Understanding self-confidence -

EQF LEVEL (INTERNAL REFERENCE):   3

keywords 

1 Self Confidence

2 Skills

3 Attitude

4  Ability

5 Progress

Introduction: 

By the end of this LU, you will have the glimpse to understand what self confidence is.

Content

What is self confidence ?. We hear very often about self-confidence, but sometimes it is not as easy to define it. We can say that self confidence is the way in which we relate to our skills and abilities. Self confidence is an attitude rather than a skill or a knowledge. Self confidence is trusting in yourself, knowing what are your strengths and your weaknesses. Having self confidence means that you set realistic expectations and goals about yourself, that you can communicate assertively and that you can handle criticism.

Having a low self confidence leads to:

• Having self doubt
• Being passive or submissive
• Having less confidence in other
• Feeling unloved or worthless

As we said before, self confidence in the way we relate with our abilities and skills, but this is not a linear relation. Being skilled in some area does not mean that we are going to be self confident in that area. For example, a beginner in some sport can be self confident with her or his upgrading skills in that area, and a professional can lack it, due to non realistic goals. The relation between our skills and our self confidence is based on our perceptions about them. Obviously, if we have high skills in some area, it would be easier to have a good perception about them. But that relation is not linear. 

So, how can we improve our perceptions about our skills?

• Setting realistic goals. Rome was not built in a day. Learning a new skill requires time and effort. Setting small goals during that time is key. If we want to perform like a highly skilled person in some skill that we are learning, we will have a bad perception about ourselves. The same will apply to our weakness.  

• Recognize your strengths and  progress.  Everyone has their strengths and progres. Even the people who outperform in some areas will be bad in something. You should have to think about what your progress is.

• Treat yourself with kindness. You will fail. Admit it. Everybody fails sometimes. It's A fact. The main difference between people with high self confidence and low self confidence is the way they act when they fail. Whenever you fail, treat yourself with kindness and don't dwell on failure.

• Recognize that past negative experiences don't dictate your future. Try to be more proactive in this area.

• Stop making assumptions about people. Also, stop doing it about yourself.

• Express your feelings. Do it with care, and assertiveness. Also, whenever you feel that intense emotions are taking over yourself, try to slow down.

Self confidence is highly linked to self esteem, but they are different concepts. Self esteem is a general sense of ourselves. Self Confidence is focused on specific areas. Someone can be highly self confident in their abilities playing a certain instrument and not having great confidence doing a certain sport. But overall, being low confident in a certain area can contagiate 

Psychologist Paul Koeck developed an exercise to have a better glimpse about our self confidence. This exercise consists in writing down those activities that we can perform due to our competences. Then we will have to reflect about how we have used those competences in those activities ,and how it has been useful.

Another tip for gaining awareness about our self confidence is to write in a narrative way how we reached a goal.  Also it can be a situation we are proud about. Once we have written it we will underline it in 2 different colors. The first color will be used to mark the means that we used for reaching that goal. The second color will be used to point down all the positive messages  that we gave ourselves and the ones we received from the others.

https://tipshogar.com/pdfs/terapia-breve.pdf

https://www.usf.edu/student-affairs/counseling-center/top-concerns/what-is-self-confidence.aspx#:~:text=Self%2Dconfidence%20is%20an%20attitude,assertively%2C%20and%20can%20handle%20criticism.