How to Improve Your Confidence When You Don’t Believe in Yourself

I used to think confident people were simply born that way. They were the people who could walk into a room without worrying about what everyone thought of them, speak up without rehearsing the sentence twelve times in their head and wear whatever they fancied without wondering whether their body was acceptable enough for it.

Meanwhile, I could find something to feel self-conscious about in almost any situation.

For a long time, I also thought losing weight would fix my confidence. I imagined there was a particular number on the scales where I’d finally become comfortable with myself. I’d wear the clothes I wanted, stop worrying about photographs and suddenly have this confidence I’d spent years waiting for.

I did lose a lot of weight. At my smallest, I wore clothes I’d never previously imagined fitting into, but something quite important didn’t happen.

I didn’t magically become a completely confident person.

That was probably one of the biggest lessons weight loss taught me. You can change your body dramatically without changing all the things you’ve spent years believing about yourself.

These days, I see confidence very differently. I don’t think it’s something you either have or don’t have, and I certainly don’t think you need to wait until you’ve fixed everything you dislike about yourself before you’re allowed to feel it.

Confidence is something you can build, usually quite slowly, by changing both how you speak to yourself and what you’re willing to do despite feeling uncomfortable.

What does being confident actually mean?

When we picture confidence, we often imagine the loudest person in the room. Someone who happily talks to everyone, loves attention and never seems remotely embarrassed.

That’s one kind of confidence, but it isn’t the only kind.

You can be quiet and confident. You can dislike being the centre of attention and still feel secure in yourself. You can be nervous about something new and still believe you’ll cope with it.

For me, confidence is much more about trusting yourself.

It’s being able to think, I don’t know exactly how this is going to go, but I’ll deal with it.

That distinction matters because otherwise we’re aiming for an impossible version of confidence where we never feel awkward, anxious, embarrassed or uncertain again.

I still have situations where I don’t feel particularly confident. Most people do. The difference is that a lack of confidence in one situation doesn’t have to become evidence that there’s something fundamentally wrong with you.

Why is my confidence so low?

Low confidence rarely appears from nowhere.

Sometimes it develops gradually after years of criticism, bullying, rejection or being made to feel that you aren’t good enough. Difficult relationships can have a huge impact too, particularly when someone repeatedly undermines your judgement or makes you question yourself.

Body image can play a part. So can experiences at school, work, within families or online.

Sometimes confidence disappears after a major change. Losing a job, becoming ill, gaining weight, going through a relationship breakdown or simply finding yourself in a stage of life you weren’t expecting can all change how you see yourself.

And sometimes you’ve spent so long thinking negatively about yourself that those thoughts don’t even feel negative anymore. They just feel factual.

You aren’t thinking, I’m having the thought that I’m useless at this.

You’re thinking, I’m useless at this.

That’s a difficult habit to change because you’re not merely fighting one negative thought. You’re challenging a story about yourself that you may have been repeating for years.

Pay attention to how you speak to yourself

I’m not going to tell you to stand in front of the mirror every morning shouting that you’re an incredible goddess if you don’t believe a word of it.

For some people, positive affirmations are helpful. For others, they feel ridiculous.

What I do think is useful is noticing when your internal voice is unnecessarily cruel.

Perhaps you make a mistake and immediately think you’re stupid. You see a photograph of yourself and tell yourself you look disgusting. You struggle with something new and decide you’re useless.

If another person spoke to you like that all day, you’d probably think they were horrible.

Yet we can become so accustomed to speaking to ourselves that way that we barely notice it.

You don’t have to replace every negative thought with I’m amazing. Sometimes a neutral thought is much easier to believe.

One describes a moment. The other turns it into your identity. That little difference can matter more than it seems.

Stop waiting until you look different

This is something I wish I’d understood years ago.

How many things have you mentally saved for the thinner, fitter, prettier or more confident version of yourself?

Perhaps you’ll wear that dress when you’ve lost weight. You’ll go swimming when you’re smaller. You’ll be in photographs when you like how you look. You’ll book the holiday, try the activity or start dating once you’ve changed your body.

I spent years attaching confidence to weight. The trouble is that the goalposts can keep moving. You lose two stone and decide you’ll feel confident after another two. You reach a clothing size you once dreamed about and suddenly find something else wrong with yourself.

