It seems like everyone is building billion-dollar businesses, becoming YouTube stars, or making it big on Instagram.
Deep down, most of us also know that it’s 99% bad. But at the same time, we see all these people living awesome lives, and we don’t care if it’s real or not.
Whether you want money, fame, travel, or none of that stuff, it doesn’t matter because it always comes down to this: How confident are you?
- Are you confident enough to say “screw it,” and pursue your dream?
Do you see? Self-confidence is important if you want to win in life — no matter what you’re after, a lack of confidence will always hold you back.
Research even shows that lack of self-confidence is associated with:
Depression
loneliness and feeling left out
Lower academic achievement
Lower life satisfaction
I’ve researched self-confidence for years, and the most practical theory that I’ve found is something called ‘confidence by competence.’
In 1952, Bernice Milburn Moore published an article called Self-Confidence For Competence in the journal of Educational Leadership. In the article, she discusses self-confidence for teachers, but I’ve found it useful in all settings of life.
If you look up the definition of self-confidence, you always get more or less the same description. Moore describes it as “a trust in self, a faith in one’s ability to be able to meet situations as they may arise.”
But more importantly, she says:
“Self-confidence without competence is of as little use as is competence without self-confidence.”
It means this: Going to business school is competence.
That analogy goes both ways. Just confidence in yourself, without the competence, is also useless — talking the talk is not a sustainable strategy.
You need the talk and bravado, but you also need to develop the skills to back up your talk.
Building Your Self-Confidence
So you become more self-confident if you become better at what you do. That’s the system, and it’s backed by research.
How can you use this information? The following process is easy—but completing the steps takes hard work.
It goes like this:
Improve your competencies
Put them into practice
See results
Grow more confident
Repeat
That’s the process.
“That’s great and all, but what if I don’t see results? Plus, I don’t have the time to practice.”
You can tell yourself every day that you’re confident, lucky to be alive, or whatever — but if you lack the skills to get done, you’ll never truly believe in yourself.
And that’s my biggest issue with a lot of self-help theories and writers. Yes, affirmations, positive thinking, and goal setting are all great, but it’s NOTHING without execution.
How can you expect to build confidence if you never do anything? It’s impossible.
“Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.” — Thomas Carlyle
“What competencies should I improve?”
Emotional intelligence — Research shows that humans are inherently social. Without good relationships, we die. And if you want good relationships, you need emotional intelligence: Understanding other people’s emotions and how to respond to them.
Self-awareness — You can practice self-awareness by continuous self-reflection. Write down your thoughts; try to understand why you do what you do, what you can do better, and what you’re doing well.
Problem-solving — Our current school system dates from the industrial revolution. We’re trained to become cogs in a wheel. We’re not trained to solve problems in complex situations — instead,
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your life will be better as long as you wish for it.
When you put in work and see the results — like a stronger body, more energy, more money, or whatever you’re after — you start believing in your ability to get sit down.
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