What is Confidence..?

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Life Coach Brittany, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.

Confidence is generally described as a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Self-confidence is having confidence in oneself. Arrogance or hubris in this comparison is having unmerited confidence—believing something or someone is capable or correct when they are not.

Confidence by those who study the subject is "the degree to which you think and “feel” your actions will achieve positive results." I’ve learned no matter how bad a a situation or experience, we will compare ourselves to others or to the achievements of others. I have expressed very often to my clients that a common road to low self esteem starts with comparing ourselves to others.

Many mix up the difference between confidence and self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to general feelings about yourself, while confidence refers to your belief and ability to feel that you can perform a task successfully. Often you can often have good self-esteem but no confidence that you can complete a certain task or be successful at it. Therefore the better you feel about yourself, the easier it is to build confidence.

I feel we live in a society of constant competition and comparison with all the reality TV shows and the standards or norms we all believe we “should” be living up to. Who says what exactly those standards should be?? Often we allow the voices of others in and even our own master head voice. I take a different approach with clients and it yields some very different results.

I start by looking at confidence with how each of my clients have be conditioned to the beliefs they carry and how they want to evolve. I feel I am the catalyst to bring the change of confidence with clients by the realization that your actions influence your results. We all have the ability for change as long as you are willing to make the choice and effort. Accepting that you have the ability to influence outcomes creates a sense of self control, this becomes the path to confidence.

Many parents praise their kids which is excellent and some will over do it creating a child that is overly confident, leaving no room for mistakes. Other parents do not give enough praise and can lead to learned helplessness or low self worth. I have seen both and either unbalanced praise type is capable to resulting in a distorted sense of self, a lot of anxiety, and most often low self esteem.

School systems are similar in that they praise student by standards again which pigeon holes kids in believing “good enough” is from achieving what the system defines as “achievement”. I often do not agree with this and have experienced it myself having a learning disability and the difficulty of keeping up with the expectations or standards of what pace learning should be, creates a barrier of frustration that gets in the way of self esteem.

Not everyone learns the same and not everyone learns at the same pace, yet again and again we become a society quick to judge what “success” should look like in order to be accepted. The end result in my opinion, is low self esteem and a lack in confidence.

I have learned that just because you are different doesn’t mean you are less, and being different absolutely does not mean you cannot be successful!!