Mental Health and Me

Chapter 5: Confidence

Confidence is having belief in yourself and your ability, confidence is another element in aiding your mental health. Sometimes you may be confident and overconfident, but you still can be going through the same negative emotions someone who isn't confident does.

My experience of confidence is very different. Throughout high school I was quite shy and not very confident and that was linked with my anxiety and worry but in college whilst studying I joined a theatre company and this is when my confidence sky rocketed and actually helped to boost my mental health and mood.

Confidence relates to every other chapter in this book, having the confidence to open up and speak your feelings is essential to help your mental health. Having the confidence to do things you never thought you could do can massively improve your mental health.

Don't not do things just because you don't think you can do it. One of my main messages of this chapter is to try something new. You need to put yourself out of your comfort zone at times you might not feel confident presenting for example in front of your friends but putting yourself out of your comfort zone more and more will mean you get used to it and your confidence increases. Not only does this increase your confidence but also your accomplishing more you are doing things that you'd never thought you would be able to do and this brings about more positive emotions and boosts your mental health. One of the things I did was joining a theatre company and at first, I didn't like it because I couldn't sing as well, I couldn't get the dances. But the more I got put out of my comfort zone my confidence grew and not only this, but it also improved my mood and mental health.

Confidence and self-confidence are two very different things and understanding these are also key. Confidence is where someone has a belief in their ability in a certain situation whereas someone who is self-confident is someone who believes in their ability to be competent in a variety of situations. Being confident is one thing but we must be far more self-confident, we can boost our self-confidence through trying new things, pushing ourselves and accepting new challenges.

Improving our self-confidence helps to firstly reduce anxieties, when we believe that in most situations our ability will allow us to do well in that situation, we will feel less anxious. This is due to a more positive mindset and so we will feel less anxious and fear when facing unfamiliar situations. This will allow us to benefit more from the unfamiliar situation but also boosts our mood and mental health more.

We also can feel far more empowered and in control of our lives. Self-confidence is linked to an increase in self-efficacy and the belief in our own ability, these increases can have a domino effect on our ability to meet our goals. This is due to our increased belief and so we are more confident allowing us to reach short- and long-term goals. Every challenge will seem far less daunting due to your own past successes and this helps to further improve your mood and mental health.

Self-confidence is also very much linked with self-esteem. Self-esteem is someone's belief in their own worth and value, we can have a high self-confidence but a low self-esteem and this can limit our own confidence and can stop us improving our mental health. Boosting our self-esteem is a good way to become so much more confident and there are many ways to do it. The first is understanding your strengths and weaknesses and especially for your weaknesses challenging them, working on them and improving them but also further improving your strengths because this is what you enjoy and so can boost your mood and further boost your self-esteem. Also, don't be so critical on yourself just because you've done something wrong it doesn't mean you aren't very good at it see what you did well and work on it as well as the negatives this helps to stop your self-esteem being damaged by you being critical on yourself.

Furthermore, you can increase your self-esteem by not being forced into doing things, you always need to push yourself and challenge yourself but if there is something you don't want to do you don't have to say yes. Saying no is good because it makes you feel less down about the situation and resentful, this won't upset your friend and damage the friendship because at the end of the day it is your life and you can do what you want and they should respect your decision and opinion.

Increasing self-confidence and self-esteem allows this positive mindset which can actually allow us to feel more energised. This can allow us to do more each day, accomplish more and these accomplishments improves your mood and confidence leading to a further domino effect.

Finally, self-confidence and self-esteem can build strong bonds with your friends. Self-esteem can massively increase your happiness and make you feel so far more energised; we can focus this onto our friendships and helping others needs. Helping others in tough times can actually improve your mental health as well, seeing others being happy through your help makes you feel so much better about yourself and boost your self-esteem.

The message for this chapter is to belief in yourself, not everyone is perfect but working on improving yourself mentally can bring about far more confidence which in turn allows you to succeed more and in turn boosting your mental health.