4 Types of Confidence You Need To Know About Yourself

One day on my way to work, one of my employees commented on the level of confidence that she saw in me but aspired to own.

She shared, “She [me] is so well put together with her heels and her purse walking down the sidewalk, one day I want to be like her”. The level of admiration was pure sweetness to my ears. In her eyes, I stood out because I expelled a level of confidence in my strut that set me apart from the crowd walking alongside me. How amazing is that feeling?

But little did she know, and learned later on…that the time she saw a confident woman walking down a sidewalk, was the very same moment I was walking down with a handbag full of drowning things inside because my water bottle spilled.

As I walked, my handbag was literally dripping water from its base, leaving a faint trail of water spots behind me. My personal belongings were swimming inside my purse!

During that moment, I was on a mission to get to the office as quickly as possible to stop the flood inside my bag from ruining my belongings. Showing or feeling confident was nowhere near my thoughts.

This is a very valuable scene in my story because it shows how confidence is in the eye of the beholder.

There are 4 types of confidence you need to know about yourself:

• Visual confidence

• Mental confidence

• Physical confidence

• Emotional confidence

You do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that my employee noticed a visual confidence when she glanced at me. But what is physical or visual confidence?

Visual confidence

This type of confidence that others can see is the way you carry yourself. Visual confidence is influenced by the way you present yourself to others (and even yourself), whether intentionally or unintentionally. Ever heard of “first impressions”?

The way you walk, the angle at which you uplift your posture, the type of clothes accessories and shoes you choose to wear, and even the color scheme you pick in your wardrobe...all of these composition factors put together the level of confidence you will imprint on others.

Visual confidence can be superficial in a way because it is dependent on how you (and others) perceive yourself according to the way you have CHOSEN to put yourself together for that day. Believe it or not, the way you put yourself together can affect your mindset as well as other mindsets around you. I hate to break it to the dirty truth but physical appearances and impressions do heavily impact self-confidence. There is a level of shallowness that most of us possess, if not all, and visual impression is its cousin.

This is interesting to note because I remember one time in ballet class when my instructor explained to her students about her pet peeve of bun neatness. She noticed that when teaching younger age groups, the power of a neat bun affected focus and performance. Students who walked in her classroom with neatly brushed bun hairdos tend to be more focused in their performance in comparison to others with messier buns. Now, she may have seen this pattern in her classroom from pure coincidence...or is it?

I’m not sure how true, through empirical data, her observations were BUT I can say that when I absorbed her thoughts and fixed my bun for the following ballet session, my demeanor was refreshing.

This is also true about my first story. The reason I demonstrated confidence in the moment of wet despair is because I CHOSE power accessories that influenced my demeanor.

For me, comfortable heels and handbags are magical. Somehow, when put on my body, it shoots up a serum of confidence up my veins. Heels makes me reassess my balance and makes me more conscious of how I strut my steps. My handbags make me feel “grown” in a “I’m well put together” magazine photo shoot kind of way.

Together, both accessories bring out a confident aura about myself that is hard to ignore even when I may be trying in the middle of a handbag flood situation.Now let’s be clear about one factor-- my confidence power tools may not be the same for you. You have to learn what works for you and how to dominate it.

Mental confidence

Let’s keep in mind that self-confidence is a process that involves how you think about yourself and others. It’s also how you go about handling challenges and uncertainties. Self-confidence is from within and it can be very private. But CONFIDENCE in general is visible to anyone who looks for it. It is that shiny jewel that everyone can see through a glass counter.

To build mental confidence, you need to reset your mind into processing that you CAN do it. whatever that “it” is. It’s important that you learn your internal trigger voice that instills self-doubt within you. The voice within you that says “NO you Can’t” is a drop of poison that taints your brain, infects your thought perception and weeds out through your pores. DO NOT give it power to grow within you.

If you are conscious of when that toxic inner voice tells you no, you can monitor it, find the triggers and overcome them. Your mind is a lot more resourceful than you think. Begin to TRUST it.

