Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what we all have to achieve if we take time to develop self-confidence. I believe that I’m privileged to have met and known some of the most self-confident people in the world, and I decided to take a “confidence inventory” on what their self-confidence has afforded them.
What are the main benefits? Self-confident people are generally happy. Their sense of self-worth is self-generated and thus they are not as dependent on external circumstances to feel grateful for their lives and existence. They experience freedom from social anxiety.
But there are other important things that are worth mentioning:
Here is my quick and dirty list of the top 10 benefits of greater confidence that you can easily experience:
- High self-confidence helps you trust in your own abilities and operate at peak performance, which helps you achieve personal goals, learn new skills, and readily take on new challenges.
- You experience less fear when trying things for the first time.
- You have better relationships, interact more easily with different people.
- You get to experience your best life with less stress and see failure as a good thing as it will motivate you to greater achievements.
- You have a positive mindset, feel comfortable in your own skin.
- You see failure as part of life and as a good thing that is only short term. Past success tells you that with a positive mental attitude, you will attract the the right social situations, new people and positive energy into your life.
- Your level of comfort will increase in social settings and experience reduced social anxiety.
- As you develop a healthy self-esteem, fear of rejection will decrease and your self worth won’t be tied to the acceptance or judgement of others.
- You are able to set healthy boundaries.
- You will recognize that taking small steps in the direction of developing healthy self confidence not only impacts the area of your life you are aiming at like your professional life, but also can have a positive impact on the lives of others.
Table of Contents
Individuals with good self-esteem enjoy fulfillment.
If you look at a person who has a healthy self-confidence, most likely, you will find that they are financially and psychologically stable. I’ll digress for a moment and say I don’t just mean rich in the sense of having a lot of money, although that is often the case as well. (You might like this article on How to Become a Better Person for a different perspective on all of this.)
What I mean is that their life is whole, and a positive mental attitude results in more fulfillment. They are content even if their understanding of contentment means always reaching for new challenges and new achievements.
Self-confidence leads to a strong sense of self and setting appropriate boundaries
As a person who has struggled in life to set appropriate boundaries, I can assure you that as your self-confidence, self-esteem, and ultimately self-worth rise, healthy boundaries begin to emerge as well.
In Don Miguel Ruiz’s book The 4 Agreements, the author mentions that we will never allow others to abuse us at a greater level than we abuse ourselves.
What you won’t tolerate for yourself, you won’t tolerate from others. Classic signs of low self-esteem and low self confidence is tolerating abuse from others. You may even rationalize and justify others behavior when you are treated unfairly.
When you survey your own boundaries, some important things to ask yourself are:
- Do I need a break from people regularly (Read here about being an introvert/extrovert)?
- Do I feel burned out from being around my friends or family?
- Do you feel guilty when you say no or turn someone down?
- Do you hold your opinion back when you feel strongly about something?
Self-confidence leads to freedom from social anxiety
You have probably heard the expression “comfortable in their skin.” I’ve noticed that the more self-confidence someone has, the more they are at ease in a group or team settings. Why is this?
Since their self-confidence isn’t dependent as much on external influences, they aren’t looking to gain popularity from others in order to feel good about themselves.
If you equate being in public with stress, I’ve got good news. You can enlist your friends to help you take more risks socially that will help you reduce the stress you associate with being vulnerable in public.
A Healthy Self-Esteem is Sexy
Sorry for the lame title on this one, but confidence is sexy and people have universally rated it high on their list for who they find attractive.
The problem is that if you don’t look like Kim Kardashian (no offense Kim) or Chris Hemsworth, you’re going to have to spend extra time getting connected to the value that only you have, to the value only you have to offer. Learn more about self-love here.
I know it is an overused concept, but the reality is that no one really knows what you are capable of.
Once you get connected to how amazing and unique you are, you’ll find that your self-confidence will rise. You don’t have to be an expert to know that there is no other person that is exactly you out there.
Remember that no other person will have exactly your story, your past experience, or your exact views. I recommend making it a point to continue increasing your self-confidence by giving yourself little tasks.
I recommend taking confidence building courses if you have low confidence. It that is too scary, just start below with these simply concepts.
Do these exercises to gain greater self-confidence and turn around a lack of confidence:
Take small steps to get rid of low self confidence
- Talk to a stranger or ask a group of people for directions.
- Say hello every time you walk into a new place.
- In the drive-through, talk with a fake accent (yes, out loud, wink).
- The next time you are at dinner with a friend, drop down in the restaurant and do 5 pushups.
- The key is taking small risks regardless of what other people think.
Sorry, building confidence in a successful way will require you to be vulnerable in front of others. It truly is the top way to make things that seemed impossible become easy. Things you thought you could never do in front of others will become second nature.
It’s amazing what possibilities will open up in your life as you begin to take the measures described on our website. Work at it and don’t give up. Understand the importance of more risk. People who lack self-esteem may struggle with these exercises, so give yourself more room than you think to get used to these ideas.
You will find that as you work towards this goal you will experience more energy and motivation.
Self-confident people fear “less”
I believe it is a massive exaggeration to say someone is fearless. At the end of the day, we all are hard-wired to experience fear. It may look on the outside as if someone is fearless, but the reality is that they have simply taken action in the face of fear.
Confident individuals tend to be able to motivate themselves through their fears in a way that less confident people cannot.
Fear stands in the way of action and self-confidence is the key to the gateway of actions that keeps us from achieving our goals and fulfilling our purpose. The confident one doesn’t spend a whole lot of time with intensive speaking about fearless behavior, rather, their life is too busy taking measures towards more success and showing teams how to increase things like their relationship repertoire, driving sales.
Speaking of fearless leaders, at the end of the day, we all want to experience greater freedom from social constraints.
Self-confidence yields a strong leadership and executive presence exuding a more positive attitude
The benefits of having the right outlook pay dividends and knowing what will cause people to perform best are part confidence the successful entrepreneur brings to the table. The benefit that the effective leader offers his/her team is direction. If you are a manager, all of your team will benefit as you develop an attitude that promotes unity and everyone is on the same page.
The more you create a vision for your team, the more individuals who follow you will feel connected and support the group effort.
Further one of the benefits of self-confidence is that it helps individuals avoid procrastination. So take action today and read more leadership articles building self-confidence on my website.
