How to build self-confidence that is unshakable

How to build self-confidence that is unshakeable? Can one even go from being a person with low self-confidence to becoming a highly confident person? 

Yes, absolutely! 

But here, I am not talking about only the outer self-confidence that gets portrayed from a person’s outward physical appearance, but more about the inner self-confidence in our abilities and in the silent knowing of our capabilities and worth.

Here in this post, I am talking about the self-confidence that is required to go confidently in the direction of our dreams.

I believe when this inner self-confidence comes, you don’t have to worry too much about how you are being portrayed by the world or how you should appear in order to look more confident, because you know you have it and no one can take that away from you.

But if right now you are finding it hard to believe and you are someone who struggles with self-doubt, then this post is for you. 

This is not to think that a confident person is someone who never suffers from self-doubt or never reaches a point where they question themselves. 

That is a universal feeling. But what it means to have unshakable self-confidence is to keep going despite the self-doubt because you have the silent inner voice that tells you that you can do it and so you believe in it. 

This required an in-depth post, so here I share about:

• What it means to be confident
• How low self-confidence looks like 
• Why do we lack self-confidence
• How to build self-confidence 

You might think you lack determination. You might think you lack discipline, but what you really lack is self-confidence. 

I believe that if you only take care of your self-confidence, everything else will take care of on its own. 

This post is all about why I say so. But first, let’s start with what self-confidence really means.

P.S some of these links are affiliate links. If you purchase from my link, I’ll earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

What is true self-confidence?

Self-confidence is the silent reassurance you have about your potential and about what you can do. 

It need not be loud. It need not show off. It is simply the gentle yet strong belief you have in yourself that you can do a particular thing, and do it well.

Self-confidence is knowing your capabilities. It is not needing for approval of anyone, but being calm by your own reassurance. 

Self-confidence is simply having faith in yourself. It is to trust yourself fully. 

One of the best quotes that portray self-confidence at its best is this, 

This is self-confidence at its finest. 

But what about low self-confidence?

What does low confidence look like?

Here is what low self-confidence looks like-

• Saying “I can’t” even before starting something. 
  
  
• Not believing you can finish something after you have started
  
  
• Not believing that you can do something.
  
  
• Constantly waiting for other people’s approval and validation
  
  
• Comparing your journey with others 
  
  
• Talking poorly about yourself and your abilities to yourself and to others. 
  
  
• Struggling to take action and procrastinating.
  
  
• Struggling to make concrete decisions.
  
  
• Looking for excuses and external blame instead of taking responsibility. 
  
  
• Continuously doubting yourself even after you start.
  
  
• Fear of being criticized  
  
  
• Fear of being judged 
  
  
• Fear of failing 

Why do we lack self-confidence?

We lack self-confidence because we stopped believing in ourselves.

Maybe you promised yourself you would lose weight this year, but you didn’t continue working out. 

Maybe you promised yourself you would have your dream home by your 30s, but you still haven’t paid off your loans. 

Maybe you promised yourself you would be successful by now, but you feel you are still so far behind. 

You see, we all promise ourselves a lot of things. Some of the promises are big and some small.

Most of the time we might feel nothing and even joke about it or share memes about it, but you must know that it matters because silently YOU (your subconscious mind) knows everything.

And when we keep on breaking the promises we made to ourselves, no matter how big or small, slowly our trust in ourselves starts fading. 

Our relationship with ourselves requires as much the same effort and nourishment as our relationship with other people, maybe even more.

But the point here is that-

The more we don’t keep up with the promises we made, the more our self-confidence gets shattered to the point where we even stop dreaming, stop setting goals and simply accept that we are stuck!

But there is a way to rebuild your confidence again. I say rebuild, because you, me, all of us all have confidence already inside us. 

It was there when we were kids and we so confidently spoke of what we wanted to be when we grew up without any hesitation. 

Only when we started growing up, did we stop believing. 

But as I said, you can build your self-confidence again, because it is already there. We just need to manifest it and rebuild it again. 

And here are all the ways how

How to build self-confidence 

1. Start small and specific

Start small- Start with a very small goal that you know you can absolutely achieve. Make it very easy for you to keep that promise to yourself.

Be specific- You might think you couldn’t follow the promises you made earlier because you didn’t have the determination, the drive and discipline, but the problem actually does not reside in you, but in your goal setting. 

Most of the time, we set vague goals. 

“I want to be successful”- but what is success really for you?

“I want to lose weight”- but how? 

“I want to become a successful YouTuber”- but how?

We set goals in the outcome, instead of the process. 

