Before embarking on a self-esteem building journey, I have always thought that self-confidence and self-esteem were interchangeable. That is confidence means self-esteem. But little that I know, there are a clear difference between the two. This becomes clear as I continue taking steps toward improving my self-esteem, and realized that being confident did not translate to having a high or healthy self-esteem. However, both can be achieved if we are willing to look beyond external validation. 

Self-confidence is the belief in ourselves, our abilities to get things done, and how capable we feel to successfully handle certain situations in life. It is usually tied to something external that can validate how we feel. It could be a skill, a talent or past performance.

Self-confidence tends to be circumstantial and fleeting. Our self-esteem can fluctuate depending on the circumstance, the situation or an external reward. Most of us will feel great about ourselves when we know that we have a skill to get certain job done, we have the money to go into expense store or when we have accomplished something that is viewed as a success. 

In my own experience, I will often feel a sense of accomplishment, feeling proud and capable, whenever I learned new skills, done something new, or completed a goal. But often, this feeling only lasted for that moment, that period or until I am back to that place of not feeling enough. I recall the time after completing my higher degree education, I felt very good about myself, I was confident in my abilities to be successful in my life with acquired knowledge and skills and new ways of doing things. I also felt confident in possibly getting a promotion or finding a high paying job, felt confident in networking with others and engaging in conversation to share more about myself. 

Although my self-confidence was high and I felt good about my accomplishment and skills, it did not necessarily translate to having a high or healthy self-esteem. The impact was not immediate in term of how I saw my self-worth and value. I seemed to still struggle about how I truly viewed and validated myself, and feeling worthy. At time, I felt like I was living between parallel time- felt good about myself when I am sharing my skills and talking about my education, but on the other end, I would feel unfulfilled and eventually lose confidence or doubt myself when engaging in area I was not familiar with or feel down about myself because of lack of fulfillment in other areas of my life.

Perhaps, one reason for this feeling was the fact I was not necessarily using my degree in a practical hand on experience to create value, rather it was just a concept I had of accomplishing a goal that translate as success. I could not make the connection between my inner value and my outside accomplishments, which self-esteem can help us understand.

Another example of self-esteem being fleeting is when we must perform in some way. Depending on how we feel about the skills or talents we are using or the experience we have gained, we may feel confident in one area versus another. A person can be a highly confident in their job, but feel less confident in public speaking, for instance. Many of us can relate to this feeling in our life, where we feel confident in some area, but completely lack in another. However, this may not necessarily mean that we have low self-esteem. This is where we start to see the difference between self-esteem and self-confidence.

A quick tip that I learned about boosting our self-confidence and to help it from fading out is to “Link your confidence to your intention or have a conviction about the action you are taking” By practicing this technique, you can connect your actions to an internal state, that make the actions easier to take or sustain. For instance, when you are afraid of speaking to stranger or in group setting, you can remain yourself of your intention, to help you move from a place of fear to action.  Perhaps, your intention is to genuinely connect with other and learn about them or it could be that you truly believe that your idea can help someone else if you share it at the meeting, for instance. This quick tip usually helps us move from a place of fear or discomfort to a place of quiet confidence and doing. And when it comes to building anything in life, the more we practice, the more we become better at it. Therefore, we must take actions that allow us to build our confidence, which in turn can improve our self-esteem.

Self-confidence focuses on outward abilities and actions (Doing). It is often tied to something external like a skill, a reward or performance. Quite often when that external validation is missing, we may not necessarily feel worthy or valued. That is when self-esteem concept comes in play, which help us see ourselves beyond the physical or outside of ourselves and create value from within. When we understand this idea of self-confidence as an act of doing something, we can easily realize that self-esteem is it opposite, because it focuses on the being of, the representation or the embodiment of it. But also, we realize that by doing, we gain experiences and skills that build our self-confidence, while also allowing us to become the person who truly see ourselves as worthy or valued because of the actions we have taken behind who we see ourselves as. In the end, it appears that both concepts need to co-exist to help us grow to our full potential.

Now let’s look at self-esteem

Self-esteem is how we perceive and value ourselves. It is how we see ourselves, and defining who we are through our own opinions, and beliefs. It refers to the overall sense of one’s self- worth and self-value.  It is more general, like a 360 view of ourselves, rather than in a specific area. Self-esteem is also about how much we like or love ourselves and the overall image we hold, which can be either positive or negative. 

