A lack of self-confidence leads to insecurity, inhibitions and self-doubt and is a guarantee of failure. How to boost your self-confidence and renew your faith in yourself with 5 tips is explained in this post.
Self-confidence is the term for trust in one’s own abilities. People with a high level of self-confidence believe that they have the resources they need to cope with the challenges ahead.
Lack of self-confidence
People with low self-confidence do not dare to trust themselves. They are insecure and anxious and are plagued by stubborn self-doubts .
Challenges frighten them back because they believe they can not cope with them. They are convinced that they do not have enough skills to handle the demands of the world.
As well as lack of self-esteem, low self-confidence has its origins in the experiences we have as children.
If we had no sense of achievement or recognized success as such, if our parents did not believe in us or kept us back, we could not gain the necessary confidence in ourselves.
We have not had the experience that we are able to handle requirements and overcome challenges.
Once created, low self-confidence then ensures that the negative self-image is maintained. Because if I do not have confidence in my abilities, I do not take chances and miss the opportunity to achieve success and prove to myself that I can. The lack of success serves as further proof of my stupidity and inferiority.
Borders in the head
Those who have low self-confidence are insecure, anxious and inhibited in their dealings with others. The constant self-doubt under which these people suffer, boycott their lives and are a guarantee of failure.
The fatal thing is that the only limits that hold people with low self-esteem are those in their heads. Those who have low self-confidence are no less clever, less attractive or less capable than others. It’s just the image in her head that makes her look that way.
The key difference between people with high self-confidence and those with low self-confidence is in one thing and one thing alone: their belief in themselves.
Because people with a low self-confidence lack this belief in themselves, they take no chances and remain passive. Because they do not believe in their own success, they also give up faster than others, which can actually make people with less self-confidence less successful.
People who have a high level of self-confidence, on the other hand, believe that they are clever and resourceful enough to solve a specific puzzle, for example. Whether they actually are plays no essential role.
Especially important is their belief in it. Because this has a motivating effect. It leads them to take the initiative and work longer and more intensively on their tasks. This in turn guarantees them success in many cases.
So it’s like Henry Ford once said:
“Whether you think you can or you can not – in both cases you’re right.”
Strengthen self-confidence
So there are enough reasons to want to boost your self-confidence. You do not have to become a better person for that, just overcome the limitations in your head. And I have 5 powerful tips for you to boost your self-confidence:
1. Strengthen your self-esteem
The more positive your self-image becomes, the sooner you will realize what you can and have to offer. You will realize that you are not a worse person and you are not doing anything wrong. You will understand that it is normal and good to make mistakes and failures are not judgments about you as a person.
To increase your self-esteem, you should first get to know your inner critics and put them in their place.
2. Show your achievements in mind
If you have a low self-confidence, you think you have not experienced any successes. But we all achieve success . We only have to recognize them as such. I can write a 1+ twice in a row, if I blame the first examiner for the first 1+, who always means well to me and the second assigns to the easy tasks, both can not boost my self-confidence because of the success I achieved just do not associate with me.
A key point is therefore to pay attention to the own cause attributions, so on which explanations I usually find for my successes. You can find an overview of the different cause attributions and their effects here .
But even if you’ve never got a 1+, you’ve been successful in your life. Most likely, you just do not see your achievements because you do not consider them special. This can help you with a success diary.
A Success Diary helps you to perceive and record your own accomplishments, reflect on your strengths , and build self-confidence. It shows you what has gone really well with you and what you do well every single day.
Write down daily (alternatively 2-3 times a week) what you have achieved on each day and what you have done particularly well.
Make sure that even the smallest successes count, because of course we do not experience every day a successful presentation or an exam success. But you might find it a success to have arrived punctually at work, enjoyed a self-prepared lunch or made a clear statement to the annoying colleague.
Run regularly, a success diary expands your gaze for all your achievements and strengths, helping you to boost your self-confidence.
3. Search challenges
Another way to increase your self-confidence is to create new success stories. And you achieve that by leaving your comfort zone and looking for new challenges. It is important that the tasks you choose are manageable. Also pay attention to a realistic planning, because otherwise any project can quickly turn into a failure.
So instead of asking your boss to ask for a raise, or having your entire basement cleaned out by next week, prefer to make plans to ask someone for directions or clear a bookshelf.
So you can experience that you are not afraid of something that you are afraid of. And you can experience how an original self-doubt (“I can not do that”) gives way to reality (“I did it anyway”).
4. Question your thoughts
Self-doubt is easiest to combat by checking their truth content. Because we tend to imagine the worst catastrophic scenarios and excessive exaggeration in our self-doubt. So if you get haunted by the thought, “I’m a total failure and can not get anything”, then question that thought.
Here is a guide to questioning negative thoughts .
5. Visualize your success
Do you remember the quote from Henry Ford? “Whether you think you can or you can not – in both cases you are right.” Behind this is the principle of self-fulfilling prophecy. That what we believe tends to come true because we unconsciously align our behavior with it.
Anyone who imagines how he is laughed at in front of a team of people for a presentation, will first try to avoid bending and breaking, to have to hold this presentation at all.
If he does not succeed, he will only speak with the greatest reluctance. He may speak very quickly to get it over with, turning bright red because he’s so scared and constantly shuffling because he thinks he can hear his colleagues whispering.
If the same person were to imagine how he successfully manages the presentation, he would respond to the challenge quite differently. He would volunteer for the presentation because it is a good way to demonstrate his abilities.
He would confidently and convincingly go into the presentation and speak slowly, because he enjoys every moment.
If he has imagined a thousand times before, as the staff will smile and nod approvingly and the boss will then give him a compliment, he will remain calm even during a small dislocation, deal confidently with inquiries and get the most out of his presentation.
If you now believe that this scenario, in which everything is going well, is completely unrealistic, then may I remind you that the scenario where everything goes wrong is just as unrealistic.
Nobody knows what exactly will happen, because the future has not happened yet. Here and now, however, you have the opportunity to go anxiously and reluctantly or calmly and confidently into the presentation.
You decide how you want to feel through the thoughts you make in advance.
Get a positive self-image
For more ways to boost your self-confidence, I’ll introduce you in my eBook, which will be out soon. You will find out in depth which sources of self-confidence there are from a psychological point of view and how you can target them to strengthen them in your life.
In addition, you will receive a step-by-step guide to boost your self-esteem, become more confident, self-confident, and more loving about yourself .
If you want to push your self-esteem to the next level and create the basis for a happy and fulfilling life, read on: “Strong Me: My Path to More Self-esteem!”