At some point, you have to ask whether you really want to spend your life waiting for permission to participate in it. You are allowed to wear clothes you like now. You’re allowed to be photographed now. You’re allowed to go on holiday, swim, date, exercise and take up space now.

You don’t have to love every part of your body before you start living in it.

Why I Refuse to Wait Until I’m Thin to Enjoy Life

Do things before you feel completely confident

I used to think confidence came first. You become confident and then you’re brave enough to do the scary thing. In reality, it’s often the other way around.

You do something while feeling nervous, discover you survived it, and that experience gives you a little more evidence that you can handle things.

Imagine you’ve always been nervous about going somewhere alone. Waiting until you feel completely confident might mean waiting forever.

Going somewhere small by yourself, even though you feel awkward, gives you an experience you didn’t have before. Next time, your brain has some evidence. I’ve done this before. That’s how confidence can grow.

It doesn’t mean throwing yourself into the most terrifying situation you can imagine. Smaller steps usually work much better because they stretch your comfort zone without completely overwhelming you.

Keep promises to yourself

I think this is one of the most overlooked parts of confidence. If confidence involves trusting yourself, one way to build it is by showing yourself that your own decisions mean something. That doesn’t mean making huge promises. In fact, smaller ones are often better.

You decide you’ll go for a ten-minute walk and you go. You tell yourself you’re finally going to make an appointment and you make it. You decide you’ll spend half an hour working on something that’s important to you and actually do it.

Each time, you’re quietly building evidence that you can rely on yourself.

This is another reason I don’t particularly like enormous self-improvement plans. If you constantly promise yourself that from Monday you’ll exercise every day, eat perfectly, wake at 6am and completely transform your life, then inevitably don’t manage it, you can reinforce the idea that you never stick to anything.

Make smaller promises. Then keep them.

Get better at something

Confidence isn’t only about thinking differently. Sometimes the best way to feel more capable is to become more capable.

Learn something.

That could be anything from cooking a new recipe to learning photography, improving your fitness, taking a course, learning to drive or figuring out how to do something around the house that you’ve always relied on somebody else for.

Being a beginner can feel uncomfortable because you’re going to make mistakes. But gradually noticing that something which used to be difficult is becoming easier is brilliant evidence of your own ability.

I think this kind of confidence is particularly powerful because nobody has had to tell you you’re capable. You’ve proved it to yourself.

Stop comparing your entire life with someone else’s highlights

We’ve always compared ourselves with other people, but social media has given us considerably more people to compare ourselves with.

You can now sit in bed looking at someone else’s beautiful house, successful career, perfect body, incredible holiday, gorgeous relationship and apparently flawless children before you’ve even brushed your teeth. It’s not exactly a recipe for feeling wonderful about your own life.

The problem isn’t simply that social media is fake. Plenty of the things you see are real. It’s that you’re seeing a tiny selection. You might compare your ordinary Tuesday with somebody else’s best week of the year. You see their new kitchen but not the argument they had that morning, their anxiety about work or the thing they’re looking at on somebody else’s account thinking I wish I had that.

If particular accounts consistently make you feel worse about yourself, mute or unfollow them. You aren’t legally required to give strangers permanent access to your self-esteem.

Wear the clothes you like now

Clothes have an enormous effect on confidence, especially if your body has changed. One mistake I’ve made is keeping clothes that don’t fit because I’m going to lose weight and get back into them.

Then you open your wardrobe every morning and half of it is essentially a collection of reminders that your current body isn’t the one you’re supposed to have.

Wear clothes that fit you now.

That doesn’t mean you need to spend a fortune every time your weight changes. Second-hand clothes, Vinted, charity shops and a few versatile pieces can make a big difference.

More importantly, stop treating nice clothes as something you’ve got to earn by becoming smaller. You deserve clothes that fit your current body comfortably.

I’ve been different sizes throughout my adult life, and I can confidently say that squeezing yourself into something because you refuse to buy the larger size does absolutely nothing for your confidence. The number on the label is considerably less important than how you feel wearing it.

Look after yourself without making appearance the goal

There’s nothing wrong with doing things that make you feel good about your appearance. Get your hair done. Wear makeup if you enjoy it. Paint your nails. Buy perfume. Wear earrings that are probably slightly too large.

But confidence built entirely on appearance can be fragile. Bodies change. We age. Weight changes. Hair changes. Health changes. Try to build some of your confidence around things that have nothing to do with what you look like.

