Confidence is truly a cheat code for life. Being confident gives you the power to transform your life. It gives you motivation to attack your goals, chase after your desires, and find a secure connection with the world around you. But, having true, unwavering confidence is a tricky feat. While many people ascribe confidence to a personality trait (either you have it or you don’t), it can be something you develop over time if you put the work in.
However, after scrolling through Pinterest and TikTok and seeing countless creators give their tips on how to be confident, I realized that there is a deep societal delusion about what it means to be confident. The Internet baits people by saying confidence can be built by dressing up every day, changing your body language, and working out. This is all wrong, none of these activities improve your inner self-worth. Confidence is about being proud of who you are unconditionally. Finding high value in yourself takes serious mindset changes and practice. It can’t be done overnight. If it’s easy, you’re doing it wrong. So, here are the tough love tips that will definitely not be easy, but will definitely be worth it.
Focus on How You Feel, Not How Your Seen
Many people misperceive confidence as being dependent on how you look. While yes, “look good, feel good” is true for the majority of us, appearances are temporary and if you base your self-worth on your looks, your confidence will be temporary too. Instead, when you try to build confidence, you should prioritize validating yourself by embracing your strengths, working through your insecurities, and finding worth in your values and experiences. These are the things that truly make you you.
Retrain Your Brain
One of the most helpful realizations I’ve had throughout my confidence journey is that you can’t change how you think and feel about yourself overnight. Think about building confidence like building muscle: you have to put work in consistently and over time you start to see progress, but it isn’t immediate. Building confidence is a workout for your brain. You have to retrain your brain and the way you think. That means you have to recognize when negative thoughts cross your mind, stop them, and replace them with positive self-talk. A great way to practice this is by repeating positive affirmations that target your insecurities.
Spend Time By Yourself
Spending time by yourself will allow you to connect with who you are without depending on external validation. Alone time is essential to self-reflection and self-acceptance. If you can’t spend time with yourself that’s a sign that you are not comfortable with who you are. So, take time when you’re alone to compliment yourself, figure out what makes you feel confident and bold, and strengthen your sense of identity. Learn a new skill, take yourself on a date, meditate– anything you do in solitude will make you feel inner security and build your confidence from within.
Make A List of Actionable Self-Improvement Tasks and Actually Do Them
The best way to keep track of your progress is to journal. Throughout the day, keep a running mental list of all the times you feel less confident, socially awkward, or insecure. Write them all down in your journal and try to figure out what triggered these feelings whether those triggers were internal (your thoughts) or external (something someone else did/said). From there you can figure out what sorts of self-improvement activities you can do to build your confidence and not be affected by your thoughts or other people.
Start Believing the Cliche Mantras
Stop comparing yourself to others. Don’t take things personally. Fake it until you make it. While these sayings may be cliche and sound meaningless, they are overused for a reason! These simple truths have power when you believe them. Give yourself little reminders to practice them consistently and see how you begin to transform your mindset. Focus on distancing yourself from self-doubt and have trust in yourself and the work you are doing to bring real change to your life.
Stand Up For Yourself
Standing up for yourself is a key step to building confidence because it reinforces your self-worth. Practice setting boundaries for yourself. This means politely confronting people when you feel disrespected, advocating for your needs, and freely expressing your opinions. The goal is to act like you know your voice matters and that you deserve to be respected.
Know That You Have No Other Option
You either become confident or spend the rest of your life insecure and miserable. If you love yourself that should be enough motivation to get up and start acting like it. Embrace the challenge and push yourself out of your comfort zone. Stop the self-pity session and start choosing what’s good for you every day. You are amazing and you owe it to yourself to do the hard inner work to believe that yourself.
Building confidence is a journey, there will inevitably be good days and bad days. The important thing is to not let the bad days set you back. Sure, you might have a day where your hair is a mess or you can’t figure out your homework or you just feel gross about yourself and nothing you think or do makes you feel any different. Relax. Remember there are better days ahead. Look at how far you’ve come, how much you’ve grown. No one said investing in yourself is easy but it sure is worth it.