Building confidence and self esteem requires several interlinked processes. Both confidence and strong sustainable self esteem are essential ingredients for personal power.

Improving self confidence is one of the delightful gifts of strengthening self esteem. Building self confidence and self esteem is all about working on the nature of the relationship you have with yourself.

Key aspects include examining, understanding and making changes where necessary in the following areas:

• Whether or not you have a positive regard for yourself – the “esteem” in which you hold yourself

• Whether or not you support yourself or treat yourself with harsh judgement and criticism

• Whether or not you believe in yourself

• Whether or not you trust yourself

• Whether or not you are trapped in the past and the effects of earlier negative or traumatic experiences

• Whether or not you love and accept yourself

• Whether or not you “honour” yourself

Positive affirmations alone won’t build confidence and self esteem. Having other people tell us we are wonderful, capable or worthy won’t do it either, although it can help once our underlying beliefs allow us to be receptive to compliments and positive feedback. If self esteem is low we won’t believe the positive things others tell us about ourselves!

How to build self confidence? The two core areas are 1) changing belief systems and 2) having positive experiences.

Improving self confidence begins with recognising and changing limiting and negative beliefs. We need to be aware of what we believe before we can change it!

Positive experiences that reinforce belief in ourselves, our abilities and our sense of worth are an essential part of building confidence and self esteem. We need to not only believe we are okay, we need to feel it. We need to have a direct experience of it. Personal power and the confidence it brings, is something that keeps expanding as you experience, feel and live it.

Confidence is not fixed and static. We can feel confident in some areas (like a work role) but not confident in others (like personal relationships.)

Self confidence is fluid, often rising and falling during a lifetime, changing for better or worse according to

• what is going on in your life and the nature of experiences

• the people you encounter and the key relationships in your life and how these effect you

• how well your various needs are (or are not!) being met

• your belief systems

• your social support systems

• access to resources and opportunities

• how you feel about yourself, your appearance and level of personal power

The more our confidence is shaken or eroded, the more impact people and situations can have on us. What we once could lightly toss off or not even notice, now has the power to keep us in a state of anxiety, or avoiding situations in which we once felt comfortable. We can get caught in a downward spiral.

Similarly, as we work on building self confidence and self esteem, our personal power increases to be able to further improve confidence and self esteem. Like an upward expanding positive spiral, it just gets better and better!

Take action now to build confidence and self esteem – it is an investment in time and effort that will give massive and wonderful returns every day.

Related posts:

1. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – the Key Skill of Assertiveness
2. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – The Initial Assessment
3. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – How Fast Can Change Happen?