How do we build self-esteem and confidence? You know you want it. You know it’s important. You even know it’s simple. Yet it’s something most of us struggle with immensely. Why is that?
We will break down the reasons why you’re struggling with confidence and self-esteem in the first place and precisely what to do to build your self-assurance and to solve any issue with low self-esteem.
Visualize confidence.
Have you ever seen someone exuding such a high level of healthy confidence and comfort in themselves that you found yourself with your mouth open in awe watching them:
- confidently expressing how they feel even when it’s difficult?
- wearing whatever they want?
- explaining their needs?
- expressing themselves authentically?
- going after a goal that others wouldn’t dare?
Have you ever imagined how different your life would be if you could be one of those people?
If seeing other people move os confidently through their lives makes you inspired, motivated, envious or even jealous, that’s because you’re meant to do those things too.
We put out a quiz on how to be happy, to find out what our audience’s emotional archetypes were, what they needed in their lives to feel fulfilled and satisfied.
Over half the people who took our emotional archetype quiz had confidence, comfort, and self-worth as their most desirable happiness trait. The other half were spread out over 3 other desired outcomes! Which included money, relationships, and even a fit body!
What You Can Accomplish with Confidence and How Self-Esteem Affects Your Life:
The quiz results showed me how smart and in tune our audience was. Confidence is the way how you get all of the other outcomes anyhow! Confidence and self-esteem are the backbone to moving yourself into:
- Professional development
— confident actions are the epicentre of getting promotions, or successfully starting a business
- Fitness
— starting a new healthy lifestyle, fitness regimen takes courage
- Great relationships
— finding your perfect match means being the perfect partner, plus you must be able to explain your desires and true needs to that person, and be willing and stable in your own confidence to hear theirs too
- Peace of mind
— self-acceptance, growth mindset & clarity all come from comfort in yourself
- Authentic self-expression & creativity
- Happiness
— these both rely on feeling good about yourself first
If I know anything about human nature it’s that we are made to change, evolve, better ourselves consistently. We are plants growing from seed to root to stem, and eventually, to flower, to fruit, to start over, and sprout again. It takes courage to change. Being able to take risks is necessary to grow.
Draw your boundaries. Free yourself — say like it is. Be authentic — tell the world who you are. Go after your biggest goals even if other people think you’re crazy.
Check out our Personal Development School: the Sustainable Dreams University.
The Subconscious Mind, Emotions, Intuition & Confidence
Confidence is intricately linked to emotions, but it is not an emotion in of itself. The way that confidence intertwines within our subconscious, our emotional experience, can mean that negative emotions have the consequence of messing with our confidence. Negative emotional experiences lead to poor subconscious programming, and that can leave us with an intuition that seemingly starts to work against us.
This is a topic for a whole other post. But you can take back control over your intuition and emotional well-being. I know because I’ve done it.
Just like negative experiences can mess with your intuition, subconscious programming directed towards confidence, and manufacturing positive emotional experiences can do the exact opposite.
Sign up for a FREE Course on Confidence HERE.
The Importance of Self Confidence:
We all know what we need to DO to get happy and get to all of our goals:
- Develop self-love & communication for relationships.
- Develop a healthy lifestyle for wellness so that we’re holistically well.
- Limit stress.
- Love ourselves and practice self-care.
- Stick to a game plan to get to our goals.
- Increase our skills.
Neuroscience Explains why Building Self-Esteem is so Hard
Why is it hard to do something so natural and fundamental to our happiness? It seems like we’d be naturally driven to feeling good about ourselves, right? It would be an evolutionarily valuable trait to have since our productivity depends on it. Neuroscience has found some clues.
Neuroscience has found a way to increase these positive emotions and rewire the physicality of your brain to feel more confident.
In his book The Upward Spiral, neuroscientist Dr. Alex Korb explains that in our monkey mind, shame triggers our reward system. Feeling shame actually fires all of the different places in our brain that are associated with rewards and releases dopamine and serotonin — the cuddle hormone and the happy hormone. As much as we want to feel confident, sometimes the safer bet, to our minds at least, seems so be shame.
Worry too, can trick us out into inaction.
“In fact, worrying can help calm the limbic system …. That might seem counterintuitive, but it just goes to show that if you’re feeling anxiety, doing something about it — even worrying — is better than doing nothing.”
Dr. Alex Korb
Pride also has this effect.
“Despite their differences, pride, shame, and guilt all activate similar neural circuits …. This explains why it can be so appealing to heap guilt and shame on ourselves — they’re activating the brain’s reward center.”
Dr. Alex Korb
Worrying will not ever make you feel as good as acting to solve problems which arise. Shame will never hold a candle to the dopamine and serotonin release from saying sorry and actively making penance. That egotistical, prideful, sham, is fake confidence and it’s reward power is nothing compared to authentic comfort in your own unique self, in your own body, in your own mind, and in your own heart.
