Confidence and Worth

Most of us desire self-confidence as it allows us to feel good about who we are and what we are doing.  But, don’t limit the role confidence can play in your life, because the higher it is, most likely the higher your motivation will be to act on a variety of things. 

Plus, there is very little doubt that confidence helps increase the chances of success when we actually do whatever it is that we set our mind to do.  For all these reasons and more, increasing our self-confidence can create a boost in multiple areas of our life.  So, how do we do it:

Know Your Worth: Part of being confident is knowing your worth.  Sidebar: We are all worthy.  Yet not all of us actually believe it.  Could be that we feel unlovable, not worthy, dumb, and the list goes on.  But it simply is not true.

Early messages about our worth are internalized and become the basis for our beliefs about ourselves. So, the longer we've had negative self-beliefs, the harder they are to override. It may require ongoing efforts to replace internal monologues of "I'm not worthy" with "I am worthy" or "I have just as much worth as anyone else." Using positive affirmations like these can be a good start to retrain your brain to believe you have worth.  Can sound silly to some, but it has been shown to be wonderfully effective.

Accentuate the Positive: This goes well beyond having worth.  It involves you being able to stand firm in the belief that there are some pretty darn good things about you, maybe even pretty darn phenomenal.

We all have ‘good’ qualities.  But if our time and energy is spent on thinking about what we lack, there is little precious time to think about all that is good and well about us – those positive qualities.  One way to begin to see these qualities is to list them out.  The list could look something like wit, creativity, self-less, etc.).  Consider looking at the list daily to allow a bit of time to focus on these qualities, which leaves less time for focusing on what we believe we lack.

Know Your Own Strength(s): Knowing what strengths you have allows you to intentionally put yourself in situations where you can exemplify them and thrive.  Utilizing these strengths can build confidence because we are regularly doing things that we are good at doing.  So, bring out that list again, add your strengths, and then find opportunities to use them more often.

Be Nice to Yourself: Many of us have the judge, that inner critic, who is quick to let us know we are less than perfect.  What might be useful to combat the judge, is a bit of talking back. Instead of “You should have done better” try “I did my best and I’m proud of the effort.” What this self-talk can do is help you re-write the story you’ve created for yourself.

The goal is to simply try and do your best, instead of striving for perfection and then telling ourselves we missed the mark.  It really comes down to self-acceptance, and through this acceptance, confidence can absolutely increase.