3 Ways You Are Secretly Killing Your Confidence

Pay attention

You’re doing it again.

It’s just that you don’t realize it. Yet.

Everything you’ve done up to this point has constructed your beliefs.

Unfortunately, those beliefs reside on the wrong side of town because you have yet to have the success you wanted.

Those negative beliefs have destroyed your confidence.

What if I told you you’re solidifying your negative beliefs without realizing it?

It doesn’t seem plausible. Can you quietly destroy your confidence and ability to succeed without realizing it?

You bet you can.

I’m going to show you three subtle ways you destroy your confidence. Then you’ll able to remove them from your life.

1. Your Appearance

If you have ever dealt with depression, you know exactly how important this is.

I, too, battle depression occasionally, and when I’m at my worst, my grooming habits get tossed out the window. My beard gets bushy, and I let my hair grow out.

I look sloppy.

I had a coach in high school who said something that always stuck with me:

If you look good, you feel good; if you feel good, you play good. — My High School football coach

Think about how you dress. Do you roll around in athleisure or overly baggy clothes all the time? Do you do it because it’s comfortable?

You’ll say you don’t care about style, but that’s not it. It doesn’t take much effort to find things that fit correctly. You don’t have to be a fashionista to do that.

Walking around ungroomed with oversized clothes also projects your image out into the world. It projects a picture of “I don’t care.”

You see people like this walking around all the time. How do you feel about them?

Yes, prejudging is terrible and all that, but think about it.

If you aren’t taking people who don’t appear to care seriously, what do you think about yourself? It’s not good, but you might not realize you are doing it.

You’re slowly internalizing that you don’t care about yourself. The more you do it, the more you are killing your confidence and not realizing it.

Get haircuts regularly and shave yourself. Body hair, too. Gross. Whatever a “groomed” look is to you, keep yourself like that.

And get some clothes that fit you. Take pride in your appearance. You don’t have to be a runway model. Wear the correct size. I’m not talking about skinny jeans. No XXLs if you are a large.

Wearing fitting clothes will make you uncomfortable if you aren’t used to them. That’s because you are used to hiding behind baggy things.

You’ll get used to it.

After a while, you notice how easy it is, but how many men don’t do it. Congratulations, you are in the upper tier now.

That’s right, you have made yourself stand out positively. How does that feel for your confidence?

2. Follow Through

Does this sound familiar? Do you find yourself getting caught in the cycle of abandoning what you’ve started because you think you’ve found a better way?

This is most likely to happen in fitness plans. You make progress, it stalls, and you stop seeing results, and you get bored or frustrated.

Rather than stick with it as progress isn’t linear, you jump ship for the “quick fix.”

The cycle continues until you get fed up and frustrated enough to quit. You always end up quitting before you reach the end.

You decide that success just isn’t going to happen for whatever reason.

If you do this often enough, this “failure” eventually becomes what you expect. It’s not even really a failure because you just gave up.

You don’t know if you could have succeeded.

Every time you quit before completing something, you’re building the version of yourself that never finishes what you start.

You’ll never succeed at anything if you quit. That’s a fact.

Most things you want to achieve are going to take resilience and patience.

You’ll have to become comfortable with that space where results seem nonexistent. This is where you have to double down and keep going.

It’s almost like a test. Do you want it?

Then, prove it to yourself. If you keep going, you’ll get there. Don’t abandon something that is working.

I’m the master of this when it comes to nutrition. Once progress starts to slow, I quickly look for a better way.

Then, I start going in the opposite direction. It’s a repeating cycle.

Make progress, progress stalls, switch programs, progress stalls, switch programs again, quit.

Then I think, “I’m never going to find the way!”.

The way is always to keep going with what’s been working and staying patient when it slows.

Quitting guarantees 100% failure.

3. Unhappy Situations

Have you ever stayed in a relationship too long?

You haven’t been happy for a while, and you’ve voiced that, only to be disregarded by your partner. For some reason, you stick around.

People tell you that relationships take work, but you keep wondering if it has to feel like “work” all the time. Shouldn’t growing together be fun, too?

You feel some sense of loyalty because things were good in the past.

But how long can you keep being the only person that keeps the relationship going? You need some help.

You start to think that this is what relationships are. You start questioning yourself about what you deserve.

When you start questioning what you deserve, it’s time to rethink everything. I know because I’ve been there.

I was in a relationship that made me question my worth. When I sat down to think about why I felt that way, I realized it was time to eject.

No relationship should ever make you question your worth. You are valuable.

You deserve happiness and to be with someone you can enjoy life with that enjoys being with you.

Getting wrapped up in things being okay or good enough is easy. Usually, that is just a sign you are making excuses in an unhappy situation.

How much of your life do you enjoy as “okay”? Wouldn’t you rather be out living a happy life?

You only get one, and it’s short. If you are in a situation that doesn’t add to your happiness, you must strongly consider putting yourself in a different position.

Listen to your gut. Any time it starts to wonder, “Is this all there is?”, you must listen. It’s a sign you aren’t thinking big enough.

Never settle.

Get To Work

It takes courage to admit you are self-sabotaging. It’s even harder to admit when you didn’t know you were responsible.

You aren’t alone. We’ve all been through it.

The key to changing unwanted behaviors is recognizing they exist. You do now.

As you move through changing these behaviors, you will hit bumps in the road. Sometimes, it’ll feel like you are taking two steps forward and one back.

This is also natural and how progression works.

But as you work through these, you’ll slowly feel more confident in yourself and your abilities. It’ll be subtle at first.

But eventually, confidence will be a part of your identity.