How to build your self-confidence as a woman – 12 Steps

Building self-confidence as a woman should be the top priority. Why? Because life without self-confidence is like flowing down the river or being blown by the wind and going in any direction it goes.

I remember watching the series Suits and I told myself that when I grow up, I want to dress, talk, and walk like Jessica Pearson. She was the most confident woman I have ever seen. Yes, she was acting, and she is a phenomenal actor, but I knew one day I was going to be like her.

If you have not watched the series, I ask that you watch just one episode. The woman walks like she owns the world, and everyone worships the ground she walks on. When she speaks the room goes silent and her leadership skills are impeccable.

Jessica was a fearless woman in a men’s world, and she dominated it.

To this day I have not met those standards, but I am working towards them and each day I am closer to reaching my goal.

Unlike apples, confidence does not fall from the tree.

It is neither inherited nor transmitted via osmosis or diffusion.

You must intentionally want it and work towards it with bulletproof action plans.

The good news is that you know you have a lack of confidence, and you are looking for ways to work around that.

The first thing to remember before I share with you the top secrets to being a confident woman is that building confidence is a continuous process. It’s hard at first but after some time it’s part of who you are.

What if you feel like a loser and a failure? Don’t worry these tips will help you start the journey. But before you start take a short detour and read about how to deal with failure in life.

Areas to build confidence as a woman

As women, we are everything to everyone. We are mothers, daughters, employees, employers, sisters, and every other hat that we wear in between these multiple roles. This means we are juggling too many balls in the air and at some point, one of these balls will drop.

Before you are a mother or daughter or sister you are your own person, and this is what you must focus on. In just being yourself there are many areas to focus on.

If you don’t focus on one area but try to do everything at once you will end up doing nothing.

Confident people highlight areas of their life that they want to achieve and focus on that. Confidence building will not happen just by wishing, you must focus on one area at a time. This is the best and most powerful way to get to a new level of confidence.

1. Be confident in your own skin.

Whether fair or dark, spotted or smooth, take pride in your birthday suit. Love your body and take care of it. It’s yours and no one else can have it.

Eat healthily and have regular exercise, you will see your skin and body react positively. Love your acne and facial hair. Love those dimples and those ears.

Take pride in your smile and make your eyes pop. Shake those hips and walk like a model on the runway. Once you learn to embrace your physical appearance and rejoice in it, you learn to have a different perspective on life.

The world is watching, make it worthwhile.

Take care of your body, love it, and give it healthy foods. It will love you back twice as much. You will begin to see a confident version of yourself appear and grow.

When you are confident in your body you have the right body language to communicate your ideas, thoughts, and feelings to those around you. You learn to build better relationships from a place of confidence.

2. Be confident in your work

Whether you are self-employed or an employee, be confident in your work. Don’t doubt your abilities. However, no one is good at everything, so if you need help ask for it. If you need a mentor, seek one.

Even a confident woman knows when to say please and thank you.

Having high self-confidence in your work will trigger respect, promotion, and attention. Everyone will fight to work with you and for you. Confidence is energy that spreads really quickly throughout your team.

So go on and be that confident woman that inspires those around you to be confident and have good self-esteem.

Now that we have named areas that you can work on to be confident, we will continue to talk about how you can build confidence. These are steps to practice daily. They are the habits of a confident woman that will change the way you view life.

How to build your self-confidence as a woman.

1.     Change your mindset

Being a confident woman requires you to have a mindset change. Realize that you cannot be everything to everyone but nothing to yourself. You can never make all human beings happy and do not even try to.

Stop looking at how you can make every other person happy and how you can meet everyone’s needs.

The person who needs love, confidence, and help here is you!

Learning how to build your self-confidence as a woman starts with you.

2.     Visualize what it means for you to be a confident woman

Lately, I have been reading a lot about financial freedom and financial independence and one key thing I read is that financial freedom means different things to different people. Someone might need a million dollars to be financially free while someone might just need half a million to be financially free.

The same is true with confidence. In the beginning I described what it means to be a confident woman for me and to whom I look up to.