What are you good at? What have you survived? What do people come to you for help with? What makes you interesting? What have you achieved that you once didn’t think you could?

If the only positive thing you can think about yourself is connected to your appearance or weight, there are whole parts of you that you’re forgetting to count.

Spend more time with people who make you feel like yourself

Some people make you feel as though you’re constantly auditioning. You’re thinking about whether you’re interesting enough, funny enough or saying the right thing. You leave interactions replaying conversations and wondering whether they secretly dislike you.

Then there are people you can be completely ridiculous around. You don’t have to perform. You can disagree with them. You can look awful. You can say something stupid and know it won’t become evidence against you later.

Pay attention to how different people make you feel. Healthy relationships don’t require you to make yourself smaller, quieter or easier to handle to keep someone else happy.

And if you’ve spent time around people who constantly criticised or undermined you, rebuilding confidence can take time even after they’re no longer in your life.

Confidence after an unhealthy or abusive relationship

I want to include this because confidence advice can sound incredibly simplistic when someone’s low self-esteem didn’t develop because they forgot to practise positive thinking.

If you’ve spent years being criticised, controlled, belittled or made to question your own judgement, it can profoundly affect how you see yourself.

You may have been told what to wear, who you could see, how to spend money or what you were capable of. Perhaps your feelings were dismissed so often that you stopped trusting them yourself.

Leaving that situation doesn’t instantly undo it. You can be physically away from someone and still hear their voice in your head when you’re making decisions.

Rebuilding confidence after abuse can involve relearning something incredibly basic: that you can trust yourself.

You make your own decisions. You discover your own preferences again. You learn that disagreeing with someone doesn’t automatically mean something terrible is going to happen. It can be slow. But every little decision you make for yourself can be part of getting that confidence back.

The Things I Didn’t Realise Were Domestic Abuse Until Years Later

Learn to say no without writing an essay

If you lack confidence, saying no can feel horrible.

You worry the other person will be upset, think you’re rude or stop liking you, so you end up agreeing to things you don’t want to do and then resenting them.

You don’t necessarily need an elaborate excuse.

“I’m sorry, I can’t make it.”

“That doesn’t work for me.”

“No thank you.”

Obviously, relationships and situations differ, and sometimes more explanation is appropriate. But you’re allowed to have boundaries without constructing a legal defence for each one.

This is something that often gets easier with practice.

The first few times you say no, you might spend hours worrying about it. Eventually you begin to realise that most reasonable people cope perfectly well with being told no occasionally.

Stop assuming everyone is judging you

When you’re self-conscious, it can feel as though you’re walking around underneath a spotlight.

You go to the gym and assume everyone has noticed you’re unfit. You walk into a room alone and imagine people wondering why you’re there. You wear something different and think everyone is looking.

Most people are considerably more interested in themselves than they are in you. Think about how much time you spend analysing random strangers. Probably not much. The person you think is staring at your body may actually be wondering whether they remembered to lock their car.

This doesn’t mean nobody will ever judge you. Unfortunately, some people are judgemental. But I don’t want to give those people more control over my life than they already have.

Confidence at the gym or when exercising

Exercise deserves its own mention because it can be an incredibly vulnerable situation if you’re uncomfortable with your body.

Gyms contain mirrors, unfamiliar equipment and people who appear to know exactly what they’re doing. If you’re overweight or very unfit, you might feel as though you don’t belong there until you’ve somehow become fitter elsewhere.

You do belong there. But you also don’t have to force yourself into the environment that makes you most uncomfortable. You could start at home, walk somewhere quiet, go swimming at a quieter time or find a beginner-friendly class. Gradually try more things as your confidence grows.

I’ve written a complete guide about how to feel confident exercising at any size, so I’d link to that rather than repeating everything here.

Do something by yourself

This was something I found surprisingly empowering. There’s a difference between being alone because nobody is available and choosing to do something alone because you want to.

Go for coffee. Visit somewhere. Browse the shops. Take yourself out for lunch. Go to the cinema. If that sounds terrifying, start smaller. You don’t need to immediately book yourself a solo fortnight in Thailand. Perhaps have a coffee by yourself and read for half an hour.

Learning that you can enjoy your own company makes you much less dependent on somebody else always being available before you’re allowed to do things.

