Unlocking Your Potential: Mastering Confidence and Self-Acceptance

INTRODUCTION

You’d love to be one of those cool guys you see in the movies, walking into the room and oozing confidence from every pore, your energy commanding the attention of all others. But let’s be honest for a minute: even if you were almost perfect—you know, good body, good looks, good hair, sharp mind, worldly, or whatever it is you think of when you hear the word “confident”—you’d probably still have times or places where you’d feel, well, not quite your best.

I’ve had two shining examples of confidence close to me just recently. My mother, who hates being the center of attention and has never enjoyed having her picture taken, and just a few weeks ago allowed some of the locals in the small village where she lives to film footage of her to be projected during the town’s annual festivities and fireworks (where there are generally hundreds of people watching). And then my wife, who—in a completely different small town—held her ground and refused to be bullied into submission, preferring to stay true to herself and her values. You see, true confidence and courage go hand in hand.

Chances are, you know what confidence looks like and what it doesn’t look like. You’ve had moments where you’ve felt invincible, on top of the world, and you’ve had times you’ve felt like you were at rock bottom (or, less dramatically, just plain awkward). That’s why I like to look at confidence (or self-esteem) in combination with self-acceptance. You see, there’s awesome power in knowing and accepting yourself, in understanding that you’re human just like everyone else in the room (as far as we know).

Perhaps the key to improving your self-esteem lies in first accepting (and maybe even liking) yourself.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start from the beginning:

UNDERSTANDING CONFIDENCE

To understand confidence and, hopefully, become more confident, you need to figure out what confidence is and how it develops. Confidence is a behavior you learn. From a young age, you may have lived under certain rules or constraints (whether intentional or unintentional) that affected your ability to project a confident persona. The good news is that you can learn to be more confident.

You need to unlearn negative behaviors and re-learn positive ones. Anyone can do it. Where self-acceptance comes into play, is that you need a realistic idea of your own capabilities, and you need to feel secure about them.

This leads us to two separate, but closely-related, concepts: self-esteem and self-efficacy.

Your confidence may fluctuate depending on the situation, while your self-esteem is more stable.

Self-esteem is the positive or negative view you have of yourself.

Self-efficacy is your confidence in being able to reach objectives.

Having high self-esteem and self-efficacy will make you more confident, more motivated, and more resilient.

Clearly, your track record will affect your self-esteem, self-efficacy, and confidence. This is one reason why it’s important to be faithful to your word. Every time you wake up later than planned in the morning and skip that workout that was supposed to give you an energy boost throughout the rest of the day, you’re letting yourself down and undermining your confidence.

Nobody knows you better than you. You might be able to fool other people, some of the time, but you’ll always know the truth.

Finally, here are some common misconceptions about confidence:

You can’t be confident without success (when in fact, you need confidence to be successful).
You need confidence to take action (you need to be able to take action before you feel ready, confidence will follow).
Faking it until you make it doesn’t work (learning confidence requires you to behave confidently until you feel it).
If you’re confident, you feel confident all the time (confidence fluctuates, that’s why you need self-esteem).
Confidence is innate (as we’ve seen, it’s a learned behavior).

THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-ACCEPTANCE

Your pursuit of confidence, including self-esteem and self-worth, can lead to self-judgment and even self-blame. Trust me, I know all about this. When this happens, self-acceptance is the thing that can save you.

It’s easy to get trapped in that cycle of constantly pursuing one more tweak, one more change, one more goal to consider yourself acceptable.

To some extent, I believe this constant pursuit of one step further can be healthy. Of course, being complacent has its downside too. There’s a delicate balance between challenging yourself to do better and just being over-critical.

Self-acceptance is about fully accepting yourself, without any “ifs” and “buts”. In a way, it’s the first step to understanding what unconditional love is. After all, if you can’t love yourself unconditionally, how can you expect to really love anybody else?

It’s also about accepting those parts of yourself that are not necessarily positive or desirable. Realizing that you’re human and have shortcomings like everyone else makes it easier for you to learn from your mistakes.

This is where it differs from self-esteem: self-esteem is about valuing yourself and focusing on the positives, while self-acceptance is all-inclusive.

So, what happens when you become more accepting of yourself?

