Confidence is a tricky beast. Just when you think you have it figured out, it can be shaken by a negative experience or triggered by seeing someone you admire. But how do you develop authentic confidence? The kind that surfaces when you’re facing challenges, rather than disappearing at their onset?

This article will help you understand what true confidence is, how to recognize its various forms, where yours currently stands, and how to build yours to become the confident person you aspire to be.

What Is Authentic Confidence?

Simply put, authentic confidence is an inner wisdom, belief, or knowing in your strengths. It also involves the ability to use that strength to get through uncertain or challenging times. For many people, confidence is something they think they either have or don’t. For others, it’s something they need to find and build up again after losing.

These three key elements demonstrate authentic confidence: 

• Knowing your strengths, both in general and in specific situations 
• Having a realistic sense of your capabilities, both in general and in specific situations 
• Having self-acceptance that facilitates resiliency when things don’t go according to plan

3 Main Levels of Authentic Confidence

1. General self-confidence:

This is your general sense of self-worth and belief in your abilities. 

2. Self-confidence in strengths:

This is the belief that you have the abilities and strengths to get you through situations. 

3. Self-confidence in challenging situations:

This is the belief that you have in your ability to use your strengths in particularly challenging situations. In other words, how much you believe that you will use your strengths and abilities to get you through specifically challenging situations.

3 Ways to Find Out Where Your Level of Authentic Confidence Currently Stands

It’s easier to start working on building up your confidence if you know where it currently stands.

Once you know the current level of your confidence, you can start to work on building the areas that need improvement. 

1. General self-confidence:

To discover your general self-confidence, ask yourself some questions such as: 

• How do you feel about yourself as a person? 
• What do you like about yourself? 
• What do you find to be your strengths? 

2. Self-confidence in your strengths:

To discover your self-confidence in your strengths, ask yourself questions such as: 

• Do you believe you have valuable strengths? 
• Do you believe you have the abilities to accomplish things? 
• Do you believe your abilities are useful in everyday situations? 

3. Self-confidence in challenging situations:

To discover your self-confidence in challenging situations, ask yourself questions such as: 

• Do you believe your abilities can help you get through challenging situations?
• Do you believe you can rely on your strengths when facing challenging situations? 
• Do you believe your strengths have helped you through any challenging situations?

3 Ways to Develop your General Self-Confidence

Having a strong general self-confidence is the first step to developing your self-confidence in your strengths and in challenging situations. These tips will help you to build your general self-confidence: 

1. Practice self-compassion:

Self-compassion is just the opposite of self-criticism. Being overly critical on yourself is what often leads to a lack of confidence.

If you’ve made a mistake, learn to forgive yourself and figure out what you have learn from it instead. If you’ve failed, don’t punish yourself. Instead, accept your shortcomings and use the failure as an opportunity to identify an area you need to improve in. If you treat yourself with love and care, your general self-confidence will grow. 

2. Identify your core values:

Everyone has core values that define who they are as a person, influencing their behaviors. You may not be aware of exactly what they are, but now is the time to identify them. If you want to build genuine confidence, it’s important to learn to understand yourself better and what truly drives you. This way you will have a stronger framework to build the general confidence you need, forming authentic confidence.

3. Reflect on the positive too:

Learn to take care of your mental state during the disappointment phase of making mistakes. Learning to focus more on the positive, such as your strengths or how you can improve. This will help you conserve your energy, using it on what you want to accomplish rather than what you don’t want.

For example, think of all the times that you or someone else made it through a difficult situation. Making it through a loss is actually a win! Even if the process of experiencing a loss is painful.

Believe it or not, authentic confidence is actually built by experiencing difficulties like losses, but choosing to get through the challenges you faced. The lessons you learn from grief or loss can never really be taught by example, only by experience. Authentic confidence is built in a similar way, experiences that challenge you, yet you chose to get through them.

If you continue to focus on moving towards a desired outcome, eventually, you will! The key is to focus on what you learn in the process; part of confidence is having an inner knowing. Learn how to decide to perceive your experience from a more optimistic perspective. For example, think of what you have gained in terms of personal growth and how the lessons can now be applied to your life.

With a “things happen for me and not to me” mindset, you will discover that this is how to develop the inner wisdom that builds true confidence. You may not be able to adopt this mind-set overnight, but keep reminding yourself until it becomes second nature.

2 Steps to Develop Self-Confidence In Your Strengths

You may have general confidence, but if you don’t believe you have the strengths and abilities to help you in everyday situations then you have to start building your self-confidence in your strengths and abilities.

These tips will help you to develop your self-confidence in your strengths: 

1. Build strengths:

If you don’t believe you have the strengths you need to accomplish the things you want, then start building them. If you want to develop confidence in yourself, you must learn to develop the strengths and abilities you believe you need. Think of confidence as working a muscle, it takes time and effort to strengthen it. But it won’t grow at all if you don’t provide your body with the resources it needs.

2. Practice developing strengths:

A crucial part of building authentic confidence is to be consistent with developing strengths once you have identified them. If you don’t use your abilities, you will lose confidence in them. If confidence is like a muscle then you know that it will atrophy if you don’t use it. Consistently practice using your strengths in everyday situations so that they become second nature. 

3 Steps to Develop Your Self-Confidence in Challenging Situations

If you want to develop your confidence in challenging situations, you need to practice using your strengths and abilities in challenging situations.

It’s one thing to be able to use your strengths in routine situations and quite another to be able to use them in challenging, unprecedented situations.

1. Identify your strengths:

The first step to using your strengths in out of the ordinary situations is to take some time to think about the strengths you have developed. These are generally the ones you use to get you through everyday challenges. They can be anything from your creativity or courage to your ability to focus. 

2. Practice using your strengths in uncomfortable situations:

Once you have identified your strengths, and practice them in everyday situations, they will become like second nature to you. Now you need to practice using them in more challenging, unmatched situations. Try new things that you know will make you feel uncomfortable. This will help you become more confident in using them during more unexpected, challenging situations.

3. Develop faith in your strengths in unforeseen, challenging situations:

If your strengths can help you in everyday challenges, and you feel able to use them in uncomfortable situations, then they can help you in unexpected challenging situations too.

The difference is that unanticipated, challenging situations are uncertain by their very nature. They are unpredictable and the outcome can vary at any moment.

The key is to learn how to strengthen your faith in yourself during unpredictable times. You must learn to rely on your strengths to help you to stay calm and focused on an intended outcome, yet maintain a healthy level of detachment to it.

Summary

If you want to become authentically confident, you must first become aware of three different levels of confidence, where you stand, and how they relate.

In addition, you must actively work on these levels of confidence; self-confidence in general, confidence in your abilities and strengths, and confidence in your ability to use your strengths in both everyday situations and in serendipitous, challenging situations.