There is a distinction between self-confidence and self-esteem for a reason; many people confuse the two. Self-confidence and self-esteem are different from each other.
Self-confidence indicates that you trust yourself and your ability to live productively in the world. A self-confident person is capable of new challenges and is willing to take responsibility for all their actions. Your confidence is increased as you work and live your life to reach success or failure. Each time you succeed, you reinforce your confidence. If you fail, you also reinforce your capability to move forward and hopefully not look back as if failure was a negative thing, just a learning tool.
To be confident also implies that you have courage, which comes from the heart. Your heart and your mind together support your self-confidence.
Self-esteem is about how you judge yourself. You can have loads of self-confidence until your inner judge says ‘You could have done that better’. You then may ask ‘Am I worthy?’ If you get an inner response that ‘Yes, you are worthy.’, you will dismiss your inner judge; your esteem is intact.
Our emotions get in the way in this instance. Self-esteem is about self and our personal value; self-confidence is about getting the job done. How well we think we got the job down is down to esteem.
Confidence enables you to go after what you want even if you think you are not good enough.
Go after what you want, without stopping to consider how well you will succeed. That aspect, success, is what moves you back to low self-esteem and will prevent you from taking any scarier journeys.
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Absolutely agree on this difference which is often underestimated.
Self-confidence is the awareness of having skills, competences and resources, which can be used to be successful in some area of life, in some project (work, study, sport, associations …) or business.
Self-esteem, on the other hand, concerns the feelings of love and respect that the person has towards himself, he felt useful and valuable, regardless of success or failure, from the ups and downs of life. The latter concerns the values and beliefs that the person possesses in himself and that define their value as a person, beyond the results and successes obtained.
In summary, trust is recognizing ability, or “knowing and knowing how to do”, while self-esteem is true love if, or “being” regardless of the outcome of doing, skills and knowledge. Self-esteem means “I’m ok so”.
Healthy self-esteem does not depend on success; in life there are always failures and frustrations to face. Having a good self-esteem means keeping a good idea of yourself unaltered, liking yourself for what you are and not for what you can achieve or not obtain by testing yourself.
In the face of a failure or a negative event, those who have low self-esteem, instead of seeking new solutions or strategies by relying on their own intrinsic resources, can instead experience negative emotions such as despair, despair, sadness, anguish, the sense of helplessness and reacting passively to the situation rather than proactively.
Hi Aldo..I do so appreciate your understanding of the dilemma people face when trying to distinguish the differences between esteem and confidence. The more others know and understand these differences, the better off they will be.