Let yourself be bad at things

Perfectionism and confidence make terrible companions. If you believe you should automatically be good at everything, every new experience becomes a test of your worth.

You try an exercise and can’t do it. You’re useless.

You try something creative and it isn’t very good. You have no talent.

You start a new job and don’t immediately know everything. You’re a fraud.

But beginners are supposed to be bad at things. That’s practically the job description. Try allowing yourself to learn without turning every mistake into evidence about your value as a person.

Some things you’ll eventually become brilliant at. Others you’ll remain spectacularly average at and enjoy anyway. Both are allowed.

Keep evidence of the things you’ve done well

Our brains can be remarkably good at remembering embarrassment while conveniently forgetting achievement. You might still remember something awkward you said at a party in 2007 but barely acknowledge something difficult you handled last month.

So keep evidence. That could mean saving messages where someone thanked you, keeping photographs of things you’ve achieved or simply writing down moments you’re proud of.

This isn’t about creating a shrine to yourself. It’s about having something concrete to look at when your brain decides you’ve never achieved anything and are rubbish at absolutely everything. You can remind it that the evidence says otherwise.

Confidence doesn’t mean never caring what anyone thinks

I don’t think the goal is to reach some magical stage where you genuinely don’t care what anybody thinks about you. Most of us care to some extent. We want people we love to think well of us. We want to be respected. We don’t particularly enjoy criticism or rejection.

Confidence is more about not letting everyone else’s opinion automatically become more important than your own. Someone can dislike your clothes and you can still wear them. Someone can disagree with your decision and you can still make it. Someone can think you’re too loud, too quiet, too fat, too ambitious or not ambitious enough. At some point you have to decide whose life you’re actually trying to live.

What if your confidence has completely disappeared?

Sometimes low confidence is part of something bigger. If you’re withdrawing from life, constantly feeling worthless, experiencing significant anxiety or finding that your thoughts about yourself are affecting your ability to function, you don’t necessarily need another confidence exercise from the internet.

Talking therapies can help with problems including low mood, anxiety and low self-esteem, and in England you can often self-refer to NHS Talking Therapies without seeing your GP first.

NHS – Talking therapies

There’s nothing weak about needing more support than a blog article can provide. Sometimes confidence grows through doing things differently yourself. Sometimes you need help understanding why you feel the way you do in the first place.

How long does it take to build confidence?

There isn’t a set timetable.

If your confidence has been knocked by one particular experience, it may return quite quickly. If your view of yourself has been shaped by years of criticism, bullying, abuse or feeling inadequate, changing it can understandably take longer.

I wouldn’t measure progress by whether you’ve suddenly become confident in every situation. Notice smaller changes.

Maybe you wore something you’d previously have avoided. Perhaps you went somewhere alone, spoke up when you disagreed or didn’t spend three days analysing a slightly awkward conversation.

Maybe you looked at a photograph you didn’t particularly like and managed not to let it ruin your entire day. Those things count.

Confidence can grow so gradually that you don’t notice it happening until one day you realise something that once terrified you has become surprisingly ordinary.

You don’t have to become a different person to become confident

I think this is probably the biggest thing I’ve learned about confidence.

For years, I imagined confidence belonged to a future version of me. She’d be thinner. She’d look better. She’d have everything sorted out. She’d know what to say and wouldn’t care what anyone thought. I’ve spent enough time waiting for versions of myself now.

I don’t think confidence is about finally becoming the person you think you’re supposed to be. It’s about becoming more comfortable with the person you already are while still allowing yourself to grow and change.

You can want to lose weight and still wear the dress now. You can feel nervous and still go. You can have insecurities and still speak up. You can dislike a photograph without deciding you dislike yourself. And you can be a work in progress without treating yourself like a problem that needs fixing.

Perhaps that’s what confidence really is. Not believing you’re perfect. Just finally believing that you don’t need to be.

Sources and further reading

A few websites that may help you.

• NHS – Raising low self-esteem — NHS advice on recognising negative beliefs, building relationships and becoming more assertive.
• NHS – Talking therapies — information about NHS talking therapies and how to access support.
• Mind – How to increase your self-esteem — practical information about low self-esteem and ways of improving it.

A note about mental health: This article shares general information and personal perspectives rather than individual mental-health advice. If low self-esteem, anxiety, trauma or low mood is having a significant impact on your life, consider speaking to your GP or an appropriate mental-health professional.

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