Confidence is an essential skill for success AND happiness.
And if you struggle with self-doubt, constantly compare yourself to others, and avoid fear like the plague, then learning to be more confident will change your life.
In this article, you’ll learn about the concept feof specificity, followed by 9 innovative ways to be more confident in life.
Also, check out the earlier article in this series about the anatomy of self-confidence and esteem.
Let’s dive in.
- What it means to be confident
- Components of a confident person
- Why learn how to become confident?
- 3 Layers of confidence
- 9 Innovative ways to be more confident
- Best books to become more confident
What does it even mean to be confident?
It’s helpful first to clarify what being confident does not mean.
- Self-confidence doesn’t equal perfection: you won’t know all the answers and will still make many mistakes.
- Confidence doesn’t mean an absence of fear: fear, self-doubt, and insecurity will never fully disappear.
- Confidence isn’t external: SELF-confidence starts within. And overcoming a lack of self-confidence isn’t about comparing yourself to others, gaining more status, seeking external validation, or owning more expensive stuff.
- And confidence doesn’t mean being better than others: Those constantly judging others are rarely confident. And there’s a BIG difference between arrogance and confidence.
So, what does being confident mean exactly?
Being confident is an attitude that reflects a positive self-belief in your thought, skills, and abilities. It means you know that you can deal with whatever challenges and setbacks arise.
Components of a confident person
Different elements contribute to your level of self-confidence. And understanding the components allows you to target your weaker areas and create a better plan.
Here are the components of confidence:
- Self-awareness leads to a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses. These insights are essential to navigate your life’s challenges effectively. And you can develop it through self-reflection and introspection.
- Self-esteem is your own perceived value as a human being, forming the foundational layer of confidence. You can build self-esteem and self-worth through confidence-building activities like improving your body language, self-compassion, and exercise.
- Mindset is about your perspective and attitude during difficult and challenging times. Improving your mentality includes cultivating a growth mindset and solution-oriented thinking.
- Competence is task-specific and requires self-belief in your skills, knowledge, and capacity to learn. Developing expertise, learning new skills, and prioritizing growth over short-term results are some of the best ways to increase competence.
- Resilience is your ability to bounce back from setbacks and failures while maintaining a positive attitude. Effective ways to build inner strength include getting outside your comfort zone and facing your fears often.
Although you may experience low self-confidence levels in some aspects more than others, keep in mind that these traits are interconnected.
So, nurturing each of those areas will make you a more confident person.
Why learn how to become confident?
We already covered the benefits of self-confidence for personal success, well-being, and fulfillment.
However, while some people naturally radiate confidence, there are significant extra benefits for those who learn how to be more confident:
- Greater self-awareness: Learning to be more confident leads to a deeper understanding of yourself, including your thoughts, (limiting) beliefs, and emotions.
- Increased resilience: Becoming more confident means stepping outside your comfort zone, which leads to a better ability to deal with setbacks, challenges, and difficulties.
- More self-empowerment: Building confidence means taking charge and personal responsibility, which are positive traits that spill over to other areas of your life.
- Expanded comfort zone: Stacking layers of confidence increases your ability to sit in uncomfortable situations. For example, it enables you to speak in public without preparation.
- Better communication and relationships: Part of learning how to be more confident means letting go of your ego and listening more attentively to others.
- Accelerated personal growth: Building confidence means leaning into your fears and pushing your boundaries, which fast tracks self-improvement.
Learning how to be more confident fuels self-mastery. And knowing that you can deal with whatever life throws at you is a great feeling.
The 3 layers of confidence
One reason why so many people struggle with low self-confidence levels, is that we tend to seek instant gratification and quick-fixes, at the cost of doing the hard work that leads to our desired results.
For example, I struggled to talk to girls.
And rather than talking to many of them, I figured that growing muscles would solve my lack of confidence. And although it increased my self-esteem, I still experienced confidence issues in my social life.
Through this process, I discovered that learning how to become confident is like growing the layers of an onion:
- The foundational layer is quite broad and consists of your self-worth, a positive body image, and self-acceptance. In other words, do you value yourself? You can develop this area through general methods, like physical exercise and positive self-talk.
- Growing new layers results from stepping outside your comfort zone, leaning into discomfort, and venturing into the unknown. The concept of specificity is important here, which we’ll get to in a second.
- Thickening each layer happens by consistently testing the outskirts of your comfort zone. You can call this area “the practice” or taking consistent action. Specificity plays an important role here too.
