How I Built My Self-Confidence by Mariamawit Tirfe

Photo by @rochellavisions

Self-confidence: “the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on oneself”

If there is something I am most proud of, it’s my self-confidence. My ability to walk into a room with my head held high, with the belief that I am worthy, I am able, and I am capable. I can say with no doubt in my mind that I can and will achieve whatever I set my mind to, with no hesitation. I believe in myself so much so that I can bet everything on myself and know that I will win, every time. Has it always been this way? Absolutely not. Was I born confident? I wish I was. If it was up to the situations that I have experienced in life, my confidence would have been long gone. But my confidence is not dependent on those situations nor any type of outside force. My confidence is something I have built, brick by brick and so can you. 

But let’s rewind back to the beginning, let me open up my world for a moment. My name is Mariamawit, and I am 21 years young. I was born in Maryland, Virginia, USA. At a very young age I moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where I spent most of my early years. Confidence was not something that I thought of a lot by then until I moved to Stockholm, Sweden at the age of 11. Although I have travelled quite a lot growing up and had been exposed to different cultures and people, this was something new. Because this time, there was no going back home when I was done, this was home. I have always been quite “different” growing up. I was very outspoken, expressive, and straightforward. I wasn’t afraid to stick out or go against the crowd and do what I think is right. But, for the first time in my life, I felt the need to hold back and be reserved because my environment was foreign to me. I didn’t know what to expect, I couldn’t predict the reactions I would receive from doing or saying certain things. There was a sense of uncertainty. And that made me uncertain. 

I’m very sure that not feeling like you belong somewhere is something many of you can relate to. Being in a completely new environment where your personality is automatically predetermined based on your appearance is not easy. The more I grew up, the more I started noticing how certain reactions of people would affect how I felt, or how sticking out made me want to hide. In a way I felt like my power was taken away from me because my way of thinking and my reactions were controlled by my environment. I had lost control. Not just control of the situations I was in, but I had lost control of myself, my emotions, and my reactions. It’s natural for us humans to people-please, to maybe articulate ourselves in a different way for the sake of the people around us or to hold back certain feelings in fear of being perceived in a certain way. But that’s tiring.

At the age of 18, I decided to move to the other side of the world alone, from Sweden to Australia to study. I was in for the rollercoaster ride of my life. COVID-19 broke out soon after my move, borders closed and I was stuck abroad with just me, myself, and I for a year. Little did I know, this was the ultimate year of my life. I was forced to face myself. No one was there to sugar coat things for me, nor was I able to distract myself. My world had stopped fully, and it was me staring straight into my eyes. What happens when everything else around you that makes you confident completely freezes? What happens when all the materialistic things that boost your ego are out of reach? What happens when the relationships that validate your self-esteem aren’t there? You are left with yourself, and if that doesn’t make you equally confident, there is a problem. What is the use of confidence if it is there through the good times and not during the bad times? Before all the physical and materialistic aspects, the mindset is what comes first. The way the mind views things makes it either a reality or false reality. These are all questions I had to ask myself while building my confidence that year, and these steps and observations have changed my life. 

Confidence is trust

“Why aren’t I confident?”. I have asked myself this question quite a couple of times in the past. For a while, I couldn’t really pinpoint the exact reason. Maybe in one moment it was what I wore that didn’t make me feel confident or in another situation it might have been the fact that I didn’t know anything about the topic that was being discussed in a group conversation. But one day, it all made sense when I was watching a soccer game. I heard a guy say, “I’m confident this team is going to win!”. I replayed that sentence in my mind a couple of times and asked myself “why is he confident that they’re going to win?”. After a couple of minutes, I told myself “Well, he has probably followed their intense training sessions, he has done his research on how much they have prepared, he has definitely followed all their past matches and seen how they have performed to excellence and he has probably even watched biographies of some of the players and knows how much they have put into this very moment, to win”. So, this means that his belief isn’t blind faith. These players and this team that he believes in so deeply have over time proven to him that they are capable of winning and have kept their promises. These players have built a reputation that this man was able to trust. After another 20 minutes it clicked again “Oh wait! Trust! That's it! It’s trust!” In that moment my whole perception of confidence changed. Confidence is trust.

