What Is Self-Confidence?

"Unwarranted fear is the door that stops progress toward that which we want in life and it is the door that closes on self-confidence." -- Kevin Hogan

Easy to identify, yet probably difficult to define, conceptualize, and measure - what does self-confidence mean?

One of the main requirements to success, happiness and reaching your goals is confidence. Having enormous self-confidence will also be useful in just about every part of your life. Let's get straight to the point - you were not born with self-confidence, that is, self-confidence is not something innate - this can be taught, nurtured and built over the years, at any stage in life. Confidence is the personal ownership of no one; the person who has it learns it - and goes on learning.

Your degree of confidence is truly the outcome of how you perceive yourself - which is eventually how people will perceive you. How people interrelate and respond to you is a reflection of how you perceive yourself. Therefore if you don't have a high degree of self-confidence or a huge deal of self-esteem - then it's mostly because you are concentrating on your negative traits and on what you are doing wrong. In other words, you are being your own worst enemy! The good thing is that you can alter this and improve your self-confidence.

The most talented person on earth has to build confidence in his talents from the foundation of faith and knowledge, like anybody else. The device will be different from one person to the other, but the necessary job is similar. Confidence and attitude are accessible to all of us according to our skills and requirements - not somebody else's - as long as we make use of our talents and develop them.

Self-confidence is an approach which lets individuals have positive yet reasonable viewpoints of themselves and their conditions. Self-confident people trust their own skills and abilities, have a general sense of influence in their lives, and believe that, within reason, they will be able to do what they desire, plan, and anticipate.
Having self-confidence does not necessarily mean that people will be able to do everything. Self-confident people do have expectations and standards that are realistic and reasonable. Even if some of their standards are not met, they remain to be positive and to accept themselves.

People who are not self-confident rely extremely on the consent of other people in order to feel good about themselves. They have a tendency to prevent taking risks because they are afraid to fail. They usually do not expect themselves to succeed. They often place themselves down and tend to disregard or overlook remarks and praises paid to them. On the other hand, self-confident people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they normally believe in their own skills and abilities. They tend to accept themselves; they don't feel they have to conform in order for them to be accepted.

Self-confidence is not essentially a general trait or characteristic which permeates all aspects of a person's life. Usually, people will have some aspects of their lives where they think they are quite confident, for instance, academics and sports, while at the same time they do not feel confident at all in other fields, for example, personal appearance, social relationships, among others.

How is Self-Confidence Initially Built?

Several factors have an effect on the improvement of self-confidence. The attitudes of parents are vital to how the children feel about themselves, especially in children's early years. When parents give acceptance, children receive a solid basis for feeling good about themselves. If one or both parents are extremely critical or demanding, or if they are overprotective and if they discourage steps toward self-reliance, children may come to think they are incompetent, insufficient, or inferior. Nevertheless, if parents encourage children's steps toward independence and accept/love their children when they commit mistakes, children will learn to accept themselves and will be on their way to building self-confidence.

Amazingly, lack of self-confidence is not automatically connected to lack of ability. But, it is usually the effect of concentrating too much on the impractical expectations or standards of others, especially parents and society. Influences of friends can be as powerful or more powerful than those of parents and society in determining feelings about one's self. College students re-examine principles and values and reflect on their own identities and thus are particularly vulnerable to the friends' influence.

Self-Confidence and Effectiveness

Self-confidence is frequently related with success. Success leads to self-confidence, and self-confidence frequently appears to lead to success. We should be cautious, however, that we don't over generalize. Other than self-confidence, people generally need particular abilities to be effective and efficient. These differ, depending on the circumstances. They may be technical skills connecting to the specific project or job they are dealing with, or they may be more general skills - such as those of interviewing, providing feedback, or evaluating strengths and weaknesses.

In some instances people may be overconfident, or unreasonably self-confident, and this may cause them to ignore difficulties, or they may fall short to spend enough time and effort on preparation or performance.

In order to continue and maintain the right degree of self-confidence is a matter of balance. This may partially be a matter of timing. There are instances to confess to ambiguity, to invite the views and suggestion of others, to admit to lack of knowledge and to research facts. When all this has been done and you have made a judgment, it is time to affirm your situation with confidence and be prepared to justify it.

 Self-Confidence and Ability

Self-confidence and ability go together. We are almost certainly to feel confident when we are faced with circumstances we know that we can handle - maybe because we have dealt with them in the past. We are less likely to feel self-confident when we deal with circumstances for the first time, when we are hesitant of our ability, and we are least likely to feel self-confident when we face circumstances where we know we have little talent, because we have failed in the past.

We can see this simple connection: skilled performance results in success and leads to improved self-confidence. In the same way, unskilled performance leads to failure, which may result in decreased self-confidence and lead to even poorer performance on the next occurrence.

Improve Knowledge and Abilities

Generally speaking, the best method to increasing your performance and your self-confidence is to work on improving your knowledge and abilities. For instance, consider the case of Aaron and Chris. Aaron and Chris were both appointed as new members of a safety committee. For a time they both kept fairly quiet in the business meetings and left most of the conversation to the more experienced members.

Within four months, however, Aaron had become much more active in asking questions, volunteering information, and even challenging some of the opinions of other members of the committee, whereas Chris still took a back seat, seldom putting forward his opinions, and always in favor with the majority.

The main difference between Aaron and Chris was that Aaron had striven hard to collect data on the matters that involved the committee and he would closely always put time into preparing for the business meetings. Chris had not exerted a special effort to learn about the background of the committee, or the technical and legal concerns facing it. He attended the business meetings and sat through them, without having done much - if any - preparation. As a committee member, Aaron was seen more effective and self-confident.

