6 Underrated Habits of Truly Confident People
Forget “fake it till you make it” and focus on these simple practices.
According to psychologist Albert Bandura, our levels of self-confidence significantly shape our everyday lives. Your confidence essentially reflects how you judge your capabilities and how much you believe in yourself.
And whether you believe in yourself or not influences how you think and act. But what we often miss is a discrepancy between genuine confidence and false self-assurance, which many people use to cover their insecurities.
Most of the time, those who seem to be the strongest are the weakest. They try to get what they want by faking their personality and sabotaging those around them.
They work hard to seem confident, but deep inside, they don’t even believe in themselves.
Genuinely confident people, however, have a strong sense of self-belief. They’re aware of their strengths and weakness and don’t try to create a faked reality.
And most importantly, they don’t need external validation. They don’t care about your opinion because they know who they are and what they want to create and achieve.
It’s NOT about your ego
The quietest people you know might actually be the most confident. The problem is that we often confuse genuine confidence with ego or arrogance.
Everybody wants to feel more confident, but we all judge people when they seem too confident.
The truth, however, is that confidence is much more than “feeling strong”. That’s why it’s so important to distinguish the outer appearance of confidence from genuine contentment.
Research proves that a strong sense of self-esteem is linked to greater happiness and mental strength.
A lack of confidence, however, can lead to depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and many other physical and psychological symptoms.
Dr. Rosenberg, the foremost researcher on self-esteem, even stated that nothing can be more stressful than the experience of lacking a basic sense of self-worth.
It’s a muscle
Another common misconception about confidence is that we often view it as a personality trait.
We think of confidence as something you’re born with, while the truth is that it’s a skill.
Every day, you strengthen or weaken your “confidence muscle” through the decisions you make, the thoughts you think, and the actions you take.
In a nutshell, growing your confidence results from believing in yourself and doing the right things for long enough.
Pay attention to the word doing here.
The modern self-help world often communicates how all you need to do for a great life is think positive, repeat powerful affirmations, and write down what they want to achieve.
The truth, however, is that all these things are nice to have, but they’re not enough if you don’t back them up with massive action.
You don’t become more confident by thinking you’re confident. It’s confidence in your actions that turns you into a more self-assured person.
Of course, you need to believe in yourself, but what most people miss is that you also need to prove that you can deal with difficulties and challenging situations.
Life is beautiful, but it’s also tough. Being confident isn’t about looking at life through rose-tinted glasses but about having the strength to deal with challenges — no matter how unexpected they are.
“Self-esteem is a quiet and relatively unshakeable sense of satisfaction that comes from recognizing and appreciating our existing worth, and then choosing to love and grow.“
— Glenn R. Schiraldi
They don’t try to be the smartest person in the room
How often do you hear someone saying, “I don’t know”?
Sadly, the reality for most people is not often. That’s because we’re used to having an opinion about everything, even if we don’t know much about a topic.
Most people feel intimidated when they realize that someone knows a little more than themselves. Truly confident people, however, put their egos aside and try to soak up other people’s knowledge and expertise.
The loudest person in the room who seems to have an opinion about everything might actually be deeply insecure.
Confidence doesn’t equal intelligence or knowledge. Genuine confidence means you’re also confident about your weaknesses and blind spots without trying to cover them.
Those who truly believe in themselves are interested in learning from others, not in being universal experts.
They seek mentors, ask questions, and soak up different perspectives and opinions because they know that there’s more to life than their own perception.
There will always be someone who can’t see your worth. Don’t let it be you.
Confident people don’t try to be everybody’s darling. They do their own thing, focus on themselves, and walk their unique path, even if others disagree with them.
As Dita von Teese once said:
“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”
There’s always going to be naysayers and people who’ll try to bring you down. Sometimes, it might even be your closest friends or family who try to discourage you.
What matters most is that you don’t lose faith in yourself, no matter what others think, say, or do.
The grass on the other side isn’t greener
Most people lack confidence because they attach their self-worth to other people’s opinions.
Young women only feel confident when their friends tell them how great they look.
Guys, on the other hand, feel good when they pick up a good-looking lady.
And all of us feel good when we get a promotion, increase our revenue, and achieve our goals.
The problem with this type of confidence is that it isn’t stable. It’s highly volatile, and most importantly, you can’t really control it.
“If a person equates his or her core human worth to the value of his or her investment portfolio (an external), then that person’s self-esteem will rise and fall with the stock market.”
— Glenn R. Schiraldi
Genuinely confident people feel good because they focus on their inner world and their intrinsic worth instead of comparing themselves to the outside.
You’re worthy and priceless, no matter how much you achieve, how you look, and how much money you make. There’s no price tag to your worth.
The problem is nobody teaches us that we deserve to feel good regardless of our achievements or looks.
Schools and society teach us to focus on our mistakes and weaknesses. As a result, we barely take the time to appreciate our strengths.
The most rebellious act of the 21st century is loving yourself and taking time to appreciate your wins every single day, so make sure to do exactly that.
Change is simple, not easy
The biggest misconception about success in any area is that you need to make massive changes and huge commitments.
Your confidence isn’t built through one big act. You don’t “crush your comfort zone” through a random challenge and suddenly become more self-aware.
You do small things on repeat — that’s how you become more confident, healthy, fit, strong, and smart.
You don’t become a better writer by sitting down and writing an entire book in a day or week. You become better by writing a little every day.
You don’t get in the best shape of your life by doing a 5-hour workout and eating veggies for a day.
And you don’t become more mindful by meditating for 10 hours.
It’s true that you become what you do, but the magic only happens when you do it consistently.
As Mel Robbins describes in The 5 Second Rule:
“Confidence in yourself is built through acts of everyday courage.”
Whenever you face doubt or don’t feel motivated and still do what you said you’d do, you build your confidence muscle.
You prove to yourself (and to the rest of the world) that you’re capable of sticking to your own promises. And by doing that over and over again, you learn that you can trust yourself.
As a result, you feel more confident because you know that you won’t let yourself down.
Big changes might seem sexier than small actions, but slow and steady always wins the race. Quite often, it’s not the big moves that shape your life, it’s the small ones.
It’s not whether you sign up for the gym; it’s whether you go there.
It’s not getting married; it’s the small daily actions that keep your relationship strong.
It’s not the decision to start a business; it’s how you spend the hours, or even minutes, of each day that determines whether your decision was a good or bad one.
Final Thoughts
Quite often, building your confidence starts in unexpected moments when your knees are shaking, and your hands are sweaty.
It’s not the cozy evenings on your couch that make you more confident, but the unexpected challenges that force you to outgrow yourself.
The good news is that you control 100% of your confidence. Contrary to common belief, other people can’t control your confidence. Only you can build or break it.
“All confidence is acquired, developed. No one is born with confidence. Those people you know who radiate confidence, who have conquered worry, have acquired their confidence, every bit of it.”
— David Schwartz
You have the ability and opportunity to improve and enrich every aspect of your life — and you can start right now. Will you?
