Confidence for women is something you might not even be aware of as an important issue in your life. If you’re lucky, you were raised by confident parents who instilled a sense of independence and confidence in you from a young age. Unfortunately, most people don’t get that kind of childhood.
So how do you build your confidence? I’m so happy you’ve asked!
Confidence for Women – Practice Self-Compassion
Use Kinder Words
While most of us would never dream of saying something mean to a friend or family member, we have no trouble saying mean things to ourselves.
It’s time to listen to what you’re saying to yourself. Even things that seem harmless, like “I’m so clumsy” add up over time.
Instead of finding fault with yourself time and time again, be kind. Listen to all of those negative things and stop saying them. Write them down and figure out something you can say to yourself that’s kinder.
Practice Self-Care
Along with being kinder to yourself with your words, practice self-care. This is something that is finally gaining some ground with both men and women and I’m so happy about that.
How does self-care help you build confidence?
It shows that you value yourself enough to take care of yourself. Feeling overwhelmed and exhausted doesn’t make life fun. It makes it drag and feel like everything is insurmountable. When your recognize that you’re worth taking care of, your confidence grows.
Take Care of Yourself
Along with practicing self-care, you need to take care of yourself in other ways, like getting into a good workout habit, getting plenty of rest, and eating healthier. Each of these three things contributes to a healthier life.
Work Out
A workout routine doesn’t need to be a three-hour trip the gym five days a week. It can be as simple as a twenty or thirty minute walk most days of the week. People hate to hear the word workout, but make it what works best for you. Throughout my life, I’ve fit workouts into different places. Now that I’m an old retired guy, my workout is walking along the beach each morning. When I was still living in Boston, though, it was the P90X workout.
Get Plenty of Rest
Sleep is also something people don’t give enough thought to. Everyone works so hard and for so long every day that sleep is almost incidental. While there’s no right answer to how much sleep should you get, there is an amount that works best for you. You probably even know what it is. You know when you get seven or eight hours of sleep, you feel better rested and able to tackle the day.
Track your sleep for a couple of weeks and note when you feel the most rested. Once you know how much sleep works for you, aim for getting that much sleep every night.
Adopt a Healthier Lifestyle
And lastly, eating healthy is something we should all do. I read a recent study that indicates a new type of diabetes – Type 3. At this time, Type 3 diabetes is an unofficial term for a link between Alzheimer’s disease and some aspects of Types 1 and 2 diabetes. One of the risk factors for Type 3 diabetes is excess body weight.
I don’t know about you, but that’s reason enough for me to keep myself in shape! Being overweight poses other risks to your body, puts stress on your heart, and makes it more challenging to do activities you want to do.
Confidence for Women – Be a Learner
I love to learn, whether it’s a new skill or just a fun fact about someone or something. Growing your skillset, regardless of what aspect of your life it’s in, will build your confidence.
It might be past time for a definition of confidence, so let’s do that now.
Confidence is your belief in your ability to do something.
Now, you can see how developing a skill, or learning a new skill will help you build your confidence.
The better at something you become, the more confident you are in your ability to do that thing, but it also transfers to your overall confidence level.
Additionally, it shows you that you can grow and become better at something, which gives you more courage to try more new things. It just builds upon itself and keeps growing and growing!
Of course, I haven’t even mentioned how much fun it is too.
Build Confidence by Starting with Small, Achievable Goals
As you set and achieve smaller goals, you also build your confidence. It’s like learning new things. Once you see that you can master something, you feel more confident to try something else.
Once you see that you can reach a small goal, you’re more likely to try to reach bigger goals, each one growing your confidence a little more.
Smaller goals will build your confidence in small ways, and that’s still good. Larger goals achieved grow your confidence in an even larger way. By achieving a few smaller ones, you aren’t waiting months and months for the reward of achieving the goal.
My funny story about reaching a goal
Confidence for Women – Hang Out with Confident Women
It might be time to assess your friend list. We tend to draw people to us who are most like us, so if your confidence has been low for a while, your friends may also lack confidence. When you all go out together, it might go something like this.
You meet for girls’ night at a local hangout. Immediately, someone starts talking negatively about either a friend who isn’t there or a woman you don’t know who’s also at the venue. Who she is doesn’t matter.
This type of behavior breeds more bad behavior and gossiping. The problem is that this type of behavior shows a lack of confidence and also often highlights what each person feels is inadequate or ‘wrong’ with their own bodies or lives.
Someone who picks on another person because they’re overweight often feels they’re overweight too. If you choose to pick on her clothing, you don’t feel comfortable in your own. It isn’t always true but pay attention to how you and your friends act around one another, as well as what you find wrong with other people.
