Self-esteem and self-confidence (or simply confidence) are related but somewhat different concepts. Your confidence is how much do you trust your own ability to perform something. While self-esteem is an estimation of your own worth in terms of your place in the hierarchy (or rather hierarchies) of a complicated and intertwined web of social interactions. I will refer to those concepts mostly interchangeably throughout this article, as fluctuation in one accompanies the other most of the time, while making an explicit distinction where it is necessary.
Some of us have at least a couple of times perceived this strange phenomenon in our lives. On some days you’re feeling energetic, having fun and cracking jokes with your friends, while on others you don’t have a motivation to even blurt out a few coherent words to other people. One day you’re on top of the world, wanting and having the energy to do a thousand things at once, while on another – getting out of bed is a torture, you wish could be avoided.
Your confidence and self-esteem are high at some times, boosting your success in and pleasure from your daily pursuits, and low at other times, making you feel like starting to do anything isn’t worth an effort. Why is it?
Young people, teenagers, in particular, are more prone to changes in self-esteem. Reasons for this commonly are a combination of hormonal and psychological factors, which still-developing mind and body go through. For some people, confidence problems are nurtured in their childhood and pursue them through their adult years, and usually stem from putting too much pressure on yourself when you’re at your low points, as well as overestimating the importance and value of events, which come and go into their lives. People, whose confidence fluctuates tend to lack the resilience to the randomness of the outside world, and all the adversity it tends to arbitrary throw their way.
And with links of self-esteem instability to disorders ranging from social anxiety to depression, this little problem in your life better be addressed. And for that, we’ll delve deeper into the reasons behind and techniques of fixing it.
Why does my confidence come and go?
For some people, self-esteem fluctuates from feeling positive to feeling negative about themselves. While for others varies the extent, to which they feel either positive or negative about their situation in life. The same goes for confidence – in some cases, confidence changes from trusting in your ability to avoiding participating in some activity because you’re not sure you have any chance of success. For others – it’s the extent to which you believe in your abilities change.
Dramatic changes between feeling high and low are especially dangerous, as they highlight that the bedrock you were thinking you were standing on turns out to actually be sand. It signals that there is some instability in life, which could be hidden deeply, and it is your task to find it.
People, whose confidence and feeling of self-worth is frequently high, can be prone to descend into the low point, after even a minor distressing event in life. This phenomenon highlights the difference between stable and unstable high self-esteem.
Stable high self-esteem is characterized by a variety of psychological and well-being indexes at high levels – a person in such state has a well-founded confidence, abilities, and achievements, so a string of unpleasant events doesn’t affect them (we’re not talking about actual personal tragedies, just unpleasant people at work, remorseful purchases, and sprained ankles to think of a few examples).
Unstable high self-esteem, in contrast, needs constant bolstering, validation, and protection to maintain. A gust of wind, sent out by the chaotic nature of the universe, will send the person with such instability tumbling into the pit. And the desperate attempts to find approval, validation, and support from others will follow. And while climbing back to the arrogant peak may be a task, such a person can accomplish, that position is bound to be temporary, as the next challenge or adversity from life can start the fall all over again.
For teens, on one hand, hormones are playing a strong role in self-esteem variability, which may be prominent, but in my opinion, it is rivaled by the psychological factor. That is, young people are not experienced and haven’t had the time yet to accumulate wisdom, and develop the standards for their performance, their achievement and how well are they doing in life. And they end up comparing themselves to others.
But those other people might have completely different life circumstances, which make their difficulty in attaining results different from yours. And as those young people mature, their lives become more and more personal, and less comparable to those of others. Young people should not forget as their lives become more individual and unique, so should their standards.
One common occurrence in people with self-esteem instability is that they tend to overestimate the importance of the events in their life for their current “status” in the social hierarchy (for which self-esteem is an internal counter). They tend to react strongly to such experiences, worrying too much about things, that have been done, and anxious about things that await them in the future, reluctant to take part in important activities, because of prior failure (or just a perceived failure).
Think of someone who after messing up on their first day at the gym (passing out from using too much weight, using equipment in a goofy way, and causing chuckles to other gym-goers, etc.), starts avoiding any visits to it (or any other gym) in the future.
They also tend to hold the opinions of others in too high regard. This is especially true for people with low social skills, as they don’t have a meaningful understanding of people’s reactions and behaviors, which promotes heightened responsiveness to immediate situational cues and outcomes. And such responsiveness results in the swaying of confidence levels.