Now let’s talk about fears of failure and the unknown. Past failures do not predict future ones, but your mindset about succeeding in a new challenge can. You need to allow yourself to be more open about trying out new techniques or strategies. And yes, this will create discomfort because it is a new UNKNOWN territory.

Instead of pushing away discomfort, welcome it. Embrace it and make it productive for your goals. Ah yes, productive discomfort. When you are uncomfortable, it clouds your judgement and it may even spike anxiety for some of you. This is because you are out of your comfort zone.

When you expose yourself to an uncomfortable situation and stay there, your comfort zone shifts and you begin to adjust. The discomfort you initially felt will begin to subdue and become more normal to you. As your comfort zone shifts, you will begin to feel more comfortable in the situation you find yourself in and you will surprise yourself at how much farther you can push your limit.

For me, mental confidence is challenged at the gym. Many times I found myself in a state of self-doubt when my personal trainer would challenge my balance coordination (of which I am severely challenged due to my clumsiness) or weight resistance through a new exercise. It is scary!

But what is scarier is the mental block I posed on myself about my ability to succeed in a new exercise, that is to exert physical confidence. Repeated experience of success molds confidence through mastery of a skill. When you have mastered a skill, whether it takes you a couple of minutes or years to develop, you have developed a competence that cannot be replaced or substituted. This is because mastering a skill takes dedication, drive, and discipline.

Mastering a competency blooms your confidence at an unconscious level. This confidence then manifests through your mental state because you know you can do the skill. Once manifested, not only will you have achieved mental confidence but physical confidence.

Physical confidence

Physical confidence is your ability to perform physical challenges that requires you to push your body beyond your average doing.

At the gym, I exert physical confidence when I break limits within my own physical condition. A perfect example was my ability (once upon a time before having my daughter) to squat 200lbs of barbell weight in my back. With hip flexor issues, carpel tunnel and nerve cramping, it took lots of training and posture correction to get there. Of course, many people can go much higher than 200lbs but for me and my physical condition, this was a breakthrough.

Now, exerting yourself at the gym is just one example of physical confidence. I mention the gym because it is one experience many of us can relate to and also one that is easy to fall off the wagon when you are not in the right mental state to push through physical challenges.

Think of one physical challenge that you can relate to.

I was able to put myself in a mental state, build mental confidence in order to manifest it in into physical confidence by exerting myself physically in ways I could not beforehand. Notice how these types of confidences within yourself intertwine?

Emotional confidence

Emotional confidence is your ability to engage in intimate behaviors that involve self-risk, which can also generate potential fear or pain within you.

Remember the dedication and drive piece I mentioned earlier when building your mental confidence? To be dedicated and driven, you must have faith in yourself. I know it sounds like cliche but you must TRULY believe in yourself. This is the most difficult layer of confidence because it’s easier to focus on quick “fixes” rather than wholesome emotional adjustments.

If you don’t have faith in yourself, it is easier to get stuck in uncomfortable situations and much harder to adjust your comfort zone. This is because discouragement begins to grow in your heart and mind, then bullies your drive at getting better.

A powerful tool in building emotional confidence is accepting your current situation and letting yourself off the hook when outcomes don’t go as planned. It is okay if that happens!

But be constructive and push yourself to be better. Don’t just stay stuck. Sometimes we tend to use our current circumstances as crutches to self-pity, self-blame or pose no action at all instead of using it as a propeller push forward.

Refrain from creating or holding on to negative fear-based or pain-based images of prior failures, rejection, or criticism. When you associate a negative feeling to a challenge, it is more likely to envision potential failure that is accompanied by pain and discouragement.

Emotions impact your thinking, which then impact your physical choices and actions.

When associating positive feelings to challenges or events, the stronger the association between your heart and thoughts. The more your heart and mind are in sync in a positive manner, positivity will manifest in physical choices and actions.

Conclusion

Confidence has many faces and each one intertwines with one another. Visual, mental, physical and emotional confidence are all related but each contain some distinctions. To help you improve your confidence, this blog teaches the 4 types of confidence you need to be aware of to know under which area you are building your confidence.

The more you can identify each one within yourself, its triggers and how they relate to one another, the more balanced you’ll be at achieving overall confidence.