One of the benefits of accepting yourself is that you worry less about what other people think. This means harsh criticism will have much less effect on you.

Do you see why it’s so closely linked to confidence? When you think of someone confident, you think of how nothing phases them. How judgement and negativity don’t affect their performance.

Think about a professional athlete, in front of a stadium full of spectators. Imagine that those spectators are all supporters of the opposing team. How does the athlete ignore that “criticism” and keep going, maybe even win the game? With confidence and self-acceptance.

BUILDING CONFIDENCE

Here are some techniques you can try to build confidence:

Identify your strengths and clarify your purpose.

Knowing yourself, your strengths, and what you are working for is a sure way to build confidence. When you think of a confident person, you think of someone who knows what to do in any situation. Of course, nobody is really like that, but there’s a lot of confidence that comes with self-knowledge.

Start a new hobby that helps you reduce stress.

Simply put: the more relaxed you are, the more confident you’ll feel. When you’re tired, struggling, and in survival mode, you just don’t feel like your best self.

Build assertiveness with “I” statements.

“I” statements express your thoughts, feelings, and needs, without laying the blame on others. They’re empowering, because they allow you to express your point without other people feeling attacked or cornered. If something’s bothering you but you’re afraid saying something will cause others to react negatively, you can frame it from your own point of view, so they don’t feel accused. You’ll come across as assertive, but not aggressive.

Work on your voice.

Your voice, like your appearance, is one of your traits that people are bound to notice. Your pitch, tone, and volume all say something about how confident you are in the message you are conveying. So, taking some time to learn how to speak confidently and convincingly is a good way to help you build confidence.

Use positive affirmations to encourage self-belief.

Using affirmations is a simple way to achieve great things. When you remember to repeat an affirmation throughout your day, it can help keep you in the mindset you desire, instead of allowing the day’s random events to dictate your attitude to the world. Find something easy to remember, that feels relevant to your specific situation and desires.

Change social anxiety by reframing your mind.

Sometimes, your discomfort in certain situations is really caused by your own thoughts and perceptions. There’s a lot to be said about managing the energy you convey around yourself. Sending positive energy to those around you, and changing the way you think about them, will change their reaction to you. I learned this while working as a bartender. There were people I didn’t really enjoy serving at first, but I learned to like them a lot more after I changed my own attitude toward them.

Develop a growth mindset.

Two things: first, if you’re working on yourself and really trying to improve or grow, you’ll automatically feel more confident. Second, a true growth mindset seeks feedback to improve. If you accept the possibility of making mistakes, and aim to learn from them, you’ll also feel more confident and receive criticism better.

Take criticism and rejection as an opportunity to learn.

This is something I often struggle with. For some reason (pride?) I’ve never been great with criticism and rejection. But, until I choose to face that criticism and rejection head on, how will I ever know what I’m doing wrong and how to improve?

Stop comparing yourself to others.

Your perception of other people’s lives is so very far from what they really experience. Don’t presume you know. Accept the fact that you won’t always be the best at everything you do. Stop comparing yourself to everyone else. Just focus on being better than yesterday’s version of you.

Celebrate and reflect on your wins.

It can be hard to stop and take stock of the situation, even when you’re winning. We’re constantly coaxed into action and distraction (usually the latter). Remember to enjoy life a little, even when it’s not perfect. Those little celebrations are the part you’ll remember, and they help you notice when you’re making progress.

Progress = more confidence.

Embrace your failures and view them as learning opportunities.

Failure is hard. Really, really hard. Especially when you’re proud and you take it personally. Yet, every single successful person out there is happy to admit they have failed at least a few times in their lives. Wanting to seem flawless is a complete waste of energy. Embrace your failures, contemplate them long enough to learn something good from them, then let them go (see my post about failing forward).

Step out of your comfort zone.

There is absolutely nothing out there that will boost your confidence like doing something you never, in a million years, thought you would do. Surprise yourself. Test yourself. Have some fun.

Treat yourself with respect.

I once heard a grown man refer to himself as “the personification of skinny fat”. People love to talk themselves down. But you know who listens to you the most, in the whole world? You do, of course. Respect yourself, and your journey, the way you would like everyone else to. If you don’t believe it, nobody else ever will.

Have positive self-talk or affirmation sessions.