But when you start small and be specific, your goals should look like this

“I will work out legs for 10 minutes today at 6 in the evening”

“I will read 2 pages every day after waking up”

“I will listen to one podcast episode about a thing that would help me on my way to work”

“I will make one YouTube video every Thursday and post it every Sunday”

Start setting goals around the process instead of the result and see the change. 

Start really small and be specific. It’s so much easier that way. 

• P.S Stop making these goal-setting mistakes
• How to set SMART goals

2. Complete what you start

I suffered from severe self-confidence issues. I used to be timid, and shy and never wanting to come into the limelight. Some of the inherent habits are still there, but I can say I have improved. 

If not anything, I am confident that I can do what I want to do if I only set my mind to it. 

I am not saying I can do everything, but I am confident I will be able to do anything I set my mind to. 

To say this now has taken some time. It took me time to rebuild my trust in myself.

But I rebuilt it slowly with every small promise I kept to myself. 

I built my confidence slowly with every small goal I could follow through. 

So I would say, if you want to build your self-confidence, always complete what you start. Make it your motto. No matter how small, complete what you start. 

If you set your small goal to read 2 pages in the morning, make sure you read it. If you miss it in the morning, read it in the evening. 

If you miss it today, try again the next day, but make sure you complete what you start. 

Once you start fulfilling these little promises, these small goals, you start believing in yourself again and your lost trust and confidence will slowly start returning. 

P.S. If you are ready to give a try at working on yourself and changing your life, I have recently created a Special challenge/Guide for you to Change your Life in 7 days.

I think you’ll love it if you give it a try for 7 days and see what’s possible for you.

3. Let go of the result

“You have the right to work, but for work’s sake only; you have no right to the fruits of work”

Bhagavad Gita

We, humans, are too attached to the outcome and it is the reason why we lack self-confidence. 

If we need to give a presentation, all we think about is the result. What would people think? How would I be? What if I go blank? 

If we have to clear an exam, all we think about is whether we’ll pass or fail. 

If we want to start a business, we think about the outcome already and are scared that we will fail or succeed. 

But let us remember again and again that we only have the right to work and that we have no right to the fruits of our work. 

• How would our approach be if we didn’t care about the result? 

• How would our approach be if we only focused on doing our part well and leave the rest up to God/Universe not caring about the outcome? 

We would do our part so much better that way. 

We would focus on the process so much more instead of lamenting how the outcome will be and wasting so much time in self-doubt. 

Work for work’s sake only. Do your part cheerfully, and don’t care about the result. Let go of the result completely and see your self-confidence rise up. 

It is much easier that way. 

• P.S On how to embrace the joy of not knowing
• On why slow growth is the best way to go

4. Become a student

If someone comes and asks a person “Can you make an application?” 

And even though that person doesn’t know a thing about coding, he tells him that he can. If you’re thinking that is confidence, it is not. That is over-confidence. 

But if that person says, “I don’t know, but I can learn how to”, that is confidence. 

Confidence is not in knowing that you can do everything, but in knowing that you can learn. 

When you become a student and seek to learn, there is nothing that you cannot do. 

And once you fall in love with learning and are eager to become a student for life, confidence slowly builds up. 

When you learn something that you did not know anything about earlier and improve your knowledge about it, confidence builds in you and you get eager to learn about other things as well.

I didn’t know a thing about blogging, but I became a student again. I allowed myself to be a beginner and learn, and now after so many mistakes, I am still learning, but also so much more confident about it. 

This learning about blogging has also improved my confidence.

This has made me feel, “If I could learn about blogging and be successful at it in less than a year, I can actually learn about anything and gain success in anything I set my mind to.”

As the process of learning builds, so does confidence. 

But first, always be humble enough to be a student. 

5. Practice, Practice, Practice

You can be a great singer, but if at some point you stop practising completely, then you will never have the confidence that you had earlier. 

To have self-confidence that is unshakable, you have to be a lifelong learner and a lifelong practitioner. 

It takes time to build self-confidence, but if you don’t know how to maintain it, you will also lose it. 

Self-confidence comes from knowing your abilities and knowing what you can do. 

But if we don’t practice and be consistent at it, we will inevitably forget our abilities and what we really are capable of doing. 

Practice, Practice, Practice if you want to have self-confidence that never gets stagnant and is always freely flowing. 

6. Know who you’re following 

Ah! This one is so important. 

I cannot tell you how many times my self-confidence got shattered because of some nasty comments and unsupportive words and actions I got from my relatives and some of the people I knew. 

I felt like stopping it all and made me think a number of times, “What’s the use of it at all?!”, “Can I even do it?”

But what got/gets me back at it is always the thought, “Who am I even following?”