Whereas the foundational layer is about self-worth, the other two focus more on self-confidence.
Related: What’s the difference between self-esteem and confidence?
The concept of specificity
Specificity means that you should practice the exact thing in which you want to have more confidence.
If that’s public speaking, speak in public.
If that’s writing, write and publish your writing.
And in my case, I should’ve talked to more girls to become more comfortable in talking to them.
Makes sense, right?
Yet, I focused on building muscle instead.
And I know that I’m not alone…
Since we all love shortcuts, here’s one: if you want unshakable confidence in a specific area, you must practice in that area.
Still go to the gym and do other general esteem-building exercises. But make sure that specificity is (part of) your main focus.
9 Innovative ways to be more confident in life
If you want to be more confident in life, you’ll benefit from a better understanding of what you want to achieve:
- More self-esteem in general, like increasing your sense of self-worth? In that case, any common technique can work. And it’s most beneficial to explore and combine different methods to see what works best for you.
- More self-confidence in a specific area like public speaking, career confidence, or social confidence. In this case, the concept of specificity is vital to your success, limiting the effective techniques to a handful.
While it’s good to remember these differences, both methods benefit from the tips below. And, of course, they’re interconnected and benefit each other.
So, let’s look at some powerful ways to be more confident in yourself.
1. Make and keep commitments to yourself
Make more deposits than withdrawals to build unshakeable self-confidence.
Let me explain.
Everyone makes small promises to themselves. But too many of those promises are broken with weak excuses:
- I’ll work out today → Let’s go home; it was a long day.
- I’ll write for 30 minutes → Let’s read for inspiration first.
- I’ll follow up on a phone call today → Let’s do it tomorrow.
- I’ll cook healthy today → Let’s do takeaway; I deserve it.
Guess what happens if you do that in your relationships, making promises and not keeping them?
The quality of your relationship suffers.
Trust forms the basis of a healthy relationship. And you build trust by following through on your commitments.
Self-trust is the basis of the relationship with yourself, impacting your mental health and self-image.
Fortunately, building self-trust isn’t difficult.
Being mindful of the essence of keeping your own promises is the first step. The second one is to make many TINY promises and keeping them:
- I’ll work out for 15 minutes today → Go work out.
- I’ll write for 30 minutes today → Write.
- I’ll follow up on a phone call today → Make the call.
- I’ll cook a healthy meal today → Cook a meal.
- I’ll read for 20 minutes → Read a book.
- I’ll meditate for 10 minutes → Meditate.
- I’ll take a cold shower today → Take the cold shower.
Making promises and keeping them deposits self-trust while breaking them leads to withdrawals.
And guess what?
Many tiny promises you can make to yourself are nothing more than good habits. So, simply by developing new habits, you’ll start believing in yourself and creating a happier life.
In conclusion, a good starting point to become more confident is to make many tiny promises to yourself – and keep them.
2. Use the power of reframing to reduce negative self-talk
Perspective is a powerful tool.
We often get stuck in our view of the world and how things should be. And getting lost in your ways can lead to tunnel vision.
That’s why taking on a different perspective and reframing beliefs and experiences more positively is so effective to feel more self-assured immediately.
Here’s how you can use this technique:
- Identify common patterns: What recurring thoughts, beliefs, and themes keep popping up in your mind? For example, one of my recurring beliefs was that I struggled to connect with people because I was an introvert.
- Challenge those beliefs: Find evidence and reasons why your assumptions are false. In my case, I learned that introverts focus on fewer but deeper relationships.
- Reframe your disempowering belief: Now, swap out your old belief for the new empowering one. For example, I can connect with some people and don’t have to like or be liked by everyone.
- Find positive evidence for this new frame: You can find evidence in your experiences or borrow it from others. In my case, I tapped into the experiences of other introverts who were just like me.
Reframing is most effective when focusing on the positive flipside and prioritizing growth over perfection.
Invite different perspectives to challenge your own views, and you’ll gain control over your mind.
3. Activate self-confidence through your physiology
Your body and mind are interconnected, and you can instantly boost your confidence by utilizing your body’s energy.
For example, Tony Robbins gets people to wave and clap in their hands to change their emotional state. And his reason is simple: motion creates emotion.
Why not try it out right now?
First, notice how you currently feel in your body.
