People tend to confuse the terms confidence and self-esteem and even use them interchangeably.
So let's start by defining them properly.
I want you to think for a moment how would you define confidence?
If you couldn't come up with a clear definition right away it means that the topic is not completely clear to you.
So how could you ever say that you have confidence or that you don't?
How can you be so sure that you don't have self-esteem if you cannot define it immediately?
If you think of a car you know what a car looks like and you can tell immediately if you want one or not.
So the first thing you want to do in your transformation into confidence and self-esteem is to avoid being vague when you speak about it.
So what is confidence and self-esteem?
Confidence is not something you have or that you don't have.
Confidence is the state of being certain that whatever you're thinking of is true.
Let's see some examples.
How confident are you to say that you went to school when you were younger?
How confident are you to say that you are not the tallest person on earth?
How confident are you to say that I am a coach and that you are on this program?
Very much,
Aren't you?
That's because the things that I have made you think are basically true and since you know that there is a sense of confidence and congruency inside of you.
Confidence comes from the Latin word fidere,
To trust.
And to be self-confident is to trust in oneself and in particular in one's ability to engage successfully or at least adequately with the world.
Now self-esteem is a whole other thing.
Esteem is derived from the Latin estimare,
Meaning to appraise,
To value,
To rate,
To estimate.
And self-esteem is our cognitive and emotional valuation of our own worth.
People with healthy self-esteem do not need to prop themselves up with external things such as income,
Status,
Or depend on things such as alcohol and drugs or sex.
On the contrary,
They treat themselves with respect and take care of their own health,
Their community,
And their environment.
Confidence can also be called trust,
Faith,
Certainty,
Conviction.
But certainty about what exactly?
Trust what exactly?
That is the real question.
When you say I am not confident,
You are talking about nothing really and therefore you're generalizing it to everything,
Which is a very good strategy to lower your self-esteem and to motivate you to do anything.
A completely different thing is to say I am not confident that I can get a job or I am not confident that I can find someone to share my life with.
Now we have something to work on.
Sometimes just by putting it into words and listening to yourself saying those things,
You simply see the flaws in what you're saying and you can come up immediately with a different course of action with many ideas.
