10 Secret Factors That Affect Self-confidence And Tips To Cope With It.

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A well-said quote is “Self- confidence is something that can make you honored.”

Nobody is born with self-confidence in this world. It is something that you learn from your family, environment, friends, teachers or sometimes tragic experience that provokes your inner voice. In the same way, some factors can influence your self-confidence, like family relations, environment, long isolation, bullyings, and tortures, etc. we will consider this in the article.

Before understanding the self-confidence, discuss the two components that are an essential ingredient for self-confidence, they are self-esteem and self-efficacy.

Self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy some times apply reciprocally but they are different in aspects;

  • Self-esteem:  self-esteem is the thoughts of ours for ourselves. It plays an essential role in building self-confidence because a person can not be confident who doesn’t know its self. It is essential to know your worth or worthiness in life and place. In the book “ Society and the Adolescent Self-Image,” Rosenberg defines that “ self-esteem leaned on the assumption that it was a relatively stable faith about one’s overall self-worth.”
  • Self-efficacy:  self-efficacy knows the capacity and compatibility of ourselves, .it is also an important contributor to self-confidence because if a person does not know its capacity cannot control the situation. Albert Bandura defines self-efficacy as an individual’s beliefs about their capacity to influence the conclusions in their own lives.

Self-confidence is the trust, believes, judgments in oneself. It is the inner feeling which tells us that we are worthy of what we have and what will we achieve in the future, and it is the trust in ourselves that what we will choose is the best choice that we can make, it is believed that what we are doing is right, it is the feeling of love for ourselves.

Self-confidence can not stand without self-esteem(self-knowing) and self- efficacy( self capability). Self-esteem is more of a present-focused mindset, while self-efficacy is more of a forward-looking belief.

Self-confidence brings more happiness, like, the more you confident about your abilities, and capabilities, the more energized and motivated you are to take action and achieve your goals.

From reviews, it is found that self-confidence is associated with better health, better social lives, protection against mental disorders and social problems, healthy coping, and mental well-being. 

How self-esteem and self-efficacy inspire self-confidence?

Self-confidence is the thing that the world sees. The society and system cannot see your inner soul, inner struggle, your mind Strom, they see your outer look, how you act, your gate, your behavior, your appearance, and your facial expression. Let’s understand the connection between self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-confidence. 

 This true story is about Muniba Mazari, who also called an “Iron lady of Pakistan” and “proud of Pakistan.” She is lively working as an anchor at Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV), and the first wheelchair-using artist and first female Goodwill Ambassador. Her story is so motivated to those who have a healthy working body. 

She said that “ she was 18 when she got partnered and that was never a happy marriage. After two years, she met a car accident in which her spine was crushed and had sustained multiple fractures to her arm, shoulder, ribs, and collarbone. And one day, Doctors informed her that she would never be able to walk, paint, or give birth again; that day she was devasted and questioned her existence in this world. 

One day she asked her brothers to bring colors, canvas, brushes that she wants to paint, she was tired with a white hospital room. And she painted a picture; she painted her grief, her inner violence, her heartache, and herself.

“…that day and that moment she decided that she would live only for herself. She is not going to be a perfect person for someone but herself. She was just going to take that moment and make it perfect for herself, that she will be going to fight her fears.”  she wrote all her fears one by one and decided to overcome one by one.

The day when she decided to live for herself, her self-esteem magnified because she knows she is worth living. And when she thought to fight her fears, her self-efficacy improved because she knows she has to do it. And now her confidence called Iron lady.   

There are even more realistic stories like this that tell us how a person trusts himself and turn his life and move on.

Why self-confidence matters in a person’s life?

Self-confidence is important in virtually every stage of life. However, many people faced hardships and scold just because of low self-confidence and are less likely to achieve success.  

We also saw in our lives a person who visibly nervous, mismanaging, or constantly apologizing are less attractive as compared, a person who is attentive, speaks clearly, answer efficiency, and admit their mistake.   

Self-confident people inspire others, like their class fellows,  their audience, their colleagues, their boss, their customers, their friends, and importantly their family.   And winning confidence of others is the keyway to accomplishments in life.

It is also be seen that High self-confidence people have even increased chances of survival after a serious surgical procedure and show strong and positive mental health.

Theories that define the importance of self-confidence:

Many people understand self-reliance and explain to other people that no human being is inferior to anyone; his/her self-confidence and self-esteem makes him different from people.

And there are many theories and frameworks of self-confidence in the psychological literature. Let’s look at common beliefs and popular theories surrounding self-confidence and self-esteem.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, was an out-of-date framework in psychology, in this theory, there are several needs that humans must have met to be truly fulfilled. In the pyramid of this theory, self-esteem is the second-highest level of need, just under self-actualization.

According to Maslow, humans must have their needs of physiological security, safety, love, and belonging must satisfy before they can develop healthy self-esteem.  He also observes two kinds of self-confidence, a “higher” and a “lower,” the lower self-esteem comes from the respect of others, while the higher self-esteem comes from within.

Maslow shaped his theory and included the instances of highly self-actualized people who are homeless or individuals who live in a hazardous area or war zone but are also high in self-esteem and confidence.  