What does it mean to be a confident woman for you? Do you struggle to speak up and would like to speak up more? Perhaps you struggle to dress up and feel confident? Do you perhaps struggle with a confident mindset?

Do you wish to be vocal and outspoken? May be you wish to challenge the status quo and be a woman that breaks boundaries and tries the unknown?

Describe what kind of self-confident woman you want to be.

Are you aspiring to be in a position of influence and become a leader, but you lack the confidence to do it?

The more you ask these questions and give honest answers you slowly build your self-confidence as a woman.

3.     Time for self-evaluation, know yourself

It’s only when you know yourself that you can make changes. A better understanding of your feelings, emotions, triggers, talents, and abilities helps you become a better person.

Knowing yourself means you know your strengths and all the areas in which you excel in. It also means you know all the areas that require a lot of improvement. This could be a personality trait or character that you have to work on improving like pride, your ego, shyness, and many more.

Create a new habit to be better and to make people around you love and enjoy spending time with you.

Know what makes you tick and what makes you laugh. Know your own thoughts and own abilities and learn to understand them. If there is room for improvement work on it.

When you know yourself, you express yourself much better. Make conscious efforts to be a better person. Don’t be defensive and think you are perfect, because you are not. When you build your self-confidence as a woman you need to start with being honest with yourself.

Work on yourself to be better.

Don’t focus on others’ successes, it’s their business to mind, not yours.

4.     Don’t forget to put on confidence when you dress up each morning

Just as we women have to powder our noses multiple times a day, we have to do the same thing with confidence. When we fall down, and our confidence is shaken we have to take a moment and step out of reality and bring our confidence back up.

Just as we reapply lipstick and do makeup touch ups in the bathroom to look good throughout the date or a girl’s night out, we have to consistently put in the effort to keep our confidence up.

When you wake up each morning put on confidence as part of your daily morning routine.

When you feel confident, your walk is confident, and it makes the process of building your self-confidence as a woman easier.

5.     Positive affirmations

The only way to continually build confidence is to have positive affirmations about yourself throughout the day. Negative self-talk is destructive and will result in low self-esteem.

Do not spend time on negative thoughts.

Whenever you see yourself in a mirror practice positive affirmations. Have eye contact with yourself and say:

“Hello superwoman, you are doing great today”,

“Hey beautiful, today is an unusual day but you’ve got this”.

Become your own best friend and number one supporter.

Although positive self-talk can be weird and challenging at first, you will get used to it. Try positive affirmations in the shower, as you apply makeup, having breakfast, and in your car as you drive to work.

Positive affirmations create a positive attitude and confident attitude that you will carry with you all day.

When you build your self-confidence as a woman you change the way you speak and communicate with others and yourself.

6.     Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone

After you have visualized what kind of confident woman you want to be, you have to realize that it will require you to get out of your comfort zone. This position will be uncomfortable, but growth is generally uncomfortable but necessary.

We will never change and become better versions of ourselves as a woman if we do not challenge ourselves to do things we have never done, say things we have never said, and go to places we have never had.

At a funeral, I heard a pastor say we are spiritual beings having a human experience and we need to make the most of it. The best way to do that is to get out of your comfort zone and do things differently.

You will get different results.

As you build your self-confidence as a woman it will require you to be comfortable with change.

7.     Let go of external validation

As confident women, we don’t need external validation because we validate ourselves. If you are waiting for validation, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. People will validate us but not always.

Therefore, if you lean heavily on this affirmation, you are setting yourself up for failure. A family member, spouse, boss, or friend may validate us but what if they don’t for one reason or the other? Our high self-esteem drops drastically, and we begin to listen to the little voice that is always negative. Our inner critic shows up and we suddenly realize that maybe we are not as confident as we initially thought.

Do not let people make you confident; find your own inner confidence and maintain it.

I have realized that when you build your self-confidence as a woman, most of the work is internal.

8.     How to navigate social media as a confident woman

Although social media is a great way to get inspiration especially if you have female role models that you follow, it can also be the downfall of a self-confident woman.

There are many different ways to get inspiration without social media. Look around you, you are surrounded by formidable women who grab the bull by its horns every day.

