How to Gain a Dose of Self-Confidence

The group Heart of Leadership reported in 2015 that roughly seven in ten girls believe they fall short somehow, whether in looks, grades, or how they connect with other people. So where do you land? Ask most people how confident they feel and they'll say somewhere in the middle. A few carry more than their share, puffed up past what the situation calls for. Others run close to empty. Self-confidence is really just the read you have on yourself: your abilities, your talents, what you figure you're worth. It tracks closely with self-esteem. People low in one tend to be low in the other, and the same holds at the healthy end.

That read on yourself spills into everything. Your relationships, your mood, your physical health, how much you get done at work. If yours feels thin right now, the useful news is that it responds to change. You can lift it with small adjustments to how you live, and the real work is in shifting how you talk to yourself about yourself. Do that and the rest tends to follow.

Start by finding the root. You can't raise your confidence until you know what's been dragging it down. Is it the idea of talking in front of a room, say a meeting or any kind of group? Is it a body you'd rather keep covered, so shorts and swimsuits feel like an invitation for strangers to judge you? When those scenarios make your skin crawl, that's a signal. People running low on confidence often get anxious or angry or quietly ashamed around anyone they've decided is somehow above them. They lose sleep over it. They eat too much or too little. They replay small mistakes for hours.

The fix is incremental. Speak in a group of four or six before you try a crowd. Sign up for a public speaking class at a community college. Push yourself to say more in the next meeting rather than less. Clean up how you eat and move your body on a schedule. None of these is dramatic on its own, which is the point.

Cut the negativity out next. Your own thoughts shape your confidence, and so do the thoughts of the people around you. Tell yourself you're fat and unattractive often enough and you'll start living as though it's settled fact: staying home, skipping the outfit, ducking the event in case someone notices and says something. Surround yourself with people who keep picking at your looks or your work and their verdict eventually becomes your own, fair or not. Either road drops your confidence fast.

When you catch it sliding, push back with something truer. "I'm smart, I know a lot about this." "I'm not thin, but I like the shape of me." Take the things you've filed under flaw or failure and treat them as something to appreciate instead. Keep your attention on what you've pulled off rather than what you've botched. And the hard days, the ones that go sideways, treat them as practice. What would you do differently next time? How would you respond with more steadiness?

Then there's appearance, which people get squeamish about. Maybe you were raised not to make too much of how you look. Half right. Lean too hard on it and you read as vain and hollow. Ignore it entirely and you're missing something real, because how you look changes how you feel and how you come across to everyone else. Try to look presentable even on the days you feel sick or small. Wear things cut for your shape, things that make you feel good when you catch your reflection. Stay on top of the basics: hair, skin, teeth, nails, clean clothes. Exercise if you can swing it, because the endorphins it releases lift your energy, settle your stress, and prop up your mood along with your confidence.

Last one, and it sounds like something your grandmother would say: stand up straight. Back straight, chin up, shoulders back. Slouch and people file you under bored or lazy. Hold yourself upright and the same people read you as assured, forward, someone who means it.

Dr. R. Y. Langham

References: Heart of Leadership (2015), Statistics on body image, self-esteem and parental influence. Mayo Clinic (2015), Self-esteem: Boost your self-image with these 5 steps. Mind Tools (2015), Building self-confidence.