Self-esteem is more grounding and stable because it connects external actions to inner value or meaning

It comes from inside and not necessary from external validation and is tied to our sense of being.  Self-esteem is more about how we look at ourselves in all areas of our lives, from a holistic viewpoint, including who we are as human being, our strengths, our qualities, our abilities, our talents and everything that make us.

Unlike self-confidence, which depend on the context, self-esteem is not circumstantial. We feel worthy of love, happiness and success, and even when we fail, we still believe that we can be more in life because self-esteem focuses on internal validation rather than external one. For instance, a person may feel less confident as a romantic partner in a relationship but can still have a good self-esteem in being able to take care of the family and be a great support system because they have developed those qualities from within and see themselves as a person who represent that.

When I started losing confidence through self-doubt and not feeling enough after accomplishing certain goals, I was able to ground myself, feel positive and maintain a healthy self-esteem by connecting my external accomplishments to something meaningful internally. Upon reflection, I reframed my achievement to translate as someone who can build my own character. Completing my degree meant I was throughout in my plans, able to complete goals I set for myself, do the hard things in life, resilience in the face of adversity, build skills and learn new things. I was able to find internal validation by connecting the external actions or rewards to non-tangible skills, qualities and strengths that I have gained through achieving my goals. I understood that willing to plan and go through years of study and hard work to complete was not easy. 

Instead of looking at my degree or skills as a temporary accomplishment, that can fade or is irrelevant depending on the context, I focused the good qualities, skills, and talents that I discovered about myself. I tried to look at non-tangibles things that can represent human qualities that are valued in virtually any context. These are things like resilience, perseverance, integrity, care of oneself and others, righteous, listening skills, problem solving qualities, team player and individual contributor skills ect—

This example maybe different for someone’s else as we all go through our own individual experiences and goals in life. But the idea is the same. For instance, someone who is a stay-at-home mom or dad or has gained skills by doing different jobs will translate and maintain their self-esteem by linking the skills, the qualities and strengths they developed in this process to something meaningful inside, that create intrinsic values. Perhaps, it could be their resilience, their charisma, their problems solving skills ect—that allow them to see themselves as worthy and valuable.

By Looking within to find validation, we can start seeing the shift and change in how we view ourselves, thus, positively impacting our self-esteem.  

Self-esteem focuses on inner self and Intrinsic worth (Being)

As mentioned above, to maintain and build my self-esteem, I linked outside rewards to inner value. I was able to recognize my qualities, my mindset, my strengths, skills, talents, resilience, perseverance and positive outlook on life as the true value creation. I reminded myself that if all else fails, these values I have created within will always stay with me and I can take them with me, wherever life takes me, next. 

This is how I came to find out about building self-esteem from inside out and feeling grounded and stable. I felt a sense of conviction in the meaning I created within and how I can use it to serve my growth and create value. Also, I connected my self-worth in my ability to face life challenges and adversities by the lessons and life skills I have gained through failures and experiences, and this is what I know can carry me forward. 

 

These are part of ourselves that bring the best out of us and help us remains strong, stable and confident, feel worthy, even when external things do not align with it at a certain time in our lives. It is more like a stable feeling inside that tells us that we are fine, all is well, we are human, even when we feel down, fail, we are still worthy because it is all part of growth. Therefore, we can remain stable in who we are because it is not based on external things, rather it is a realization of our self-worth, which can be reinforced though external things, but is not dependent on it. 

This is why self-esteem can be more stable overtime because we start to find meaning and create value from within ourselves as we grow and become wiser in life.

 

As we come to understand, self-confidence is an element of self-esteem, and every step or action that boost or increase our self-confidence, is more than likely help improve our self- esteem and build our self-worth.  

Finally, although self-esteem and self-confidence has some difference, they have some aspects in common. Both self-esteem and self-confidence can be impacted by our experiences and our environment, as well as our beliefs. Both are subjective as they come from our own individual lenses and opinions and a reflection how we see ourselves.

Below is a table that represents the specific differences between self-esteem and self-confidence for future reference.