The Science of Self-Esteem: Learn to Build up Confidence

Some of our beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. Robert Rosenthal's famous study in schools demonstrates this perfectly.

Mindsets are underlying beliefs that we have about our qualities and even our personalities. In this video we'll look at our beliefs about intelligence and drawing abilities to understand the idea of mindsets.

With a fixed mindset in a certain area of your life, you believe that your qualities are carved in stone. People with growth mindset on the other hand, see their qualities as things that can be developed through their dedication and effort.

In this video, we'll explore the value of self-doubt and then the 5 strategies people use to manage self-doubt in a way that reduces confidence:

1. Perfectionism

2. Procrastination

3. Impostor Syndrome

4. Self-Handicapping

5. Other Enhancement

In this video we’ll look at what to do against self-doubts: We need to challenge them. When a doubt comes to our mind, we can dispute it.

This is an activity. Remember a time when you've done this in the past and you were successful.

The insight that our beliefs trigger our emotional reactions provides the basis for the ABC model developed by the psychologist Albert Ellis. The ABC model helps us understand and control our reactions to adversity. ABC stands for adversity, belief and consequence.

This is a homework exercise. Do this for seven days. Every time you realize that you have negative thoughts or feel anxious or stressed, grab something to write on and scribble down your ABCs of the current situation.

Adversity: the simple facts of the situation (without judging) For example: Who, what, when, where.

Belief: your belief (why it happened; what will happen next).

Consequence: your feelings and behaviours related to these beliefs.

Cognitive distortions – or also commonly referred to as ‘thinking errors’ – are thinking patters that distort information. In this video, we'll go over a list of the most common thinking errors. By understanding our thinking errors, we can spot our unhelpful thoughts more quickly and respond in healthier, most constructive ways

This document constitutes a lectures on its own. It introduces you to the most common cognitive distortions and builds on the previous lecture's introduction.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the major cognitive distortions, we can move on to ways of fixing them. This takes effort and quite a lot of practice. In order to stop cognitive distortions, the exercises in the area are a good place to start.

Once we have identified a few ABC sequences, we are ready to start changing our thought patterns. There are two options to deal with them. The first option is distraction. This activity helps become aware of cognitive distortions in the momnt we are thinking them. It’s a really important step to bring awareness to our thoughts, and helps us let go of these unhelpful thoughts.

The second option to deal with cognitive distortions is generating alternative beliefs. That's what this activity will teach you.

Anxiety is our body’s and our brain’s response to something that we perceive as dangerous. It’s a feeling of unease that everyone has at some point in their lives. In this video, we'll learn what evolution can teach us about it.

We naturally react quite strongly to negative, threatening events. The explanation for this comes from evolutionary psychology. We humans are born with an inherent disadvantage: The so-called negativity bias.

It’s very common that with feelings of anxiety come shallow and fast breathing. One solution is diaphragmatic breathing. It is one of the most useful tools in stress management.

A lot of research in sports psychology looks at the impact of self-talk on anxiety as well as confidence. It is clear that people can use positive self-talk to reduce their anxiety and increase confidence in the moment.

How we perceive the way we feel about a challenging situation greatly influences how we feel about the challenge itself. Anxiety and excitement are very similar to each other, only our interpretation makes the difference.

Exercise, meditation, and relaxation are productive, positive stress management techniques. But we also have some that come with negative long-term consequences: for example, smoking and alcohol.

Acceptance is easily misunderstood. It means fully opening up to the feelings of anxiety, acknowledging them and then letting go. Accepting doesn’t mean we like the situation how it is at the moment or that we want to stay here. It means accepting our feelings of anxiety so that we then can effectively change our situation.

Typically, we try to avoid feelings of anxiety and low confidence. However, this forms a vicious cycle.

To break out of the vicious circle of avoiding anxiety and as a result avoiding actions to build confidence, we can learn to stay with our feelings of anxiety.

Body Scan Meditation is a great way to learn how to feel anxiety without recoiling from it.

Feelings are not only negative – so that we have to manage or accept them in order to build confidence. No, we can also use positive feelings and emotions to raise our self-confidence. That’s what we’ll look at in this section.

According to Albert Bandura, the psychologist behind self-efficacy theory, our psychological states also play an important role for our self-confidence. Being in a positive emotional state serves as a self-confidence boost.

