14 Jan Self-confidence versus self-esteem

I am investigating the difference between self-confidence and self-esteem. You see, one of mine has been dented and I am wondering which one it is.

I have always been judged as someone with very little self-confidence. I don’t know who said it first, but it is a belief I have held about myself for as long as I can remember. Beliefs are stories we tell about ourselves but they are not necessarily true. Someone might have said something about you once and you have believed it ever since. It could be a friend, a parent, a teacher. It may have been about something very trivial but you have held on to it and your brain repeatedly goes off in search of evidence to back it up because it doesn’t want you to be wrong. So I have believed that I have low self-confidence for most of my life, but I don’t know why.

My own research into self-confidence informs me that confidence can be at different levels for different things. For example, my confidence at maths was very low at school but is better now. When I started skiing, my confidence was very low because I spent most of my time face down in a mound of snow. As I improved and could make it down a slope on my feet rather than my face, my confidence improved. My confidence at speaking in front of people is quite high because I have been doing it most of my career as a teacher and I have acted on the stage at school and University.

In fact, confidence it seems is based on “doing”. If you have no confidence at something, the best way to get it is to go out and do it.

The word confidence is derived from the Latin word “confidentia,” which literally means “to have trust or faith.” So self-confidence is about having trust or faith in yourself to be able to do whatever it is that you are faced with. Therefore it stands to reason that if you have done it before, you will have more faith that you can do it again.

Carol Dweck is one of the biggest names in education at the moment, and her theories about “Growth mindset” are driving forward many teachers. for those of you who haven’t come across her, she supports the idea that everyone is born with the ability to improve at everything – there is no “clever”, no innate ability to do something. Therefore confidence in anything can be grown with the right mindset. How one deals with failure is key to improving confidence. Failure is to be embraced as a necessary step towards improvement.

So to say I have low self-confidence would mean I do not have faith in my ability to do anything. Well, that’s just not true then. I know I can stand in front of groups of people and deliver stuff (I’ve been doing it for 20 odd years). I know I can ski, inelegantly. I know I can walk 26 miles with training because I have done it 4 times. I know I can cook well enough not to give my family food poisoning. I don’t have low self-confidence. My confidence in some areas may not be terribly high – I can’t snorkel, I can’t swim terribly well, I can’t run very far. But I could stick the word “yet” at the end of all those sentences because I know I could get better at them if I practised. Evidence shows me that when I practise, I improve. So, my confidence isn’t high in everything and sometimes it needs a bit of building up. It can be dented by failure, but it can be rebuilt,

Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it. – Stan Smith 

So what about self-esteem then? “Esteem” is derived from the Latin aestimare, meaning “to appraise, value, rate, weigh, estimate,” so self-esteem is about how we rate our self-worth. This is an interesting one then. How do you rate your self-worth or value? Value to what or to whom? To yourself? The world? Your family? Maybe it is to all these. How do you decide on something’s value? Isn’t that by using comparison? £1.00 is worth more than 50p because you can buy more with it. I value my daughter above my car because she is more important to me. So do I decide on my own self-worth by deciding whether I am worth more, or less, than someone else to the world, myself or my family?

If I decide I am worth less, what does that do to my mental health? Do I decide I am then “worthless”? Interestingly, if you type “How to build self-esteem” into a search engine, organisations like “Mind” come up, so it is clear that self-esteem is considered quite key territory.

Poor self-esteem is characterised by how we treat ourselves: negative self-talk, substance misuse, hooking up with “friends” and partners that treat us badly. People with high self-esteem look after themselves, taking care of their emotional needs as well as their physical ones. They eat healthily, exercise and engage in nourishing relationships because they know that they are important.

 So can you have one without the other?

Well apparently, yes, you can. There are many examples of celebrities who have high confidence in performing in front of thousands of people, but destroy themselves through terrible relationships or substance misuse because of their poor self esteem. Thousands of pounds are spent in shops daily by people who have confidence in what they want to look like but do not realise they are trying to build up their self-worth through wearing expensive items. Sadly, that is never going to be the answer. There are also those people who are constantly doing things in search of fulfillment but never actually find peace. They may be adrenaline junkies, constant travelers or permanent students, basing their self-worth on their last achievement. Clearly, when one thing has been achieved, they need the next in order to feel worthwhile.

However, it is less likely that you will have low self-confidence if you have high self-esteem. If you think highly of yourself, you are likely to recognise that you can achieve anything with practice and therefore that your confidence will grow with whatever you are trying to achieve. Although someone with high -self-esteem may have low confidence in some areas, it probably won’t bother them because their self-worth is not based on achievement.

So if you build confidence by doing, how do you build self-esteem? How do you improve your sense of self-worth?

Firstly you need to decide what your values are. What is important to you. You need to see that you are living to a unique code that is important to you. And you need to give that code value, recognise it as important.

Then you need to acknowledge yourself, all your good points, your less than good points, and accept that this is OK or decide what you want to change. Because you can change anything with enough practice.

You need to speak kindly to yourself and eliminate all negative self-talk because if you wouldn’t say it to another person, why is it OK to say it to yourself?

You need to take care of yourself and recognise that you are entitled to be taken care of. Start exercising, stop eating rubbish. Get enough sleep.

Get some support. Life Coaching is invaluable here. Or you may need to deal with some demons of the past – then get some counselling. You don’t have to do it on your own.

So, can self-esteem be dented? Some believe that it is built in childhood and cannot be gained afterwards, therefore cannot be dented if it is strong.

I think that’s rubbish. I believe that we can create ourselves to whatever blueprint we choose. Sure, it takes hard work and practise. But I plan to be long time on this earth and I have plenty of time to practise. Yes, life can dent it. But life also gives us the tools to hammer out the dents.