And this leads me to think, 

• Are they the ones also taking the same journey as me?
  
  
• Are they even an expert in my field that it’s worth listening to them?
  
  
• Are they also going after their dreams? 
  
  
• Are they professional enough to lead me to think what I am doing is wrong?

Chances are that they are just some people being unkind and unsupportive because the people who really know their way are always paving way for others to take. 

So if you want to have unshakable self-confidence, always remember who you’re following and take advice and words only from those who are an expert in your field and in what you are trying to achieve. 

If they’re not, then just smile at them and say to yourself, “Nah! You’re not the one I want to follow” 🙂

7. Read auto-biographies

To build unshakable self-confidence, you have to constantly fuel your fire. 

And the best way I have found is to read autobiographies of great men and women who have paved the way. 

Reading auto-biographies make me come to know the humble beginnings of most of the great people out there and get me feeling, “If they can, even I can”. 

Here are some of the best autobiographies to read

• Long way to freedom by Nelson Mandela
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• The story of my Life by Hellen Keller
• I am Malala by Malala
• Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Dreams from my father by Barack Obama
• The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Wings of Fire by A.P.J Abdul Kalaam.

Also, read stories/blogs about people who have become successful at what you want to have success at. 

You will find that almost everyone who is really successful and who is really an expert in anything, never keep it to themselves. 

They always want to share freely their story and how they did it. Hence we must feel fortunate for this and seek to learn from them what they have shared so openly.

Want to be a better speaker? Learn from the best.

Want to be a better writer? Learn from the best.

Want to have a successful business? Learn from the best. 

Want to be a better YouTube? Look closely at the videos of famous YouTubers and study them. 

There are countless books, podcasts, and videos that are there just for us! 

Seek and you shall find. 

P.S Only 3 things required to boost personal growth

8. Fix your negative self-talk

Words are the biggest source of encouragement, and can also be the greatest source of despair.

Here you must remember that it’s not only words that we receive from others, but more importantly, the words that we give to ourselves.

We think that in our life we hardly get people who really support us. But more than others, do you support you? 

How do you talk to yourself? What beliefs do you have about yourself? 

Do you often say, “I am so lazy”

“I don’t think this will work”

“She can do it, but I can’t”

“I fear speaking in public”

“I can never make enough money”

“Being an adult sucks”

Be aware of your thoughts and words and the things you speak when with others. 

Be careful of what you’re speaking because YOU are always listening.

Also, notice also the things you share on social media.

Do you share about life being difficult, sharing memes happily about how lazy you are, and how unmotivated you are?

The more you do so, the more you reinforce those beliefs about yourself and you will never build your self-confidence. 

Change your negative self-talk and limiting beliefs about life and yourself and see your self-confidence slowly rise up. 

P.S a good way to change your negative self-talk is by starting to affirm the positive.

Here are 101 self-love affirmations to change your life

9. Be your own competition 

Lastly, I know you must have heard this quote so many times, but here I say it once again as a reminder, 

“The only person you should try to be better than is who you were yesterday”

More than often we lose faith in ourselves seeing where others have already reached in their journey. 

It makes us only see the long road ahead of us and how long it will take to reach there that being confident about our own journey becomes hard to feel. 

But at such moments, remind yourself of this, “Time will pass anyway”

Think about the road you’ve covered already, and keep taking the first steps again and again. 

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. 

Stop making yourself anxious and thereby dwindling your self-confidence by comparing yourself to others. 

Your journey is yours and only yours. Their journey is theirs. Give them best wishes instead and be confident and visualize that someday you too will reach the same. 

Remember to only focus on your journey. Don’t get sidetracked by what others are doing, but focus on what you are doing, and what you are building and just enjoy the journey. 

Final thoughts: How to build self-confidence 

Remember, you already have it inside you. We are all born confident and with all the good qualities in us. 

If there are negative traits in us, there are also wonderful, powerful, positive traits in us. 

Till now, because you were unaware, the negative traits were dominant, but once you start polishing yourself and working on yourself, all the good traits and positive qualities will come shining forth and will make you realize how it was already there. Because it has always been there. 

Now you’re just wanting to let it shine. So shine and be confident. 

In summary, here were my tips on how to build unshakable self-confidence:

1. Start small and specific
2. Always complete what you start 
3. Let go of the result 
4. Become a student 
5. Practice, Practice, Practice
6. Know who you’re following 
7. Read autobiographies 
8. Fix your negative self-talk 
9. Be your own competition. 

Related posts: 

• How to build self-discipline
• How to be consistent
• How to stop procrastinating
• How to become organized