Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

If possible - stop coding for some time and volunteer in non-related field

Spend time to master something. Genuine confidence comes from a sense of empowerment (not entitlement).

It's a hard way and I've been struggling with this, too. I had depressions and a burn out and felt like I wasn't worth anything.

Took me quite some time to realize that I'm really good at some things and that people value me for that. Those things are not always work-related, but we often define our value or our self esteem by success at work.

I'm sure you're really good at something, too and people value you for that. Find out what it is, and use that confidence to grow in other areas. Think like "I can make people laugh, so I can handle phone calls with customers". Yeah, that's oversimplified, but this worked for me.

To be honest: I'm still struggling, but every day I feel a bit better and more self-confident. It isn't much when viewed on a daily basis, but looking back it's drastically different (and better) than two years ago.

I don't know that the world really needs more confident people.

exercise.

There are no easy answers. All the answers in this thread are worth trying though. Walks and runs and bike rides help. So does meditation. Social interaction with people you trust (or if you don’t trust anyone, with people you don’t know very well).

Personally have been going through this myself, and recently. Some things which make me feel better:

* Finding my own independence to do things. I often tied my own activities to that of my partner. So many times I felt like I was WAITING for things, when I didn't need to be.

* Find your own hobbies which are outside of work related things. I am interested in kite surfing for example. I've never done it, but I've begun digging into it.

* People will say this often: Exercise. Don't quickly dismiss this. It's MENTALLY hard to motivate yourself, I get it. I HATE going. But, I ALWAYS feel better after having gone. There is something about tackling things you DON'T want to do, and getting satisfaction from having accomplished doing it. Plus, your whole body, including your brain, get distinct benefits which persist longer than the time you work out. So you work out 30 minutes, but you feel great for hours after, and your body physically benefits well beyond too.

* Find friends you can just hang out with. I moved to a new city and hardly know anybody. But I still take trips 1-2 hours away to see friends because I NEED that interaction. It breaks me out of my own world/thoughts.

* Understand nobody can see into your head and the knowledge you posses inside

* Understand nothing can hurt you if you just align yourself with the karmic good and don't go into harm in others

* Understand you are the only one giving meaning to events and attaching emotions to them

* Find what caused you to believe you are not good in your past and understand those events. And let go. Your past doesn't influence you, it just brought you here

* Your perfectionism is what gives you the chance to improve, you know where your flaws are

* Meditate

* Check out hypnosis, for example Marisa Peer, to solve deeply rooted issues

* Try psychedelics

Seeing your faults is not necessarily (in itself) a bad thing. That means it's that much easier to improve, until you can no longer see trivial faults of your own.

Try to answer honestly (to yourself) - why exactly do you care what others think, unless their opinion has immediate effects on you? But be blunt and honest to yourself, don't kid yourself.

Confidence is a scam. It's just a way certain people "act", and others label it "confidence". Sometimes you can label it with a different word - like a moron under the guise of the all-mighty "confidence", for example. Don't buy that much into it.

How many "confident" people "deserve" the mystics surrounding the confidence? How many original thoughts, works have they produced? In which field have they been top in the world? If they simply died tomorrow, who'd miss them truly? What is their objective value? What about their internal, moral values? Any substance at all?

Try to err on the side of logic, not emotions. Try to think objectively, as much as possible.

On the topic of "trying new things" - listen, nobody is good enough. People take chances all the time and we usually hear about the "winners". Think about "last man standing" kind of thing. Try, fail, improve, try again - that's what everyone does. No exceptions.

Practical advice: sleep 8+ per day, exercise daily, protect your mental well being (especially if you notice that it's going down) - don't expose your mind to insane things.

Three suggestions and reason why mate:

1)Do exercise: It will increase chemicals like serotonin, endorphins and dopamine making you feel way better.

2)Eat more healthy: If you reduce saturated fats and increase protein will impact your dopamine levels.

3)Book "a guide to the good life": The chapter #1 is very slow but the rest of the book is pure gold and I found it here in HN, I strongly recommend it.

If you can build the confidence - I’d recommend giving a talk about it at a local meetup group, something like a local devops / dev meetup group as long as the managers of the group think it’s appropriate for the audience.

You could go into what it makes hard for you, what situations you have experienced, what advice you’ve received (and if it worked or not if you tried it and how you did), then you could make the 2nd part of the talk taking questions from the audience.

It might make you feel uncomfortable and definitely vulnerable but in my experience if the audience is mostly respectful - I think they’ll naturally become empathetic or at least sympathetic and respond perhaps by opening up with some of their experiences and how they evolved from them.

Don’t get me wrong - I know this may well be very scary and if you have (mental) health issues I would suggest discussing it with your doctor first.

You need a mentor/coach. Find a good one.

As many others here, I have been (and in some ways still am) in the same situation myself.

My advice, find something else to do in your spare time. Many people recommend excersise. Remember, excersise doesn't have too be going to a gym, or going jogging. There are plenty of activities that will give you a good workout as a bonus. Personally, I like chopping wood.

Also, if you are able to, try to take a little longer lunch breaks and spend the extra time doing non-work related stuff. Outside if you can.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is evidence based and has reasonably good effectiveness - about 60% of people going through it experience good recovery.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cognitive-behavioural-therapy-...

One good thing about it is that it only lasts about 12 to 16 weeks.

Find someone with qualifications, experience, and a registration. Check the pricing over 21 weeks (this is the maximum you'd possibly use, but you're likely to use fewer lessons.) Then book in. Don't be afraid to change therapist if the one you have is terrible.

The first session will talk about the CBT model, and ask you what you want to achieve, and talk about confidentiality and payment.

You'll need to be able to identify emotions and hot thoughts, but the therapy should help you with that.

