How to be confident in yourself in 5 practical ways
We’ve all had moments where we’ve asked ourselves, “Will I ever be confident?” or wondered how to improve that elusive sense of self-assurance. Confidence is the thing we all know we want but aren’t necessarily sure how to get. You know that confident people seem to do better in life but they never really teach us what confidence is and certainly not how to build it.
The funny thing is that in my over 5 years of learning about confidence and over 3 years of teaching and sharing what I’ve learned on the internet, my overwhelming conclusion is that most people don’t actually understand what confidence is!
So it’s no wonder that it’s so hard to build it? Imagine trying to complete a puzzle without knowing what the image is or building a lego set without knowing what the shape is going to be?
The truth is, confidence is not an innate trait—it’s a mindset, a belief in yourself that can be developed over time, and everyone can build it. But even once you understand what it means to be confident, there’s still a lack of practical resources on what it actually takes to build confidence. Too many resources talk about loving yourself or not caring what other people think, but achieving those goals is easy to say and much harder to do.
So in this post, I want to walk you through what confidence really is and then start you off with five practical ways that you can start building confidence today.
How to feel more confident
Before we can start building confidence, it’s important to understand exactly what it means. The definition of confidence is simply this: a mindset where you believe you can handle any situation, regardless of the outcome. It's not about always succeeding or always being perfect—it's about trusting yourself to deal with what comes your way.
Misconception: Confident people experience less rejection
There’s often confusion thinking that when you’re confident, you’ll deal with less rejection or disappointment and it actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Confident people actually tend to experience more failures, rejections and disappointments because they’re willing to put themselves out there more but they bounce back from these moments more effectively because they’ve built up resilience over time.
Misconception: When you’re confident, rejection hurts less
The other misconception about confidence is that the feedback, failures or rejections bother confident people less. While it may be true that over time, confident people are less bothered by the “negative” parts of life, it doesn’t mean they don’t feel the sting, sadness or frustration. To think that is to set yourself up to fail because even if you are well on your way to building more confidence, if you associate feeling bummed or sad as something that unconfident people feel, you’re never going to feel confident.
If you want to feel more confident, the focus shouldn’t be on avoiding negative feelings or the negative circumstances that cause them (although I could argue that most failures or rejections end up being positive in the long run when you look back), the focus should be on how you coach yourself as you enter situations and as you respond to the outcomes.
Remember, confidence is believing you can handle a situation regardless of the outcome. The more you go into a situation saying, “if it works out, great, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll be okay,” the more willing you’ll be to take risks, try for big things and bounce back when they don’t work out.
Misconception: Confident people are arrogant
Both confidence and arrogance involve a certain belief in yourself. However, there’s a big difference. Confidence is rooted in self-esteem - how you feel about yourself. I consider confidence a subset of self-esteem - if self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves, confidence is how we feel about our abilities. There is more to us than our ability to do things, respond to things or make something happen but the more we feel good about our abilities, it will always trickle up to how we feel about ourselves.
On the other hand, arrogance is an overstating of your own abilities, accomplishments or worth. It’s often accompanied with an air of superiority, where you feel better than others. You can see in both of these descriptions, arrogance comes into play when we feel like we have to be better than what we might actually be and so in a funny way, arrogance is actually a sign of insecurity. Confident people believe in their abilities but you don’t need to know everything or be better than someone else to be confident. It’s actually more stable this way because you can walk into a new room with really impressive people and still feel confident in what you bring to the table, while an arrogant person would have to puff up and find a way to justify how they’re good enough to be in the room.
Misconception: Confidence is a trait you’re born with
Many people think that confidence is just for “naturally charismatic” or “outgoing” individuals. Most people who we see as confident actually worked very hard at it and even those who might have come to it more “naturally” are usually those who had more opportunities from a younger age to build skills like positive self-talk, resilience, and emotional regulation young. The reality is, confidence is a skill—and like any skill, it can be learned, practiced, and improved once you understand the foundational skills that go into the larger skill of confidence. You might not feel confident at first, but with the right tools and strategies, you can grow your confidence and start to see the results in every area of your life.
What makes you more confident
Confidence is a combination of several key elements, and understanding these can help you build a stronger foundation so that you can strengthen these skill muscles over time.
Self-trust
The first core element of confidence is self-belief or self-trust. Confidence depends on your trusting yourself and your ability to handle what life throws your way. This doesn’t mean you have to know everything or have all the answers. It simply means that you trust that, no matter the challenge, you can figure it out.
If you struggle with confidence, it’s likely that right now you don’t feel like you trust yourself. So in order to build toward this long term, you want to focus on reinforcing the things you do know how handle. This might mean reinforcing that you trust your ability to show up at work, even though you still question yourself in dating or vice versa. It’s also important to recognize that trust is built over time and that the more you give yourself a chance to figure it out, the more you’ll have examples of how you’ve figured it out in the past.
