Women are complicated creatures, and anyone who disagrees is probably a woman! One of the biggest things that we all have in common is a blanket of low self-esteem. Not every woman will feel it at the same time as everyone else, but at some point in life, confidence and self-esteem are affected in a negative way for everyone. The one thing that everyone should have in life is good confidence, but sometimes it can take changing your life to boost it. The pieces of your life that come together to make you feel happy and satisfied are like glass: if one of those pieces shatters, your whole confidence can come screaming down. Self-confidence is the ability to believe in yourself, and if your life is causing you stress and low confidence, then you need to make changes and be happy with those changes. A happy life comes with a lot of little pieces for a lot of people. Relationships with partners and friends are one, career is another and the way that you view yourself is the last piece. We’re going to look at each of these pieces and discuss how your confidence can be affected, and how you can bring it back to its best.
Relationships
When your relationship is going well, your confidence can soar. You feel beautiful, you feel loved and you feel like you are worth something. When a relationship breaks down, you can question everything that you feel about yourself – even if the breakdown isn’t your fault. One of the biggest pieces of advice that you can be given after a relationship is not to have a dramatic change in your life. Don’t upset the apple cart, people will tell you. The thing is, your apple cart may be far happier upended, like the relationship that was stable and constant a moment ago. Dramatic haircuts, a holiday and even finding out if you are a candidate for rhinoplasty are all big changes that you may look at. You need to bring your confidence back up from the ground, where your break up left it. Rebuilding your confidence after a break-up is not easy, but it can be done. Finding out who you are without someone else to rely on is an adventure in discovery. All you have to do is spend time with yourself. In a relationship, it’s common to change pieces of yourself to fit their puzzle. You shave a little here, a little there and then you force yourself to fit their belief of who you should be. It’s time to reset yourself and be the person you want to be. Thus, your confidence will soar.
Career
Being a superstar at work has a huge impact on your confidence. When you’re doing well, you can feel like you’ve established yourself as an adult. You can feel like you have something to work toward and when you meet those challenges, they’re a personal achievement that makes you feel good and strong inside. When you’re doing well at work, you can feel as if you are untouchable. Being demoted, made redundant and even fired can change your entire outlook on your job. It can knock that confidence, make you second guess yourself. This type of change in life can shatter everything that you thought you knew about who you are and what you mean in the eyes of other people. You once may have strived to do more things, achieve more results. But knocking your confidence can make that motivation, that drive, slow right down. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? Don’t allow yourself the time to dwell on a knock-back. Get back on the horse – or the stilettos – straight away and start again.
Self-Worth
Outside of your relationship and your job, who are you? Do you know who you are? If you can’t answer that, then your confidence being shaken can be hard to recover from. You need to be able to feel assured about where you fit in the world, in your own head. Look into the mirror and find five things about your appearance that you can praise and appreciate. Your eyes, your skin, the shape of your mouth. Anything that is in front of you that you don’t want to change. Once you find those pieces, tell yourself what is beautiful about them. Look at yourself as a whole and find another five traits that you love about yourself. Is it your refusal to accept less than you deserve? Is it the way you know random facts that could interest anyone? Is it the way you carry yourself when you wear high heels? Whatever it is you can think about yourself, elevate it. Raise it up in your mind and let those thoughts fill you with positivity and motivation. That there is your confidence. It’s as fragile as a snowflake and you can’t break it. You have to be determined not to allow anyone else to break it, either.
You don’t need to have a stunningly handsome partner or a flashy job to feel good about who you are. You have the ability to do absolutely anything in the world and the sooner that you realize that the sooner you have a limitless potential is the day that nothing will stop you from reaching it. As you begin to grow in confidence and take on more daring adventures: traveling solo to a new place, learning to cook international dishes etc, you’ll find that the outward confidence that you show to the world that isn’t altogether real will start to rub off on your personality. You want to feel happy and secure about who you are already, and this means relying on yourself to get there. Sure, relationships and good careers would be nice, but that doesn’t mean you can’t function without those things. Be a force of nature and be fierce; only you can change your life to boost your confidence.
