Self Confidence - Do you Believe?

I do believe in self confidence. And this is why. Most people see self confidence as bring arrogant or cocky and they misinterpret it as overconfidence. But for me, self confidence comes from within, it is a path to self awareness, accepting yourself as you are, both your strength and your weaknesses, discovering what makes you unique and taking risks that are calculated.

Once you reach this phase of self confidence, you'll be able to grow, develop meaningful connections find purpose and achieve all your goals.
Personally I've struggled with building my self confidence so I understand how this may come off to anyone. I've stayed in the pit of self doubt for many years, always being the person who wanted validation from people, family and friends.

I guess having the right person in your corner, growth and experience just helped me realize that my worth wasn't defined my people's opinions of me and I needed to find myself worthy before anyone else ever did. Till date, I look at self confidence as a journey we all must go on, there's no end to self confidence because each day we strive to be better than yesterday, embracing our flaws, celebrating our wins and trusting the process.

£People often misinterpret the differences between self confidence and over confidence*, and the truth is that the two cannot be mixed because why self confidence is impacted towards improving a person's personal and professional growth, overconfidence is impacted towards slowing a person's growth which can ultimately lead to his downfall.
In most cases, these are the differences;

• Self confidence means having faith in yourself and your abilities and acknowledging your weaknesses but overconfidence is when you have this over exaggerated faith in what you can do and believe that nothing can stop you while refusing to acknowledge your weaknesses.

• Self confidence also means being resilient when it comes to facing obstacles and challenges but overconfidence means being arrogant when it comes to facing challenges.

• Self confidence means being open to learning new things, being humble and ready to adapt to growth but overconfidence means being resistant to learning, being proud to accept criticism and the feeling of always wanting to be right while looking down on other people's ideas.

• Self confidence also means seeing the good in yourself and acknowledging it but overconfidence is the sick way of self image. It is when a person sees himself as the most important and better than any other thing or person.

Pexel

To balance self confidence and over confidence, one way to do this is to set goals that are realistic, surround yourself with mentors and peers who can remind you when you're deviating from that goal and at the end of the day, celebrate your achievements.

Another way to do this is by developing a growth mindset and being adaptable to challenges while learning from them and from time to time, regularly access your self and adjust your thinking with the support of loving and positive people around you.

By understanding how these 2 mindsets differ, and taking practical tips to deal with it, people will be able to cultivate a healthy amount of self confidence while avoiding the dangers of being over confident. This will help them achieve a balance between both and also bring them closer to personal success and ability to reach their full potential.

I'll like to talk about the time that I took a math exam in my year one. Leaving high school, I wasn't very strong with maths and it wasn't my strongest or favourite subject but when I entered uni, I thought that I won't have to go through those subjects again. Unfortunately for me, I needed to pass those subjects again in the prelim of my first year in uni.

I attended a tutorial to help me familiarise myself with maths again. Everyday I would attend that tutorial and remind myself to be calm, that I was going to pass the exams without a carryover even when I saw so many people who knew it more than I did.

Pexel

I continued trying my best, making mistakes but not giving up on learning even though I was slow. the day of the exams came and I had faith that no matter what happened I was going to do my best in the exams and I won't fail.

The exams was actually hard but I told myself that if for a moment I gave in to doubt just because this subject wasn't my strongest suit, then I might as well just fail. I had to believe in myself, encourage myself that I did my best in that exams hall and patiently wait for the results.

When the results later came out, I passed. So many people failed but I passed. Me, that didn't know maths.

One thing I learnt from that experience was how good it was to have confidence in yourself and your strength while acknowledging your weaknesses...and yes, I was confident in myself and that's why I passed that course that seemed to be hard at first.