Building self confidence -
and a better life

Part 1 of 5. Social Confidence

Confidence skills can be learned and building self confidence is something you can achieve.

What are the benefits of having a high level of self confidence? You can experience greater fulfillment in personal relationships, higher levels of success at work and have an overall better feeling about yourself and life in general.

Self confidence and self esteem are closely related. After you have read this page, take some time to read about building self esteem.

There are at least five elements that contribute to your level of confidence and they are:

how we act in social situations
how we act with our peers
how we treat others of different status than ourselves
how we respond to performing in front of others
how we think of ourselves

How we think and behave in these five areas will have a big impact on our level of self confidence. Let's take a brief tour of each of these five elements of confidence. Developing all five will greatly enhance our self confidence. Even developing just one element at a time will be beneficial for building self confidence.

Confidence in social situations

Being confident socially helps us to be ourselves when talking with one or more other people. Whether it is at a party, with a small group of friends after work or with a total stranger, social confidence will allow us to share our thoughts and feelings in a way that helps build relationships.

With a healthy level of social confidence we can enjoy the presence of others and others will enjoy being in our presence.

Building Social Confidence Skills

While there is no magic solution to building self confidence, there are some things that can be done on a self-help level. Practice these things and you will begin to develop better social confidence skills.

1. Be aware of your own mood and feelings. When a mood or feeling takes you by surprise, make time to think about what triggered your response. Try to understand why you think or feel the way you do about situations you encounter in life.

Don't dwell on any failures of the past, rather use awkward social experiences as a prompt to dig deeper into your our emotions. When you understand more about how you react to certain situations you will be better able to manage your reaction and discuss the same type of situation in a more mature manner.

2. Be aware of and respect the mood and feelings of others. Stepping on the feelings of others and not respecting their mood is not going to help. Although you do not want to attend any pity parties, being aware of others mood and feelings and responding in a gentle manner will demonstrate that you care.

Showing that you care will lead to others being more open. They will lay out their thoughts and feeling knowing that you will not trample all over them. Use this to build and strengthen the relationship. Show other people that you can be trusted with their feelings and thoughts and will greatly improve your own social confidence.

3. Live in the present. Dwelling on the past, especially past failures and bad experiences, is a guaranteed way of damaging relationships. Although your own feelings and emotions need to be respected, there is no need to keep going over old ground.

Friends usually have the capacity to hear you share about your past, but no one wants to stay back there. Bring your life into the present and focus on the positive aspects of the future.

Share your current successes and future hopes and dreams. You will not only be doing yourself a favor, you will be helping others along the self-development path.

4. Be open. As relationships develop, be prepared to open up more of yourself. Keep the above dot point in mind and limit the past negatives to a few. If they serve as a marker in your life and help demonstrate just how far you have developed then do include them.

Share more of your inner desires and dreams as you get to know people. Being open and honest about who you are and where you plan to go shows a personal level of commitment to a relationship. It can also help you to fine-tune your life as others reflect on who you are and where you are going. It is like a reality check.

Letting others into your life is as refreshing as opening the doors and windows after a long cold winter.

It not only lets in the fresh air, but as the light shines in, you become aware of those things that need attention.

Some things need to be dusted. You might even find some things that need to be thrown out as they were there just to provide you comfort during the long winter.