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If you want to improve your life in every single way, then boosting your self-confidence is one of the best ways to do that. With low self-esteem you’re going to find yourself feeling bad about yourself and everything you do will be less enjoyable. 

At the same time though, low self-esteem is something that you will ‘give off’ to others. This radiates from you whether you mean for it to or not and in turn, this can weaken the impact you have on others. Looking to get a promotion? Low self-esteem will communicate that you aren’t sure you can do what needs to be done to your employers and they will feel less confident about giving you that boost in responsibility. 

Want to succeed in your love life? Low self-esteem sends a powerful signal that you are not a good catch. Clearly you do not think you are a good catch, so why would that other person think you are a good catch? 

This can eventually lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you act as though you are worthless and if you don’t take chances, then people will treat you as though you’re worthless and you won’t find opportunities. You will thus get further and further behind your contemporaries and that will only worsen your self-esteem. 

So how can you get out of this rut? What is the answer? 

In this guide, we’re going to take a look at what you can do to boost your self-confidence and how you can become that powerful alpha male, or that dominant wonder-woman that you have the potential to be.

 

Why Self-Confidence Will Change Your Life Forever

First, let’s take a look at why self-confidence is so important and how it can change everything about your life.

You know when you were younger and you fancied the boy/girl at school? You told your Mum and she said: it’s all about confidence. 

You probably thought that this was a lie: that really it was all about looks or money. Saying it’s ‘all about confidence’ and you should ‘just be yourself’ is car bumper-sticker advice. It’s a nice platitude that is ultimately just a lie to make us feel better about ourselves. Right? Wrong! 

Self-confidence really is what it is all about. I know some guys who are unattractive in the conventional sense, not wealthy and not in good physical shape either. Yet they get loads of girls and the reason for that is simple: they are outgoing and fun.

This is why ‘bad guys’ will famously get all the girls. These are the guys that don’t care what others think of them and that do whatever they want/. This comes across as confidence and it happens to be very attractive. 

The same is true for women. A woman who is a 6 out of ten can beat an 8 out of ten if she knows how to flirt (which comes from confidence) and if she dresses to impress (which comes from confidence!). 

There is a caveat: if you lack social skills then no amount of confidence will save you. That is something else you need to work on (and you’ll learn here). Otherwise, it’s all about confidence. 

The same goes for your career and the same goes for the way you fit in with your friends. 

We all know people who are supremely confident and we know that they are highly attractive and highly successful. We all want to be like those people. 

And the reason for this is that confidence sends the signal that you are higher in the hierarchy than others. In the dating game, we want to date people who we believe are ‘out of our league’. 

This makes us feel good about ourselves and from a biological perspective, it is the best way to ensure our DNA thrives.

If someone has confidence, this tells us that they must be an evolutionary catch. On an unconscious level we are drawn to them because we think it will boost our status. Meanwhile though, someone who thinks nothing of themselves will be ignored and will be taken advantage of. 

It sounds harsh but unfortunately, this is just human nature. 

How To Boost Your Confidence 

So how do you go about getting that boost in confidence?

There are two different avenues to take and these are external and internal. External confidence is much easier to acquire but it’s the internal confidence that will make the real difference to who you are and how you feel about yourself. 

We’ll start with the easier, shallower option and then move onto the more profound change we can make. 

Shallow Confidence Boost 

The first thing you can do to give yourself an immediate boost in confidence is to change what you can about yourself to align yourself more with what you think a successful individual should be. For example, most of us feel that people who are more attractive and smarter are more successful. One of the biggest reasons that we might feel bad about ourselves is that we don’t like the way we look. 

So, the easy step one is to fix that! 

One of the best ways to change the way we feel about our looks is to make some kind large change. A makeover might sound like a cheesy way to give ourselves a confidence boost but it really does work. 

The key here is to be bold and to change things about yourself that you would normally be shy to change. You want to make changes that people will actually notice so that when you walk into a room, heads turn. You want people to think of you in a different way than they did before and you want to feel like a new person. 

So, for women, wearing a bright red lipstick, wearing taller heals, or wearing a lower-cut top can all help, especially if these are things that you wouldn’t normally do. For guys, this might mean wearing a suit jacket, it might mean getting a much shorter hair-cut, or it might wearing a tank top to show off your arms. 

