By HAYDEN FINCH, PhD
I was recently asked: What is an effective way to enhance self-confidence?
Complex question. Self-confidence is something most of us struggle with on a daily basis, even though it often seems like we’re alone. Low self-confidence fuels perfectionism, depression, and a host of other mental health problems, being both cause and consequence. The truth is, there isn’t a “cure” I’m aware of that raises self-confidence and keeps it elevated. Like lipstick, deodorant, nail polish, and a good attitude, self-confidence is something you have to reapply often. But here are some practical strategies to enhance self-confidence – things that will help you with the persistent reapplication of your self-confidence body lotion.
“Like lipstick, deodorant, nail polish, and a good attitude, self-confidence is something you have to reapply often.”
1. Positive Qualities Journal
You know that gratitude journal you’ve been keeping? Time to add another component to it. This component is about your positive qualities. This is not the time to judge those qualities as too small or insignificant, and it’s not the time to compare those qualities to anyone else. It’s just time to write them down. What do you like about yourself? What do others value about you? What challenges have you faced and overcome? What do you value about your friends – and how do you share those values? What bad things aren’t you (hello: serial killer? rapist? pimp?) What skills have you developed through your education and experience? What did you do today that was positive? Keep a record. Check out this sheet for some examples of positive qualities, and then check out this page, this page, this page, or this page for worksheets to get your positive qualities journal started.
2. Positive Beliefs Record
You know how attorneys can argue for just about anything? Like, somehow a team of attorneys convinced a jury that OJ might not have killed Nicole and Ron (*collective American eyeroll*). When you identify unhelpful thoughts that keep your self-confidence down (think: bad names you call yourself, reminders of all the mistakes you’ve ever made ever), it can be helpful to then try to be the attorney on the other side of the courtroom and make the opposite argument. Instead of trying to argue that you’re lazy, try to argue that you’re really industrious and hard-working. Here’s a worksheet to help.
3. Challenging Negative Self-Evaluations
Negative self-evaluations are death for self-confidence, and we’ve got to challenge those ideas. This tip is very similar to #2 above, but this one is not just about developing evidence to the contrary, it’s a much more thorough approach to debunking some of the terrible things we say to ourselves and call ourselves from day to day. Here’s a worksheet from the Centre for Clinical Interventions to help walk you through this process.
4. Assertiveness Training
Sometimes our self-confidence tanks because we’ve just got too friggin’ much on our plate. We start to think we’re the problem — we’re not smart enough, we’re not efficient enough, we’re not working hard enough — rather than realizing the problem might be that it’s a superhuman amount of crap on our plate. Assertiveness is not aggression. It’s halfway between being a bully and a doormat. It’s that space where you can ask for what you reasonably need from people, eventually without guilt or discomfort. When our needs are being met in a way that balances how we’re meeting other people’s needs, then our self-confidence grows. Here, here, and here are some resources to help build assertiveness.
5. Fake It
Seriously. Instead of wearing sweatpants to Target, put your jeans on. Iron your shirt (or at least use some of that life-changing wrinkle release spray) before you go to work. Comb your hair. Put your shoulders back and head up when you walk in the door. Look people in the eye. And SMILE. Look around you at what other people, people you assume feel self-confident, are doing. Emulate that. Research and experience tells us that our feelings make us behave in certain ways (when we’re feeling sad, we grab extra cookies), but brain science also tells us the opposite is true: our behavior also affects our feelings. When we smile, we literally feel happier. When we frown, we feel angrier or sadder. And when we act confident, we suddenly begin to feel more confident. Of all the tips, this is the quickest to implement and is perhaps the most effective. But, like pancake syrup, queso dip, and Nutella, if you don’t reapply often, you’re gonna be stuck with something that’s dissatisfying and unfulfilling.
Related: Watch my video series about how to build self-esteem.
Hayden C. Finch, PhD,
is a practicing psychologist
in Des Moines, Iowa.