Next, get up and move your body for 30 seconds, whether you just wave your hands, do some squats, or act like a ninja whilst making monkey noises.
The more motion, the better.
How do you feel now?
Do you feel a change of energy in your body?
Of course, you can’t always act like a ninja or make wild moves. So here are some additional techniques:
- Improve your body language by standing tall, opening your chest, keeping your chin up, and assuming confidence.
- Control your breathing to calm your nervous system by taking slow and deep breaths.
- Smile more often. Yes, even cracking a tiny smile boosts your mood and radiates warmth and confidence.
By harnessing your body’s energy, you can influence how you feel on the inside, and project confidence outward.
4. Engage in deliberate practice
There’s just no way around it…
Unshakable confidence requires consistent, deliberate practice.
And consistency is hard.
It’s one of the main reasons why not everyone succeeds. But it’s one of the good qualities confident people tend to exercise frequently.
And here are some effective ways to practice confidence daily:
- Walking upright all the time. Make it a habit to pay attention to your posture when walking, sitting, or waiting for people. Set alarms with reminders or paste sticky notes in obvious places to raise awareness.
- Making eye contact. Not only when you speak to others but also when you walk past strangers. While it’s not a staring contest, try making eye contact a little longer than you’re comfortable with.
- Speaking up during meetings, social gatherings, and other group settings. Share your ideas and opinions.
- Engaging in public speaking if you can. Are there any presenting opportunities at work? Or can you start teaching what you’re learning to someone else?
- Embracing small talk by initiating brief conversations with strangers. Traveling taught me this skill and helped me overcome social anxiety.
- Taking cold showers daily. I finish the last minute of my shower with its coldest setting. And while I’ve been doing it for years, my mind still tries to talk me out of it every single time – which is why it’s so effective.
Remember the concept of specificity? Be deliberate in the kind of practice you do. Want social confidence? Get out and talk to people. Want more confidence as an artist? Create and publish your work.
When you make building confidence an intentional and consistent practice, it will change your life.
5. Expand your comfort zone
The size of your comfort zone translates to how confident you feel. And there are two things you should know about:
- If you exercise your comfort zone, it expands.
- Stop exercising, and your comfort zone shrinks.
You can maintain your current level by visiting the outer layers of your comfort zone frequently. But increasing your comfort zone requires you to step outside its present boundaries.
Keep in mind the following:
- Specificity is king. You become a confident public speaker by speaking often, a good coach by coaching often, and a good writer by writing often. There’s no shortcut.
- Set realistic goals, especially if self-doubt easily overwhelms you. Set small but manageable targets that lay just outside your comfort zone to avoid being paralyzed by fear.
- Try new experiences. Get outside your shell by exploring new activities, hobbies, and sports. Doing so will also lead to more joy, self-discovery, and perhaps even a new passion.
- Change your relationship with failure. Mistakes are learning opportunities and essential for self-mastery. No one becomes great without experiencing many, many, failures.
- Avoid taking yourself too seriously. We live in an epidemic of convincing others how perfect we are. And as a result, we barely take risks because we fear exposing our flaws. Flip that script. Know that everyone struggles with self-doubt and that it’s okay to make mistakes. You gain personal power from being able to laugh at your own mistakes and shortcoming.
Confident people are okay with discomfort.
They’ve experienced enough mistakes, failures, and awkward situations to know they can deal with whatever happens next.
You can reach that level of confidence if you keep challenging the boundaries of your comfort zone.
6. Step into the future through visualization
Creative visualization is a powerful tool to prepare yourself for greater success mentally.
For example, competitive swimmer Michael Phelps used visualization to win an incredible 28 Olympic medals.
But you can also use it to overcome your fears.
That’s what I did to overcome social anxiety.
I would imagine walking up to someone and saying something stupid or awkward. And then, I would visualize what to do in those situations.
That way, I experienced those situations without actually going through them. And that gave me enough confidence to push through discomfort in the actual moment.
Here are some important visualization principles:
- Visualize success by imagining yourself achieving your goals and overcoming challenges. Feel confident as you repeat this movie inside your head.
- Visualize failures – and what to do next. While you shouldn’t focus too much on what you don’t want, it can prepare you to respond better in such situations.
- Engage your senses and make your mental movie come to life by incorporating vivid images, sounds, and emotions.
- Feel positive emotions intensely as you go through your creative visualization practice. The more you experience joy, pride, and satisfaction, the more you reinforce the image.
