!

The three main areas where you should be looking after yourself is:

• Your fitness – Not only does working out produce good feeling hormones such as endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, but when you look after your body’s physique it will lead you to feel proud about yourself and confident.
• Your diet – The gut is an incredibly undermined factor to our emotions and the chemical compounds in our brain. Did you know that the gut produces 95% of the body’s serotonin, the happiness hormone? If you didn’t know, then get out from under that rock and do some research on the gut-brain axis!
• Mental health – This is closely linked with gut health because our diet affects our mental state but there are less tangible factors as well. This includes points which have already been mentioned such as being disciplined, having positive self-talk and also taking control of what kinds of environments you put yourself in. Remove yourself from toxic environments or people. Go towards places which support the person you want to become. If you cannot find it, be the person you need and you will attract like-minded people.

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