This hierarchy is no longer recognised as a stringent theory of unidirectional growth, but a more general expression of how basic needs being met allows individuals the freedom and capacity to inspire an individual self-confidence.

Terror Management Theory:

A darker theory that delves a bit more extensively into the human experience to explain self-confidence is the Terror Management Theory.

Terror Management Theory (TMT) is based on the belief that a person holds excellent potential for responding with terror to the recognition of their death, and that worldviews that emphasise peoples’ opinions in their quality of significance as humans protect them against this terror.  

TMT declares that self-esteem forms as a way to protect and buffer against anxiety, and subsequently, people try for self-confidence and react negatively to anyone or anything that could undermine their beliefs in their comforting worldview.

Sociometer Theory:

Mark Leary, a social psychologist who researches self-confidence in the context of evolutionary psychology, also presented a theory of self-esteem to built confidence in individuals in the literature.

The Sociometer Theory proposes that self-esteem is an internal gauge of the degree to which one is included vs excluded by others.  This theory holds on the conception of self-worth as an individual internal perception of social acceptance and rejection.

There is some strong confirmation for the accuracy and applicability of this theory and shows that social exclusion based on personal characteristics decreases self-esteem, which also hits confidence.

10 Factors that affect your self-confidence and tips to cope with it:

It is impossible in this world to always be confident and not afraid to move forward, and there are many factors when people need company, people’s noises, bullyings, behaviour sounds terrible. Let’s discuss them and see how to cope with the circumstances.

1.Your self-image:

Self-esteem is the most important thing,  how and what you think about yourself? How do you feel yourself? How do you see yourself? How do you walk? What do you think about the situations, challenges? How do you talk for yourself? How you treat others? 

Always remember “ people will think of you as you think of yourself” if you think your self-image is that you are good looking, smart, stylish, talented, selfish, and successful than people think the same! If not, and you consider yourself ugly, lazy, confused, weak than people think the same. What you feel about yourself, it matters. It doesn’t matter what people think.  Always think positively about yourself, be loyal to yourself, take care of yourself,  love yourself.

Don’t let your mind bully your body, always thankful for what you have!

Tip:

  • Never feel inferior because every human is good in his/ her way. 
  • Never think badly of yourself, what you have is probably not what anyone else has.   
  • If the person’s expression sings bad, or someone’s advice verbalizes bad, or there’s is something annoying, always take a deep breath and think “ is that ok or do you need to change?” if not, then trust yourself.     

2. Family and friends relations:

Understanding and good relations from our friends, family, and your love-once, also a contributing factor that enhances self-confidence. We feel proud and confident when we think our family and friends have confidence in us, in our abilities. Sometimes we feel confident and secure when a family member or friends around us in public places, seminars.  

On the other hand, if our relationship with family and friends is bad or disturbed, we will not have attention, our concentration will not be good, our thoughts will continually depress us, and we will not be able to focus on anything like work, project, learning.

Tip:

  • Try to make a strong understanding and good relation between you and your family and friends.   
  • Try to leave where there are conflicts so that you can focus on your work.
  • If your conflict bothering you then try to send an apology or any funny text to a person, it will give you peace of mind, and you will be able to do your job comfortably.
  • If you see your friend or any family member losing self-confidence, then you should move forward to support and motivate them by talking; as talking is the best therapy.

3. Environment:

A well said words “ a negative atmosphere never grow a positive tree”, in the same way, no one can develop a good habit in a negative environment.  

If a person lives where people are never happy, where no one talks to anybody, never celebrate a small success, call people with bad words, do backbiting, and ruin the whole environment with anger; this kind of negative environment will never give you hope and confidence on you to do well. 

On the other hand, a positive environment, where people live happily, solve the situations with talking, considered your deeds and thoughts, appreciates you, encourage you to move forward; this kind of environment will help you to be confident and improve yourself more.

Tip:

  • First, try to make your home or living place environment better.
  • Or try to have a good atmosphere wherever you live.
  • If not, discover a place or corner where you can find peace of mind and get out of stress.

4. Good  appearance:

Having a good appearance is one of the key factors of self-confidence. Many people gain confidence from perceiving that they look good, and it can help mentally for things like presentations, talks with strangers.

When you buy your food, you always take a look at the cover, in the same way, it works with our personality. If you expect someone to be nice, you first intuitively judge by his appearance. However, I do not mean that being engaging is a must. I just suggest that being correct with your appearance is important.

Having good body hygiene, coherence in your outfit style, a smile on your face, your reaction is some countable outlook that attracts others.

Tip:

  • Always take care of your hygiene, your body, your outfit, your response.
  • It is not important to wear branded and expensive clothes, wear fine clothes which look good on you is important. 
  • Treat yourself with kindness when you make a mistake or face any bad experience. 
  • Don’t compare yourself to other appearances; everybody has their style and looks. 

