I had an epiphany the other day. I finally realize what the difference between self-esteem and self-confidence was.

People often confused the two.

Self-esteem comes from within, it is how you feel about yourself. While self-confidence is how confident you are about the way you fell about yourself.

Self-esteem is feeling positive about yourself. Someone with low self esteem will think they are a loser or a joke etc. While someone with a high self esteem will think they are a winner, and deserves success etc.

Self-confidence is the confidence you have in your views towards yourself. Someone with confidence in themselves is less likely to be persuaded otherwise by other people.

It's about how confident they are about their self-esteem.

Also self-confidence is ones ability to project how they feel about themselves to other people. While self-esteem comes from within, self-confidence is how you portray your with-ins outwards.

If you portray yourself as a non-confident person when you are really confident, you have no self confidence.

If you let someone attack you and run you down with negativity, you have low self-confidence.

Though you may have had high self-esteem, your self-confidence about your self-esteem will determine if you will have that view of yourself for long.

Self confidence is your wall against the world. It's the protection of your positive views about yourself. They really go hand in hand.

You need self-esteem first, because if you don't have self esteem you will feel confident about how badly you are. You will have a confident view of yourself that you are a negative/bad person.

But once you have self-esteem, you can build up those walls to protect that view of yourself from the outside world. Once protected your view of yourself has the chance to grow stronger and stronger.

Tips to build self confidence:

1) Be around positive people that reinforces the positive views you have about yourself. This way you will feel positive reinforcements for your self-view, therefore making your more confident about the way you look at yourself.

2) Create at least three layers of skin. Everyone's opinion about yourself shouldn't be treated as equal. The first layer is how you feel about yourself. This is the most important layer, because what it all boils down to, your success will be determined by how you view yourself.

The second layer is your close friends and family. Remember that if these people don't help you reinforced the positive views about yourself, it's time to look for new friends and stop communicated with certain family members. (or you can confront them, and hopefully they will stop. but remember how they look at you says more about them then it does of you.)

The third layer is everyone and everything else. Remember that they don't matter, and the other people that matter is your first two layers. If you can do this, your self-esteem will surely grow.