where does confidence comes from?

 Confidence is self-trust in your skills, choices, and values. It comes from within yourself and feels like an inner knowing of your strengths and weaknesses while still thinking positively about yourself.

Varying levels of confidence can also show up in different situations. You may feel very confident in math because you were socialized and praised to succeed in your academic studies. You may feel less confident when it comes to public speaking because you've previously received criticisms from peers and haven't yet processed their feedback in a useful way.

Again, the good news is that low self-confidence is fixable, and you are totally in charge of making it happen.

Figure out where your lack of confidence stems from.

Finding the root cause for low self-confidence can provide a map of how to build up more positive self-confidence. A good place to start is through self-reflection and journaling.

Understand what self-confidence feels like for you.

Take some time to figure out what confidence feels like in your body. A good question to ask is "How will you know that you've reached a satisfactory level of self-confidence?" Perhaps you will start speaking up more at work. You might finally wear that outfit you've always wanted to. You may even introduce yourself to your crush at your co-working space. This will be different from person to person, so it doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. This is your personal measurement of confidence. 

Align with yourself.

If you find yourself frequently using the word "should," (for example, I should be married by 30, I should have a house by next year, or I should have my life together by now), take a step back and reflect. Where is this "should" coming from?

Many of the "shoulds" in life stem from cultural or familial expectations. With all of these statements, it's helpful to always ask yourself: Is this what I truly want for myself?

You have the power to reclaim your life at any point. The more that you make decisions aligned with your true self and your desires, the more confident you will become in your decision-making.

Start small.

Most of us don't like experiencing a ton of change at once. A very important key for self-improvement work is starting small. 

Shirin Eskandani, life coach and founder of Wholehearted Coaching, says one way to build self-confidence is to make small promises to yourself and then follow through. "And the key word is small. Do things that are a stretch but also realistic for you. So perhaps if you're not a morning person, not committing to waking up at 6 a.m. every day to do a morning routine but instead trying out an evening routine."

Adopt a growth mindset.

A growth mindset encourages you to explore beyond your current skills and knowledge, keeping the possibility of improvement open. Instead of using phrases like "I'm not confident," just add "yet" to it, which transforms the old belief into "I'm not confident yet." This adds the qualifier that you are in the process of gaining skills to become confident.