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and a Stoic Philosopher
Your upbringing can play a role too. Like everything, unstable self-esteem has a genetic component to it. If you were born “lucky” enough to have an aptitude for it – you’ll just have to grind it out and work on cleaning your life from it. You’ll get stronger in the process.
Growing up in a harsh, controlling environment also increases the risk of developing self-esteem issues. Violent, abusive childhood is especially destructive in this, like and many other areas of personal development.
Social circle and your environments, in general, can bump your confidence levels here and there in both directions. However, high variability and dips between “the high” and “the low” should not follow unpleasant experiences, which life and people around you throw randomly your way.
Some people chase happiness and success way too hard – being goal-obsessed puts a lot of pressure on you and distorts your standards of performance. Your average result becomes lows, after a long string of success, and in case the luck runs out in any of your pursuits – you’re feeling yourself at the bottom, while in truth you’re just doing fine, you’ve just forgotten what the baseline is.
Of course, having unrealistic goals, and scaring yourself into achieving something (by convincing yourself that the alternative is a total failure), might be a good way to get the motivation needed to grind through some o the toughest moments of your life and reach success. But, if you’re losing stability and confidence consistently and over long periods of time, this might be a time to take a step back and reevaluate what you’re doing.
On of course fluctuating confidence could also mean that you’re growing – you’ve gotten far enough in certain skill or pursuit, and have discovered that there is much more to be done, learned, discovered. You’ve just climbed a mountaintop, but have found a gigantic wall looming over you. Turns out, the peak is way further above and has only revealed itself once you’ve gotten high enough. And who knows whether it is the true summit?
What effects do self-esteem fluctuations have on me?
People with high variability and low levels of self-esteem are vulnerable to depression. This is especially true for those who poorly understand other people and their behaviors, as wrong interpretations of social interactions with enough repetition could introduce general confusion about life, which could grow into frustration and resentment, as the failure rate of human contact increases.
Unstable self-esteem is also associated with:
- internalizing and externalizing problems
- social anxiety, fear, and avoidance of social contexts
- public self-consciousness
- with reduced frequency of social interactions
- a tendency to see your current failures, however small, as proof of low chance of success in the future.
Unstable self-esteem and confidence will impact your performance in frustrating and hindering ways. You might find yourself “stuck in your head”, trying to find correct words or appropriate acts, or worrying about the next steps of social interactions, instead of the context of a conversation going, when you are at your low points. That will stray your attention away from the actual matter and substance of the discussed topic, be that a business meeting or a friendly chat.
And as you are worried about the absence of your confidence in the success of the ongoing conversation, your awkward self and the desperate tricks he/she will come up with might blunder the thing to the point of leaving an impression that you have completely ignored what your partner was saying, making you appear as in inconsiderate douche.
And this is just an example of a situation, where fluctuation self-esteem can harm you. So, How can you ensure constant high levels of confidence, to make sure that blunders like that won’t happen? How can confidence be stabilized?
How do I develop sustained confidence and self-esteem that holds up to setbacks?
I might sound like a broken record, but there are 4 fundamental things, which you need to have in your life for optimal mental health in general:
- Diet – you have to eat well, not overloading on calories, especially with fast carbohydrates, consume protein-rich foods, foods which contain high amounts of fiber, as well as vitamins-filled fruits and vegetables, if you want the right components and fuel for the healthy mind to be present in your body.
- Exercise – physical activity, which gets you muscles working against resistance for growth, and keeps the cardiovascular system working, has enormous health benefits not just for the body, but for the mind.
- Sleep – give your body and mind an optimal time to recover from your daily activities – usually at least 7 hours, but might be different for you.
- Hygiene – bathe, shower, rinse, brush your teeth, wash hands regularly, as well as keeping your house in the state of order.
When you have those things properly incorporated in your daily life:
- your meals are healthy, except occasional treat, in which you indulge rarely;
- you do a balanced strength training at least 3 times a week, you have a steady-state cardio workout daily, and your physical training totals to 5 hours a week at least
- you sleep well, have an uninterrupted regular schedule for you nap time
- you are a neat, well-groomed person, whose room is clean and tidy
Then you have a huge chunk of bedrock for emotional and mental stability laid out in your life. Apply them to your life in reasonable doses, as you don’t want to sleep through your whole life, excess in exercise can cause injury and insomnia, and obsession with the sterility of the environment is a mild mental disorder.
After these fundamental practices are part of your life, start knocking off whatever bad habits you may have: binge eating, smoking, weed, alcohol. Those are especially harmful, as they involve altering your body’s chemistry and loading it with toxins.
