What is confidence?
Confidence is, by definition, the degree of certainty someone has. If someone is confident in something, it means they are certain that it is true. The term confidence simply measures the certainty of something.
When referring to a person’s personality and characteristics, confidence can be regarded as a measure of a person’s general composure, and the way they act. However, when a person refers to themselves, this becomes self-confidence, the degree to which a person is certain in themselves.
Self-confidence is the belief in oneself to be able to do the things they want to do. It is the measure for how certain you are in yourself. A person’s self-confidence stems from many things, and can refer to many things at once. A person may be confident in their ability to cook or write, but may not be confident in their ability to swim. Self-confidence refers to how well a person believes they can do something. In this case, self-confidence refers to individual tasks. A person can say they are a confident person as a whole, as an adjective, while still being unsure of their ability in a specific area.
Why is confidence important?
Confidence is a highly sought-after attribute for people, as confidence is often linked with success. People strive to be confident at all times, and often enjoy speaking with more confident people. This Ted Talk illustrates how dominant the perceptions of confidence are in modern society. In the minds of people, there is a distinct correlation between success and confidence, and confidence is a well sought-after trait.
Overall performance
There is definitely research that supports causation between confidence and performance. In the area of stereotypes, there has been much research supporting the idea that harmful stereotypes can diminish people’s performance due to expectations. Research by Steele & Aaronson, Moe & Pazzaglia shows the phenomenon known as stereotype threat, where people’s expectations and preconceived notions of themselves significantly hampered their ability. This phenomenon is shown to be possible to happen for everyone, so long as a harmful stereotype or expectation is present. From the numerous bits of research on this topic, it is almost certain that confidence does have an impact on performance. How large however, is unknown.
In further research, in the same topic area, it was found that adding confidence increases performance, at the same rate as hindering confidence decreases it. Much research that tries to look at the effect of confidence on performance uses the mental 3D rotation task as its main paradigm. This is because it is a difficult mental task in which men on average score higher than women. Researchers use this paradigm to test whether it is the difference in confidence levels between the gender that causes the difference, or whether it is simply different ability levels.
In a piece of research looking at mental 3D rotation, it was found that confident people did the best regardless of gender. The effect of confidence while doing the 3D rotation task was researched a lot. In further research, participants did an extremely difficult task beforehand, one with near-chance difficulty. Afterwards, they were told if they were above average or below average. The participants then did a 3D mental rotation task. Regardless of gender, it was found that those who were told they were above average performed better than those that were told below average. However, there was still a gender gap, with the men who were told below average scoring the same as the women who were told above average. So, while there were significant differences shown by confidence, it’s not completely clear whether it is confidence which separates the genders, or ability.
New experiences
Confidence definitely has an effect on people’s performance in all manner of ways. However, there is another way in which confidence can be highly useful, maybe even more so than increasing one’s performance. This is in their willingness to do anything. It’s common sense to say that people will often choose to do tasks that are easier for them, and research backs it up. In this, people choose to do tasks they are more confident in. Which is understandable, but the problem is that this leaves the harder tasks undone or unfinished quite often. People will often not do the tasks they are not confident in. For those wanting to try new things, or take risks, lack of confidence will stop them. In these cases, confidence is important to get started with new tasks, and delve into new areas.
As many websites will tell you, you have to get out of your own way. When people think about trying new things, feelings of stress, anxiousness will no doubt come, but it’s important to continue regardless. In fact, a common piece of advice given to people to increase confidence is to try out new things. Kind of like a loop. Confidence helps when you want to do new things, and doing new things helps to build confidence. Regardless, while difficult, it’s important to fight the anxiousness you feel when starting up your new business.
How can you get more confidence?
And now, the golden question, how do you get more of it? If it’s so useful, what’s a way to get more of it. There are a few ways commonly mentioned, and a few more abstract ones to cover.
Practice
What’s the best way to build up confidence? In short, it’s probably just practice. Practicing is not only the way to build up your skill in something but also for building up your confidence. As people do things more often, they tend to become more confident in their abilities. This goes for preparation as well. If you’re ever not very confident about an upcoming presentation, the best thing to do is to just rehearse it extensively. Confidence can be built up this way. If you’re confident in your ability to win a sports tournament, once again, one of the best ways to alleviate it is to be as prepared as possible. “Practice can be very useful and is highly recommended because, in addition to building confidence, it also tends to improve quality. Actually deliver the big presentation more than once before the due date.” – Gruenfeld (Moghadam Family Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior).
Of course, simply practicing isn’t going to help with everything, and only really helps with specific tasks or one area. Increasing confidence, in general, can be much more complex. If you want to increase your general confidence as a person, it mainly comes down to changing more fundamental aspects of yourself. You need to change your approach, rather than just what you do.
Posture
First up, one of the things you can do is be physically confident. Things, like sitting up straight, uncrossing your legs, widening up, and simply taking up more space, has shown to increase people’s confidence. This links back to simple biology, in the animal kingdom, and is often shown in humans. When people feel confident, they tend to open up more, for example, having their arms in the air when they win something. Research has shown that even being in a ‘power pose’ for 2 minutes not only significantly increased testosterone and cortisol levels but also changed people’s willingness to gamble, despite it being a game of chance.
