Everyday Confidence Hacks

What is the basis of confidence?

The phrase confidence is key is not just a saying it actually relates to our personal lives. For example, you may need confidence for careers, a workplace, a collaboration, or even specific skills or tasks like roller skating for the first time, or dancing on stage. You need to believe in yourself and feel confident in what you do. There are also times you might feel unaccepted or insecure. Confidence also means accepting yourself and building up your self-esteem, self discovery, and self-awareness. 

Roots of Confidence:

Have you ever stepped into a room full of people and felt small or hesitant? That is what we call insecurity or loss of confidence. How can you build up your confidence to speak up for yourself and not feel anxious? According to an article, you can find your roots of confidence. The five roots of confidence include; awareness, acceptance, alignment, authenticity, and attunement. Let’s break each one down! 

• Awareness: Notice yourself and observe your surroundings without judgement. 

• Acceptance: Embrace and accept yourself and others.

• Alignment: Match your inner with your actions, words, and choices one step at a time. 

• Authenticity: Have courage to be yourself and live out your life without being apologetic or shameful. 

• Attunement: tune into the connection between yourself, others, and life through your intuitions and senses. 

Methods: 

There are many different ways to be confident. You can start by little steps and build your way up. For example, stop comparing yourself to others, treat yourself kindly, and don’t let anyone bring you down. If you know yourself worth no one else’s opinions matter. Now let’s dive into some more important methods!

Speak to Yourself: Affirmations & Self-Belief

To thrive in being confident you need to implement positive self talk. Positive self talk can ensure growing self confidence. But sometimes you might be harsh to yourself, this is negative self talk. This can limit your abilities and lessen your self esteem. You might catch yourself saying “it's too hard” or “I shouldn’t even try” or “I can never do it”. Whenever this happens, redirect your mind and remind yourself that your inner thoughts aren’t always accurate, you can do it! Say phrases like “This is possible” or “ I can handle this”, we call this self affirmation. Self affirmations are optimistic phrases or sentences to help change your mindset and believe in yourself. 

Stand Like You Mean It: Confidence Hacks

How do you look confident even though you may not necessarily be? We use body language cues! Imagine yourself giving a presentation, your hands are sweating, you're fidgeting, and you keep stuttering. You need ways to calm down and ways to express your confidence through body language. There are body language DOs and DONTs, let’s discuss some of the DOs. Do claim your territory, speak enthusiastically and express your thoughts clearly, do control your breathing so you don’t catch yourself stuttering a lot, do have good postuse, posture makes you seem more confident and put together, and definitely do use hand gestures ensuring your audience knows what you're talking about and feel good about your topic. Did you know there's a method to gain confidence in less than two minutes? It’s called power posing! 

• In an amazing study by Harvard Business School, researchers found that putting their hands behind their heads and their feet on the desk or leaning over a desk and planting their hands far apart), within as little as 2 minutes, they regulated more hormones and less stress enhancing their power and confidence. 

Putting It Together: A Daily Confidence Routine

Lastly, let’s put all of it together and make a good fitting routine to boost your confidence every single day, whether you're going to school, work, or just trying something new. You’ll have a piece of confidence with you each moment of the day to help you perform your tasks and daily activities. We talked about accepting yourself, having self awareness, affirmations, posture, hand gestures and positive self talk. How can we graph all of this into a well-balanced routine? Let’s try it out! 

1. Make a micro habit, a micro habit is when you practice this habit every day but it’s something you should use in your everyday life. For example, Listen more, appreciate yourself more, work the mind to stimulate less stress, and don’t judge people. 

2. Affirmation, listen to affirmations while doing daily tasks like, getting ready, cooking, or cleaning. Write them on the mirror so say you’ll be reminded of your worth. 

3. Posture check: Maybe you're giving a speech you need stable posture, always straighten your back and stand tall to speak your word, this instantly makes you look one hundred times more confident. 

4. Movement: Again while giving a speech or presentation, move around! Walk and talk simultaneously and feel free to do open hand gestures. 

5. Use environmental cues: this helps you understand how the audience may be feeling or how the mood is. 

People don’t gain confidence instantly; it's a muscle we strengthen so it’ll take time. From the way we stand to the word choices we make, all of these tiny actions build up to something powerful. You don’t need to wait until you feel ready, confidence is an act of trying. You'll grow with every experience, even the awkward ones. Confidence doesn’t make you seem louder, it makes you help clearer and more powerful!

Keerthi VIrupakshi, Bentonville, AR, 9th grade, instagram: @keerthivirupakshi 

Sources: 

Amy Morin, LCSW. “Want to Boost Your Confidence? Give These 9 Tips a Try.” Verywell Mind, www.verywellmind.com/how-to-boost-your-self-confidence-4163098. Accessed 2 Oct. 2025.

Claffey, Michelle. “The Roots of Confidence.” Claffey Leadership, Claffey Leadership, 24 Apr. 2024, www.claffeyleadership.com/post/the-roots-of-confidence.

Edwards, Vanessa Van. “23 Confident Body Language Cues Every Woman Should Know.” Science of People, 7 May 2025, www.scienceofpeople.com/confident-female-body-language/.

Environmental Cue - an Overview | Sciencedirect Topics, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/environmental-cue. Accessed 3 Oct. 2025.

Lazar, Alexandru. “8 Habits That Will Make You More Confident than 99% of People.” Medium, Medium, 21 Mar. 2025, medium.com/illumination/8-habits-that-will-make-you-more-confident-than-99-of-people-aaa2e670c423.