How to Have Confidence in Yourself When Nobody Believes in You

You look around, and everyone seems to be happy just the way they are. They have confidence in themselves, they smile, and it seems that life could not be better for them.

On the other hand, when you stand in front of the mirror, you do not see the same thing: there is only reflected a man or a woman who does not feel comfortable with who they are, who wants to change to be better, but who does not know how to do it. Does it sound familiar to you?

Confidence is everything. Confidence is what makes that simple white tee and jeans look good. Ciara

I did because I also went through a time when I felt insecure with myself and worst of all. It seemed that no one could help me. But after a lot of thinking and looking inside, I realized that I was the only person who could change that.

It was not easy to be happy with who I was again, but with effort and some techniques that I could practice at home, I succeeded.

Surely, there have been a few moments in your life in which you think that nothing has a solution, and what is worse, you believe that you are a failure and do not have faith in yourself to overcome your obstacles. You can’t imagine how many times I went through that too a few years ago.

I believed that I was worthless. I stopped chasing my dreams because a voice inside me told me “You will not be able to achieve it”, and I even came to believe that being like this, no one could love me.

Luckily, in the end, I realized that this was actually a low self-esteem problem that, unfortunately, started when I was just a child because of a very close relative.

But I decided that I was not going to give up, even if it cost me. I was going to get over it; because even though my strength was failing me. There was also a ray of hope that told me that I wanted to be happy again and become a better person.

And although the road was hard at times, today I can tell you that I made it, just like you can too.

However, I know that sometimes getting it on yourself is difficult. These are the moments when you most need to go to a source that helps you, and that gives you the push you need to move forward.

In this article, we want to talk to you about, how to have confidence in yourself to be able to do anything, get where you want to go and achieve what you want to achieve.

What is self-confidence?

Self-confidence is self-belief. It is believing and knowing that we are capable of what we set out to do.

It seems obvious and easy, however, it is not. Many people do not have confidence in themselves and that makes it impossible for them to take many actions.

When you have a lot of confidence and you feel like nobody can beat you, it is game over for everyone else. Jason Day

How to be confident in yourself?

Next, I want to show you some tips or advice that help you gain motivation and self-confidence. Of course, they are actions and exercises that we constantly have to do. Trust is not earned in an instant and it does not last forever. Even being a person with self-confidence, there are times when we lose it either for having a bad day or for not having achieved the desired goal, because we are in a negative sentimental or emotional state and all this directly reduces confidence.

Therefore, it is necessary that you begin to carry out and put into practice the following points until you convert them into an internalized habit that does not involve any effort to do it:

1. Be daring:

One of the most important aspects of gaining self-confidence is daring. Daring people are not better or possess more skills and qualities than those who are not. They simply dare to carry out tasks and actions without knowing what the result will be.

Of course, when you do, you get a result. This can be positive or negative. If it is positive, you will have realized that you are good at doing that. Therefore, daring has allowed you to learn a skill that you may not know you had and that gives you and generates confidence in your life.

If you do it and the result is negative, you have to analyze why it has not gone well and look for solutions to turn the situation around. This learning will help you to know yourself better as a person and to locate skills that you did not think you had again.

Afterward, you have to try again in a different way until you succeed. In this process and in the final positive result you will generate self-confidence. In addition to that, you are going to do things better and you are going to know how you have to do the following.

2. Embrace Uncertainty:

Linked to the previous point but not the same; when I say “embrace uncertainty” I mean doing things that we are not sure about at all. There is nothing that tells us that we can do it or that we are going to achieve it. But there is nothing that tells us otherwise, so it is in our hands to do it and achieve it.

When you are daring and not afraid of uncertainty, your confidence level increases. Among other things, because you do not expect to get anything at the first change, something that if it happens, will not pose a problem of confidence or self-esteem, because you were already prepared for it.

If you learn to work and live in this way, the changes that come your way will not negatively affect you or have a major impact on you.

This does not mean that living or working in uncertainty means that you do not know what you are going to do tomorrow because you do not make an effort in your job and you are on a tightrope or because you do not own your life or your actions.