Additionally, to introduce more structure into your life, try keeping a journal. Journals have to be written daily. Set aside a time of the day, when you could write what needs to be logged and follow that schedule systematically. If you’ve skipped a day – you have twice as many records to write down the next day, but don’t borrow any time from yourself- if you don’t do it today – you probably won’t do it even a year later.
To have an accurate enough account on your confidence swings, and notice patterns of it, to get some ideas of potential fixes you could introduce, you might want to keep a journal of your moods. There you should write:
- what you’re feeling, keep positive and negative moods logged (sad, angry, frustrated, anxious, energetic, hyped, happy, etc.)
- why you feel that way (fight with a friend, raise at work, homework assignment due, etc.)
- how can this feeling be improved, or be made more frequent in your life (for positive) and how can it be removed from it (for negative)
For anchoring your confidence at high levels, you might want to keep a success record journal. It’ a log of what is good in your life, and is there to reaffirm your lost confidence by observing what a nice track record of success you already have. There you would write down:
- your small victories
- the positive feedback you got
- the things that made you feel good or that you’re grateful for.
- insights you’ve had or things you’ve learned.
Ask yourself a few questions about your current life, as if you were asking a stranger, and have the courage and genuine desire to hear an honest answer (however unpleasant it might be). Jordan B Peterson, a famous psychologist, suggests the following list in one of his most famous books:
- What is it that is bothering me?
- Is that something I could fix?
- Would I actually be willing to fix it?
If any of the two last questions have a ‘no’ as an answer – ask yourself the first question again, and look for a different answer.
Go to mini “mental” vacations. Take a day off from stressful events, and do something enjoyable: go out for dinner, go to a theatre, walk around the streets.
It’s important to do that in a more social environment, instead of locking up at your house playing videogames or watching Netflix.
If you are a daring type – join a masterclass – you’ll learn something new and will meet new people. However, it is a potentially more stressful activity.
Learning new skills and understanding of new domains is a great way to feel better. Learning a skill and using it to do something valuable to others is a good way to expand your network with quality people. This, in turn, will add stability to your life.
Keep relationships with people, who bring out the best in you. Don’t suffer in companies that drag you down, be only with people who strive to reach highs, and are supporting you in your best efforts.
Stop putting strict performance goals on yourself. Scott Addams in his most famous book claims that goals are for losers, and successful people embrace systems. Which means that you learn and master skills, try ventures and projects, which increase your chances to become successful, don’t care about failure conditions, as any small business that didn’t take off as you were planning is more of a learning experience, and might fuel your imagination with better ideas, one of which will eventually take off.
Stop comparing yourself to others. But rather compare yourself to who you were a month, a year ago. Keep track of your direction in life, and how much does it correspond with where you want to get.
“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best”
Epictetus, a Stoic Philosopher
Stop avoiding and start facing sources of your anxiety. If there is something in your life, that causes lows in your self-esteem, try understanding it, first. Think, why is this event bothering me to the point where I lose my confidence for periods of time? Can and should it be avoided?
If we are talking about giving a public speech, stuttering there a few times, and then avoiding repeating experience, because of the recurring mental reminder of slight embarrassment, then think again. Becoming proficient at public speaking, for example, will improve your chances of success in life. You just might need to change the strategy here – visit a course and learn this skill with a qualified instructor. This is an example of a source of anxiety you need to face.
But if we’re talking about a particular company of people, interaction with whom makes you feel down afterward, then, by all means, ostracise them away. This one is an example of a source of anxiety, which safely can be avoided. Just don’t cut off from the entire humanity.
Introduce self-compassion and love. Some people tend to criticize themselves for their failures too hard. Imagine the following: you and a close friend swapped places – how would your criticism of his/her performance change. Would you say something to encourage them? Would you do something to cheer the close one up? Realize that everything you’re anxious about matters much more to you than anyone else, and only when you are judging yourself.
Fluctuating self-esteem, when extreme jumps between highs and lows are frequent, and especially when no clear pattern can be distinguished, as to what is causing rapid changes, might be a sign of a mental condition, which requires help in dealing with from a professional. If you’ve tried to bring the best out of yourself, and have followed most of the above advice to no avail, and instability and confusion still plague your life – take action and find a good therapist. The topic of finding an actually qualified therapist, who can help is a very complex one, and deserver an article of its own. But basically your task here is to conduct the job interview on your potential therapist, having him/her as an interviewee. Contact several respectable ones, who have a track record dealing with people who have self-esteem problems, having background similarities with yours (similar childhood, education, age, etc.). And find out which one is the best candidate for the job of improving your life.
Thank you for this article <3
Thank you,
Reading this helped my day
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