We all need some confidence in life – and yet it can slip from us without realizing it. The problem is, we often think of confidence as something we’re either blessed with from birth or completely devoid of it. The reality, however, is that confidence comes from practicing it. We can also so easily erase it from our psyches with negative thoughts, judgments and behaviors.
The upside: they can often be remedied once we become aware of them. In this list, we’ll dive into some common ways you might be undermining your self-confidence and how to nip the habit in the bud, so you can find your faith in yourself once more.
Featured Image Credit: Pexels.
Negative Self-Talk
How you talk to yourself also has a huge impact on how you feel about yourself. If you’re always telling yourself you’re not good enough, smart enough or capable enough, then over time you might start to believe it. It’s easy to get into a habit of negative self-talk & it can really chip away at your self-esteem. So the best way to really begin to change how you think about yourself is to start to replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations. It might feel a little cringey at first, but over time it can do wonders.
Comparing Yourself to Others
Compared to someone else, you might never do it as well – and if you keep comparing yourself to others, you will never develop the kind of confidence that leads to success. Other people’s experiences don’t hold much value if you’re embarking on a journey that’s different. Life is filled with choices – the things that work for you might not work for someone else, and vice versa. Don’t measure yourself against others.
Dwelling on Past Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes. But if your tendency is to beat yourself up over them, then you might not feel overly confident. If you keep thinking about the missteps you’ve taken in the past, then it will be hard to feel enthusiastic about any challenges you want to tackle in the future. You need to be able to learn from your errors, but when you’ve done that, that should be the time for you to let go.
Avoiding Challenges
How can you gain confidence by consistently doing that? You won’t. The only way you’ll develop true confidence is if you allow yourself to face challenges. When you take on a challenge and prove to yourself that you can rise to it, you gain confidence. I’m not saying you have to dive in with both feet if you don’t want to. But make a start by surviving challenges where you ‘test the water’ a bit first.
Seeking Constant Approval
If you have to rely on others to feel confident about yourself, you are handing over the power to feel good about yourself to that person — rather than taking it for yourself. It certainly makes sense to want to know what others think about you, and quite rightly we often think we should care about that too. However, it can quickly lead to a pattern of caring far too much what others think about us – which can damage your self confidence.
Not Setting Boundaries
If you never say no, you might not acknowledge just how much you give to others – just how much you put their needs above your own – and so you don’t realize how much you discount your own needs and feelings. You can end up feeling worn down, frazzled, resentful and that your feelings don’t count as much as everyone else’s – or that they don’t count at all. Setting a boundary demands that someone treat you in a way that you feel you deserve to be treated.
Focusing on Your Flaws
No one is perfect, but if the only time you think about yourself is when you’re being critical of yourself, then you’re doing a terrible disservice to yourself. You know there’s a part of yourself that you don’t like – whether it’s your looks, or a skill that you want to get better at or your personality. If you always focus on the things that you don’t like about yourself, then you won’t stand for yourself.
Disclaimer – This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.
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