This is not an extraordinary story. We are more effective and hence more self-confident in any circumstances if we have spent the time and effort to learn about it. This learning generally starts with the acquisition of information. At times people do not take the initiative, or will not take the time or effort that is required to learn about what they ought to recognize to be effective and efficient.

Self-Esteem

Part of self-confidence is a general trust in oneself - a liking for oneself - or self-esteem, also referred to as self-worth. American psychologist Eric Berne used common everyday language to illustrate the esteem in which we regard ourselves and others: we may think of ourselves as OK or Not OK. According to Berne, we all go through a stage in our very early lives of low self-esteem - of thinking that we are Not OK. After that we may come to like ourselves more, and hold ourselves with higher esteem - a perception of feeling I'm OK. Berne saw that there were people whose usual position of themselves is I'm OK (i.e. high self-esteem) and then there were those whose usual view is I'm Not OK (i.e. low self-esteem).

This level of self-esteem may differ at any one time, depending on the situation. Attaining success in a task or job may increase one's level of self-esteem. Likewise, failure or criticism may have a negative impact. Independent of these situations, some people have a higher customary degree of self-esteem - hence self-confidence - than others. A significant area of self-esteem can be an ability to recognize between our self and our actions.

Positive Thoughts

The thoughts that we send ourselves can influence our self-esteem and our self-confidence in any particular position. A person's mind may send them negative thoughts when they are confronted by a challenge, such as:

• "I'll never be able to do this!"
• "Everyone's going to laugh at me!"
• "I'm very stupid!"
• "I'm a hothead, and my anger is going to get me in trouble one of these days."
• "This is so unfair!"
• "Anyone else but me could do this right!"

These negative and depreciating thoughts have a propensity to weaken one's self-confidence and cause it more difficulty to function effectively.

There are three positive ways of overcoming these negative thoughts.

1. Search for the truth. At times the negative thoughts include deceptions and exaggerations. Is it actually true that: "Anyone else but me could do this right?" Is it actually true that: "I'm very stupid?" These two messages are most likely untrue, and they are absolutely useless.

2. Face up to the fears. At times the threats in the negative thoughts are wrong - or improbable to happen. On other instances it may be that they will occur, but will they actually be so terrible? We might believe: "Everyone's going to laugh at me!" However, if this is the worst that can ever happen to us, why not give it a try?

3. Send positive thoughts. Substitute the negative thoughts with more positive messages. These should be realistic, reasonable, and should be able to support what we can actually expect to achieve.

Beliefs That Influence Self-Confidence

Self-confidence - like being famous and wealthy - is something we believe everyone else possess. In spite of that, feeling insecure about ourselves is probably the most ordinary problem of humankind. The majority of individuals in society believe "You have to be born with it." This is absolutely untrue. You can learn how to be confident, just like learning how to cook or drive a car.

Secondly, people are likely to believe once they lose their self-confidence that it's gone for good. It's not true. It may take time to win your self-confidence back, but once you defeat your insecurities it's less likely that you'll lose your self-confidence once again.

Thirdly, people believe that you can only have self-confidence if you are able to conquer a new challenge. There is more to confidence than achieving something new.

In response to external control, people build several assumptions; some of which are positive and some are destructive. Several assumptions that can hinder self-confidence, as well as alternative ways of thinking, are as follows:

BELIEFS - ALTERNATIVES

"I should always have love and approval from every important person in my life." -- This is a perfectionistic, unreachable goal. It is more reasonable and desirable to build personal expectations and principles that are not thoroughly dependent on the consent of others.

"I must be completely capable, adequate, and superior in all significant aspects of my life." -- This once more is a perfectionistic, unreachable goal and suggests that self-worth or self-esteem is identified by accomplishments. Achievement can be satisfying however it does not make you more worthy. Instead, worth is an inherent characteristic and all people have it.

"My past remains all important and influences my emotions and behaviors in the present." -- Whilst it is true that your confidence was particularly susceptible to external control during your childhood, as you grow older you can achieve awareness and viewpoint on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can decide which influences you will continue to allow to take action on your life. You don't have to be helpless in the challenge of past incidents.

In order to increase self-confidence you have to believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself, then you can succeed in anything and everything you set your mind to. You may not succeed the first time you try, but you need to keep trying until you do succeed. Quick success does not exist in our society.

Success only comes to those who work hard to get them. You'll get nowhere in life if you do not motivate yourself. You have to build a lifestyle that is appropriate for you. Don't settle for anyone else's lifestyle or for a lifestyle that's underneath your expectations.

Self-Conquering Thought Habits

Subscribing to these destructive beliefs leaves you susceptible to the following self-conquering thought habits:

All Or Nothing Thinking.
 "I am a total failure when my performance is not perfect."

Seeing Only Dark Clouds.
Failure lurks around every area and comes to be expected. For instance, a single negative aspect, piece of criticism, or passing remark darkens all truth. "I got a C on one biology exam, now I'll never get into medical school."

Magnification Of Negative or Minimization Of Positive.
 Good things don't count closely as much as bad ones. "I know I won seven chess games in a row, but losing this one makes me feel awful about myself."

Uncritical Acceptance Of Feelings As Truth.
 "I feel ugly so it must be true."

Overemphasis On "Should" Statements.
 "Should" statements are frequently perfectionistic and reflective of others' standards instead of expressive of your own needs and desires. "Everyone must have a career plan when they go to college. I don't have so there must be something wrong with me."

Labeling.
 Labeling is a simplistic procedure and normally expresses a sense of blame. "I am a loser and it's all my fault."

Difficulty Accepting Compliments.
 "You like this outfit? I think it makes me look fat and terrible."

On the next page we will talk about ways to Boost Your Self Confidence.