Confidence is a motivator of behavior in people

Our nonprofit, Self Love Beauty, is built off of educating, investing and impacting individuals on the importance of self-love and confidence. These two strong and powerful words have finally come to the surface because our society is finally starting to talk about them. 

However, when I started SLB back in 2012, it was not a common thing to talk about and it has taken our world years to come to grips that these things are needed in order for people to grow to their full potential.

Albert Bandura is probably one of my favorite people to learn from when it comes to confidence alone. He is known for his work around self-confidence, self-efficiency, self-compassion and more. As you can see there is one common word…self. Because of his work, psychologists now recognize that humans are the agents of their self-development, who can adapt and self-regulate to achieve their desired future.

In a study Bandura was part of, he defined confidence as ‘One of the most influential motivators and regulators of behavior in people’s everyday lives’. Self-confidence is not a motivational perspective by itself. It is a judgment about capabilities for accomplishment of some goal, and, therefore, must be considered within a broader conceptualization of motivation that provides the goal context.

As an educator in the space, I 100% agree. Confidence is not a fixed attribute but an outcome of the thoughts we think and the actions we take.

Self-confidence is the belief that one can successfully execute a specific activity, rather than a global trait that accounts for overall performance optimism. For example, one may have a lot of self-confidence in one’s ability at speaking language fluently but very little self-confidence in one’s presentation skills. Another example is having confidence in their job but having a hard time selling and marketing to others. 

“Perceived competence” and “perceived ability” indicate the perception that one has the ability to master a task resulting from cumulative interactions with the environment. Bandura asserted that, in a responsive environment that rewards performance achievements, the outcomes people expect depend heavily on their self-confidence that they can perform the skill. However, in an environment in which outcomes are fixed at a minimum level of performance or in which a social condition restricts people’s ability to perform successfully or control their circumstances, outcome and confidence expectations would not be causally linked. For example, a college instructor could have confidence that he or she is efficacious enough to maximize his or her presentation skills through vicarious teaching strategies while simultaneously believing that those teaching strategies are not enough at all. Such individuals may give up trying, not because they doubt their own capabilities, but because they expect their efforts to be futile. This type of outcome-based futility could lead to pessimism or learned helplessness

So you probably are wondering how you build self-love & confidence. Here are a few things (because I could share LOTS if we had the time): 

1. Self-Awareness & Self-care: Start spending time loving yourself. The more time you spend with yourself, you will start to learn more about yourself. This will help you have conscious knowledge of your character, feelings, motives, and desires. Once you become aware of these, it makes it easier to love who you are and find ways to care for yourself that works for you vs. everyone else. 
2. Programs: Take part in a SLB program. This is not a shameless plug! SLB programs are effective ways for you to grow on your journey to have more confidence. Our programs help individuals increase their confidence, support levels and social and emotional skills by 30%. 
3. Podcast: Listen to podcasts including ours ‘The Confident Girl’ to give yourself ideas, motivate you, inspire you and give you tips to focus on your confidence.
4. Blog: Read blogs (including ours)and get inspired but then make action plans and take aways to incorporate into your life! 
5. Positive People: They say you are like the five people you are closet with so do a check of who you are spending the most time around. Are they lifting you up or bringing you down?
6. Practice & Feedback: Just like golf, writing, learning to run, etc – it takes practice and taking feedback from people. Just know you will not be perfect at anything in the beginning but getting out of your comfort zone, being positive and having a growth mindset is so important.

Confidence is truly important. In all aspects of our lives this is a continued journey. Right now, I feel more confident in areas than I never thought possible however it took work and tips above to do this.

Now go do and make a change in your life!