Many people believe that “self-esteem” and “self-confidence” are two different words that mean the same thing, so they tend to use them interchangeably in different contexts.
However, whilst they might seem “similar” on the surface, they both have meanings that are entirely different from one another, and they both ask different questions.
Self-esteem asks, “How do you see yourself?” (Value).
Self-confidence asks, “What do you believe you can do?” (Ability).
Understanding this key difference can help us understand ourselves and the people around us a lot more.
You can meet someone who seems fearless in boardroom presentations and public speaking events but still struggles to accept compliments or believe that they’re “good enough”.
They have a lot of self-confidence, but self-esteem is lacking.
And you can meet someone who struggles to put themself out there or to take full advantage of opportunities but has no problem admitting that they’re lacking or that they need help.
They have healthy self-esteem but struggle with being self-confident.
Both words define two different things, and when we separate them and the manner in which they express themselves, our actions and the actions of others around us start making more sense.
You’ll understand why some people can spend their entire lives racking up achievements and yet still be so insecure and why some other people can admit they fail repeatedly and embrace public scrutiny without feeling diminished by it.
My objective for this article is to help you understand yourself a little bit more, so I want to ask:
Are you struggling with your self-confidence or your self-esteem?
If you’re not sure which, that is why I’m here.
Think about the last time you felt extremely intimidated by a challenge.
Maybe it was a job interview, or a public presentation, or an exam, or a first date, or when you were simply trying something that was unfamiliar.
Think about the anxiety you felt.
In that moment, what exactly was going through your mind?
If your thoughts sounded like “I don’t think I can do this” or “I don’t want to make a mistake,” then you were most likely dealing with a self-confidence issue.
You didn’t trust your ability to overcome that challenge, either because you had never done it before then or because you had failed at it in the past.
On the flip side…
If your thoughts sounded like “If I can’t do this, then I’m a failure” or “What will people say if I embarrass myself?” , then you were having a self-esteem struggle, which is inherently much deeper.
You stopped seeing the challenge as a hurdle for you to cross, and it became a referendum on your worth as a person.
Like I said earlier, understanding this simple difference can change a lot of things.
For the sake of introspection, we’re going to explain the four distinct combinations of these two concepts that can be at play in the life of anybody at any given time.
I want you to pay close attention.
Low Self-Esteem, High-Self Confidence
I believe this is the most misunderstood (and most common) combination among people, and it is almost imperceptible from the outside.
To illustrate it, let’s say the following:
You’re capable, and you know you’re capable. If someone asks you to lead a team, solve a difficult problem, or finish a demanding project, you don’t hesitate to take on the challenge because you trust in your ability.
From the outside, everybody admires how composed you are under pressure, and they constantly express how impressed they are by your results.
In their minds, they assume you must believe greatly in yourself because your performance and track record suggest that you do.
However, what they don’t see is that your confidence only exists inside your ability to do what it is that you’re good at, and outside of it or outside of anything that relates to it, you’re constantly questioning yourself and wondering if you’re even worth anything.
Imagine a lawyer who rarely loses a case yet secretly believes their career is the only good thing about their life.
Or a musician who performs regularly before thousands of adoring fans but can’t genuinely accept that those people truly admire and value them.
Or a student who consistently graduates near the top of their class but constantly obsesses over any B or C grade because anything short of perfection feels like failure.
There’s a lot of outstanding ability and undeniable output, but outside of that, there’s almost nothing else.
Such people don’t struggle with proving competence because they don’t need to; their struggle is with convincing themselves that they are “worthy” and that they “meet up” with whatever criteria they’re judging themselves with.
Unfortunately for people who try to use their ability and achievements to answer the questions they have about their worth, they always soon discover that it is just never enough.
High Self-Esteem, Low Self-Confidence
Imagine you’re learning to drive.
You’re nervous every time you sit behind the wheel, parking feels impossible, and roundabouts make your heart race. You don’t believe you’re a good driver yet, and that’s simply because you are not one.
Nothing about this admission makes you think poorly of yourself, and you can confidently acknowledge your inexperience without turning it into a summation of your character.
However, the problem is that every time you make a mistake behind the wheel, it takes you longer for you to convince yourself to enter a car again to continue your lessons.
You know continuing to practise will make you better, but you can’t find it within you to just try again.
People like this don’t think less of themself despite the fact that they struggle to do certain things or reach certain heights.
They recognise the fact that their inability to do something doesn’t make them less of the person they are, the same way their ability to do other things doesn’t make them more of the person they already are.
The only problem is that they might be hesitant to do the things they struggle with or hesitant to try out unfamiliar situations because they lack familiarity or experience with them.
I’ll be honest though, there’s a level of freedom that comes with this combination because you’re not in that headspace where your identity is constantly pitching its worth on your ability.
Whether you’re good at something or not, it doesn’t really matter to you because, regardless, you are still who you are.
This is why the greatest experts at anything are the ones whose self-esteem gives them permission to keep looking foolish until their competence catches up.
