Self confidence and self esteem are linked but they’re not the same thing.  Sometimes the two do get confused. Your self esteem is how much you like yourself, how you see yourself.  What we see when we look in the mirror. Self esteem is somewhat passive and isn’t something others can observe in you.

By comparison, you can see how self confidently  somebody (or even a group such as a sports team) is acting.  Self confidence is more active, and describes our abilities and willingness to interact with the world around us.

Does having great self confidence go hand in hand with having great self esteem? Not necessarily. Someone can appear and act very confidently, but have low self esteem. You can be very self confident in you ability to do things, but be full of self loathing. Celebrities such as Princess Diana and Elton John have all fitted this category at times.

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. For most of us 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.