The confidence in yourself (self-confidence) is necessary for you to achieve the goals you set for yourself and is key to your well-being, as it is closely related to self-esteem.
People who have confidence in themselves manage to develop their life projects or professional projects, because they are individuals who know how to take certain risks, make difficult decisions and are highly resilient, that is, They know how to overcome negative situations that may arise throughout their lives
Many people think that self-confidence and self-esteem are the same thing. But although both concepts are related, They are two different terms with clearly differentiated implications
Self-confidence or confidence in yourself is the appreciation of the abilities you possess and focuses on the beliefs you have regarding the ability and the ability to succeed in a given context. While self-esteem is the general feeling of how valuable you are as a whole and refers to the appreciation you have of yourself.
If this difference is not clear to you, imagine a salesperson or salesperson who knows that he does his job very well. He has no doubt about his great ability to seduce clients and knows that he has the people skills that not everyone has. Thanks to this, he performs his job perfectly, so he completely trusts himself when performing this task.
Now, this person has low self-esteem, because when he comes home after a long day at work, he thinks: “I don’t have a partner, nor can I save enough money to buy a house. “I’m a failure.” As you see, he trusts himself and knows that he is a great salesman. Now, he is not comfortable with himself, and regardless of whether this assessment he makes is correct or not, the overall image he has of herself is negative.
Confidence in yourself: the theory of self-efficacy
One of the great theorists of self-confidence is Albert Bandura, who formulated his theory of self-efficacy (meaning, roughlysomething very similar to self-confidence) as part of his Social Learning Theory.
His research on the social learning of human beings allowed him to identify other cognitive components that facilitate the process of change and influence the formation of intentions and the motivational self-regulation One of these components is perceived self-efficacy or the perception of self-confidence.
Bandura states that The development of self-confidence is made up of four components:
How to improve your self-confidence?
But, What steps can you take to improve your self-confidence? Below we propose a list of 6 steps to improve your self-confidence:
1. Live situations positively
As you have seen, for Bandura, verbal persuasion is a very important element in the development of self-confidence. Therefore, be positive even if you are going through a period in which you feel that things are not going the way you want Stop focusing on problems and focus your energy on solutions and positive changes.
Low self-confidence is usually associated with thoughts of failure and negative thoughts that mediate between you and your goals. If you are constantly telling yourself that you are not up to par, all you will achieve is the “self-fulfilling prophecy.” So, even in the unpleasant moments, motivate yourself.
It may happen, for example, that you have to give a presentation at university and you notice that you do not have enough confidence in yourself. In this type of cases, What really works is to prepare your presentation well so that, when the day arrives, you fully trust your possibilities
Another example may be that you have started working with the public, and as part of your job you have to give a welcome speech to clients. Since you have never done this type of task, you may not have full confidence in yourself. In this case, you can prepare your speech well, and, in this way, you will feel comfortable and confident in front of clients.
Whatever is on your goal list, Being well prepared and feeling that you master what you do increases your self-confidence
3. Make a list of what you have already achieved and remind yourself of it
As in the first point, Difficult moments can make you doubt and cause your self-confidence to be shaken
And life is full of changes, and sometimes it is difficult to stay ahead. In cases like this, It is ideal to have a list of what you have achieved so far regarding the goal you have, because visualizing your progression can help you motivate yourself in difficult moments.
4. Take action
The engine of self-confidence is action: If you dare to act, then you gain self-confidence. Bandura, in his theory of self-efficacy, tells us about “execution achievements”, that is, experiences constitute the most important source of self-confidence information.
It may happen that, even before acting, you are already visualizing failure. Well remember: If you don’t act, you lose 100% of the opportunities to achieve what you want
5. Accept any past failures
And what happens if you act and it goes wrong? Well then, Performance achievements are our self-perception of our victories and failures By perception I mean the assessment you make of the events that have happened. If it has gone wrong, you have to accept it and also see the small successes, which there surely are, even in failures.
Self-confidence only develops if we manage to overcome the obstacles that we set for ourselves: on the one hand, renunciation (which has to do with acting), and on the other hand, criticism. Seeing successes as the sum of our failures can help us gain self-confidence
6. Observe successful people
Bandura’s self-efficacy theory states that vicarious experience or observation is another key element of self-confidence. Observing or imagining other people carrying out certain activities successfully can positively influence your self-confidence
This is one of the techniques used in coaching to increase clients’ confidence, as it is useful when the latter do not have great knowledge of their own abilities or have little experience in the task to be performed.