- Shrink negative emotions. Picture your fears and make that image smaller in your mind. This NLP technique can put fear and self-doubt in perspective and make them much easier to deal with.
- Practice frequently to reinforce the images and create new positive beliefs.
Creative visualization reprograms your mind and prepares you for success. And while only real action leads to real confidence, this technique can accelerate your progress.
7. Practice positive self-talk to increase self-esteem
Does negative self-talk dominate your inner dialogue?
Research shows that positive self-talk is an effective way to improve your mental health and feel self-assured – if you do it the right way.
When I used positive affirmations in the earlier days of my self-improvement journey, it didn’t impact my personal life.
Why?
Because I didn’t believe in my own statements and tried to trick myself. And tricking yourself is quite a difficult thing to do.
Here’s what to do instead:
- Raise awareness of your positive aspects. Find what you already do well and affirm that. Alternatively, make a small promise to yourself, follow up on your promise, celebrate it, and then reaffirm your success.
- Celebrate your victories and failures. Why? Because you took action. And progress is more important than perfection. While everyone drowns themselves in negative self-talk after making mistakes, celebrate that you acted instead.
- Use evidence-based affirmations. Find evidence of your past successes and experiences, and save them in your mental library (or write them down).
- Repeat affirmations consistently. Consistent and daily exposure is the key to success when changing self-limiting beliefs and cultivating empowering ones.
- Surround yourself with positivity. Connect with uplifting people and place positive affirmations in visible locations. For example, you can use uplifting quotes as your desktop wallpaper or set alarms on your phone with positive notes.
Whether you practice positive thinking and self-talk in your morning routine or after you take action, remind yourself to do it often.
8. Rediscover yourself
If you lack self-confidence, you likely also struggle with who you are, what you want, and what you stand for.
And clarity leads to self-confidence.
Discovering who you are and what makes you tick enables you to set meaningful goals, align yourself with your values, and create a life on your own terms.
Here are some excellent starting points:
- Identify your personal strengths
- Clarify your personal core values
- Discover your life’s purpose
- Write a personal vision statement
- Write a personal mission statement
- And set inspiring life goals
This self-discovery process will help you cultivate a strong sense of self. And being authentic helps you to be more confident and live a happy life.
9. Remember that everyone else is struggling too
Let’s do a little thought experiment, okay?
Say you’re swimming naked in the ocean on a secluded beach when hordes of people suddenly show up.
How would you feel?
Vulnerable?
Wondering how to get out of the water unseen?
Now, imagine that scenario – but now the people around you are all naked too. How do you feel now about that situation?
The urge to escape disappears, right?
When we feel alone, we get inside our heads. And that’s when the mind cooks up a deadly cocktail of fear and self-doubt. But if everyone is in the same boat, you feel less vulnerable.
Well, guess what.
Everyone struggles with self-esteem, self-doubt, negative self-talk, and self-limiting beliefs to a degree.
Everyone’s fighting some demons.
Even those who appear confident on the surface.
And please note that cockiness, overconfidence and arrogance don’t display self-confidence. Quite the opposite is true…
Realizing that everyone is on a similar journey called being human releases the need for perfection.
So remember: everyone else is swimming naked too.
Best books to become more confident
If you want to dive even deeper into the topic, then check out some of the best books on self-confidence, including #1: The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.
Prefer audiobooks?
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And finally, if you want to step up your game, check out the best courses to build confidence and self-esteem.
What’s next?
Learning how to be more confident comes on many levels. And when you level up, you’ll enjoy various benefits and rewards.
Most noticeably:
- Greater self-awareness
- Accelerated personal growth
- Increased resilience and adaptability
- And more success, fulfillment, and well-being
Remember that becoming more confident is a process. And you can use the innovative strategies we discussed to grow your self-confidence and expand your comfort zone continuously.
But there’s one thing.
Expand with the various ideas.
Try out everything to learn what works for you.
Then, double down on your favorite techniques.
And keep the concept of specificity in mind.
Building unshakable confidence is very achievable. But it requires consistent action and a dose of patience, especially at the beginning.
But I’m confident that you can do it.
Stay consistent to build unshakeable confidence
While the principles of building self-confidence may seem quite logical, the biggest issue people have is consistency.
The idea of taking small, consistent steps is simple – but not easy.
If you’re serious about building confidence and creating your best life, sign up for the weekly newsletter and get access to my best stuff for personal growth and self-empowerment.