14 ways to know about building confidence

and ace your way to the life you want

It was a constant struggle for me while growing up.

I was good in studies, came from a respectable family but still could never feel good about myself.

I was that short, thin kid while growing up whom anyone can make feel inferior.

That was the level of confidence I had.

And I would be too intimidated by those guys and gals around me, who were super confident.

They were always confident irrespective of the place they were in.

While I could never participate in any extracurricular activity due to the lack of self-confidence & because of my fear of failure; these people would go out there, make merry and come back with a winning smile.

There were only a handful of them so everyone admired these people.

I was also one of them.

But I wanted to become one of them, not those who admired, but those who get admired.

I wanted to become confident. I wanted to do the things I want to.

But what to do?

I didn’t know.

In Fact, I even thought that this is something I can never have.

What is that word? Yes, Self-confidence.

It was much later that I came across another word similar to this i.e. Self-esteem.

There is not much difference between these two, self confidence is something that makes you believe in yourself while self-esteem is about how you see yourself.

For me, the answer was way negative in both these things.

Except for studies, I could never have confidence in anything that I could do.

And as far as self-esteem goes, it was as low as it could be.

I was that guy who was supposed to live life the way it was given to him because according to me, I didn’t have anything that life would ask me what do you want.

I was living my life like this until, during the initial years of my job, I came across one of my old school mates.

He used to be super confident during school days but when I met him, he was only a distant copy of himself.

He was broken, down in confidence as visible from his ways, and was literally lost in his life.

While I was way more settled, emotionally and financially, than him but in spite of that, I wouldn’t call myself confident.

However, this one incident made me question myself that if the confidence can be lost like this guy had, then it can also be gained.

There have to be ways to do that.

And this one question led me to a path of self-discovery which is still going on.

If you are also someone who is traveling on this path somewhere, here are the ways that can help you shorten that path.

1) Dress well

Have you ever noticed how you feel once you have dressed well?

Even when you are not feeling well, if you change into well ironed, neat clothes, there is a sudden change in the way you feel.

It is all about that mental picture you get about yourself.

When you dress well, in your mind you are looking good and that gives you confidence which doesn’t come when you are sitting ill-dressed.

2) Groom yourself well

Grooming yourself well is another step to make yourself feel good about yourself.

Look around and see any successful person, all of them would have well-shaped beards, nicely cut hair, and would reflect a charm which comes when you are taking care of yourself in the best possible way you can.

It makes you more presentable, more organized which automatically makes you feel good about you.

3) Improve your self-image

We are living in a society that feeds itself by pulling others down and because of that, there is a high probability, you don’t see yourself in a good way in certain aspects of your personality.

Either you are too short or too tall, too fair or too dark, you are either an introvert or an extrovert, either you are fat or thin, intelligent or dumb, there are so many ways you see yourself based on your self-image which is highly influenced by the experiences you have had in your life until now.

And because some of those experiences are bad, you have that inferiority complex about you.

Work on changing the way you see yourself, talk yourself out of those negative beliefs you have about yourself and create a new You who is filled with confidence and self-belief.

4) Fulfill your commitments

Remember the school time when we would always keep our homework up to date so that the next day we are appreciated in front of the class.

I felt so good on those days and I’m sure you would have also felt the same way because we kept our commitment to work on a daily basis.

But as we grew, as there is no teacher to impress, no class to clap for you, you tend to get complacent with your commitments.

Hours turn into days, days into months, and months into years, and we keep on delaying our commitments.

But even now, the moment you keep the commitment you had with yourself, you feel good.

Start with something as small as taking a stroll in the park in the evening; that achievement of small commitment also gives you confidence that yes, you can do it and that confidence feeds you when you go for bigger tasks,

5) Remove negative thoughts

One of the biggest setbacks to our confidence is the way we see our life.

We are always having negative thoughts and think negatively about the outcome of a thing and with that our self-confidence takes a beating.

“hope, this works out’ is a phrase with negativity in it and we use it all the time,

Turning those negative thoughts into positive ones will not only help you to do your things with better focus, but it will also bring more confidence as positive thoughts will lead to positive actions leading to positive results which will ultimately boost your confidence.

6) Do what you love

As per research, doing things that someone enjoys and excels at feeds the confidence and self-esteem of an individual.

All of us have that one thing which we know we are good at and we love to do.

Some of us are lucky to have that as our career but not all of us.

But, that doesn’t mean we can’t keep that as our hobby.

Do that one thing which makes you feel alive and that liveliness will slowly feed your confidence.

7) Know yourself

Whatever battle we have in our lives, they can only be won when we know our enemy.

In our journey of self-growth and gaining that self-confidence, our biggest enemy is we, ourselves.

And if we want to win against ourselves, we need to first know ourselves.

Once that is done, confidence is just a by-product.

8) Develop positive attitude

Having a positive attitude changes the perspective around you just like that

For long, I had given preference to the circumstances and let myself down but when I turned my attitude positively, the same or even worse circumstances gave me positive results and that resulted in me becoming more confident.

9) Improve your posture

Have you observed the people who look confident?

The way they walk, stand, or talk, there is an aura around them. The posture which they carry is another wheel of the vehicle called confidence.

So next time, while walking, lift your head up, straighten up your shoulders a little without exuding arrogance and machoism, and walk with a straight posture and see the confidence it brings in your inner world.

10) Be vulnerable

Most of the time, half of our confidence goes down when we think about our failures, our weaknesses, and our mistakes.

As if nobody has had them ever and we pull ourselves down because of that.

But when you let them come in open; when you make yourself vulnerable to share those things with the public, you lose something and that is that fear of being found out.

And when that goes away, confidence takes its place because now you have nothing to fear about.

11) Prepare well

I am sure all of us will remember those exams where we were super confident that we will get good marks.

And the reason was that we had prepared well for those exams.

Life is also a series of exams that keep on coming on a regular basis and the key to face them confidently is the same as what was in our school days.

Prepare well.

12) Change your habits one by one

Nothing significant in this world happens overnight, but we want to change ourselves, which is built over a couple of decades, in just a few days, that too fully.

And the result is that we fail and lose our confidence that we can’t do it.

The key is to start with something small, pick that one small habit you want to change, work on that alone for a few days.

Start by eating a tiny part of that big elephant and slowly you will have the confidence to eat the full one.

13) Empower yourself with knowledge

Nothing gives you more confidence than having knowledge of things around you.

Knowledge is nothing but information.

Remember that boy who could speak on any subject anywhere among any kind of people and counter them as well, because he had filled himself with information.

You can also do that but for that, you need to fill your system by knowing the things and once you have that, you will feel more confident while opening your mouth in the public.

14) Change your associations

While growing up, I had a group of friends who would always pull each other down no matter what others did.

And I thought that is the norm for long until I became part of a group of people a couple of years ago where everyone was lifting each other up.

They were always trying to make each other better; sure they would make fun of each other as well but then they would help you overcome your shortcomings as well.

That changed my perspective towards me completely.

I started to feel much better about myself.

And the same thing will happen to you when you connect with those kinds of people.