Self-Confidence Questions

This idea comes up from time to time – that someone doesn’t have enough self-confidence. What does that mean really?

Sometimes we see someone struggling. They’re afraid to try something or go somewhere and we think about how they don’t have enough faith in themselves. Maybe we feel bad for them, maybe we’re impatient with them. Maybe we just want them to get over it and do it!

What is confidence in yourself?  Is that a  natural thing? How do you get it?  Do animals have self-confidence or is it only in humans? Does my cat, Frito have self-confidence?

In an ideal world, we grow up confident, we grow up in a loving and supportive home. We’re surrounded by loving and caring people who encourage us and believe in us. But what about when we didn’t have that, or we did but now it’s gone? What can we do to build our faith in ourselves now?

If we’re not sure we can, but we’re willing to try stuff and then succeed, we begin to believe in ourselves. When we take small steps and then larger steps to do hard stuff, we start to believe we can do things, even hard things.

Maybe we just want to give something a try but we’re afraid. How do we decide even if we’re afraid that we’ll go ahead and do it? We need to believe that the people in our lives that we care about, whoever they are –  think it’s ok for people to try something new. Maybe even one of them has tried something new and  now they’re kind of a role model for us. Of course, it helps if we really understand what we’re  going to try.

If it’s a good goal and you want to do it, why not?