Confidence

Confidence is belief or faith in the reliability of a person or object. Trust in one’s own powers is known as self-confidence. Confidence in someone or something is based on experience and is therefore strengthened over time. Self-confidence is an important aspect of mental health, allowing people to participate in society by seizing opportunities, overcoming challenges, and managing responsibilities. A chronic lack of self-confidence can seriously impede one’s ability to lead a healthy and productive life. Self-confidence is distinct from self-esteem, which is the evaluation people make of their own worth.

What Is Confidence?

The word confidence derives from the Latin word confidentem, which means "firmly trusting" or "bold." Confidence is the human belief that another person or object can be trusted to fulfill a purpose. Confidence is built over time through experience. The more often people or objects prove to be reliable, the more confidence is placed in them.

Confidence is most commonly referred to in the context of self-confidence, which is simply trust of one’s own abilities to carry out certain tasks. Just as confidence in others takes time to develop, self-confidence also results from steadily learning to trust oneself to handle a variety of life situations.

However, self-confidence is a resource that is not guaranteed to last after being acquired. Certain mentally traumatic circumstances can destroy a person’s self-confidence and turn formerly simple tasks into enormous challenges. It is, therefore, important to maintain a healthy amount of self-confidence throughout life so that obstacles can be overcome without suffering from major mental stress.

Innate Self-Confidence

Employing self-confidence as a mental tool for facing life’s complications is a natural ability with survivalist benefits. From infancy, humans enjoy a form of self-confidence simply called self-love. This love of self develops soon after birth from sexual energy that collects in a kind of mental pool. It is the basis of people’s general appreciation of themselves throughout their lives.

Self-love is also known as healthy narcissism. This kind of self-confidence must be distinguished from traditional narcissism, an extreme form of self-absorption and selfishness that can strain relationships with others. People manifest healthy narcissism in their enjoyment of being alive. It is what generates the feelings of well-being people experience by carrying out life’s general activities. Healthy narcissism ensures people love themselves enough to want to survive as long as possible.

Loss of Confidence

The self-love that all people possess from birth can be strengthened or weakened throughout life by positive or negative experiences. Events such as failing at doing something or being criticized or rejected can seriously impact people’s mental states and cause them to lose some or all of their self-confidence.

Being deficient in self-confidence can present a range of problems. When people doubt their abilities to face challenges, completing many of life’s daily tasks can seem enormously difficult. Additionally, people who lack confidence may fail to take advantage of desired opportunities—such as applying for jobs or meeting new people—because of fear.

In extreme cases, harrowing events can so destroy people’s self-confidence that they lose even their innate self-love. Without their basic healthy narcissism, these people can become severely depressed. They feel no self-worth and may even begin to hate themselves. All of these combined factors may lead people experiencing depression eventually to suppress their self-preservation instincts and commit suicide.

Building Confidence

Those whose wills to live remain consistently stronger than their self-hatred or depression can recover their self-confidence. This is a mental process that takes time to complete. With enough time and effort, however, people can learn to be confident in their own abilities once again.

One way to build self-confidence is to revitalize self-esteem. Despite being similarly named, self-esteem and self-confidence are not the same. While self-confidence refers to people’s trust in themselves to interact effectively with the world, self-esteem is the estimation people make of their own value.

The word esteem derives from the Latin word aestimare, meaning "to appraise or estimate." People with a healthy self-esteem see themselves as having intrinsic worth. They like and respect themselves and do not compare their own accomplishments to those of others. Achieving higher social status through income or possessions does not concern them. Rather, those with healthy self-esteem work always to improve themselves and their lives. They welcome new experiences and are not demoralized by failure.

However, high self-esteem does not necessarily correlate with high self-confidence. Someone who is extremely confident in achieving various life objectives may simultaneously have low self-esteem. In an ideal mental state, a person would have both high self-esteem and healthy self-confidence.

Experts recommend a variety of methods for people seeking to build their self-esteem and self-confidence. The most direct way to correct a lack of self-worth is to receive counseling from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional. Through talk therapy, people can learn to accept and overcome their problems and discuss new ways of viewing themselves.

Since counseling may not suit everyone, however, some experts have suggested other techniques people can practice on their own to improve their self-confidence. One way is for people to reject all negative thoughts they have about themselves and instead focus on the qualities that make them unique.

Physical changes can also affect a person’s mental state. Sleeping enough hours every night, maintaining proper hygiene, and eating a healthy diet can also increase self-esteem, which, ideally, will lead to greater self-confidence. As people believe in themselves more, they will be willing to take more risks. Their confidence should grow after each success, while failure should make them only want to try again.

Bibliography

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Burton, Neel. "Self-Confidence Versus Self-Esteem." Psychology Today, 24 June 2024, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201510/self-confidence-versus-self-esteem. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.

Fox, Marci G. "The Key to Confidence." Psychology Today, 1 July 2009, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/think-confident-be-confident/200907/the-key-confidence. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.

Keitlen, Seymour. "Self-Love." The Psychology of Self-Esteem. Llumina, 2004, pp. 1–2.

"Links Between Confidence and Mental Health Laid Bare." University of Dundee, 30 Sept. 2022, www.dundee.ac.uk/stories/links-between-confidence-and-mental-health-laid-bare. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.