In this video, we’ll explore the so-called ‘Undoing effect of positive emotions’.

It has been discovered by the renowned emotion researcher Barbara Fredrickson and it describes the impact that positive emotions have on us when we are stressed or anxious.

Sometimes, I like to get a quick boost of positive emotions. I’ve gathered this list of these videos that I would love to share with you. If you have any suggestions for videos to add here, please message me or share it in the forum!

The best way to change our self-confidence is through our behaviour. In this section, we’ll explore why this is the case and how to tackle confidence from this angle.

This counter-intuitive theory explains how we form beliefs about ourselves. We observe our behaviour, and only then reach conclusions about who we are and what we believe. We form our attitudes based on our behaviour.

If self-confidence is ‘the stuff that turns thought into action’, using behaviour to improve self-confidence is somewhat of a paradox. How can we build self-confidence through our actions when it’s self-confidence we need to act in the first place?

Make a list of possible confidence challenges. Use the confidence challenge hierarchy template for this and then rate the difficulty of each challenge 1-5. Find at least two challenges for every difficulty level.

After you completed your confidence challenge hierarchy, use the confidence challenges you identified to gradually increase your exposure and build your confidence step-by-step.

Increasing stress levels can help focus motivation and attention, but only up to a certain point. That’s what is known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law. It’s important for learning to have a mild amount of stress – not too much and not too little.

This video is about BF Fogg's 'Tiny Habits' program and how we can use it to increase our confidence.

Visualization - or mental imagery - can help us get started.

Nike has it right. 'Just Do It' is a great strategy to build confidence.

You don’t decide to go out of your comfort zone and risk failure for no reason. This activity is about clarifying your reasons and making them explicit.

The anxiety curve is a graph that shows how anxiety changes over time if we are exposed to something we fear.

Willingness is a concept from Acceptance-and-Commitment Therapy (short: ACT) and basically means allowing something unpleasant in order to do something that is important to us.

This lecture deals with the fact that risk-taking and failure are in inevitable part of building confidence. If we try to avoid it, we will limit our potential.

Holding our body in expansive, "high-power" poses for about two minutes stimulates the release of testosterone and reduces cortisol.

One of the most effective ways to reduce anxiety is physical activity. If you manage to add exercise to your routine, your anxiety will decrease over time.

Reaching for goals is an important part of strengthening our self-confidence. It helps shape how we define ourselves and at the same time adds a sense of accomplishment to our lives.

Setting goals to where plan where you want to go is a great first step to take. If you don't define your goal, you don't know where you're going. In this activity, you'll plan a few basic steps towards higher self-confidence. Based on goal-setting theory, you'll also consider a few important ingredients for a successful goal-system (timelines, sub-goals, obstacles and resources).

Research shows that practicing a skill, strengthens our confidence in this area. It is very obvious but easily overlooked.

This activity is a short brain-storming about how you could become more competent in whatever area you choose. With increased competence comes increased confidence.

This video is about social network analysis and how it shapes our understanding of social relationships.

One of Albert Bandura’s four principles to raise self-efficacy is what he calls ‘modeling behavior’. This means finding examples of people who are performing at a very high level.

One thing we know is that people don't attempt to achieve something unless they believe it can be done. We know that people are much more likely to attempt to do things if they've seen that someone like them can do it.

First we need to know that it can be done. Then we need to know that we can do it. Role models can help us with both of these steps. They are the obvious proof that some things can be done.

This lecture is all about connecting to your fellow students. We are all in the same boat, so let's make use of this.

Social persuasion is a powerful tool for combating self-doubt. Encouragement from people we trust helps convince us that we have what it takes to succeed. So, when you’re facing a challenge, surround yourself with people who believe in you. Their belief will help build your confidence in your skills and abilities.

A board of success is a group of friends, colleagues or your family who meet regularly to keep each other updated about their goal pursuit. They also hold each other accountable and give each other feedback and support.

This activity basically consists of one question. It's simple yet powerful if you really take some time to think about it.

We human beings constantly compare ourselves to others. That’s what psychologists call ‘social comparison’. It’s our drive to evaluate ourselves against other people, their abilities and accomplishments.

This activity is all about putting into practice the lessons from the previous video lecture. Negative social comparison is not helpful and reduces our self-confidence so now it's time to do something about it.