Not everyone on social media is faking it but try to find someone near you to whom you can talk to and relate to. Social media can put tremendous pressure on us and when we fall short our self-confidence is bruised.

When it comes to building self-confidence, you need to protect your mental health and peace. Spending time on social media is not a healthy habit. It may be hurtful to your thinking.

Follow these steps and find a recipe that works for you.

9.     Confident women have a growth mindset, let go of your fixed mindset.

A growth mindset is an important thing that any confident woman should have. A growth mindset is all about progress and improvement of your talents, abilities, and skills. Any confident woman with a growth mindset loves and acknowledges change and believes in practice to be a better person.

As confident women, we love challenges and appreciate negative feedback. If you view criticism at work or in your personal space as a personal attack on you then you will struggle to get ahead in life.

Yes, some people are out to get you and they will do everything in their power to destroy you but don’t let that put you down, here are simple steps to deal with them.

Challenge yourself with difficult tasks and try out new things. It could be that your talents and abilities lie in unexplored territories. As a confident person be a lover of new challenges.

Life is a journey of continuous improvement.

10.  You don’t have to do it alone

Life is not meant to be lived alone. On this journey of being a self-confident woman, get a strong support structure.

Don’t feel shy, we all suffer from confidence issues, and from time to time our confidence level drops and we need someone or a group to pick us up.

Like riding a bike, you fall off a couple of times until you get it right.

Invite your best friends, or church ladies to join you. Create a safe space where women come together to inspire each other and share ideas on how to grow and be confident. Take turns doing activities that build confident behaviors. Have boot camps about building confidence with sisters and family.

This is the first step to changing the world, one female at a time.

Help young girls as well and teach them to be confident in themselves and in their abilities. It’s always a great idea to nurture confidence from a young age.

When you are accountable to someone, life and this journey to becoming a force to be reckoned with is easy.

As a wise person once said, if you want to go fast go alone but if you want to go far go together.

11.  Read more and arm yourself with knowledge

The saying that knowledge is power is true. With more knowledge comes confidence. Read more about fun things that you enjoy.

Read about things you have no interest in. From politics to health to environmental issues. Be a confident woman with a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Empower yourself on a personal level and a professional level. Knowledge provides a confidence boost and unlocks your best self.

Set small goals that you achieve like reading a book a month and instead of scrolling through social media at night and first thing in the morning rather read a book. Confident woman use this morning routine to make their lives twice as productive, join them.

12.  Try a lot of outdoor activities

Adrenaline gets us going. It makes us excited and happy. When we explore outdoor activities, we get out of our comfort zones and are forced to do unusual things. When we do this, our body releases endorphins which is the happy hormone.

Confident women love trying outdoor sports and extreme sports like sky diving and bungee jumping. Not sure what to try this weekend, don’t worry here is a list.

Human beings are creatures of habit but it’s when we do things, we are not used to that we become more confident in who we are as people and as women.

Learn new skills. These can be skills that challenge your mental abilities or a new physical activity. Don’t be scared, honestly what is the worst that could happen?

Benefits of being a confident woman

Here are a few benefits that you will get when you build your self-confidence as a woman

• Your professional life will improve
• Build healthier and meaning relationships. Being confident gets rid of toxic relationships and creates a safe peaceful space around you
• You have a healthy self-esteem
• You learn to nurture and have positive thoughts about yourself and your surroundings

Go get them!

Being a confident woman will not happen overnight, but it’s the small steps that we take today that make us superwomen who are ready to take over the world.

Unfortunately, low self-confidence is like breathing air, it comes freely and naturally but you can challenge this and be different. Don’t wait for self-confidence to be served on a silver platter because it’s not coming.

The best version of yourself depends on the changes you will make as soon as you finish reading this article. Do not wait for the right time, it’s now.

Remember great things like confidence do not come to those who wait, it comes to those who get up and get it. Happiness and confidence go together, so as your confidence goes up you will become a happier person.

Leadership positions await confident women. To any confident woman, the world becomes your oyster.

After trying all of these steps to build your self-confidence as a woman, let me know of all the positive feedback you are getting from your friends and family in the comments section.