9 Smart Strategies to Build Confidence and Overcome Insecurities

Confidence can be defined as believing in yourself and your abilities. It allows you to live your life, tackle challenges head-on, and improve how you approach tasks and relationships.

If you don’t have confidence, you will likely feel scared, worried, and too afraid to take chances that can benefit you.

Insecurities are when you may feel uncertain or anxious about yourself. We all have them, whether it’s about your weight, skillset, being weird in front of people, or sucking at your job.

Having these types of thoughts can make you negative towards yourself and prevent you from doing things you want to do.

Below, we will talk about confidence and how you can build it to overcome your inner insecurities.

Why Building Confidence Is Important

You need confidence to have a better understanding of yourself and your insecurities. The more you know about what you’re insecure about, the more you can tackle them head-on.

Building confidence is important because it allows you to do more throughout your day.

When you have high self-esteem, you will want to take more chances, look for opportunities, and interact with more people.

How to Build Confidence and Overcome Insecurities

1. Identify Your Strengths

One of the best ways to build confidence is by knowing your strengths. Write down what you’re good at or what you enjoy doing.

Having a list will help you focus on your strengths when you have negative thoughts about yourself.

Start by writing down your interests or what you’re good at. You can write down that you’re a great public speaker or you like to draw.

Once you finish your list, you will notice that you’re good at multiple things.

Use your strengths to help you fight your insecurities. If you know public speaking is a strength of yours, try to speak more often or take public speaking classes.

Every time you use your strength, you will feel more confident, creating a positive cycle.

Remember that everyone is good at something. Don’t be afraid to find what you’re good at so you can work on your confidence.

2. Set Small Goals

Another way to build confidence is by setting small goals that you know you can achieve.

When you meet your goals, you will feel better about yourself. Setting goals is great because you can break your goals up into small tasks that you know you can handle.

For example, think of an insecurity that you want to work on. If you fear public speaking, you can try and publicly speak for 5 minutes each day.

By creating small goals, you have something to work towards. You will also feel confident because your goal isn’t public speaking for 3 hours.

As you reach your small goals, you’ll build up confidence to your larger goal. You’ll feel happy every time you meet a goal, which will encourage you to reach more.

Make sure you celebrate every goal you reach, no matter how small.

This will create positive reinforcement and you will be able to look back at all of the goals you’ve reached.

You can also use goals to track your progress. Write down each time you reach a goal so you can look back on how far you’ve come.

3. Use Positive Self-Talk

The way you talk to yourself can harm your confidence. If you tell yourself negative things, you will never be confident with who you are.

For example, if you make a mistake, you may tell yourself, “I always mess up” or “I’ll never get this.”

Telling yourself things like this will never allow you to feel better about yourself. Instead of being negative, why not try some positive self-talk?

If you know you messed up, tell yourself that you are smart and you will figure it out. By using positive self-talk, you will build your self-esteem and confidence.

Here are some ways that you can use positive self-talk:

Write down the negative things you say to yourself.
Ask yourself if what you’re thinking is true. 9 times out of 10, it isn’t.
For every negative thing you say, make a positive affirmation. Say these affirmations when you wake up or before you’re about to face a challenge.

4. Surround Yourself with Positive People

The people around you can affect your confidence one way or another. Positive people help you grow as a person and make you feel better about yourself.

Take a look around you and see who makes you feel confident and happy.

When you are around positive people, you’ll start to feel better about yourself, which will raise your confidence.

Try to spend more time with people who make you feel good about yourself. Look for people who congratulate you on your successes, even if they are small.

Avoid spending time with people who bring you down. No one benefits from a toxic relationship.

Surrounding yourself with negative people can decrease your confidence. If you have friends who tease you about your insecurities, they may not be your friend anymore.

You have to learn to build a barrier between you and those who don’t support you. It can be hard to cut off people that you care about, but it will benefit your confidence.

5. Face Your Fears

Facing your fears is a great way to build up your confidence. When you face your fears, you may feel super uncomfortable at first.

However, everyone is scared of something, whether it be social anxiety, public speaking, or making decisions.

The first step to fighting your fears is by facing them. Once you face your fears, you’ll start to become desensitized to them.

Here’s what you can do:

Start by thinking of small goals that you can do to face your fears. If you have a fear of public speaking, you can try speaking in front of friends.

Once you get comfortable with that, try speaking in front of more people. You can even look for opportunities to speak in public.

By doing this, you will slowly face your fear and build your confidence.

You can even start a journal to help you face your fears. Write about your fears and write about the times you faced them.

You will start to notice that you fear less as you go on. Not only will your fear decrease, but so will your anxiety.

6. Learn From Your Mistakes

It is important to know that everybody makes mistakes. You can use your mistakes as a tool to better yourself and grow from them.

If you make a mistake, ask yourself what you could’ve done differently.

You should also think about what you learned from your mistake. By changing your mindset, you will no longer fear making mistakes.

Once you stop fearing mistakes, you will take more chances. Taking more chances will allow you to grow as a person and boost your confidence.

7. Do Things You Enjoy

When you spend time doing things you enjoy, you will collect good memories. These good memories will make you feel better about yourself.

Doing things you enjoy allows you to spend time getting better at what you love.

The more time you practice, the better you’ll get, which will make you feel confident in your abilities.

Not only will you gain more experience by doing things you enjoy, you can meet new people.

When you meet people with the same hobbies as you, you’ll feel less alone. Knowing that others may have the same insecurities as you will motivate you to keep bettering yourself.

8. Focus on Growing Yourself

Focusing on growing yourself is another great way to build confidence. When you focus on growing yourself, you are constantly learning new things.

You can learn new things by reading! Pick up books that will challenge you or teach you something new.

You can read nonfiction to learn more about what you’re interested in. If you want to grow as a person, pick up a fiction book.

Reading fiction can help you learn more about how others think and how they behave.

Try to read as much as you can, whether that’s reading every day or reading once a week. The more you read, the more you can grow yourself.

You should also try and take classes that you enjoy. Take classes that will help you with your job or hobbies you enjoy.

By taking classes, you will learn more and meet new people that have the same interests as you.

Building relationships with others who share the same hobbies as you can help your confidence.

9. Celebrate Your Wins

You should celebrate every time you reach a goal. But you should also celebrate your victories no matter how small they may be.

Writing down your wins will allow you to focus on the good things about yourself. As humans, we focus on what we’re bad at instead of what we’re good at.

By celebrating your wins, you push that negative mindset out of your mind.

Here are some ways to celebrate your wins:

Keep a journal of your wins. Every day, write down something you did that you’re proud of.

By writing down your wins, you have something to look back on. You will be able to look back at how far you’ve come and it will boost your self-esteem.

Next, you should reward yourself if you reach a goal or have a win. You can eat your favorite dessert, play your favorite video game, or hang out with friends.

Rewarding yourself will create positive reinforcement, which will encourage you to keep your head up. Celebrating your wins will allow you to have a more positive mindset.

If you can, tell someone about your win. You can tell a friend or family member about what you did.

You will be able to build a connection with that person, and they can help you with your confidence as well.

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