By: Asma Shums,
Confidence is self-trust in your skills, choices, and values. It comes from within yourself and feels like an inner knowing of your strengths and weaknesses while still thinking positively about yourself.
1.Figure out where your lack of confidence stems from.
Finding the root cause for low self-confidence can provide a map of how to build up more positive self-confidence. A good place to start is through self-reflection and journaling.Try this exercise to help you get to the possible root cause of your low self-confidence:For one week, record any low self-confidence thoughts or sayings that keep showing up for you. For each thought or saying, ask yourself “Who or what told you that?” Decide if you want to allow that voice to have authority over your thoughts in this stage of your life.Journal out your reactions and create a plan of action to move forward.If you’re struggling with this, it can also help to work with a therapist or coach to identify and transform the unhelpful low-self-confidence thoughts.
2. Understand what self-confidence feels like for you.
Take some time to figure out what confidence feels like in your body. A good question to ask is “How will you know that you’ve reached a satisfactory level of self-confidence?” Perhaps you will start speaking up more at work. You might finally wear that outfit you’ve always wanted to. You may even introduce yourself to your crush at your co-working space. This will be different from person to person, so it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else. This is your personal measurement of confidence.
3.Align with yourself.
If you find yourself frequently using the word “should,” (for example, I should be married by 30, I should have a house by next year, or I should have my life together by now), take a step back and reflect. Where is this “should” coming from? Many of the “shoulds” in life stem from cultural or familial expectations. With all of these statements, it’s helpful to always ask yourself: Is this what I truly want for myself? You have the power to reclaim your life at any point. The more that you make decisions aligned with your true self and your desires, the more confident you will become in your decision-making.
4.Start small.
Most of us don’t like experiencing a ton of change at once. A very important key for self-improvement work is starting small.
5.Adopt a growth mindset.
A growth mindset encourages you to explore beyond your current skills and knowledge, keeping the possibility of improvement open. Instead of using phrases like “I’m not confident,” just add “yet” to it, which transforms the old belief into “I’m not confident yet.” This adds the qualifier that you are in the process of gaining skills to become confident.
6. Know you will fail, and that’s OK.
We live in a failure-averse culture where people mostly just talk about their accomplishments. Rarely do you ever get to hear about people’s accounts of failure. Understanding that failure happens and is a part of the process of living will help you to live more fully.
For a lot of us, we were usually taught that self-confidence comes from achievements. However, this means that when we achieve, we feel great about our abilities, but when we fail, our self-confidence takes a hit. I truly believe that self-confidence comes from our own thoughts about our abilities rather than external achievements. So that regardless of whether we succeed or fail, we have the power to retain our self-confidence.”
7.Stand up to your inner critic.
Sometimes you might hesitate to trust yourself because you’ve received critical feedback from authority figures earlier in life, like parents, teachers, or community leaders, and you have adopted their criticisms as your own beliefs. But there comes a point when this feedback no longer serves your current life. Standing up to those old criticisms can unlock a new level of confidence. “Confidence can also be built by rewriting the narratives in our heads about our worthiness. This involves identifying self-limiting beliefs and reframing them,” Shanmugavelayutham explains. “Often the voice in our head that tells us we are not good enough is not our authentic voice but an aggregate of all the voices of those who have criticized us in the past. When we talk back to the inner critic enough, the confident inner-child that we lost touch with can reemerge.”
8.Understand that emotions and feelings are temporary.
Emotions go through a cycle of beginning, middle, and end. Although emotions can feel really intense in the moment, they are only temporary. At the very basic level, emotions are physiological responses to stimuli in your environment. If your Wi-Fi goes out right before your work presentation, you may experience an acute pang of stress. If you receive a surprise package from your sister, you may be overcome by heartfelt joy. If you get a text from your ex, you may feel a sharp streak of hot sadness. Whatever the stimuli and paired emotion, they’re all data points to inform your next action step.
In terms of confidence, any emotion like anxiety, stress, or fear that is holding you back from taking action is only temporary. Once it subsides, you can make your next move. As the saying goes, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
The bottom line – While most of us are born with a healthy level of confidence, life throws us challenges that can derail our sense of confidence. However, reclaiming that self-confidence is possible and worth every effort for living a more fulfilling life.
Email: asmashums@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