As you work on building your confidence, work on finding friends who will support you, regardless of where you are in your journey. Maybe one or two of your current friends do this now. They’re keepers.
Don’t hang out with people who spend more time gossiping than they do working on their own lives. Definitely don’t hang out with someone who don’t support you in your life. Good friends cheer you on and build you up.
Build Your Confidence with Mindfulness
When you’re mindful, you’re living in this moment right here. While you’re reading, you’re just reading, you aren’t also watching television, listening to the radio, or thinking about what you need to do next.
Live in each moment. Don’t look back and don’t look forward. You can’t change the past so there’s no point in reliving it.
When you stay present in this moment, you avoid experiencing stress and anxiety, both of which are caused by living in the past or future.
Take some time and just sit. What do you smell? What do you see? What do you hear? Enjoy each one. Notice your surroundings. How do the surroundings make you feel? I could argue that this is a form of self-care, which is a bonus!
Try to focus less on worrying about things that have already happened or things that might happen. Those thoughts steal your joy and push you into regret and anxiety. They do you no good.
Confidence for Women – Walk the Walk
Anyone who understands confidence can spot someone with low confidence right away. I was recently in a local retail shop and needed to speak to the person at the register. He never once looked me in the eyes, telling me he lacked confidence.
Some other signals of low confidence include:
- Hair covering your eyes or wearing dark glasses
- Slouched shoulders
- Shying away from conversations
- Arms folded across your body
- Speaking critically of yourself
- Comparing yourself to others
- An undying effort to be perfect all of the time
- Trouble accepting compliments
Even if you don’t feel confident yet, try to walk tall without hiding your eyes. Make eye contact, even if just for a moment, with people you walk by. Flash a smile for bonus points. Also, be more aware of your body language. When you catch yourself crossing your arms, just gently allow them to fall to your sides.
This is how confident men and losers decide who they’ll approach in a bar. The loser will approach the woman who’s sitting a little away from her friends or isn’t engaged in their conversation. The confident man will approach the woman who’s laughing and having a great time, totally engaged with her friends.
Dress Confidently to Be More Confident
How you dress tells people, in particular men, a lot about you. I remember being out with a few friends a couple of years ago. I watched a woman in her fifties walk into the restaurant and immediately knew she had low confidence. How?
She was wearing an outfit that was entirely too revealing. Her cleavage was very exposed and her dress was entirely too tight, and short. I later saw her with her date, and I could gather from the conversation I heard when walking by that it was a first date, probably an online find.
Men like mystery. If you’re showing off your body, you’re leaving nothing to their imagination. On top of that, it tells a man that you don’t believe you have any attributes to hold his attention aside from your looks. It also, falsely or not, may send a signal that you’re open to sex on a first date, which is also a sign of low confidence.
Be Confident in Who You Truly Are
How are you living your life right now? Is this the life you dreamed of, or is this the life someone else thought up for you? Are you afraid that if you be yourself, people won’t like you?
I can guarantee that if you can figure out who you really want to be and you can start living like you’re that woman, people will be drawn to you.
With social media as predominant as it is now, being genuine has gained some traction. People don’t want to deal with those who feel the need to be fake. They want the real deal and they’ve learned how to sniff out the fakes.
Outside of that, why wouldn’t you want to be yourself? Wear the clothing you like. Enjoy the job you really want to do. Live in the surroundings that make you happy. If you don’t like something, work on replacing it.
When you work to be someone you think people will like instead of being yourself, you’re the one who suffers the most. You’re depriving people who love you, or could love you if they knew you, of the wonderful woman inside!
Confident women aren’t fake. Their attitude is love it or leave it. It’s someone else’s loss if they don’t want to hang out with you, not yours!
Confidence for Women – Chase Your Passions
What lights you up? What energizes you and makes you want to act? Life without passion is flat and unexciting. If you don’t have something you’re passionate about now, it’s time to find something!
When you’re passionate, you can’t be weak. The two cannot co-exist. Not to mention that people sense your passion, and they want to come along with you, wherever you’re going. My assistant encouraged me for several years to do videos. She said I was so passionate and that I should show you that passion, so you’d know how much I want to help you.
She was right. After I did the first couple of videos and got the hang of it, I loved it. And she’s right, I love talking about the topics I choose to speak with you about. I get energy when the two of us brainstorm a new book or a new idea for you. I have passion!
To find your passion, try different hobbies. Volunteer for different causes. Get involved in charities. Look for local groups that are doing things you’re interested in. You’ll find it if you try!
