What is self-confidence and how to increase it?


Hello everyone,

Self-confidence is probably the most important thing in life so as to acquire new skills and be successful.

On the whole, we can easily say that everybody on planet earth needs more confidence. What I mean by that, even though you are proficient at something or great in any activity, you can always increase your self-confidence.

It is endless actually, you must work on it all the time in order to make it go through the roof.

As I have already said in several articles success is 80% psychology 20% the mechanics. Psychology is emotion, thoughts, beliefs, attitude, motivation…

So even if you are the best tennis player in the world, psychology is what makes you succeed or not. At that level each champion is more or less as good as the competitor in front of him or her. Neither of them is streets ahead of the other, psychology mainly makes the difference. It is the reason why they all have mental coaches in order to overcome some hurdles, and that really makes the difference.

What is self-confidence?

Self-confidence is a psychology aspect which allows anyone to do something easily, without fear, and without thinking he might fail. High level of self-confidence makes you achieve anything in life, low level of self-confidence makes you probably fail.

How can you acquire self-confidence?

There are two main ways so as to acquire self-confidence. One of them is experience, the other way is mark of gratitude.


By doing the same action over and over and over again, you will be more and more confident and proficient. I explained that in my article “The four steps of success” (have a look at it). In doing so over and over again you get unconscious competence, things are done automatically, naturally, like your own language, you do not think about it.

You are unconsciously competent, it’s autopilot. If I ask you, can you tie your shoelaces, you bend over and you tie your shoelaces without thinking, you have acquired a high level of self-confidence thanks to experience.

Mark of gratitude

Receiving marks of gratitude, enables anyone to acquire a great deal of self-confidence likewise. Remind you when you were little, if your parents gave you a crowd of signs of recognition, encouragement, their behaviour then have helped you expand your self-confidence, for your entire life.

It turns out to be that during your childhood, if you were used to receiving countless signs of recognition or none of them, as a result your self-confidence today is logically high or low.

In fact, your childhood, your education, your parents, your teachers, your entourage, and so forth have given you the chance to get a great self-confidence or nothing whatsoever. Self-consciousness stems from your childwood and does not help you at all increase your self-confidence.

What can be done in order to expand self-confidence?

First as I have just said, you must develop your “experience”. The more you work on it the better and the faster it is. Do what you have to do in your domain, learn more, follow through and never give up, your self-confidence is bound to step up. Do it on a daily basis and you will soon reap the benefit of it.

Remind you when you first got dressed, or when you first learnt how to go cycling. At first you were not confident at all, you were maybe afraid of doing certain things but step by step your self-confidence increased. Therefore you became confident as well as competent.

In a nutshell, when you do things automatically, you are confident, think it over.

There is a whole slew of things you do automatically, driving home, walking, speaking your own language, eating, plenty of other things, you do not think about it any longer, it is automatic. In doing so over and over again you have built a high level of self-confidence.

Experience means TAKE ACTION right now, even if you are NOT proficient or confident yet. You want to learn a foreign language? Take action, take the plunge, and experience will make skills, proficiency and self-confidence occur all a long, it is how it works.

If you are not confident it stands for you doubt, in order to handle that, you then need more faith and more action:


It is called confidence competence loop.

Another powerful technique: use you positive past.

Constantly acknowledge your positive past, it develops high level of confidence. Write down what you have successfully accomplished and you feel as a fulfillment, read it regularly.

Another tip, is knowing what you want and tell others what you want and what you do not want, it is another key. You have to say what you THINK (politely and with diplomacy), assert yourself.

In that way people are going to see you differently, by telling them what you want and what you think, you are going to improve your self-confidence. Above and beyond, self-confidence does beget self-confidence.

I would like to give you some additional useful tools, one of them is your physiology and your posture. Physiology first, if you are in good shape, with a high level of energy you are more likely to succeed.

Energy will make you succeed and acquire confidence likewise, it will give you more positive and powerful emotions, and positive emotions will make you do anything you want with the right attitude (motivation, perseverance, determination, desire…)

Here are some different things you have to implement, and you will get much more confident. Remember that self-confidence is endless, during your entire life you have to enhance it.

We have seen together there are a few simple techniques to do and to apply, it is not rocket science, thus just do it and you will see great results.

Ta-ta for now

Take care

F&F Consulting
Communication Marketing Consulting

“Follow your dreams believe in yourself – your life will never be the same”

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