I want to describe self-confidence as believing in one's capacity. Knowledge of having performed and/or being able to perform. Self-confidence is dependent on replenishment from outside (praise, attention, money, status, love). The inner voice is strong and tends to use negativism to push you to perform so that confidence can be filled from the outside. The inner voice can also be trained to tell you that you are good, even the best, even when you fail. The failure is then the fault of the environment. If it hadn't been "if" you would have succeeded. The self-confidence pumped up while self-esteem pushed aside.
Self-esteem is an experience of a kind of basic value, independent of performance or external rewards. A slightly elusive but clear feeling of feeling good, of being liked itself. If you have never experienced that state, you might confuse this description with peak self-confidence. You have won and everyone sees you. In that case, the whole concept of self-esteem becomes meaningless and incomprehensible. But have you ever experienced your own acceptance of yourself and love for your innermost being, then you know the difference. Despite that experience, it can be difficult to get there again.
I imagine that self-esteem and confidence could be like two balloons. They are shaped exactly to the inside of my skin and they can be filled in a variety of ways. Sometimes one of them fills me up, sometimes they share the space and sometimes they are completely sunken and I have no self-esteem or self-confidence. The self-feeling balloon has slightly thicker and more durable rubber, and this means that it is slower to inflate. But it also lasts a little more once it's filled. The self-confidence balloon feels like a safe castle when it fills the whole body, but my experience is that it deflates very quickly if performance and reward are not forthcoming. When self-confidence has taken up all the space and suddenly disappears, it becomes very empty. Menacingly empty. If, instead, self-esteem and self-confidence can balance each other, adversity will not be as dangerous.
I imagine that a person who is completely dependent on performance (or the environment behaving perfectly) unconsciously becomes terrified of losing self-confidence. Who am I then? Nothing? The struggle to keep the balloon inflated becomes a life and death struggle. There is no room for self-esteem when I force confidence to spread. Self-confidence becomes a kind of artificial respiration. Self-esteem then? How do you fill it? I think it happens by allowing oneself to feel one's feelings. Sounds easy, right? It is difficult. Especially if your entire well-being is based on self-confidence. Then there is no room to feel afraid, to feel shame, to feel sadness, tiredness and maybe not genuine joy, love or happiness either.
The path that I know of to self-esteem goes through getting to know what is felt in the body. I'm not talking about feelings such as sadness, joy or anger, but about phenomena such as tingling in the foot, upset stomach, tension in the shoulder, warmth in the hand, etc. For many, this examination of what is going on in the body is completely new. Some people actually have no idea what it feels like in their body. Regardless of where you start, you can step by step become more aware of what is happening in your body. And thus know what is happening in the present. Thoughts and ideas are usually in the past or future.
Physical sensations in the body happen unfailingly in the present.
At a later stage, perhaps emotions can be connected with these sensations in the body. Simply put, self-esteem gets an opportunity to venture forward when you signal to yourself that you confirm that you feel what you feel.
If in the next step you can also accept what you feel, then you have found the valve that can (slowly) fill the balloon "self-esteem". It becomes like you allow yourself to be you. This cannot be read or thought about. It is a physical experience in the body. It can be difficult to do this on your own. Welcoming a strong feeling of, for example, shame is not something anyone does lightly. It is not an end in itself to force the full spectrum of all imaginable emotions. Instead, it's just about allowing what is to be and discovering that it is the struggle against the emotions that constitutes the great suffering, not the emotions themselves. They are just that – feelings.
That's how easy (and difficult) it is to develop a stronger sense of self.
