Confidence is what we tell others. Self-esteem is what we tell ourselves.

It took me way too long to understand this difference. I’m not a therapist and don’t play one on the internet, but here’s my theory:

Confidence is a skill you can learn today. Self-esteem is an art of healing which takes time.

When you have high self-esteem, the confidence will follow effortlessly. Not the other way around. If your self-esteem is low, you can act confidently your whole life but the won’t improve your self-esteem.

My self-esteem was low and I compensated with high confidence. I learned confidence as a coping mechanism because the stories I told myself inside my own head were not pretty. Confidence is how you stand, it’s your tone of voice, it’s the words you use. You can learn confidence if you just do what confident-looking people do.

Confident will fool most people, but the people that matter the most, the closest people to you, will see your true self-esteem. They can see past the bs if confidence and self-esteem don’t match.

I think that you can decide to be confident when you wake up in the morning and just act confident all day. But self-esteem, that takes consistent effort over long-time. It takes healing and rewiring life-long believes.

If what you say to yourself and what you tell others doesn’t match, you’re not living in integrity.