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Self confidence is a term used to describe how secure a person is in their own decisions and actions. This can be applied generally or to specific situations or tasks.

A high degree of self confidence means that a person believes they will perform an action correctly or achieve some specific goal or will make a good decision or have faith in a decision they have made or action they have taken.

Self confidence is never inherited it's learned, so believing that you lack the genes or something like that is a popular myth.

Although someone can be incorrectly self confident, self confidence usually means a realistic assessment of one's own abilities. Unwarranted self confidence is usually called 'Over confidence'. A lack of self confidence means that a person believes a particular action or decision will not work out as desired.

Self confidence is an important attribute because lack of belief in the consequences of an action creates stress that increases the probability of failure, thus causing a person to under perform.

A lack of self confidence is often coupled with Self-consciousness, especially when someone is performing an action while being observed by others. Pre-occopation (often irrationally) with what others might think should they make a mistake can cause over critical self observation that distracts a person from the task. Any mistake, however small, can be amplified by this pre-occupation and cause an erosion of self confidence and a heightening of self consciousness. This can precipitate a downward spiral to distaster, leading to humiliation and embarrassment even when the person concerned is perfectly capable of performing the task.

Improving self confidence is a matter of breaking this cycle, which is often best achieved by tackling the various elements together. Practicing the task so that is becomes automatic, combined with reducing the fear of the consequences of failure is a good approach. Ironically, sometimes to get over the fear of failure, it is necessary to fail often until the person learns that failing is not so bad after all, at which point they will be less self conscious and their performance and self confidence will improve.

Additionally exposure to social groupings that are nurturing instead of critical can be of great help in improving self confidence.

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