This research suggests that it is possible to ‘fake it till you make it’ when it comes to confidence. Acting in this way can influence your body to change your mind, and can make you overall much more confident as a person. In this Ted talk, it covers how people got these increases in certain hormones and the biological effects on the body. Amy Cuddy goes further in-depth into how you can influence your body to increase your personal confidence.
Exercise
Many sources agree on consistent exercise being a factor that can control confidence as well. This is because of the general way you see your own body, and your own perceived physical fitness. Doing exercise tends to make people feel much better about themselves, and research has shown correlations between an exercise done, perceived physical fitness, and self-esteem. Doing consistent exercise and taking care of your own body can help create a more positive image of yourself, which is highly useful for gaining more confidence.
Professional trainers often notice the effects of exercise on people they work with, often stating that they themselves feel growth in confidence whenever people reach their goals. This feeling is much stronger for the people that experience this success themselves. A common opinion among both trainers and psychologists is that exercise does help people’s confidence in general, but that it is extremely helpful, if not vital, to notice some success. Simply exercising will not always have the same effect. But when a person notices some success, or improvement in their exercise, this has shown to increase people’s confidence by leaps and bounds. Feeling good physically, can also increase a person’s overall confidence.
Self-compassion
Whenever you complete a task, remember to praise yourself. However small, maybe even insignificant, it’s extremely useful to simply give yourself the satisfaction of having done something, made an achievement. Acknowledging your own achievements is a sure way of increasing your overall self-confidence. While looking for improvements in everything you do is important, it is also just as important to recognise the successes in what you do. Research also supports this. Recognise when you’ve done something better than before, and regardless of overall outcome, find a way to compliment yourself.
On the flip side, if you fail at something, accept it graciously. It never helps to beat yourself up over any kind of failure, as this will often lead to less overall confidence in your own abilities. Recognize that things aren’t always going to be perfect. As mentioned earlier, try to look for things you did well anyways, while still understanding that it could have gone better. Improving for next time definitely isn’t a bad thing, and would definitely help (after all, practice helps confidence too!) for the future. In fact, one of the best ways to get over failure is to laugh. Even if it’s not funny, laughing is often a great way to downplay the emotional impact of failing. Just don’t beat yourself up over it, that doesn’t help.
Feedback
Get some validation, get some feedback from others. While it may seem conceited to some to gain personal confidence through external validation, other people are a great tool for helping to build confidence in one’s own abilities and boost your personal perception. The need to belong and the need for social gain is a fundamental motivation for humans, found from many classic studies on the topic. “Doing a kindness produces the single most reliable increase in momentary well-being than any other exercise we have tested.”, said Martin Seligman, a famous psychologist. This quote counts both for the person giving the kindness and the person on the receiving end. Getting external help has often proven to be one of the most efficient ways to gain confidence or motivation.
Also if you’re uncertain about doing anything, much like in the ‘new experiences’ section, one of the best ways to get over personal fear is get encouragement from peers or other people. The certainty of others can be used in these types of situations to get over personal uncertainty and gain a lot of confidence. As Gruenfeld said, “The White House Project finds, for example, that many women need to be told they should run for office before deciding to do so. Men do not show this pattern of needing others’ validation or encouragement”. Typical men. But in other regards, external validation can be useful in getting off the fence, or even overcoming initial anxiety. Don’t go so far into the realm of peer pressure though, that doesn’t help you.
No comparisons
When trying to become much more confident with yourself, do not compare yourself to other people, and stay focused on yourself. Comparison to other people will often result in self-degradation as you try to match yourself with other people. Research has found strong links between the envy people feel of others and the amount of self-confidence they feel. Even comparing yourself to others with the purpose of improvement with benchmarking or mimicking, oftentimes, it is hard to not see yourself as worse in comparison. To stop this, it is essential to focus only on yourself when rating your ability for anything.
Also in the same vein, it is important to combine this tip with the tip of self-compassion. While focusing more on yourself, it is equally important to be kind to yourself. Without focusing on others as much, it is much easier to compliment yourself in the small improvements you may make. Practice comparing to your past self, and finding everything better now. This can definitely help to increase your confidence.
Embrace doubt
It’s important to realize that not everything will go according to plan, and it is important to accept the feelings of doubt you may have over anything. A little nervousness helps with whatever you are doing. Regardless, if you wait until you’re 100% confident, there’s a chance you’ll never do something. Giving yourself the leeway to mess up, embrace doubt, and simply try will allow for much more confidence in the future.
However you go about this, whether it’s through rationalization of your emotions, employing a ‘just do it’ strategy or something in between, it is important to move past your own feelings of self-doubt and simply act. On top of this, it’s not like some nervousness isn’t beneficial. Being nervous, having some feelings of doubt might even help you out. So when you next feel overly anxious about something, find a way to do it, and not get in your own way. Even if things go wrong, the way to confidence is to start, and as mentioned earlier, to get some practice in the area you’re nervous about.