Try it on your commute. If you drive. Don’t talk to yourself while using public transport. Or do. It scares people. It’s your call.

Track your progress.

It’s easy to get lost in the trenches of self-development. Working so hard on trying to get “there”, you don’t even notice how far you’ve come. That’s why tracking your progress is important. It helps you feel better, and it helps you stay on track.

Pursue passions that make you happy.

Think about how much more confident you feel when you have a little bit much to drink. Why? Because you’re happy, and you don’t care what anyone else thinks. Why not do more things that make you happy? If you’re happy more of the time, you’ll spend less time worrying about what everyone else thinks and you’ feel more confident.

PRACTICING SELF-ACCEPTANCE

Practicing self-acceptance will take time and effort. Changing yourself, in any way, will take time and effort. Be patient with yourself and accept that you are on a learning curve. In fact, you will be for the rest of your existence, so just accept it and move on to the next thing.

Some of the things that are recommended to help you learn to be more accepting of yourself are mindfulness and self-compassion techniques.

To begin with, try this:

Think of your “self” as an external observer, watching how your body and your personality act and react to the world around you. This kind of detachment can help you notice things you often overlook. You’ll be able to catch those horrible, judgmental thoughts you think about yourself, before they do any real damage. You’ll be able to see when you’re presuming other people are judging you, even when they might not be.

You see, negative self-talk is your biggest obstacle. Not just to self-acceptance, but to your success as a human being in general.

By observing yourself and being mindful of how you react and respond to certain situations, you will be able to predict your response and, with some practice, manage it.

Have you ever been to one of those doctor’s appointments where, rather than be physically examined, you’d prefer the ground to swallow you whole? Except you also don’t want to die or suffer physically, so you just have to go along with it? Your heart beats faster. Your hands get sweaty. That perfectly reasonable description or explanation you had in your mind just a minute ago has now vanished into thin air…

Now, imagine you could take a step back from that shaky, panicky pile of you, and look at the situation as an outsider. Imagine you could look at yourself the way you look at a loved one in the same situation. Feel that feeling. Yes: that’s self-compassion. Love yourself the way you love your family, or your close friends, or your pet, and you’ll be on the right track.

CONCLUSION

For some of us, probably most of us, confidence is something we need to work on constantly throughout our lives.

Without true self-reflection and work on self-improvement, I don’t believe you can experience real confidence. You can fake it, but that’s not going to last without the work to support it.

So maybe, after all this, there are only a few considerations that matter:

Your lack of confidence often comes from worrying too much about what everyone else thinks. So, what is it that makes you care so much about their opinion?
Another reason you may lack confidence is when you break the promises you make to yourself. If you can’t trust yourself to follow through, maybe you can’t be trusted, right? So, respect yourself enough to keep those promises. When you know you can rely on yourself, it’s easier to convey that energy to everyone else.
Self-acceptance—knowing you’re not perfect and being okay with it—is essential to true confidence. Make a genuine effort to accept that you’re not always going to get everything right. And that’s okay.

In short: confidence and self-acceptance are a journey, not a destination.

I hope this post helps you to become a more confident individual. As for myself, I’m a work in progress just like you. I’ll keep working on it.

If you’d like to do a deep dive down the confidence rabbit hole, here are some good places to start:

Resources:

Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2022). Is high self-esteem beneficial? Revisiting a classic question.American Psychologist, 77(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000922

How to Become More Confident, in Both Mindset and Behavior | Psychology Today United Kingdom

Is Confidence a Personality Trait? | True You Journal (truity.com)

How to Become More Confident, in Both Mindset and Behavior | Psychology Today

Why self-confidence is a learned behavior | Kids in the House

Confidence | Psychology Today

Self-Esteem vs Self-Efficacy: What’s the Difference? (believeinmind.com)

Boost Your Confidence: Understanding the Power of Self-Esteem on Self Efficacy – Aspire Atlas

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Efficacy: What’s the Difference? – Mental Health Center Kids

What Is Self-Efficacy Theory? (Incl. 8 Examples & Scales) (positivepsychology.com)

5 Myths About Confidence (positiveperformancetraining.com)

3 Common Myths About Confidence – RiSe Women

Self-Acceptance: Definition, Exercises & Why It’s So Hard (socialself.com)