I recently finished my training to be a tour guide at Penn State. When I gave my final mock tour, my evaluator checked every single box on the page except confidence. I knew the route, knew what I was talking about, and did everything right, but I still lacked confidence.
Being confident is something I’ve struggled with my entire life, and I often feel like no matter how hard I try, I will always let anxiety take control. After getting that feedback from my tour evaluator, I decided I wanted to make a change. I began to dive deep into what it means to be confident and how to achieve true confidence. After looking into those and adding different practices into my own life, I compiled this list of 7 things that can help to boost your confidence.
- Change The Way You Use Social Media.
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Social media has become such a huge part of our lives. Without even realizing it, we can spend hours at a time scrolling through Instagram and TikTok and consuming content that directly impacts our confidence. We compare ourselves to everything we see on social media, even though we know that most of it is fake or exaggerated.
People only post the best aspects of their lives and use filters that sometimes completely alter their appearance. This subconsciously causes us to think we are less than others because we don’t have perfect lives or look perfect all the time. I find myself feeling insecure about my Instagram page and if it looks as good as the accounts of other people I follow.
Limiting the amount of time you spend on social media per day is a great way to boost self-confidence. Focus on real life, rather than a version of life where every detail is edited to perfection to stop comparing yourself to unrealistic standards. However, even if you don’t drastically cut the amount of time you spend on social media, changing how you use it can be extremely beneficial.
Unfollow accounts that make you feel like your life isn’t good enough, and follow accounts that inspire you and make you feel happy with who you are and what you look like. While many aspects of social media can be draining for our confidence, there are also tons of accounts out there that spread messages of self-love and positivity.
- Understand Your Strengths And Weaknesses.
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Confidence is, at its core, feeling like you are enough and not lacking. This might seem impossible because everyone has weaknesses in some areas. However, the key isn’t being good at everything, but rather knowing where your strengths and weaknesses lie so you can prepare accordingly. This is very beneficial in many aspects of life.
Confident people aren’t experts at everything, but they have a good grasp of what they know and what they don’t. When we understand what we don’t know, we become better learners and more connected to our emotions. Once we have a solid understanding of our strengths and weaknesses, we can feel confident in ourselves and know we have everything we need to succeed within ourselves.
- Change The Way You Outwardly Present Yourself.
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Looks and outward appearance don’t define who a person is or what they’re capable of in any way. That being said, how we present ourselves to others can cause us to feel like we are more sure of ourselves. Body language is a simple way that we can instantly improve our confidence. Standing and sitting up straight, maintaining eye contact when talking to people, and speaking clearly can all drastically improve our confidence. Having good posture and mannerisms during a conversation can lead us and others to believe we are confident and know what we are talking about.
Aside from just body language, what we wear can also affect our confidence. This is different for each person, so finding what style makes you feel most like yourself is really important. Once you figure out your style, wearing clothes and styling your hair and makeup in a way that makes you feel your best will give you a significant boost of confidence as you go through your days.
- Learn From Others.
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One of the most effective ways I have increased my confidence is by having confident role models in my life. Whether your role model is someone in your own life who is very confident, a celebrity you admire, or a fictional character from a movie or TV show that exudes confidence, having these examples of what confidence looks like is a great tool to utilize.
I remember watching Glee with my best friend in high school, and we would always joke around about “channeling our inner Santana” when we needed a boost of confidence. As silly as this sounds, it was actually really helpful. When someone you admire exhibits confidence, you can think to yourself, how would this person react in this situation? This gives you a tangible example of what confidence looks like and how you can be confident too.
- Prepare Without Obsessing.
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A big part of confidence is being comfortable with what you know. If you go into an interview or an exam completely unprepared, you will most likely feel a lot less confident than you would if you were prepared. Preparation is key to confidence in many scenarios, and we must take the necessary steps before going into situations that could make us feel nervous or unconfident.
On the flip side of this, over-preparing can put unnecessary stress and pressure on ourselves. Like many things in life, balance is crucial when it comes to preparation. As difficult as it can be, it’s important that we make sure to stop ourselves once we’ve prepared a decent amount. It can be tempting to cram and analyze every detail until the last second, but this can affect our performance negatively. Through time and practice, we can find the right balance between preparing and over-preparing.
- SURROUND YOURSELF WITH PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT YOU.
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Something we’ve probably all heard at some point is that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. This definitely has some truth to it because the people we surround ourselves with can significantly impact the way we view ourselves.
If the people in your life are constantly making negative remarks about you or themselves, this can really harm your outlook on yourself. Conversely, if the people in your circle support you and lift you up rather than tear you down, they can improve your self-confidence.
I think it’s important that we occasionally reflect on who we surround ourselves with and what kind of energy we receive from them. It can be difficult to realize that someone you’re close to might be draining your energy and hurting your self-confidence, so sitting down and analyzing how the people in your life are affecting your mental state can be beneficial.
- Replace Nervousness With Excitement.
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While this might seem strange, there has been a lot of research done on how nervousness and excitement are the same in many ways. Many people will try to calm down when they feel nervous or anxious about something, but this isn’t easy. Instead, channel these feelings into excitement because nervousness and excitement share many similarities. Both cause your heart rate to increase, and both are preparing you for an upcoming experience. Due to this, it’s easier to maintain the higher heart rate and preparation feelings and alter the connotations of the feelings from negative to positive.
Next time you’re feeling nervous about something, try to think of all the potential positive outcomes that could come from the experience. Tell yourself that you’re excited because of the possible positive outcomes. When you go into the situation, you will feel more confident and perform better than if you focused on the negatives and nervousness.
In our fast-paced society that emphasizes unrealistic beauty standards and lifestyles, it can be easy to forget about dedicating time and energy to working on our mental health and self-image. However, confidence is closely related to happiness, so it’s crucial to take time and focus on building up self-confidence in whatever ways work best for you.