A surprising number of people think that everyone has their lives (and themselves) figured out by age 30 or so. While this might be the case for some, it certainly isn’t the same across the board. In fact, many people reach their 40s or 50s and still don’t have the confidence and poise that their peers, parents, or esteemed elders seem to have developed effortlessly.
If you’ve reached midlife and still lack confidence, don’t despair: you aren’t destined to end your days in awkwardness. Here are some things you can start doing today to improve your confidence exponentially.
1. Engage in positive introspection.
Psychology Today tells us that self-reflection is crucial to improving ourselves. So set aside some quiet time in which you’re unlikely to be interrupted, and explore which aspects of your life you feel are hurting you or holding you back from feeling confident.
Write these down if that’s helpful to you, along with any evidence you have that these thoughts and feelings are real. For example, if you’re feeling low self-confidence about your appearance, take note of whether others have criticized you about it, or if you’re feeling overly critical towards yourself. Sometimes it’s our own behaviors that actually sabotage our self-confidence.
Once you figure out where this lack of self-confidence comes from, you can address it. Furthermore, you can determine whether these things are easily fixed or will require greater dedication. If your low confidence comes from things you cannot change, then refocus on all the things you can alter that’ll boost your flagging self-confidence.
2. Take action to do the things you’re good at.
After identifying what the issues are (hopefully with some good feedback from trusted friends and family), you can start working on whatever it is. Perhaps you never started a passion in your 20s and feel like now you can never achieve it. But is that actually true? As long as you have a fairly healthy working body, there’s a good chance you can still do it.
Some of the best ways to improve self-confidence in this regard are to tackle a skill that challenges you, like learning to play an instrument you’re unfamiliar with, or learning a language in a different family from those you can already speak.
Realizing that you’re capable of doing these things — and doing them well — does wonders for helping you recognize your worth. Just take it slowly and be as consistent as possible in your efforts. Add a pebble to the pile every day, and eventually that pile will become a mountain.
3. Get out of your comfort zone and do something that scares or intimidates you.
A great way to build up your confidence is to do something that’s totally out of your usual behavior or comfort zone, according to Harvard Summer School. This invariably involves taking risks, which might be intimidating (or downright terrifying) to you, but is the impetus that’ll break you free from the shell that’s been stifling your confidence.
An old friend of mine used to have terrible self-confidence until a couple of really good-looking girls who were super into him convinced him to go on a road trip with them. He hemmed and hawed and tried to find every possible reason not to go, ranging from worries that they’d abandon him somewhere weird or could potentially be serial killers.
So, we all but packed his bags for him and threw him into the back of their van. When he came back from that trip a couple of months later, he was a changed man. His self-confidence had soared, he had an easy smile, and many of the anxieties that had previously plagued him had disappeared.
Of course, we’re not suggesting you should take risks that are genuinely unsafe, but strategic risk-taking done right can do wonders for your self-confidence.
4. Spend less time with those who bring you down.
Some people in your life may not be actively trying to make you feel terrible, but their presence has that effect on you nonetheless. They may, in fact, be lovely, wonderful people in many ways, but something they do (or some other aspect about them) is really hurting your confidence. For example, let’s say you were fantastic at a particular skill when you were younger, and now your nephew is better and faster at it than you are currently.
He’s younger, doesn’t have the life stresses that you do, etc., and his abilities are eroding your self-confidence — especially if your ego was tied into your proficiency with that skill in the past. The boy isn’t trying to show you up: you’re simply at different points in your life, and his rising star is reminding you that yours is on the decline.
In a situation like this, it’s best to withdraw for a time until you have successfully worked on your feelings and overcome this issue. Then you can be your full, radiant self around those who might be making you feel awful simply by existing.
5. Avoid discussing your insecurities with too many people.
If you’re comfortable discussing your insecurities with your partner and closest friends, that’s cool — they can likely help to bolster your ego with positive reassurance. That said, if you’re seeking external validation by talking about your perceived foibles and shortcomings with everyone around you (including online), then you’re opening yourself up to potential harm.
Essentially, you’re providing potential enemies with all the ammunition they need to hurt you, manipulate you, or otherwise cause you distress.
Additionally, the more you speak negatively about yourself, the more likely it is that you’ll keep embodying the very traits you feel insecure about. This isn’t just because you keep saying it to yourself, but if you keep telling others how depressed and underconfident you are, they may become an echo chamber that’ll slow or even halt any attempt at positive improvement.
6. Examine your negative self-talk and figure out where it’s coming from.
For a lot of people, their low self-confidence is due to other people’s mistreatment of them during their formative years. As a result, they “hear” constant negative jibes about them in their own minds: about their appearance, their value, their capability (or lack thereof), and so on.
If you feel that you lack self-confidence and you’re plagued by negative self-talk, examine whose voice it is. When you start to think poorly of yourself, are you hearing your own voice? Or the echoes of those who have put you down in the past? You aren’t the same person now as you were in your teens or twenties, so the narrative you might have incorporated into part of your daily reality is no longer valid.
7. Find the middle path.
If your confidence has been tanked by setback after setback, then taking some time to find balance in your life (e.g., the “middle path”) is a good idea. This may involve being more realistic about what you can and can’t handle — or achieve — now that you’ve reached midlife, while also aiming to be the most ideal version of yourself possible.
This usually involves working with what you have to the best of your abilities, while tempering the traits that you may not be particularly happy with.
For example, if you’ve always been fiery and impulsive by nature and you want to change that, seek to improve your patience. Alternatively, if you’ve always been fairly timid and quiet, aim to be more expressive and expansive. Find the sore spots where you feel that your confidence is flagging, and then aim to improve them as best you can. Many small improvements and course adjustments will lead to great, long-lasting change.
Final thoughts…
If you ever feel like those around you are far more confident than you are, please keep in mind that most of them are either faking it or are living embodiments of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Meanwhile, the most capable and brightest individuals suffer from debilitating self-doubt.
The good news is that if you feel that you’re at rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up from here. Besides, when you’ve been through a ton of difficulty, you realize that you’re capable of pretty much anything: you can be fearless and develop immense confidence from being so.
