8 Confidence Building Exercises to Help You Think Like a Winner

Up to 85% of Americans suffer from low self-esteem. This means that they lack the confidence to go after what they really want in life.

If this sounds like you, your lack of confidence could be holding you back in a number of ways. In fact, research has found a direct link between self-esteem and earnings.

People from blue-collar families with high self-confidence earn approximately $7000 more than their peers who lack confidence. The gap is larger amongst white-collar earners, with those who lack confidence earning $28,000 less than their more confident peers.

So how do you gain the confidence to live your best life? The following confidence building exercises will help get you started on your journey to greater confidence.

Ready? Let’s get started.

The Confidence Building Exercises You Need

Nobody is born with all the self-confidence they need. If someone is incredibly confident, it’s because they’ve been working on themselves and their confidence for years. This is good news, as it means you can build up your own confidence levels.

Here are 8 confidence building exercises to help you think like a winner:

1. Get it Done

Confidence is built when you have accomplishments. When you’re achieving your goals, you’re naturally going to feel better about yourself- and more confident.

Now’s the time to make a list of all of your goals, and the steps you’ll need to take to meet those goals. Set up milestones so you can celebrate your small wins, and build momentum as you’re continually achieving.

2. Challenge Your Critic

We all have that nagging voice in our head that assures us that we’re going to fail. You may notice this voice when you have to make a big presentation in front of your boss or some clients and you think “I’m going to blow this.”

When you challenge this voice, you think about real examples of when you didn’t blow an important speech or presentation.

It’s easy to blow things out of proportion, and your critic is likely to be telling you all about how you “always fail.” Instead, challenge that critic with the truth, reframe it, and you’ll automatically feel more confident.

3. Do What You Say You’ll Do

People respect others who do what they say they’ll do. Most importantly, you’ll respect yourself more when you do the things you’ve committed to.

Think about it: How likely would you be to trust a friend who constantly bails on you when they’ve told you they’ll help you with something?

How often do you tell yourself you’ll do something like pitch a new client, hit the gym, or ask someone out, and never do it? Start doing thing things you say you’ll do- or don’t say them in the first place.

4. Practice Visualization

Visualization is one of the most powerful ways to increase your confidence. Often, we visualize the worse case scenario when we’re low on confidence. Why not take all this energy and put it towards visualizing the best case scenario instead?

Think about what it is you want to achieve, or how you’d like to behave. Close your eyes and really live it. Picture yourself achieving your goal. What are you wearing? What’s the weather like? Who is there? How do you feel?

Recreate these visualizations with as much detail as you can and whenever you find yourself picturing the worst possible outcome, replace it with the best.

5. Use Affirmations

Affirmations are a great way to instill the right beliefs about yourself. These are uplifting statements that you say to yourself. They’re always positive, and you can either write them down, say them out loud, or do a mixture of both.

Our brains believe the things we’re continually telling ourselves. One good way to make your brain accept your affirmations is to phrase them like a question like “Why am I so good at public speaking.” Your brain won’t be analyzing whether it’s a valid question, but will instead seek answers to that question- remembering times when you successful spoke in public.

6. Help Someone

When you help someone else, you can forget about your own problems and feel grateful for the things you have. It can also be a great way to grow your own confidence, as you can see how many skills you do have in a particular area.

Mentor someone new to your industry or company. Teach a friend or family member a new skill, do some volunteering, and you’ll notice your self-confidence grow. This can be a great way to see just how much you’ve learned yourself, or how knowledgeable you are about a particular topic.

7. Create Boundaries

Creating and maintaining your own personal boundaries can sound extremely challenging. But eventually, you need a healthy work-life balance.

You can’t grow your confidence when you’re continually doing things you don’t want to do to make others happy. Learn when to say no. Sometimes this is a matter of teaching friends and family members to respect your personal boundaries. As you become more assertive, you’ll naturally become more confident as well.

Remember: “No” is a complete sentence.

8. Work on Your Body Language

Your body language demonstrates your level of self-confidence. In fact, your body language can be 13 times more influential than the things you say.

You may have recently heard of power poses. These can actually boost your confidence levels, by tricking your brain into thinking you’re actually feeling incredibly confident. Holding these poses for a few minutes each day can increase your testosterone levels, which, in turn, create a temporary boost of self-confidence.

That makes these power poses super helpful before you get on an important call, give a work presentation, or ask your boss for a raise.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, there are plenty of different confidence building exercises you can do to increase your self-confidence. By using the above tips, you’ll be more likely to feel your most confident self. And when you feel confident, you’ll be motivated to go after your goals and achieve your dreams.

Need some more resources? Check out some of our blog posts today and continue your self-improvement journey.