3 Tips to Be More Confident

If you read my Q&A from this post in spring of 2019, you may remember I had mentioned some issues with self-esteem. Everyone has these issues and wants to be more confident, no matter how gorgeous one is. However, some have it worse than others where it starts to affect how much (or how little) they eat, how much they isolate themselves, or even whether one might be harming their own body in any way. I’m still not ready to share my personal journey of my struggles, but either way I think this blog post can apply to anyone no matter what age they are or how hard their journey has been and teach you how to be more confident.

One of my biggest lessons from 2019 was learning to not pay attention/care to what others think about me. And I think that was possible due to slowly discovering my self-identity and getting more comfortable with who I am and what I like, which has in return boosted my self confidence. Now I’m not talking about the kind of confidence where you hold your head too high and are self-centered. No, I am talking about being comfortable with myself and not letting other opinions lower my self-esteem. So how did I learn to be more confident and more comfortable with myself?

Treat your body right.

When you respect yourself & treat yourself well, you feel better about yourself. If you don’t treat yourself nicely, how can you be confident in yourself? Whether you’re treating yourself right with food, content you’re consuming, self care nights, doesn’t matter. Do right by yourself. Your body is a temple. It sounds cheesy, but it’s the God given truth. Stop harming it by surrounding it with people who upset you, by listening to music that might be degrading but has a cool beat, by looking at people that you’re constantly comparing yourself to. You don’t need anything that makes you feel less love towards yourself. You need to stop consuming whatever is making you feel bad about yourself in order to slowly be more confident in your own body and in yourself in general.

Keep your own promises to yourself.

If you say you’re going to do something, do it. Don’t fall back on your word to yourself. You might be thinking, “Uhh…how is this relevant?” Well, think of it this way: Are you more confident in your reliable friend or your unreliable friend? I think the answer is the reliable friend. Why is that? Because this reliable friend is someone you can count on, something who won’t let you down. So you need to make yourself your own reliable friend that you can count on. So make promises to yourself and keep them. Stop letting yourself down. The more promises to make and keep, the more you will build your self-confidence. Even a promise that may feel small is helpful.

Do what makes you happy.

Something upsets you? Stop doing it. Stop committing to dates with people you dislike, stop pursuing the job you hate, stop trying to look like someone you don’t want to be, stop doing things that make you hate your life. Instead, pursue your loveliest life! I’ve fallen back into old habits multiple times, that’s for sure. But whenever I’ve fallen back into those bad habits, the root cause has been because I was pursuing something that was not making me happy. Most recently, I remember back in September 2019 I fell back into an awful habit that I’ve been healing from since I was 17/18 years old. A habit I am ashamed to admit even to my husband or sister. But I realized very quickly that the root cause was the fact that I kept pursuing something that made me very unhappy and unsatisfied with my life even though it was something that a huge chunk of our society thinks is acceptable. But no matter how acceptable it might be, it was not worth the dissatisfaction I felt and the negative effects of the awful habit I picked up again.  So I cut the root cause out as soon as I could and I instantly felt more love, both towards my life and myself. It has helped me be more confident in myself.

I think it goes without saying that there are definitely some more tips that can help build one’s confidence. But I think these three tips cover the basics. Some might say “dress better” or “work out/eat healthy” but that can fall into the category of treating your body right or doing what makes you happy. Some might say “wear makeup” to make yourself more confident, but if it doesn’t make you happy than you shouldn’t have to wear makeup.

I also want to say that if harming yourself physically makes you happy, it’s not going to make you feel more confident because then you are not treating your body right.

If you ever need support in preventing self-harm, there’s wonderful people on the other side of 1.800.273.TALK that are happy to help you. You can also text CONNECT to 741741 to chat with someone.

Last but not least, I want to acknowledge that building self confidence is not a one-man show. It’s much harder to do if you are surrounded by a negative group of people or negative family members that you can’t just cut out of your life. Everyone needs a supportive friend or two in their life and I want to encourage you to seek out that supportive network for yourself. Whether it’s an online community (which is what blogging was for me – in addition to college friends – when I was 17/18 years old) or a local book club or any sort of organization. And if that doesn’t work and you ever need a friend, I am here to listen, seriously. Send me an email at alena@loveeverythinglovely.com or message me on instagram (@alena.votchits).

I know this was a lengthy blog post so I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to read it through. I hope it helped you and inspired you to get comfortable with who you are and live your loveliest life. After all, we each deserve nothing but the best.

♥ Alena