With self-confidence you trust your abilities, feel
Building worthy and accept yourself (including accepting
your weaknesses, flaws and mistakes). Use the
Self-Confidence strategies below to develop healthy habits that boost
self-confidence. With confidence, you'll enjoy life
more and worry less about what others think of you!
Be your own cheer leader. Learn from mistakes and failures.
Use encouraging self-talk to motivate yourself to Life involves trial and error and failure provides
keep going with difficult tasks, to keep learning opportunities to learn. If you've made a mistake or failed
new skills, to push yourself to improve. on a task, acknowledge it and learn from it. What worked
well? What can you do differently next time?
Here are some examples of encouraging self-talk:
"You have what it takes to achieve your goals". Have you met anyone who never made a mistake? It's
"You can do this" human to make mistakes; no one's perfect so don't be
"You've coped with difficult things before, you can do it again" too hard on yourself - you're a work in progress!
Remind yourself of past successes. Turn down the volume of your
Record your successes and achievements on
internal critic.
a list and when your confidence is low read it
Your inner critic (the voice inside your head that
to remind yourself that you can succeed.
criticises you) destroys your confidence. Notice
when your self-talk is critical and replace it with
Acknowledge how you contributed to the success with effort or skill supportive, encouraging self-talk.
rather than attributing success to luck or other external factors.
Imagine you're talking to a friend and use that same
nurturing, supportive tone with yourself.
Don't compare yourself to others.
Most people compare themselves to those who are better Accept compliments
than them in some way. This makes them feel inadequate.
Focus on personal bests, on building your strengths, or on graciously.
comparing yourself now to an earlier time noticing how
Instead of batting away compliments ("Oh,
you've improved over time.
that's nothing"), thank the person for
recognising something good about you or
If you have to, compare yourself to others who are better and
your behaviour.
worse on the attribute so you get a realistic picture of where you
stand. With practice, you'll increase your comfort with praise from others.
You may even learn to praise yourself!
Learn new skills. Set goals.
Set goals, make sure they're realistic, and
Stable, long-lasting confidence comes from
many sources. Don't just base yours on study take action to achieve them. You’ll develop
grades or appearance. As you master new a perception of yourself as someone who
skills, you'll grow in confidence. successfully gets things done.
Using 'To Do' lists keeps you on track and helps you to feel
successful as you check off completed tasks.
Face your fears.
Fear destroys confidence. You can build Use affirmations.
confidence by gradually exposing yourself to the
things you avoid out of fear. Start small and Changing critical self-talk doesn't happen
build up to more feared situations. automatically. You have to work hard to replace it
with supportive messages (also called
E.g., if you're afraid of being laughed at, deliberately give a wrong answer to
affirmations) like "I am enough", "I am worthy of
a question, wear odd socks or a silly hat! Once you discover that being love" or "I love and accept myself".
laughed at is not as bad as you thought it would be (that you can survive it), Display affirmations on your mirror or cupboards with post-it notes
you'll feel more confident just being yourself. so you repeat them to yourself every day.
Need some help to build your self-confidence? Make an appointment with a
Counsellor via the Counselling Portal: https://counselling.monashcollege.edu.au
More tips for These tips for confidence-boosting are from Barbara
Markway's The Self Confidence Workbook: A Guide
Boosting to Overcoming Self-Doubt and Improving Self-
Esteem. You can start your project for increasing
Self-Confidence your confidence today by buying a Journal to use for
these exercises.
Step by step towards confidence. Who's your support crew?
If you're wanting to be more confident in a particular Identify the people in your life who
way, try a small step first, see what happens, then encourage you, admire you and make you
try another step. Write down what small step you feel good about yourself. Write about what
will try tomorrow. they say and do that help you feel confident.
Use these same strategies to support and
encourage yourself.
Ask for feedback.
Get used to asking for feedback from others.
Try it with a friend - tell them you'll find it Be like your role model.
helpful to know how to improve in some way.
Identify someone in your life who is self-
It's not as scary as your think!
confident. Record in your journal their qualities
and behaviours that make them look confident.
Try and emulate what they do. It may feel
List your strengths. awkward at first, but with practice you will get
more comfortable acting in a confident manner.
Create a list of your skills. When you learn new
skills or think of other things you do well, add
them to the list. Think about what other skills you When self-doubt helps.
have that you're not acknowledging.
Record in your Journal times when self-doubt
was useful. E.g., it made you realise you hadn't
Achievements - big and small done enough preparation for a big task or you
needed more information to make a decision.
Every day, write down 3 things you did well. They
don't have to be great achievements - record
small tasks you completed too. E.g., remembering Failing well.
to wish a friend Happy Birthday, cooking a meal for
Being cautious helps you avoid mistakes but it
someone, tidying your bedroom, getting to every
also stops you trying and learning new things.
class on time!
Don't wait until everything is 100% perfect
before doing things. Taking small risks will help
you build your self-confidence
Fictional characters as inspiration
Keep a record of films and books with
characters who over-came difficult times to
Practice kindness.
succeed. Be inspired and motivated by them. Doing things for others stops you from focussing
Write about times you've succeeded when on your perceived flaws. But the real bonus is
things were difficult. that when you're helping others you're actually
helping yourself to feel good about you!
Failure is not all bad. Reality check.
Self-acceptance requires accepting your strengths
Describe one time that you thought you had and weaknesses. It builds confidence. Write about
failed in some way but then it later turned out your strengths (how they're helpful) and weaknesses
that the failure led to another achievement. (what they teach you) to develop a realistic and
accepting self-perception.
Your confidence playlist. Re-experience confidence.
Write in your journal about times when you felt
Write down the songs that make you feel confident,
confident. Include details, like what confidence
that help you keep going when things get tough. Add
felt like in your body, how you were talking to
songs to the list that make you feel like dancing.
yourself, what helped you feel confident?
Remember, you can create a sense of confidence!
Need some help to build your self-confidence? Make an appointment with a
Counsellor via the Counselling Portal: https://counselling.monashcollege.edu.au