However, the drawback that comes with this is the unwillingness to take risks, explore new situations, and take advantage of opportunities, and that is a very, very big flaw to have.
Low Self-Esteem, Low Self-Confidence
This is the worst combination to have, not only because lacking both can affect your quality of life but also because your lack of identity and your lack of ability will eventually begin to reinforce one another.
You don’t think highly of yourself, and because of that, you don’t believe you’re capable of anything either.
Every challenge you face, you ask yourself, “Can I overcome and succeed?”
If you say “Yes”, your mind tells you, “You still won’t be good enough.”
And if you say “No”, your mind tells you, “That’s why you’ll never be good enough.”
It’s a lose-lose situation, a never-ending loop of doubt, shame, and constant avoidance of unfamiliarity.
Most people cope by giving up and not even trying at all.
They don’t apply because they believe they’ll be rejected. They don’t ask people they like out because they believe they’ll turn them down. They don’t start the business because they believe it will fail. They don’t speak during meetings because they believe they have nothing valuable to offer.
Before they even take the first step, they have already rehearsed the disappointment, and that keeps them stuck and scared of moving.
It’s really not a pleasant place to be in.
And because such people have stopped trying, they rob themselves of the opportunity to get new experiences that might contradict what they already believe.
Every opportunity they avoid prevents their confidence from growing, and every missed opportunity quietly reinforces the low opinion they have of themself.
It’s a terrible cycle that reinforces itself with remarkable efficiency, and it’s one that is remarkably difficult to interrupt because each part keeps strengthening the other every time.
High Self-Esteem, High Self-Confidence
The key character trait you’ll have when you get to this point is resilience.
You know your value, and you trust your ability, so whether you fail or you succeed, neither has the role of defining who you are, and you’re still as willing as ever to take on the next challenge.
As you walk into that job interview, you genuinely believe you’re capable of doing the work, but even if someone else gets the role, you don’t spend the next two weeks questioning whether you’re capable or not because you recognise that there are dozens of reasons why the interview didn’t go your way, many of which have nothing to do with you as a person.
What you do is to prepare a little better for the next job, apply elsewhere, and keep moving.
High self-esteem lets you survive failure without drowning in anxiety, and high self-confidence is what gives you the courage to pursue difficult things in the first place.
Together, they form resilience, which can see you through the most difficult situations.
The difference between having low self-esteem and having low self-confidence is that confidence can be grown over time through practice, while esteem is a more innate and complex phenomenon that takes more than just time and familiarity to fix.
It requires deep soul-searching for you to trace the areas you don’t feel adequate, understand why, and then ask how you can, through your actions and words, fill that void by yourself.
Now, if these two concepts are distinctively different, why then do we confuse them so often?
I believe the reason is because confidence is visible and esteem usually isn’t.
You can watch someone confidently negotiate a business deal, captain a football team, or command a room full of strangers, but you cannot immediately tell whether that same person goes home loathing their appearance or the mistakes they’ve made in the past.
Likewise, you can see someone hesitate before volunteering an answer or admit they don’t know something, but it would be unfair for you to assume they secretly dislike or are resentful of themselves.
The fact that confidence is visible means people often mistake it for emotional security, and while it sometimes is, many other times it’s just a well-practised performance being executed.
From the outside, people can describe you as confident, but inside you’re exhausted from carrying a burden that your external ability and results can never help you unload.
People look at others with great abilities and impressive achievements and believe that if they can only reach those points too, then they will begin to feel better about themselves.
But at the end of the day, that is not always the case.
Many people become more accomplished, more respected, more admired, and more capable while carrying exactly the same doubts they had years earlier.
Which means that you and I can improve every measurable part of our lives drastically and still end up lacking in the way we relate to ourselves because we were working on the wrong thing all along.
Yes, self-esteem and self-confidence both influence each other, but, no, they don’t depend on each other.
That’s why it’s important to identify the one that’s lacking in your life, so you can understand what exactly to do to work on making it better.
You can spend a decade collecting achievements, hoping they’ll eventually add up to a feeling of worth, and find that the feeling never arrives regardless of what you get.
And you can spend a decade telling yourself you’re enough as you are, while avoiding every situation and challenge that might have exposed you to versions of yourself that are capable of bigger things than you could have ever imagined.
The next time you feel inadequate, resist the urge to assume it’s simply a confidence or an esteem problem.
Pay attention to the sentence running through your mind.
Are you thinking, “I don’t think I can do this?”
Or are you thinking, “If I can’t do this, what does that say about me?”
Learning the difference gives you something incredibly valuable: clarity.
And once you know which question you’re trying to answer, you’ll know whether to aim for more confidence through practice or more esteem through better perceived value of yourself.
The line between self-esteem and self-confidence is the place where our identities and our abilities meet, and we must never, ever, ask one to do the job of the other.
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I intentionally didn’t give any “tips” on both how to grow self-esteem or self-confidence.
I think, sometimes, it’s okay just to know the root of issue and take the pain of going on a personal journey to find the solution.
Great insight, Ebun.