A Practical Way To Build Lasting Self-Confidence

Do you ever feel shitty about yourself? It happens all the time to most of us.

It seems like everyone is building billion-dollar businesses, becoming YouTube stars, or making it big on Instagram.

Deep down, most of us also know that it’s 99% bullshit. But at the same time, we see all these people living awesome lives, and we don’t care if it’s real or not.

Whether you want money, fame, travel, or none of that stuff, it doesn’t matter because it always comes down to this: How confident are you?

• Are you confident enough to ignore the naysayers and pursue you dreams?
• Are you confident enough to resist outside pressure and stay grounded?

You see? Self-confidence is important if you want to live life on your terms — no matter what you’re after, a lack of confidence will always hold you back.

Research even shows that a lack of self-confidence is associated with:

• Depression
• loneliness and feeling left out
• Lower academic achievement
• Lower life satisfaction

I’ve researched self-confidence for years, and the most practical theory that I’ve found is something called “confidence by competence.”

In 1952, Bernice Milburn Moore published an article called Self-Confidence For Competence in the journal of Educational Leadership. In the article, she discusses self-confidence for teachers, but I’ve found it useful in all settings of life.

If you look up the definition of self-confidence, you always get more or less the same description. Moore describes it as “a trust in self, a faith in one’s ability to be able to meet situations as they may arise.”

But more importantly, she says:

“Self-confidence without competence is of as little use as is competence without self-confidence.”

It means this: Going to business school is competence. But using your business competence to lead a company is self-confidence plus competence. They are only useful when combined.