Depression and Anxiety Epidemic Explained
There’s usually nothing to fear in worrying and feeling shame, at least for a healed, wholehearted individual. The problem with these emotions happens when someone has had enough negative emotional experiences that their intuition draws them towards shame and worry as a solution to their troubles. If we have negative emotional experiences that are hindering our confidence, sometimes worry and shame can feel like it’s the safe bet.
Is there any wonder that our society is living in anxiety and depression?! The root emotions associated with both of those mental health issues are shame and worry. We have been collectively oppressing so much of ourselves and exploiting so much of our world for hundreds of years. Not even the biggest benefactors of this abuse have been allowed to have emotional or spiritual wellness.
No one has made it through this culture unscathed.
What’s the solution then? You might’ve heard Brene Brown sharing that the root word of courage is coeur, Latin or French word for “heart”. She said that the word “courage” used to mean “telling your story with your whole heart”. We need courage to feel confident.
So what can we do?! We’re working against our brains! The subconscious is running rampant/around our lives. If we have confidence, we do. And if we don’t have it, What’s the hope? We’re never gonna have it!
WRONG.
How do we develop Confidence?
Gratitude
Gratitude releases dopamine, just like prescription happy pills, cocaine, and any other party drug. Dr. Korb explains, “The benefits of gratitude start with the dopamine system, because feeling grateful produces dopamine. Additionally, gratitude toward others increases activity in social dopamine circuits, which makes social interactions more enjoyable.”
It also produces serotonin, the most powerful mood influencer. And that’s what popular antidepressants do, they regulate serotonin. “One powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin. This simple act of practicing gratitude increases serotonin production in the anterior cingulate cortex.”
Practicing gratitude counteracts the rewarding feeling of worry and shame. And it’s more powerful. Practicing gratitude has more potent effect than shame and worry ever could have. You can reprogram your shame and worry neuropathways by practicing gratitude.
Gratitude is Objectivity
We can agree gratitude makes you happy, but you’re wondering how does it make you confident?
We’re wired to share negative dangers with other people. By practicing gratitude and taking a course of action to enhance our communications of grateful, joyful feelings, we can counteract and balance this natural pre-programming to share these dangers, which results in less worry for us and and for the people around us.
Confidence is objectivity. Gratitude is a way to train our minds to see objectively.
Think about your biggest goal and all the things that you want to achieve in your life. Do you think that you’re capable of them? Think about it:
- Do you think that you’re capable of learning the skills that you need to get to the profession that you want? You have the rest of your life, do you think you’re capable of doing that? Of course you are.
- Do you think that you’re capable of making your healthy lifestyle change? Are you physically capable of getting up, going to your favorite yoga class, eating healthy food? Of course you are.
- Are you capable of the openness required to have really healthy relationship bonds? Of course you are.
- Can you feel your needs and express them? Of course you can.
All you need is objectivity. All you need is to get past that monkey mind, automatic, pre-programmed, worry – shame spiral and get over the subconscious, emotional, intuitive, impossible-to-win, relay race and get objective.
Practicing gratitude is looking at the world realistically. It’s getting past the worry, shame, and propensity to share negative news and to look at what’s really happening.
Thinking objectively is confidence because you CAN handle this life. You can get to your goals. You can make your dreams come true.
But you wan’t just wish it. You can’t just wait to feel thankful — it MUST be cultivated. You have to actually practice it. It isn’t a trait. It isn’t an emotion that comes around and goes like other emotions. It’s a SKILL.
Find a Gratitude Practice: Building Self Esteem Activities
Dr. Korb writes that practice is absolutely necessary. He calls it an emotional intelligence which you need to develop in order to fully realize that.
“It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in the prefrontal cortex. These density changes suggest that as [gratitude practice] increases, the neurons in these areas become more efficient. With [more practice ie.] higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes less effort to be grateful.”
Dr. Alex Korb
Gratitude practice is key.
Expressing gratitude creates a “positive feedback loop” in relationships. (SagePub)
That is why I developed GRATis — they’re therapies to help rewire your subconscious brain towards gratitude and give you the tools you need to get confident no matter if you want professional development, health and wellness, good energy, body positivity, or even healthy relationships.
Get the support you need, the clarity to find solutions, and the courage to be your wholehearted self.
I’m teaching a whole course on confidence, a step-by-step guide on how exactly to get to your most confident self. This course will be a couple hundred dollars, but you can watch the LIVE exclusive screening and filming for free. I’m inviting you to watch on October 21st by signing up here.
Thank you for sharing this! I love every sentences used here. I agree with how gratitudes changes a person.
I’m glad you like it 🙂