Is there a difference between self esteem (or self-esteem) and self confidence (self-confidence)? Although grammatically correct I’m going to drop the “-”! In earlier posts the definition of self confidence came back to “belief in ourselves and our powers or abilities”, and confidence is generally based around our ability to do a particular thing (or many things) – such as giving a speech, walk into a room of strangers.

Dictionary.com defines self esteem as “having a realistic respect or favorable impression of oneself”. I have also seen self esteem defined as a combination of self confidence and self respect. Another definition is that self esteem is how we view ourselves, whilst self confidence is more about “doing”, how we actually cope with life, or think about our ability to do something - rather than our thoughts about ourselves.

Having great self confidence goes hand in hand with having great self esteem. Self esteem is ultimately down to what we believe about ourselves – if you like it’s the core of confidence. We can build self esteem, by developing a realistic view of ourselves, other people and events.

The initial focus of this blog was self confidence. Partly because as an Occupational Therapist rather than Psychologist I focus on “doing” and “function”, activity rather than talk and analysis. By working on, and building self confidence, our inner view of ourselves - our self respect - should improve as well.

However, there are times when I will specifically focus on self esteem issues, recognizing that is the direction some people are coming from.  There are also different cultural  interpretations  and usages of the two  phrases, so I won’t get too pedantic in separating them.

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