5. Long isolation period or loneliness:

Although Loneliness and self-esteem, both are essential aspects of individuals’ lives. But an extended period of Loneliness or isolation may represent a negative affect state and reflects an individual’s subjective perception of deficiencies in his or her network of social relationships. Self-esteem may be characterized as feelings of self-worth and self-respect, while Loneliness has been linked to physical illness 

Many studies measured correlations between loneliness and a wide variety of social, emotional, and fundamental variables. Lonely individuals have been found to express depressed views and to be low in positive affect. Lonely individuals are more likely to be shy and are less confident and less satisfied with life than other individuals. They avoid social interaction, spend extended time alone, experience social anxiety, fear, which develops severe distress and loneliness. 

Long isolation periods can be the cause of failure, rejection, emotional, any pandemic situations like strikes, COVID-19, etc.

Tip:

  • See your past achievement and appreciate yourself. 
  • If you are a failure or you faced rejections in your life then first you should think about why it is happening? Repeatedly try because loneliness is not the solution.   
  • Make yourself busy what makes you happy and perfect, spend time with your loved once.
  • Try volunteering for something and somewhere and meet new people. 
  • If your relative has this problem, then you should help them, comfort them, appreciate them, forced them to do.  

6. Bullying and torture:

The people who experienced bullying and torture, start to internalize it and become self-critical because it starts to affect our behaviour, which in turn, can go on to impact both our mental and physical health. 

Bullying and torture mostly affect negatively but can affect positively if we once said no to bully and take action against it. 

Tip:

  • Take action immediately if you can.
  • Talk to your family or trust one, never hide this from them.
  • Change the route, school, college, job, etc. 
  • Never tolerate bullying and torture for a long time; it gives courage to other people to use you.  

7. Social Comparison:

Social comparison, judging ourselves with others, personally and professionally, can lead to a negative evaluation of yourself. Are you attractive or ugly, a success or a failure, smart or stupid? It probably depends on who you compare yourself against. We often make the mistake of comparing ourselves to others.

Comparison can have a negative influence on our self-esteem. It is frequent for us to compare ourselves to others. 

Tip:

  • Develop a clearer and faithful sense of who we are!
  • If you can’t stop yourself, at least take some restriction of whom you compare yourself to. 
  • Make your self-concept more realistic. 
  • If your surrounding has this comparison statics, then avoid these surroundings, or keep faith in you.

8. Crowd and audience:

An Audience or crowd effect can change in confidence and behaviour caused by being observed by another person or the belief that another person is observing one. 

Zajonc’s influential claim that “ in the presence of an audience or crowd, people perform better on easy tasks but worse on hard tasks”  and  large meta-analysis finding predicted that;

  • In self-presentation or reputation-management account, a people who feel embarrassed after failures on hard tasks which makes later performance worse.
  • Physiological signs of arousal during hard and easy tasks.  Physiological signs are cardiovascular changes, with increases in stress response when being observed during a difficult task and decreases when being observed an easy task.

Audience effects are also seen in the setting of emotional experience and the making of emotional facial expressions.

Tip:

Before going on the stage or any crowded place  prepare your body and mind for good performance;

  • Talk positively and calm yourself.
  • Use the restroom.
  • Strike power pose
  • Stretch your body lightly or take several deep breaths.
  • Never ever pretend you are nervous
  • Change your nervousness with your excitement 
  • Focus your words and strength.

9. Accidents: 

Sometimes we faced so many accidents that change our lives, change us, change our attitudes, change our ideology. Because these accidents also have adverse effects on how we feel about yourself. These accidents include;

  •  Car accidents,
  •  Losing loved once,
  •  Losing yourself,
  •  Harassments,
  •  Cheating,
  •  Bullying,
  •  Seeing someone being killed, etc.

These situations have negative effects on our body, which are; Fear and anxiety, panic attacks, loneliness, and lack of self-confidence.

Or these realities sometimes make us human beings who have no worries, feelings, the pain of others, or sometimes they forget the difference between right or wrong in the fire of revenge.

Tips:

  • Accept what happened to you.
  • Adjust according to the situation and find diversions like work or hobby.
  • Try to love yourself or seek medical help.
  • Consult with a lawyer.
  • Avoid situations, people, or in fact area or place.

10. Teachers:

The teacher is not a king, but he tries his best to makes you king”. Teachers- student interaction matters in everyone’s life because we follow teachers after parents. 

There are some moments in our life, one of our favourite teachers would come up to us and said: “you are going to do something big in the future”. And at some point in our lives, we realize that he was right.    

Teacher’s guidance, advice, scold, and lectures, sometimes really help you in your hard time. Teacher in the appearance or religious scholar, philosopher, school teacher, grandparents, parents, or any person who guide you, always respects them.    

Tip:

  • Respect your teachers because they have the power to change your life or your thoughts.
  • Always try to learn something new from them, from their life experiences.
  • And always be in touch with them.

Takeaway:

Self-confidence matters in everyone’s life. Life is not a bed of roses. It always gives you challenges and situations to make you stronger. So never be dishearten, believe in yourself, and be confident, it helps you to face any situation in life. It’s ok to be alone but never isolate yourself, spend time with your family and friends, and be happy!   “Stronger the self-esteem( self-knowing), stronger self-confidence.”