Quite the contrary, you have to have the wheels and once you are sure of it, let yourself go, be flexible, but always with an objective, with some goals, with a strategy, with a direction, with an illusion, with a focus, and with a plan.

3. Be optimistic and positive:

Another important point is to have the ability to be optimistic and positive, that is, to see things with a perspective that if something can go well, it will turn out well. If something has a solution, why worry. And if you don’t have it, why worry.

Okay, this phrase is very rosy and very pretty to say, but very screwed up to apply. I don’t even believe or apply it myself. And if you do and you succeed, please contact me and teach me.

But what I want to tell you is that you always try to see the positive side of things or analyze the situation.

Make this reflection, as a general rule, you are a negative person, who always sees things from the wrong side when you go to perform a new action, you will not dare to do it because your mind is thinking that you are not going to achieve it and your internal interpretations are already conditioned. Therefore, you will not be able to embrace uncertainty because that generates fear and therefore, your confidence is strongly diminished. However, if you are a positive and optimistic person, you will think that you are going to do well, or at least, that you are going to do your best. Right from the start, this condition favors you to want to try it, to dare and not be afraid of uncertainty; and also, to be more objective with the result.

4. Set goals and micro goals:

Something necessary to grow day by day is setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. If there is no goal to reach, it is impossible to move forward because you will never go in the right direction. And in case you were, you would have insecurity, uncertainty, and distrust that you were on the right path, something that would make you hesitate and turn around.

Therefore, set your goals. Based on them, create a route plan, that is, a strategy and actions to execute (tactics) that will help you reach the goal.

Generally, it is not easy or fast to reach it, and along the way, we find many obstacles and stones, something that reduces confidence. To fight against this, it is important to segment those objectives into micro objectives, that is, objectives that are smaller, easier to achieve, and closer in time.

Achieving these micro-goals gives us encouragement and confidence because we know that we are closer to our goal. By achieving a micro objective our confidence increases and we are more prepared to go for the next micro objective. As our confidence has increased, we get to the second micro-target faster and easier, giving us another confidence boost, and so on.

If in our life we have several objectives (professional, personal, social, etc.) and in each of them we set micro objectives that we meet every day, our level of self-confidence skyrockets, and in case of failure if any, it does not affect us largely because we are backed by the successes of others.

5. Seek people’s Validation:

This point is somewhat risky and a double-edged sword, but necessary. We all need the validation of people, at least those who are dearest and closest, or who we impact the most.

I give an example: if you give a talk, and several people come to you to tell you that you have done very well and that they liked it a lot, this is an adrenaline rush for your self-esteem and confidence.

When this happens, instead of puffing up like a turkey, what we have to ask them is what they liked about the talk, what aspects have most caught their attention, and why they have come to tell us that it has charmed them.

When we carry out this exercise, we are being objective and analytical, and this allows us to know what we do well and what we do badly so that we can work on it.

Now, as I said at the beginning of this point, you have to be very careful because generally, we will have more negative comments usually from people who do not really know us or are not subjective on the matter.

We have many different people around us. Many times our own friends or closest family members are the ones who put up barriers and walls saying that we are not going to achieve it, that we do not do such a thing because we are going to fail.

They think of it from their perspective. They say this because they have not dared to do it and they think that the same thing is going to happen to us and that is why they warn us. Be careful, ignore them unless they can prove it to you and are really objective!

Therefore, in the beginning, stay with the positive comments that will help you win and add confidence.

How to become more confident in yourself and how to regain self-confidence?

I have already explained 5 ways to have more confidence in yourself, but I still want to share with you 2 more ways that for me are key to regain self-confidence (in case you have lost it) or if you want to gain more confidence.

i. Analyze what has been achieved so far: integrate your successes and achievements

Another super important point is to be aware of what you have achieved so far. Many times we are obsessed with achieving goals and dreams that prevent us from seeing what we have in the present, real things (maybe dreams already fulfilled) but that we do not value or are not aware of.

