What Makes You Confident

Confidence is an attitude that permits you to have more initiative, take more risks, be more assertive and feel better about yourself. With a good level of confidence, you can improve most areas of your life.

Psychologists have studied this attitude for decades now and have identified various elements that make you confident. Here are the most important ones, which you’ll want to know for your personal development:

1. Your genes. Directly or indirectly, your genes do play a role in determining your level of confidence. Some people have a genetic predisposition for a wider or higher range of confidence than others.

However, this is only a small part of the equation, although it does matter. Most of our confidence is acquired and your social conditioning or self-conditioning play a huge role here. Thus, you have control over a majority of your self-assurance.

2. Your experience. People with more experience tend to be more confident than people with less experience. Having done, seen and tried a lot of things gives a person the perception that they can deal with whatever life throws at them. 

Keep in mind that experience doesn’t mean simply having lived for many years. It’s what you do in those years that matters, and this is why you want to have a rich, diverse life in which you experience many things.

3. Your competence. There is a noteworthy correlation between confidence and competence. The better you become at something and the more aware you are of this, the more assure in that area you will be.

Competence is based on experience, but it is not defined by it. The most important part is going through a quality learning process. You can grow in months as much as others grow in years by using the best personal development tools.

4. Your thinking. This is the crucial element. All your experiences, results and skills are interpreted by your mind and thus, they influence your level of confidence. You can have all the results humanly possible, but if your mind does not acknowledge them, you still won’t be confident.

Ultimately, it is your thinking that plays the biggest role in making you confident. And it is in taking conscious control and changing your thinking that lies the secret to mastering any of your attitudes.