Self Esteem And Self Confidence

In a world full of languages and in a language with a wide expanse of vocabulary, you can only imagine multifarious words getting interchanged or mistaken for each other’s meaning. The same is true of the words self-esteem and self-confidence.

There have been countless times that these words have been used yet how many really know what each means? What are actually the differences between these two concepts? Read on to find out what beliefs you have which are waiting to be corrected.

One of the most common discrepancies of self-esteem and self-confidence is that the first one is your overall look of yourself, how you give respect to yourself. The second one is your trust or faith in your own abilities. If direction is to be applied on these definitions, it is safe to say that self-esteem is about looking inwards, while self-confidence is how you see outwards. If mental affirmations are involved, self-esteem is saying, "I am good" while self-confidence is saying to yourself, "I can do this."

Deconstructing your esteem and confidence

Then again, it’s not as simple as it may seem. Self-esteem has its underlying factors contributing to the sum respect you give yourself. The same can be said about self-confidence.

Some of the elements contributing to whether you have low or high self-esteem are your conscience, guilt, and security. This means that it would be awfully challenging for you to have a good self-esteem if your conscience is nagging you that you are a person with distorted values.

As for self-confidence, a person may not fully depend his level of confidence on the abilities he has. He may find confidence in such external factors as power, money, and social status. A fine example of this is your confidence rooted in the fact that you are more financially challenged than most people you know.

It’s all in the mind

Since these concepts are both founded on psychology, the levels of your self-esteem and self-confidence are not entirely dependent on your environment, your experiences and/or your schema or stored knowledge.

You have the power to control these levels, especially if you’ll keep in mind the following definitions: self-esteem is also the value you place on yourself while self-confidence is the expectation of success. This just goes to show that no matter how ignominious your past may be, it does not serve as an alibi for you to have a low self-esteem. It is up to you to put value on yourself, on your own worth as a person, irrespective of your past failures. The same is true of your self-confidence since even if you are surrounded by utterly intelligent or successful people, it is up to you whether to translate this situation as a reason to sulk and whine about your incompetence or to treat it as a challenge that you can also reach such heights.