Self-Doubter's Guide to Building Genuine Self-Confidence: Part 1

The Number One Factor in Building (or Destroying) Your Self-Confidence

How to build self-confidence?

This is something I’ve been asked to write about for quite some time. I took my time to think about it so that I could offer something new to this conversation, as well as give actionable advice rather than just talk about it in an abstract way.

This will be the first of a planned three-part series on self-confidence.

And it fits perfectly with the topic that this is my 100th Existential Espresso essay.

This is how that number relates to self-confidence: Writing for Existential Espresso is also not the only writing I do on a daily basis. Also, writing is not the only thing I have to do each day as a solo digital creator. However, I write and publish a 700–1200 word essay five days a week. That’s why I’ve been able to get to 100 essays in a relatively short time since starting Existential Espresso.

I would be lying if I said that writing this much was easy. But I am absolutely confident in my ability to do it. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about it. And, since I’m confident, it definitely feels easier than it actually is.

What matters is not for you to hear how confident I am, but to know that exactly 0% of that confidence comes from something that I was born with. All of it was built and developed. If I believed that you are born either a self-confident or an insecure person and that’s how you stay for the rest of your life, I wouldn’t be writing this. Hence the title, "Self-Doubter's Guide to Building Genuine Self-Confidence."

However, you might say that what I’m talking about is not the type of confidence you are interested in. There isn’t any specific thing that you want to be confident in. You are, like most people, interested in self-confidence in a more general sense. You simply want to feel good about yourself when you walk into a room full of people.

Well, I will be talking about both of those types of self-confidence. And, spoiler alert!, you cannot have that other, more general type of self-confidence without the first, more specific one.

In this first essay of the series, we will approach this topic with a question:

Why should you have any self-confidence?

And I am not asking this in a demeaning way. It is a genuine question.

To be more specific, let me ask you this: what reason have you given yourself to feel confident?

I know one thing for sure: most people give themselves plenty of reasons not to feel confident. In fact, almost all of those things can be traced back to one major killer of self-confidence: not keeping promises that you make to yourself.

I believe that the promises you make to yourself are where you either start building your self-confidence or kill your chance of ever having any.

And I am not talking about promising yourself that you will complete some great project or achieve an impressive goal. I am talking about starting with the basics. Are you able to keep those small, daily promises you make to yourself?

Let’s be more specific. Are you able to keep one of, if not the most basic promise that you could give to yourself? Are you able to wake up when you said you would?

Are you able to get up and start your day without hitting the snooze button? The night before, when you were setting your alarm, you were clear about the time when you wanted to, or when you knew you should, wake up. Are you going to start the next day by showing that you are unable to keep that basic promise to yourself?

And I know that some of you might say, "Okay, David, I get your point, but I know confident people who hit the snooze button."

I’m sure there are plenty of them. But I also know this: I don’t care how confident that snooze-hitting person is; a person who is able to keep that promise they made to themselves the night before will start their day feeling better about themselves. I challenge you to try and see for yourself.

But waking up on time is, as I said, just one of the most basic promises you make to yourself.

Another place where most people either build self-confidence or dig a hole of insecurity is with any kind of change they want to make about themselves. It’s often a physical change. If you say to yourself that you want to start training regularly or that you want to start eating more healthy, and you fail in doing so, how could you feel self-confident? Why should you?

On the other hand, if you stick to your training and diet and you see your body changing as a direct result of your discipline and hard work, imagine how good that makes you feel about yourself? You are someone who is able to keep a promise they made to themselves. How could you not feel confident? Furthermore, training and eating healthy might not have anything to do with learning a new language or how to play an instrument, but why shouldn’t you be confident in your ability to do those things? They also come down to making yourself a promise. A promise to show up every day and learn. And you already know that you are a person who keeps a promise they give to themselves.

Take the same example with addiction. And I know "addiction" is a heavy word, but here I am talking about it in a broader sense. Whether it’s overindulging in junk food, playing video games nonstop, binge-watching Netflix, or it’s alcohol, smoking, or other recreational drugs, it’s all addiction.

Let’s be real for a moment. One of the most ridiculous things people say is: "I could stop if I wanted to."

No. You are proving to yourself every single day that you cannot stop. Because, no matter what the motivation for your self-destructive behavior is, no matter how deep and painful that spot is, there are countless instances where you can clearly hear the inner voice saying, "This is not good for me. I should stop." I can confirm this from personal experience.

If you are not able to put some order into your life and eliminate, or at least limit and manage, the things that you know are bad for you, how could you be confident? Why would you, if you are giving yourself a reason to feel the opposite way?

Even though it might have seemed otherwise up to this point, the purpose of this essay is not just to call you out. It is, first and foremost, to help you.

So let’s talk about the practical side of things. Let’s talk about what you can actually do to start keeping the promises you make to yourself.

If you were expecting some revolutionary, never-before-heard secret, I will have to disappoint you. What you need is to build momentum. You need those small wins.

You don’t build self-confidence by keeping a promise you made to yourself that you would run a marathon. At least not until you’ve kept countless promises to go for a walk, then for a light jog, and then for a run.

Saying that you are going to lose X amount of weight in X amount of time is not the way to build self-confidence. There are so many things that could get in the way of you reaching that goal. You build self-confidence by saying, "I am going to become a person who doesn’t overeat." Don’t start by tracking your calories or starving yourself. Start by practicing some self-control and not eating way past what was necessary or reasonable. Do it for just one day. You will feel good about your ability to keep that promise to yourself. You will repeat the same thing the next day and the next day. You will feel that it’s time to make a slightly more ambitious promise to yourself because now you know you can keep that promise.

The same goes for any sort of change you want to make in your life. I know I am not saying anything revolutionary by telling you to start small, but it seems that this is a message that will never grow old or unnecessary because most people are still not applying it.

So I will end this essay by leaving you with two challenges.

The first one is simply to start keeping the promises you make to yourself. And you are going to do that by giving yourself small promises. How small? Small enough that you know you can keep them.

My second challenge to you is to be honest with yourself. If you are someone who is having trouble making promises to themselves that are small enough to be kept, ask yourself this: Are you really that ambitious? Are you really overestimating your abilities? Or are you sabotaging yourself? Why would you be sabotaging yourself? Maybe in order to avoid all the effort that you would have to put in as you move forward? Or is the self-sabotage coming from a place of believing that you don’t deserve to feel confident? Just something to think about.

Thank you for reading.

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