The people I know who lack confidence seem fearful and have the tendency to hide. To gain confidence, you have to face your fear. There’s a book about this: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I’ve tried to do that, and it works. I still haven’t faced skydiving, though.
This is what I came in to say. (Well, not the part about Architects and Fathers. You can substitute Engineer and Mother there. 
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I’ve noticed that people who define or judge themselves against other people are frequently not as confident as those of us who judge ourselves against our own standards.
I’d think the first thing to do is decide “who is the person I want to be?” in all aspects of your life. Visualize that person as you go about your day, and strive to meet the mark.
That’s one thing I did, anyway.
I think part of self-confidence also comes from shifting your focus from yourself onto something else.
For example, if you’re writing, focus on the writing itself–on what needs to be done, on what needs to be said, on what you’re really trying to say. If you focus on that, and not on whether or not you can do what you set out to, you’ll end up actually having done the work. That result is the same as what you’d get from having genuine confidence in yourself. You can think of that change of focus as gaining you functional self-confidence–i.e., something that lets you get the thing itself done, as though you had genuine belief in your capabilities. And, of course, once you’ve actually done the writing, you’ll get some genuine self-confidence from that achievement.
For social situations, I’ve found that focusing on the other people in the room–on how they feel, on what they have to say, etc.–works pretty well. Attention you pay to other people is less attention you can pay to yourself and your flaws. Whatever flaws you have aren’t likely to be as big or objectionable to other people as they are to you, and everyone likes to have someone else be genuinely interested in them. That’s a lot of what being social is about, anyway.
Failure does seem to be a common thread in positive thinking programmes.
“Taming tigers” etc.
Richard Branson once said that he estimated 50% of the business decisions he made lost him money, but the key point was he learned from his failure and carried on making decisions.
Every Oscar winning actor will have at least one failed audition behind him/her; every Wimbledon champion will have at least one defeat in their past.
Most confident people will have made a tit of themselves at some point or another; the strength is to walk back into the room the next day after a failure of some kind.
Be nice to people.
Smile.
Do what’s expected of you. You don’t have to put forth any Herculean effort, just do what people expect.
Keep somewhat current in newsworthy events. Nothing sucks the confidence out of you quicker than if the conversation turns to, say Libya, and you have no freakin’ clue what the hell’s going on.
This self-help piece helped me.
To have high self-esteem, engage in esteemable behavior.
Repeat as necessary.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” -Bertrand Russell
My Boss’s boss pulled me in the other day to explain to me what an arrogant bastard I am- but of course, she couldn’t come right out and say it, so she had to use ‘appropriate language’ until I said, “I think you are trying to say that I am an arrogant bastard, and it offends some folk we work with, correct?” She indicated this was correct, and we had a little discussion about it.
I don’t know, it has to do with the fact that anything I have ever really tried to do, I have either succeeded or done damn well at- and the few things at which I have failed have taught me well.
Being able to learn from one’s own mistakes and own one’s own failures is part of it, and another part of it is to surround one’s self with positive people. I shall not take part in another’s misery, unless I am the cause of it- in which case I will attempt repair, and then make my merry way!
Missed the edit- and what QtM and Bill and Ted said; “Be Excellent to each other, Dudes!”
I think that is key. Just focus on doing what needs to get done. Unconfident people focus on themselves. They focus on what they can’t do or how they failed or why some situation sucks for them. Confident people focus on the results.
It’s not about new-age positive thinking “I can do anything I set my mind to” bullshit. You know what you need to do. So go do it. Or do not. There is not “try”.
I disagree somewhat. I don’t go through life doing what everyone expects of me. My awesomeness is not defined by my ability to meet other people’s arbitrary expectations.
It is defined by my ability to meet or exceed my own.
Not so. Be honest with what you know and don’t know. People who try to “fake it til they make it” are typically brimming with insecurity. Not only do they not know what’s going on, they are desperately trying to hide the fact that they don’t.
It’s like when I start a new job as a manager / executive. I have no idea what any of my people do really. I do in a vague general sense, but there is no way I can know the minutiae of their jobs better than they do. So I have them explain it to me as if I’m 8 years old. And if I still don’t understand, I have them explain it again like I’m 4. And THEN if I still can’t understand it, I have them fired and replaced with robots.
no, when it gets to the point where people are complaining about you, it’s not because you’re awesome. It’s because you have a shitty, self-aggrandizing attitude about how awesome you are.
Self-confidence is a virtue. Arrogance is not. Problems start once you’ve crossed the line into unwarranted self-importance.
Confidence is really more of an outward manifestation of risk tolerance/aversion. Almost every non-confident person I know is also not very risk-tolerant or adventurous.
I think that a big part of confidence is both knowing that you can do something, and also knowing that the penalties for failure are not crushing or are very remote.
Essentially, not only do you know that you’re good at something, you know that the real penalties aren’t that bad, which makes you that much more confident that you’ll do it well. In a sense, non-fatal failure reinforces confidence.
A quick example- if you’re a kid and you’re thinking about climbing up in a low tree. If you’ve climbed up in the tree, you know that you can climb up, and are confident about it.
If you’ve climbed up AND fallen out, you know that you can climb up there, and that if you fall out, it’s not that big of a deal to fall out. Which makes you that much less worried about climbing up again.
Self esteem is simply liking yourself. This is basically what QtM said above- do things that are likeable, and you’ll like yourself.
Neither have anything to do with being a precious flower or being told you’re the center of the universe either. I’m a pretty confident guy, and despite having a very loving, nurturing family, one of my mom’s favorite sayings to me was:
“Remember, no matter how good you may be at something, there’s always someone better.”
Hardly center-of-the-universe stuff- almost like a childhood “memento mori” saying.
Or, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” -W. B. Yeats
Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
At some point, you get enough experience that you start getting what you want (along with additional experience).
You have to be willing to fail.
I was born with it. I like making decisions, I like being responsible for things/projects/etc. I was always the guy who came up with ideas for the neighborhood gang of kids that
I also don’t concern myself with the past, other than some evaluation re: decisions that have gone wrong.
My wife is completely opposite - she can’t make a decision without asking other people (regardless of whether or not they know what the hell they’re talking about) their opinion. Many times she tells me “Just tell me what to do”, even among things that are patently obvious. Then, once her mind is made up, it is MADE UP regardless of what others may say, prove, show, etc. It’s the weirdest combination of indecision and inflexibility that I’ve ever seen (not saying much, as I know few people as well as my wife, of course).
In case anybody cares, the unfinished sentence in the above post was supposed to be:
" I was always the guy who came up with ideas for the neighborhood gang of kids - let’s build ramps and jump them with our bikes… let’s roll Andy’s house tonight… Let’s go hop on a train and hitch a ride to the mall… stuff like that. "
My gilfriend is like that. Except she will ask me for validation in the form of a question as if she was following up on an earlier discussion. For example:
Her: “Did you want to go out to my parents this weekend?”
Me: “No. That doesn’t sound like something I would want.”
Yes. Me. Nana-nana boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo.
I find a great tool for building confidence is to learn how to do something really, really well - your job, a hobby, something that you can do and recognize as challenging.
That provides, as it were, a pattern and blueprint for doing other things well, taking justified risks, feeling some real self-worth.
Another important key to self-confidence I think is adhereing to an inner code of morality. The thought that you are really a stand-up kinda person that others can rely on to do the right thing (assuming you are, and try to be) is part of the foundation of true confidence.
I think it would be hard to have self-confidence without real accomplishments and without a moral centre (though perfectly possible to have unjustified arrogance without either, naturally).