So how do you build your confidence? Firstly, you rebuild trust with yourself. Your confidence is your reputation with yourself. A confident person is someone who keeps the promises they make to themselves. And that reputation that you have with yourself is built over time when you are able to consistently keep those promises and prove to yourself that you are trustworthy. But this works the opposite way as well. The more you break the promises you make to yourself, the more you lose your confidence. An important aspect of building this trust is time. Building a reputation takes time so, keeping promises to yourself should be a habit that is done consistently to build a solid track record. 

Self-love is not a feeling

“I want to keep the promises I make to myself, but why don’t I?...That’s another question I asked myself. The answer was that I didn’t have a good understanding of self-love. You’re probably wondering what on earth self-love has to do with keeping a promise you made to yourself. Hear me out. “It’s self-love Friday, slap on a facemask, put your hair in a bun, order some takeout, watch a good movie and call it a day” was what I thought self-love was for a very long time. I simply understood the concept as making myself feel good. So, I would give myself passes to do things that made me feel good. I would have that weekly “cheat day”, get my nails done, go out for some “retail therapy” as we call it nowadays. Which is all great, but if you asked me what self-love is today, do I have the same understanding? Probably not. So, what is self-love? 

Self-love is not just a feeling. Self-love is actions. Self-love is having the courage to say no to the things that don’t have your best interest at heart. Self-love is holding yourself accountable. Self-love is disciplining yourself to stay consistent with developing a habit of keeping your promises. Doesn’t sound too fun, does it? But these difficult actions are what increase your self-appreciation and most importantly, your self-respect and self-trust. Earning trust and respect from yourself is what eventually builds your self-love because you now have the belief that you can rely on yourself, you are capable of making decisions that are good for you and that you have your best interest at heart. But in order for this to happen, you need to be intertwined with yourself. Confidence comes from within, once the spirit and soul are connected and on the same page, the body follows. Most of us have this feeling of confusion, as if we are within our bodies but a part of us is floating in the air. We understand ourselves yet we have no control of our actions which creates indecisiveness and a vicious never-ending cycle of broken promises. The body, spirit and soul are living separate lives, and there is no harmony. Hence, why we aren’t able to love ourselves because we aren’t even in harmony with all parts of ourselves. What do I mean by that? Let’s get deep for a moment. 

We consist of 3 parts: the spirit, the soul, and the body. The body has direct contact with the physical world through our five senses: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. This means that everything we consume through these five senses from the world goes straight to the soul. The more we consume from the physical world, the stronger the influence of what we consume is on our bodies. So, if what we are consuming is social media that tells us we are ugly, that's what the mind and body believes, and eventually that’s what becomes our reality. The spirit, however, has no five senses, so everything it consumes is from another dimension or a “higher power” through things like meditation, intuition, and vision. This is where we encounter feelings or ideas that aren’t from our body or the physical world, but instead from our subconscious mind or higher self. The link between our spirit and that dimension is faith. This aspect of ourselves is unlocked when there is faith or belief in something. Having faith in ourselves, the universe or whatever gives us that extra boost of hope. Remember, since the spirit does not have those five senses, it isn’t led by what we see, feel, hear, smell or touch. Instead, it’s led by what we have faith in or what we hope for. This can also be connected to having visions, dreams, hopes and aspirations. We can’t physically see visions, dreams, and aspirations but we believe in them and have faith that they can become a reality. Lastly, there’s the soul. The soul acts as an intermediate between our spirit and our bodies. Therefore, it is either influenced by the spirit, the body or both. The spirit and body are in constant battle. When this pressure is put on the soul, we feel stressed, confused, and indecisive. Eventually either the spirit or the body has more influence, and a decision is made regarding how we feel and react. To have control over the body and how it’s influenced by the world, the spirit needs to consume more of whatever gives it inner peace and increases its faith in one's vision. Otherwise, if the spirit is shut off, the body is directly influenced by whatever information is consumed through the five senses, directly affecting one’s confidence. The key to self-love is creating harmony between the spirit, soul and body and being in control of what is consumed.

