Anxiety Doesn't Have to Lower Your Self-Confidence

Anxiety and self-confidence usually don't coincide with one another, in my experience. I've also found that it is important to find ways to boost my confidence. Otherwise, it is easy to allow my anxiety to overwhelm many aspects of my daily life.

Why Anxiety Can Cause Low Self-Confidence

When you deal with anxiety constantly, you are overrun by anxious thoughts. And often, these thoughts include every misstep, every error, and every poor decision you've made, either recently or even years ago.

And even if the overwhelming thoughts aren't about mistakes you've made, you somehow convince yourself that you've done something wrong or that you are going to do something wrong in the future. And this results in feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

How to Boost Your Low Self-Confidence When You're Anxious

But there are things you can do to boost your low self-confidence. I've learned that I can't let my anxiety overtake me to the point that I am fearful of making any kind of movement forward in my career or personal life.

1. Surround yourself with supportive people. It's essential to surround yourself with people who are going to boost you up rather than make you feel worse about yourself. When you struggle with anxiety, you do this to yourself enough that you need people in your corner who will be supportive and help you feel more confident.
2. Use self-affirmations. This is all about self-talk. I've had to repeatedly tell myself some of the self-affirmations that I've found help me feel more confident, and even then, sometimes, I have a hard time believing them. But with practice, I've recognized that reciting to myself self-affirmations can actually be very powerful.
3. Use mindfulness and self-compassion. Sometimes, your self-confidence might drop because you're focused on a mistake or misstep that you've made. And then, what I've found with my anxiety, is that I'll replay the mistake repeatedly in my mind, creating this whirlwind of anxious thoughts. This does nothing beneficial for me but makes my anxiety worse, so it's critical that I stop those thoughts in their tracks. When you practice mindfulness, you focus on the current moment, and you do it without judgment. But it is just as important to do so with self-compassion. Instead of beating yourself up over a mistake, you practice mindfulness and self-compassion to recognize that you are human and that it is human to make mistakes. This is a practice I have to remind myself of constantly.
4. But don't be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone. Sometimes, it is when we step outside of our comfort zone that we experience the most growth. And when you step outside of your comfort zone, you might find doing that, in and of itself, helps you to feel more confident.

What do you do to boost your self-confidence? Share your strategies in the comments below.