Take Charge to Feel More Confident
Who’s running your life these days? You might think it’s you, but is it? Or do you live in a way in which others will accept you. In other words, do you do things because you think others will like you if you do, or do you do them because you want to?
When you don’t feel very confident, there’s a tendency to make choices that you think others will find acceptable. You may choose trendy clothing, even though you’d rather be wearing something else.
You might get the current haircut style, even though you prefer your hair to be longer or shorter. You may even live in an area you don’t particularly like because it’s the place to live, never mind that it costs a lot and you can barely afford it.
Being confident means not caring what other people think. You’re being your genuine self. People need to either like you for who you are or not, and if they don’t, it’s their loss, not yours.
Acceptance is something we all strive for, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of who you truly are inside.
So, it’s time to take charge of your life and decide what hairstyle compliments your features, what hair color you like, where you want to live, and what you want to wear. Work at the job you want to have, not one that everyone thinks is awesome.
Take charge!
Growing Confidence for Women by Building Others Up
When you focus your energy on building others up, it helps you as well. Confident women want others to succeed too. A confident leader will be sure to lift up her employees. A confident parent will lift up her children. A confident employee will help her coworkers.
How can you do this?
Offer Encouragement
Encourage someone to reach a goal or even set goals. Ask someone if they need help, or if you see they do, just step up and do what needs to be done. Some folks are afraid to ask for help, but grateful to receive it.
Share Knowledge
Kindly sharing what you know with others is a great way to encourage, as long as it’s done in a helpful and compassionate way. Help a child learn a new skill, or help a coworker learn a new aspect of their job.
Be Supportive
People often hide what they’re going through, but if you know someone well enough, you can see when your support might be helpful. If someone comes to you with a problem or concern, be a great listener and offer that encouragement where they need it most.
Forgive
People think that if they forgive someone for something they did that it makes what happened okay. The truth is that forgiveness is for you. A confident woman doesn’t hold grudges and she doesn’t give other people space in her head. When you forgive someone, you aren’t saying that what they did was okay. You’re saying you are a big enough person to forgive them. In fact, you don’t even need to tell the other person that they’re forgiven. Just say it to yourself.
Institute a Zero Gossip Rule
Gossip is for people with low confidence. Finding fault with others means you’re ignoring the things that need to be repaired in your own life. Aside from that, gossip is catty behavior and beyond that of a confident woman. When you’re confident, you don’t want to spend time criticizing others because you’re too busy living your life. Gossip isn’t building up, it’s tearing down.
Give
Giving to others is a great way to build someone up. Whether you give a financial donation, the gift of your time or energy, or something someone needs, like groceries or furniture you aren’t using, giving makes everyone feel good. Giving is a selfless act that shows empathy and encourages others in their time of need.
Confidence for Women – Do Things Alone
I wish I knew where the stigma of being alone came from because I’d wipe it out at the root. There is nothing wrong with going out to dinner by yourself or going to a movie alone. Who cares what other people think? You’ll never see those people again anyway. The first time you do it, it might feel a little intimidating, but just facing that will help you build confidence. Get comfortable doing things alone and you’ll feel much better!
Admit it When You Just Don’t Know Something
It’s okay not to know something. It’s the sign of confidence when you’re able to admit you don’t know something and are willing to ask for help.
Many feel it’s a sign of weakness, and even fear they’ll lose their job if they don’t know how to do something, but your boss will respect you more if you admit you don’t know and ask for assistance.
That’s a Wrap on Confidence for Women
The truth is that confidence doesn’t grow without effort on your part. It’s also true that if your confidence is really low, you might need to seek professional help to get the ball rolling.
There’s no shame in it and quite frankly, these steps might be more than you can handle right now. They’re tools to put into your toolbox, but if you find them difficult or insurmountable even, seek professional help.
Confidence improves all areas of your life. The changes you’ll experience are amazing, but you must do the work. It isn’t something you can work on today, then skip a few days. Each day, doing something to grow your confidence will help you get where you want to be.
I know that sounds like a lot, but really, some of the things I’ve shared with you above are things that might take a few minutes each day, not hours. Knowing that you need to build your confidence is a great first step.
Consider getting a journal so you can write every day about your journey. In six months, if you’ve been working on these things by yourself or with a professional, you should see a profound difference.
I wish you the best of luck in your journey. Be sure to check out the resources you’ll find on this page for more help!
The first confidence building book for women and a best-seller, Comfortable in Your Own Shoes will prepare you to meet great men and enjoy a happy and fulfilling life. And not just any life, but a life you design for yourself. YOUR life your way!
Are you ready to start planning that great life? Click below to get started today! There’s no time like now to live your life on your terms!
