Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Is there a difference between self esteem and self confidence?

by

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.

The wedding – part 1

by

Last week my wife and I went to a wedding. A relatively low key event – 50 guests, with bride and groom both second time around – it was interesting at how different people performed.

Personally it didn’t start well – my suit trousers had mysteriously “shrunk” since I last wore them over a year ago. I could get into them – but looking in the mirror all I could see was my huge “beer gut”!

Also my collar no longer did up at the neck, leaving my tie to hold the “gap” together. Suddenly my air of confidence slipped away, as I felt my now shabby appearance would mark me out from the rest of the smartly dressed men. The bride was a friend of my wife’s, and not knowing any guests, I started to inflate their stature (and diminish mine) in my thinking.

As it happened, not everyone was wearing a suit, and with a bit of wear my suit and tie seemed to settle into place. Apart from the “top table” no-one was dressed particularly flash. But it reminded me of a few basic lessons in building self confidence.

1) Whatever the occasion we need to take care with our appearance. I’m not advocating dieting or anything radical. But dressing “confidently” can be easily achieved with a bit of time and effort. The key is how we feel about ourselves, not the judgment of others. If you feel you look right, that is a big part of the mental game.
2) Confidence is about tolerating the unknown – not letting uncertainty blow us off course. We all encounter many situations on a daily basis that we cannot know exactly what will happen, who we will meet, how they will act. In our minds we can destroy our confidence before we go out the door – if we let it.