Resilience
Confidence also comes from being resilient—the ability to bounce back from failures or setbacks. No one is perfect, and we all face challenges. What matters most is not whether you fail, but how you respond to it. Resilience is the ability to pick yourself up, learn from mistakes, and keep moving forward.
Usually when you don’t feel confident, there’s a real fear around what will happen if the bad outcome of a situation comes to fruition and as a result, you stray away from the risk to avoid that scenario. The reality is that we can’t avoid risk in our life if we want to be happy and fulfilled so rather than cowering scared, we have to learn resilience so that we are willing to fail knowing that we can pick ourselves back up.
Think of resilience like muscle: the more you practice it, the stronger it gets. Each time you face a setback and keep going, you’re building the mental strength and resilience that will serve you in future challenges, which is the very definition of confidence.
Preparation and Knowledge
Another key element of confidence is preparation. Confidence doesn’t just come from wishing you were better; it comes from actively building your knowledge and skills. When you feel prepared, you’re more likely to trust yourself in any given situation.
For example, if you have to give a presentation, spending time preparing and practicing will naturally increase your confidence. Similarly, when you know you’ve done the work to learn something new, your confidence will grow. Knowledge truly is power when it comes to building confidence.
Supportive Self-talk
The final key component of confidence is how we talk to ourselves. Our inner dialogue has a profound impact on how we view ourselves. If you constantly tell yourself that you're incapable or not good enough, you’ll begin to believe it. But if you choose to speak to yourself with kindness and encouragement, you’ll gradually build a stronger sense of self-belief.
There’s a common misconception that we need the “self-aware” voice to keep us honest about what we still need to improve on. We often use this as an excuse for critical self-talk out of some fear that if we are not our own worst critic, we’ll be completely blindsided by somebody who points out a failing about us that we didn’t know ourselves.
Not only is this a really negative way to see the world but it’s also not true! Negative self-talk usually leads to less action, which then leads to less accomplishments while positive self-talk is actually more motivating for us. The world will still continue to be hard enough on us so the ability to be a cheerleader for yourself can help you continue to stay motivated enough to build the resilience, self-trust and knowledge described above to bolster your confidence over time.
Practical Strategies to Build Confidence
Now that we’ve covered the core elements of confidence, let’s dive into some actionable tips for confidence. These are strategies you can start applying right away to begin building your confidence on a daily basis.
1. Take little risks
If you’re wondering how to be confident, it’s important to start small. Building confidence doesn’t require you to tackle life’s biggest challenges all at once. Instead, look for small moments where you can push yourself outside your comfort zone. It’s the little wins that build the foundation for greater confidence over time.
We tend to fixate on not wanting the bad thing to happen so if you can find a small thing that you feel sensitive about and practice coaching yourself through how even if it goes poorly, you could handle the situation, you’ll build good confidence muscle memory.
If it goes well, you’ll have proof that you might overstate the possibility of negative.
If it goes poorly, you get an opportunity to prove to yourself that you can handle it.
Tip to Do Today: Take on a task you've been avoiding, whether it’s sending an email, speaking up in a meeting, or asking a question you’ve been hesitant to ask. Celebrate your progress, no matter how small. This will help build momentum and reinforce the belief that you can handle challenges.
2. Address Negative Self-Talk
Your inner dialogue is a powerful tool when it comes to building confidence or tearing it down. Limiting beliefs are often swimming in our negative self-talk full of the reasons we convince ourselves we aren’t good enough to have what we want.
Spending a little time journaling on what the limiting beliefs you have about yourself can give you the oportunity when in a calm, rational mind to challenge some of those beliefs so that you can start building more self-esteem.
Tip to Do Today: Fill in the blank “I don’t have [goal] because I __________.” Once you’ve identified the limiting belief, spend a few minutes researching or reflecting on your network and find someone who shows that limiting belief actually isn’t limiting. For example, if you said, “I don’t have a boyfriend because I’m shy,” you’d find examples of shy people in your life who are in relationships. This can be celebrities, characters in fiction or in your real life - anything to prove to yourself that what you think is holding you back might not be.
If your limiting belief feels inherently negative when you write it, for example “I don’t have a boyfriend because I’m ugly,” try to identify what the non-emotional trait about yourself is that leads you to feel that way.
3. Regulate Your Nervous System
Confidence is not only a matter of our minds. In fact, when we are feeling stressed, triggered or frustrated, we are more likely to act out of our survival fight or flight mode and that mode is more focused on what things can go wrong. This biased mindset is biologically very difficult to overcome simply using our minds which means that it’s significantly harder to be confident (which requires a healthy balanced view of whether things will go right or wrong) when you’re triggered.
So one very practical way to feel more confident is to regulate your nervous system. By learning how to regulate your nervous system in every day life, you’re going to be triggered into that fight or flight state less often and you’ll have more practice bringing yourself back down to calm when it matters in the moment. Techniques like deep breathing, mindfulness, or grounding exercises can help calm your nerves and bring you back to a place of confidence.
