The main difference between self esteem and self confidence is that the self esteem is about the overall self evaluation on who you are while the self confidence is about the confidence you have in you to succeed in various tasks of your life.
Self esteem and self confidence are inter-related characteristics of a person. Thus, both these are well-studied phenomenal concepts in psychology. Even though they share many similarities, there is a slight difference between self esteem and self confidence.
Key Areas Covered
1. What is Self Esteem
– Definition, Characteristics
2. What is Self Confidence
– Definition, Characteristics
3. What is the Relationship Between Self Esteem and Self Confidence
– Outline of Common Features
4. What is the Difference Between Self Esteem and Self Confidence
– Comparison of Key Differences
Key Terms
Self Esteem, Self Confidence, Self Identification, Self Evaluation, Psychology
What is Self Esteem
Self esteem primarily refers to the overall rating or evaluation we have on ourselves. Self esteem is, therefore, highly influenced by our life experiences and interactions. Therefore, it involves the way how you feel about who you are. Accordingly, this overall rating or evaluation can be positive or negative.
Thus, if you have a positive attitude about who you, are you will have high self esteem that results in overall appreciation for yourself. On the contrary, if you feel bad about who you are or if your attitude or the evaluation about yourself is negative, you will end up developing a low self esteem.
Similarly, if you appreciate and start loving who you are, your self esteem improves, and you feel more confident and happy about yourself. Then, you do not aspire to be someone else, and you find yourself more unique and worthy. On the other hand, if you always start disliking yourself and end up disapproving yourself, your self esteem will get degraded. Then you will start seeing yourself not worthy and will eventually lack the strength to move forward with your own identity.
What is Self Confidence
Self confidence, though directly related with self esteem, has a fine line which differentiates it from self esteem. Self confidence is about your stance on your abilities when engaging in different tasks in your life. In brief, it is the trust you put on your capacity on varied situations in life, or it is the belief in your abilities: self assurance or belief in your ability to succeed.
To be self confident means to have faith and trust in yourself, particularly on your aptitudes and abilities to successfully engage yourself in varied situations in life. As a result, a self confident person is always ready to face new challenges, seize opportunities, deal with difficult situations, and take responsibility when things are difficult to deal with for others.
Thus, it is related to how you feel about your abilities and how capable you see yourself to do certain things or handling different situations in your life. However, having high self confidence doesn’t always mean that a person has high self esteem as well. For example, you may be a very popular person, very talented in many fields such as theatre and drama; however, if you are a victim of alcohol and drugs or you suffer from depression, that certainly indicates you have very low self esteem.
Similarly, you might have high self esteem and low self confidence as well. For example, you may have high self esteem, but you might find yourself lacking the confidence to perform in front of an audience. However, that doesn’t mean you have low self esteem; it just means that you have low self confidence for theatre and drama.
Thus, though self esteem and self confidence share a common ground, they do not always go hand in hand.
Relationship Between Self Esteem and Self Confidence
- Most often, high self esteem results in high self confidence while low self esteem results in low self confidence
Difference Between Self Esteem and Self Confidence
Definition
Self esteem is about the overall evaluation (either positive or negative) you have on yourself while self confidence is the belief in your abilities to succeed. Thus, this expains the difference between self esteem and self confidence.
Evaluation
That is; self esteem is about self-evaluation whereas having faith in oneself plays a major role in building confidence.
Ideology
Ideologies about yourself are directly related to self esteem. In contrast, self confidence is about having confidence to accomplish certain tasks and face certain situations in life. Hence, this is another difference between self esteem and self confidence.
Tasks
Moreover, self esteem doesn’t evaluate you based on certain tasks in life whereas confidence is all about task based-evaluation. For example, you may have high self esteem, but you might have low self confidence in debating with another person.
Conclusion
Self esteem and self confidence are related to self-identification and self-acceptance of a person. Both these, therefore, seem similar due to the similar nature they both share. Yet they differ from each other due to the fact that self esteem is about overall self evaluation on who you are while self confidence is about the confidence you have in you during in various tasks in your life. Hence, this briefs the difference between self esteem and self confidence.
Image Courtesy:
1. “Love yourself” By Quinn Dombrowski (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr
2. “2433978” (CC0) via Pixabay
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