EDIT: a lot of people are recommending exercise. It's important to exercise for your physical health. The evidence for benefits to mental health is somewhat weaker, and we've only recently started getting good quality evidence that it works. For you it may work, it may not, and it's probably not going to hurt to try unless the failure of exercise to lift your mood is going to feed into negative thinking.

Kettlebells + running or rowing. You can watch stuff if you do kettlebells and rowing at home (Water Rower rocks). Exercise 5 days a week. It’s hard at first, but after a couple of weeks it’s easy.

For me it was exercise + getting outside and interacting with different people more + not tying all of my esteem to work + doing some sort of challenge every day (exercise when I would rather not, go out and socialize when I would rather not, clean something, learn something, talk about something, etc.). My self esteem has increased a lot, but I am still not there 100%.

Write down what you’ve achieved every day, and occasionally look over what you have accomplished.

Sometimes I wonder what I’ve done with myself over the last few years, but then I look at the size of the text file I produced that way and realise that I averaged over ten tasks per day last year.

Reminding yourself what you’ve done makes it easier to discuss what you’ve done.

Lifting is good advice.

Try to stop caring as much. Books like 'the subtle art of not giving a fck' may help. If you find something start to bother you, remind yourself that ultimately it doesn't really matter and that while you'd like to succeed, you don't have* to, so take some of the pressure off yourself.

Stop asking HN for advice. You are getting "exercise more" and other platitudes.

This is like asking your GP advice on software security and getting "install the antivirus thing"

Self-esteem and confidence are very complex aspects of psychology. Ask a professional.

If you like running, I recommend getting into ultras. Atte first it seems unachievable, but it's pretty doable and not a lot of things in this world can boost your confidence as knowing that you just finished some 80k, 100m or 24h races. Also the ultra community is very supportive and not very competitive, at least not at the hobby level. For example it's bad manner to try to sprint at the finish line, unless you compete for the podium. (True for my country)

I think it's a personality trait, not easy or even possible to overcome. But it gets better with time as you gain experience. For instance, talking with your supervisor may be hard now, but will certainly be easier in six months. And in two years, your supervisor may be the one asking you questions and seeking your expertise. And you're not alone in this. Some people may appear very confident, and as you get to know them better you realise they are struggling too.

I had low self confidence and no longer do. I've studied psychology of mental health and am training to be a therapist, so I will be discussing things through this lens.

So while low self esteem is annoying to experience, it is important to understand that it has a function. You are not experiencing it due to chance, it is serving a purpose. You have to remove the need for it to exist and it will go.

Typically, the function of low self esteem is to protect you from the brain's idea of conflict - this was the case with me. It is important to note that the brain's idea of conflict does not fit with the the standard definition - while it includes obvious examples of conflict (e.g., getting angry with a friend who has done something out of order) it also includes situations which are more subtle. For the brain, conflict is breaking the expectations of others (or rather, your own idea of their expectations) - for example, let's say you've been learning the guitar and haven't ever played anything in front of your friends, breaking the flow of conversation with "guys, I've been learning guitar and I want to play you a song I've been working on" is a 'conflict' in the eyes of your brain; even though you aren't doing anything negative, you are disrupting everyone's expectations of that moment. Your brain knows it would be "safer" (less disruptive) for you if you didn't pause the conversation to play guitar. From here on I'll refer to 'the brain's idea of conflict' simply as 'conflict'.

Feeling low self esteem helps you avoid conflict. Let's look at how:

1) Conflict exists in relationships. Low self esteem makes relationships difficult and makes you feel insecure in them. This means they are harder to construct, harder to maintain and as the one's you have feel insecure, if a conflict were to emerge in them you would take the submissive path. "You don't DESERVE to have this relationship, so of course you should shut up and agree!"

2) Conflict exists when expectations are broken. Low self esteem means you don't want to try (and definitely don't want to share) your creative endeavours. Unless you are painting by numbers, creation is pretty much always disruptive - it adds something new and potentially uncomfortable to the world. Your brain knows this, so to keep you safe from conflict it would rather you feel shit about yourself and hide your creativity, than feel good, create and risk disruption.

So, how to break the cycle? You need to remove the fear of upsetting others - and this means practicing it. It means catching yourself avoiding this and making yourself do it again and again. Even if the experience does not go well your confidence will grow. The need to avoid conflict is learnt in infancy, where you really are dependent on other people loving you to survive - so your brain just needs to know that you will survive conflict, rather than it ending up with everyone too happy on the other side.

Broadly speaking, all anxieties are functional in this protective way, and all are resolvable through focused action. Though it was a bit unusual, during therapy developing a new way to interpret dreams which enabled me to know where to focus my action meant my progress improved rapidly. I wrote a paper on it which is available here: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz

Happy conflicting :)

This is hard. I know; I struggle with it too.

Many people struggle with it. I imagine your director has struggled with it in his lifetime. I mention these things to point out that you are not alone in this.

For me, I fake it. I've practiced pretending people like to meet me and talk with me, and that they consider me a good friend and valuable colleague. This kind of pretense helps me see beyond my own fears. It helps me see myself reflected in their eyes: that they see me as plenty good enough.

You are plenty good enough too. Seriously. Try to look at yourself reflected in others' eyes so you can see that.

Good luck and strength with your struggle. It gets better!

One method to achieve more self-esteem: Do more things you are proud of and less of those that you are not proud of.

Second method: Invest effort into yourself.

But the "effort" has to be something that actually takes work, courage or frustration, and it must not be something immediately gratifying or distracting. The reasoning is that in experimental behavioral economy, the worth of something is determined by how much energy a subject or animal will exert to get it. You are the animal, the "something" is "your self worth" and then you have to find a way to expend energy towards your self. Your subconscious will over time learn from these examples that you value yourself.