What makes self-love so interesting is that it has a direct connection with all types of relationships that we have with others. With no self-love, it is impossible to have love for someone else because there is no foundation to build that love upon. Self-love is what has the power to dissolve our ego, which is the greatest obstacle to truly and fully loving others through thick and thin. We often mistake self-love for selfishness, but quite frankly, it’s the opposite. The best thing we can do for those around us is to first love ourselves. Because only then can we love those we hold near and dear fully. Only when we love ourselves can we recognize true love from others and distinguish unhealthy “love”. Want to know the first thing that happens with your relationships when you learn to love yourself? Most of your relationships will end. Yes, you read that correctly. Why? Because the relationships you had before building your self-love were built on your ego. Others can only support the love we have for ourselves, but they can never substitute it. A lot of the unhealthy and toxic relationships that we are forced to deal with are relationships we allowed into our lives so that they can validate the idea of who we think we are to boost our ego. Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown. Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus. Think of every relationship in your life and ask yourself why they are in your life. Be honest. The answer will most likely explain why you are dealing with the issues that come from that relationship. 

Real self-love is loving ourselves enough to have the courage to look at ourselves, be honest with ourselves, put that ego aside and take responsibility for the choices that we make regarding the people that we invite into our lives. What you allow in your life and who you allow into your life is a representation of self-love. I’m about to trigger some nerves here but, most of us are dealing with issues with people that we chose to invite into our lives. Remember, the way you love yourself is how you show others how to love you. Which brings us back to my point of the definition of self-love, making those hard choices that will be things you will thank yourself for in the long-run and creating that harmony between our spirit, soul and body. How do we do that? Well, I’m glad you asked: let me introduce you to what I like to call “self-parenting”. 

Photo by @rochellavisions

Self-love manifests itself through self-parenting

The marines have a saying “everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die”. We all want to be confident, but not all of us are willing to put in the work. The main foundation of loving yourself to build strong confidence is self-discipline. I like to call it “self-parenting”. The love between a parent and a child is a very good example of self-parenting. A parent’s goal is to raise their child in the best way they could and make decisions on their behalf that benefit them until they can make those decisions themselves. However, sometimes this may mean that the parent may have to say no to some things even though the child may cry, roll around on the ground and throw a tantrum. 

Self-parenting has little to do with your body compared to your mind because the goal is to gain control of your mind so that it can instruct your body to take actions that are in your best interest. We live in a world where we are faced with trials and tribulations every single day. Every day the world is trying to kick you down. Every day the world is trying to crush your confidence and every day the world is trying to convince you that you can’t. On top of all that, the last thing you need is having yourself contribute to that abuse by choosing to do things that don’t benefit you and preventing yourself from getting everything you ever dreamed of. It’s easier to skip going to the gym today and indulge on that junk food that you’ve been craving, it’s easier to ignore that task that you’ve been putting off and watch TV instead and it’s a lot easier to scroll on social media for hours instead of reading. But these actions that may seem to be “self-love” have actually taken you several steps backwards and proven to yourself that you aren’t able to build a trustworthy track record. This is not about imprisoning yourself by saying no to things that may seem “fun”, it’s about freeing yourself from your impulsivity and things that eventually imprison you by not exposing yourself to them. You have the right to do whatever you want but, will everything benefit you? Is everything necessary? Asking yourself these questions is what saves you from falling into the trap of becoming a slave to what seemed to be “freedom”. This is how we teach ourselves to make better choices in life.

Discipline has been associated with punishment, but it’s not. Self-love is foregoing immediate pleasure in exchange for long-term self-respect that can only be obtained through discipline and self-parenting. You can never win the war against the world if you can’t win the war against your own mind. The key is not being able to handle the situations you are in. You can never manage everything that life throws at you, but you can manage your mind. That is how your self-confidence stays stable when everything else around you says otherwise. If you want to be confident, you must love yourself, which means that you must discipline yourself. The road to sustainable confidence is disciplined behaviour because that’s what's going to allow you to rebuild the reputation and trust that you have with yourself. 

It’s called “SELF-esteem”, not “others-esteem”

It all has to do with you, you are the main character in your own story, and you choose how to write it. Allowing your surroundings to determine your self-esteem? Let me give you a visual representation of what it’s like basing your confidence on other people’s opinions. Imagine looking into a shattered mirror. The image is obviously distorted. Now imagine trying to rearrange your face to look good in that shattered mirror. That’s exactly what we’re doing when we let other people's opinions determine how we feel about ourselves. Giving over this power to other people is extremely dangerous. Because you are giving over control of your mind, which means that you are giving over control of your actions. Now you are a muppet. One thing I realised is that people are only going to understand something to the level of understanding that they have reached, and they are only able to tell you something based on what they know. If someone tells you that you can’t do something, it’s usually because they fully believe that they cannot do it themselves or that it can’t be done by anyone. So, it isn’t always personal. Realising this made me let go of seeking validation or confirmation from other people about how I should feel about myself. 