To be successful, you need to stop analyzing everything you currently have. Looking back a while back and thinking about what you were looking for or what you expected back then in what is now the present. Surely you have achieved things, some are in process and others are not, but that is what it is about, being analytical.

When you do this exercise, you will discover that you have achieved things that previously seemed difficult to achieve (finish a career, find a partner, lose weight, learn new things, help others, etc.).

This has to serve as a stimulus and impetus to know that you are capable of achieving goals and that therefore, you have to keep fighting for them.

ii. The tunnel of success: Do the following exercise to regain confidence in yourself

Go back to a moment in the past and think about different successes and achievements you have had, no matter if they were small or big or if they were very important or not.
For example, having acquired a new skill, passed an exam, or passed a test. Find a job, have a partner, etc.

I insist, no matter how small or great the success has been. The important thing is that you have succeeded.

Once you have a large list (because you sure do), I want you to feel and enjoy that feeling of having achieved it, and I want you to jump chronologically from one success or achievement to another until you reach the present moment.

Do you see all that you have been able to achieve?

If you manage to do a new thing every day, feel it as an achievement and add it to your list of successes.

This habit allows you to regain the trust in yourself that you may have lost, in addition to strengthening it.

iii. Value what you do:

Another of the big problems with self-esteem is thinking that others are better than us because they do more things and, on top of that, they do things better. This thought leads us directly to feel smaller as a person than we really are and to believe that we do not know how to do anything well.

To solve it, do the following reading: Think about the things that you are good at doing, from helping others to cooking to making others laugh, to organizing people, to teaching, etc. You will realize that all these actions that you possibly overlooked because you were immersed in other things, make you be better and good, and you have skills that you can enhance even more. Many times your skills and abilities can be “hidden” from yourself because you don’t realize it.

When you discover this, look around you and compare yourself with other people (maybe even with those you admired for something else) and see if they know how to do this as well as you do. You will see that no. So in these tasks, you have skills that others do not have. You get to do these things better. This helps increase self-esteem and self-confidence.

We live different experiences every day. We give each of them a meaning that implies an emotion (positive or negative). Out of this emotion comes a behavior that carries a result.

If you are not aware of this process and how to alter it, this is when problems of self-confidence, low self-esteem, etc. come.

iv. Feel and apply in the Momentum:

The momentum is that moment in which everything flows, which feels like things come from within you and are unconsciously guided by something or someone and have an exceptional result.

When you reach this state, this “moment”, take advantage of it and let yourself go because what you do will surely have a positive result. When you do it and are rewarded, you feel more valuable and energetic, more confident in your aptitudes and abilities.

Well, be aware of it to be able to apply it in those other moments in which things and situations do not flow in the same way.

v. Be honest with yourself:

Once we get here, it is important, to be honest with ourselves. This means being self-critical and objective because otherwise, we will go wrong.

It is one thing to have confidence in yourself and another thing to be irrational. Self-confidence (including daring and uncertainty) means doing things that we did not know earlier would result, but we have options to do well.

Irrationality is doing something that you already know in advance that you will not be able to achieve.

For example, if you do not have a driver’s license and you think that you will never be able to get it, a good exercise would be to apply everything seen so far to improve the confidence you have and end up knowing that you are capable of doing it and finally get it.

The opposite would be to take a vehicle without having any idea of driving and circulate with it alone, without company, on a narrow road with a ramp out of the circulation of vehicles and people (without going into details of legality or illegality and without putting at risk nobody else).

Therefore, it is important to be aware of, our strengths, skills, and abilities, as well as our weaknesses and shortcomings.

This does not mean that what today is a weakness or lack, in the future will not be our strength or ability, but to transform this, effort, work, and perseverance are required.

When you are honest with yourself, your perspectives are realistic and in the face of failure or stumbling, your confidence is not diminished.

Well, these are the most important points and tips for me.

Do you apply them? Do you think they work? How do you do it?

You might also like:

Self-Sabotage: How to stop sabotaging yourself

Self-compassion: Definition and three elements of self-compassion

Self-Acceptance: How to accept yourself for who you are and be happy