Most of us can think of some outfits that we dare not wear but that we know look good on confident, attractive people. Guess what? You’re attractive too and the only thing missing is the confidence. Wear that outfit and you’ll look that confident and that will make you feel much more confident. 

Of course, you should still be you. So, don’t wear things you don’t like or that make you feel like someone else.

But just try to get outside your comfort zone and perhaps surprise people’s expectations. Likewise, take some time to invest in yourself when it comes to your clothes and your grooming. Spend a little more money on better quality fabrics, take the time to do your hair and to moisturize. If you show that you think you’re ‘worth it’ then this sends powerful signals too. 

And if all of this is beyond you, consider hiring a stylist! There are people out there who do this for a living and who can help you feel amazing. Women: consider going on a makeup course! 

Now enjoy those heads turn when you walk into the office and work that look you have.

Intrinsic Confidence 

This latter example of confidence building works because it creates a ‘virtuous cycle’. In other works, one good thing is going to lead to another. You’ll dress more confidently and that will make other people treat you differently. In turn this will make you feel more confident and you will start to become more confident.

But if you want to truly upgrade your confidence then you need to do more work on that internal feeling of contentment.

And you know where this comes from? It comes from learning to stop worrying what other people think.

This is what confidence really is. The most confident person in the room is the person who spreads themselves out in a way that isn’t done to make them ‘look more impressive’ but which is done in a way that makes them feel comfortable regardless of what others think. 

The truly impressive person is the person who isn’t afraid of upsetting someone with what they say. They aren’t about to agree with the general consensus just so that they can feel liked. They speak their mind – while of course still being respectful to others. 

So how can you get to this stage? Where you genuinely stop caring what others think?

The answer is that you have to know yourself and you have to know what’s important to you. Spend some time reflecting and finding what your life’s ‘goal’ is, what your true purpose is and what you want to accomplish. 

Once you’ve done this, you will be able to start working toward that goal and focussing your energy on those things that matter to you. And once you’ve done that, you will be able to shrug off the insults or the opinions of others. 

People are teasing you for being short? What does it matter when your goal is to become a great writer?

Not sure if a group of people like you? What does it matter when you know who your true friends are?

Knowing yourself and judging yourself by your own standards will make you immune to the judgements of others and will help you to strengthen your resolve and your determination. 

And now, you will become someone who is much more interesting and much more engaging. Your passion will be apparent in the way you speak and the fact that you aren’t so worried about what other people think of you will make you much more enigmatic and interesting. People you aren’t trying to please everyone around you, other people are going to start trying to please you.

 And this is the route of supreme, bulletproof confidence.

 

Training Your Confidence 

Like everything else, this confidence won’t appear overnight. It needs to be trained and it needs to be practiced. And this works just like training for anything else: on the basis of the SAID principle. 

SAID stands for ‘Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands’. In other words, we become better at doing whatever it is that we do often. If you want to be more confident and stop worrying about what others think, then you need to subject yourself to things that you would normally find daunting and continually reinforce your positive feelings. 

If you are usually too shy and unconfident to speak in public for example, this is going to be the perfect way to practice your new esteem. Force yourself to speak up in front of people. Better yet, force yourself to get it wrong on purpose so that you learn to face the music. Remind yourself: it doesn’t matter what these people think and the worst that can happen is that you bemuse a stranger. 

Practice talking to people and striking up conversation and always remind yourself that it doesn’t matter what happens. You are developing yourself into the person that you want to be and that is all that matters. You can even try joining classes – a stand-up comedy class or a drama class can be a great way to lose inhibitions for example. 

Meditation and CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) can also help you to learn to react appropriately to the comments and reactions of others and to focus more on what really matters to you.

If you can do that, you’ll find that you eventually start to like yourself. You’re meeting the standards you set for yourself and you are thriving as a result. 

In order to dress in that bold and more colourful way, you need to stop worrying about what others might think and instead focus on how it makes you feel. 

And once you get a little bit of confidence like this, you’ll find that it begins to grow and grow into something huge. Everything you do will be reinforced by those around you and each win will only give you more confidence to focus on more challenges.