People can make you act out of your character and out of your beliefs by projecting their fears and their insecurities on you. Allowing this comes from lack of trust in yourself, which refers to my first point. We often tend to give over this power to someone else when we don’t trust ourselves and our own emotions because we haven’t proven to ourselves that we are trustworthy. So, it’s easier to let others tell us how to feel about ourselves, or what decisions we should make or how we should act, rather than making those decisions ourselves. Why? Because we think that allows us to blame everyone else but ourselves when things go south. 

Don’t get stuck in the “victim comfort zone”

Welcome to what I like to call the “victim comfort zone”. This is where most of us are stuck in suffering because we are still pointing fingers. Things happen in life, things we have no control over, things that have completely shattered our self-confidence and self-esteem. And after a while we allow these things to become a part of us that we use as excuses. “Oh, that’s just the way I am”.... But let me give you a reality check: it doesn’t matter whose fault it is that something is broken, as long as it is your responsibility to fix it. We all come with trauma, and sometimes we’re even born into it and may not have had a say. But it is our responsibility to figure out how to deal with those traumas and create a life out of it. How? Separate fault and responsibility. When someone is at fault for our suffering, we want them to fix things, we want them to pay, and we want them to suffer for it. But here’s another reality check for you: when it comes to your life, your heart, and your happiness, it is your responsibility. The road to winning back your self-confidence is when you take back that power by taking responsibility. 

So, how do we take back that power? By forgiving yourself. The biggest thing holding us back is usually the grudge we hold against ourselves. The false belief that “because we are flawed, we can’t start over”, or “because we are scarred, we can’t be whole again”. STOP! What's even more interesting about holding grudges is that it usually doesn't even have anything to do with the people who hurt us. We usually hold grudges against ourselves because we can’t forgive ourselves for putting ourselves in a position where we got hurt, or allowing certain things to happen to us, or maybe not speaking up for ourselves. What's frustrating about this is that it’s probably the biggest obstacle to everything we desire in life. So, forgive yourself. You’re probably wondering “how”? Well, forgiveness is not a one-time decision, which explains why most of us aren’t able to forgive. We decide to forgive in a specific moment but that feeling of anger or frustration crawls back into our minds, and that’s completely normal. Forgiveness isn’t about the grudge disappearing in a second. Forgiveness is about what you choose to do over and over again when those feelings of bitterness do come back. Forgiveness is a process of continuous choices. Forgiveness is a fight against grudges and usually it can be a long one. Hang in there. 

Photo by @rochellavisions

Comparison is poisonous to confidence

The biggest obstacle most of us face within the journey of building our self-confidence is comparison. So, if self-confidence is trusting yourSELF, by loving yourSELF, through disciplining yourSELF and forgiving yourSELF to take back control of yourSELF, please remind me why you're comparing yourSELF to others? Building your self-confidence has everything to do with you and nothing to do with your surroundings. The biggest danger to self-confidence is when it is dependent on outside forces such as people, money, career, or anything else that boosts the ego, because then your self-confidence would basically be the stock market with all the fluctuations. You can’t control anything in this world rather than yourself. So, your self-confidence should be based on yourself alone and not anything else. 

So how do you change the comparison mentality? It’s a shift in perspective that is needed. Start seeing people you admire as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than a threat. The problem with jealousy and comparison is that it is self-destructive and self-sabotaging because usually you end up competing with people that you could have on your team! Isn’t that such a waste? Change competition to collaboration, change jealousy to inspiration and change opposition to support. The truth is that there is enough space for everyone to be confident and succeed, but that success comes a lot faster when there is collaboration. This is because we all play an important role in the bigger picture. The world consists of thousands of ecosystems in every aspect. The atoms are equally as important as the planets in the solar system. They all play a role that contributes to the existence of the universe in harmony without clashing in each other's paths and so do you. Your confidence is never something that increases because someone else failed or decreases because someone else succeeded, but it could be more meaningful if everyone is elevated. 

Thank you for reading this article. You are more than welcome to connect with me and reach out. 

Instagram: @martirfe 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mar-tirfe