Self confidence is one of the most core aspects of the human psyche. It impacts upon our career, our health, our relationships with others and perhaps most importantly, our relationship with ourselves. In the course of this article I hope to explore the numerous reflections of self confidence in of lives. If you have grown up lacking confidence in yourself , your first goal is to genuinely understand what we mean when we say self confidence. There is a significant divergence between confidence and cockiness, the latter being something many people fear becoming when they start on their journey towards the former. Confidence is based upon a genuine understanding of your strengths and greater than that a compassionate understanding of your weaknesses. …show more content…
Self confidence must be separated from self esteem, although they may be described as two sides of the same coin. Where self confidence is a sense of trust in oneself, self esteem is your ability to see your own self worth in relation to others. Self esteem comes into play most often when we try to set boundaries with others. How we allow other people treat us speaks volumes about our self confidence and self esteem. If you allow someone to treat you poorly or to under value your contributions you are saying one of two things ‘I am not good so I don 't deserve to be treated well’ or ‘I may deserve to be treated well, but other people 's opinions of me are so important to me I 'm not willing to challenge poor treatment and stand up for myself’. Fear of abandonment or rejection is at the core of many peoples behaviours. It is hence very important to understand the relationship between that fear and self confidence. It is a fear we develop very early in childhood and is rooted in basic fears for our survival. Respond to these fears in a comforting and loving way - reassure yourself (even it it 's hard to believe at first!) that you are a competent, good person who does not need other people 's approval to survive. Unravelling such young thought patterns can be tough and requires a combination of logic and compassion. Think of yourself as a child - would you tell that kid they were bad or ugly or stupid? No? Then try to apply that same standard to yourself now. In this sense, developing self confidence could be described as a process of