It's Impossible to Build Self Confidence

It’s impossible to build self confidence without first raising self esteem. Trying to build self confidence over the top of low self esteem is like trying to build a house on sand. It’s impossible. The foundations are not stable enough.

There are so many self confidence programs, books, tapes and seminars that try to make you believe that all you have to do to gain self confidence is to add something to your self. You can not add self confidence to your self. Real confidence comes from within, not from outside of the self.

Human beings are born self confident. Have you ever seen a baby lacking in confidence? Of course not! Confidence is something we lose over time.

Confidence is often eroded in childhood when we are confronted with situations in which we might feel less capable than our peers or we think that we are not up to certain tasks. We have parents and teachers who criticize us and sometimes unknowingly give us the impression that we are less than we should be.

Those memories become locked in our sub conscious and they create beliefs about ourselves that are difficult to shake even if we are capable, intelligent or attractive. My own experience showed me that it didn’t matter how hard I worked, how successful I was, how many degrees or certificates I gained or the high opinion others had of me. It simply wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter how many tapes I listened to telling me how wonderful, intelligent or beautiful I was. I didn’t feel it. Daily self esteem affirmations were useless. In fact, they only made me feel worse, because affirmations often have the opposite effect to what they are supposed to achieve. Initially, affirmations can bring up all the negative thoughts and feelings that have been buried in the subconscious, serving to further reinforce our already low opinion of ourselves.

I came to the conclusion that there had to be something that worked, even for those with rock bottom self esteem, and now, with the latest advances in human technology, there are.

To suggest that we can gain self confidence by changing certain behaviours or making lists of our achievements is, in my opinion simply laughable. Sure, you can feel better about yourself by telling yourself how great you are or by taking on board the positive comments dished out by other people. You can undertake bigger and better projects than before by doing this. Maybe your self confidence will rise by about 5% or 10%. That’s entirely possible. You can even adopt the practice that I see many insecure people engaging in and that is adopting false confidence, which is part of the ‘fake it till you make it’ philosophy.

But, deep down at the core of your being, the part that no one else but you has access to, you know that you still don’t really feel right inside. You still feel like you did in grade school, not quite good enough. Real self confidence can only be achieved if and when the negative memories that are responsible for low esteem are erased from the subconscious and the negative patterns and erroneous beliefs you hold about yourself are replaced with updated ones. Then, and only then can true self confidence be established.

What is the use of putting on a great act in front of others, puffing yourself up, bathing in their accolades when under the surface you still think you’re not good enough?

It’s really impossible to build rock solid self confidence over the top of low self esteem. The best way to get the type of confidence that’s worth having is to change your opinion of yourself by letting go of the old beliefs about yourself. Stop wasting time and money trying to build self confidence. Instead, release what is blocking your self confidence. Your natural confidence has been there all along, waiting for you to rediscover it. Do the inner work of releasing and reap the rewards. It is well worth the effort.