Tip to Do Today: Practice a 3-minute deep breathing exercise when you start feeling nervous or anxious. Inhale for four counts, hold for four, and exhale for four. This will help you bring your body out of a dysregulated state. Notice how the pace of your thoughts shift from before the breaths and after!
4. Use Body Language
Believe it or not, your body language plays a huge role in how confident you feel and how others perceive you. When you adopt a powerful stance—standing tall, shoulders back, making eye contact—you send a signal to your brain that you are in control. This not only improves how others see you, but it also boosts your internal confidence.
Tip to Do Today: Stand tall with your shoulders back and take a deep breath. Think about that Grey’s Anatomy episode where surgeons stand like superman because it’s been clinically proven to improve how we show up in our days. Notice how this simple shift in your body language impacts how you feel.
5. Surround Yourself with Positive Influences
Confidence is contagious, and the people you surround yourself with can significantly impact your own sense of self-assurance. If you spend time with people who encourage, inspire, and uplift you and support you when things go wrong, you’ll naturally feel more confident. On the other hand, if you spend time with negative or critical people, it can be hard to build your own confidence.
Tip to Do Today: Reach out to someone who encourages you or spends time with someone who makes you feel confident and motivated. Their energy will help reinforce your own sense of self-belief.
Overcoming Challenges to Confidence
Building confidence isn’t always easy, especially when you’ve felt your whole life that you aren’t. However, overcoming these obstacles is a key part of the process. Let’s explore a few common challenges and how you can address them.
Fear of Failure
Fear of failure is one of the biggest barriers to confidence. But the truth is, failure is part of the journey. The most successful people don’t let failure define them—they see it as a stepping stone to growth. Reframing failure as an opportunity to learn and grow is a powerful way to develop resilience and confidence.
Remember, when you are physically anxious, stressed or triggered, your body is more in survival mode and it naturally focuses way more on the potential for failure (it’s called loss aversion). If you can regulate your nervous system, you might notice your perspective on the failure has shifted naturally.
Imposter Syndrome
Imposter syndrome is that feeling you get when you think you’re “faking it” or don’t deserve your success. This is a common challenge for many people, especially as you are trying to build confidence because it feels like you’re putting on an act of something you don’t yet believe.
It’s important to remember that every skill is built by attempting to do it before you know how and continuing to do it before you feel good. Learning to ride a bike, swimming, living on your own - there are so many parts of life where you have gotten through the early stages that included doing things when you weren’t sure you’re ready.
As women, there’s also been broad scale research that suggests that we undervalue ourselves. While this may not feel super helpful in the moment, remembering that you’re probably not giving yourself enough credit can soften some of the fears around imposter syndrome.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism often gets in the way of confidence because perfectionism celebrates lack of mistakes over the presence of success. Perfectionism often comes from a desire for control where we feel like if we’re perfect, people won’t be able to hurt us and we’ll be able to manage more of our surroundings accordingly. The problem with this view is that we are actually making ourselves more and more afraid of when things go wrong.
Thinking back to the definition of confidence, we need to believe in our ability to handle a situation good OR bad and perfectionism would prefer we only deal with situations where we know it’ll work out. This mindset has us stray away from healthy risks and growth opportunities and has us living scared.
If you are in pursuit of confidence and yet identify as a perfectionist, one of the best things you can do is focus on acclimating yourself to ways in which failure or mistakes might actually be good for you. Balancing your relationship with “good” and “bad” outcomes will help you be more confident long term. By allowing yourself to make mistakes and learn along the way, you’ll build a more authentic sense of confidence.
Building Confidence over Time
Confidence isn’t something you build once and then forget about. It’s an ongoing practice and more than anything else it takes time to build. You need to be consistent in applying the strategies we’ve discussed.
Building confidence doesn’t happen overnight, and that’s okay. To unwind limiting beliefs you’ve had your whole life, regulate your nervous system and build skills and knowledge are each things that could take a few months of dedicated focus each. So it’s important to set reasonable expectations of how quickly you will see change.
If you are looking for the shortcuts to confidence, my best advice would be that the shortcut is the long way. All the quick tips and tricks are like sugar highs and you’ll often find yourself having to bounce to a new one so quickly that you can tell you’re never getting to the deeper root.
By acknowledging that the process takes time and focus on making small gains and overcoming small challenges, you’ll actually see much faster progress than if you follow the “get rich quick” schemes.
Building confidence requires consistency. It’s about making small, daily efforts to reinforce your belief in yourself. Whether it’s practicing positive self-talk, facing small challenges, or using confident body language, the more consistently you engage in these behaviors, the stronger your confidence will become.
Building confidence is a journey, not a destination. It’s about developing a mindset where you trust yourself to handle any situation, regardless of the outcome. By embracing the core elements of confidence—self-belief, resilience, and preparation—and applying practical strategies in your daily life, you can learn to be confident in any situation. So, the next time you ask yourself, “Will I ever be confident?”, remember: you already have everything you need to start building it today.
