1. Saying Yes to Everything

Being assertive is an essential skill, in both business and a mans personal life. And if you find yourself always saying yes, you’ll find yourself always being taken advantage of.

If you want to take control of your life, you have to take control of what you allow into your life. Saying yes when you really do have the time/desire/ability to contribute is great, but if the task asked of you is detrimental to your life, it’s your responsibility to say no.

2. Backing Down When Others Challenge Your Opinions

Like saying yes to everything, backing down every time someone else challenges your opinions shows a lack of confidence in those opinions, and therefore, in yourself.

Be right as often as possible, and when you’re not, change your mind

Considering other people’s opinions, and using them to better understand your own is great, but if you know you are right, there’s no reason not to defend your opinions until proven otherwise. If you don’t feel your opinions are as important as someone else’s, it shows a lack of confidence in yourself.

3. Being Indecisive

Being indecisive is a telltale sign of low self-esteem. It’s the inability to accept responsibility, so you avoid decisions all together for fear of making a wrong decision. Which leads us to…

4. Fearing Failure

We’ve all experienced fear of failure, and a healthy fear of being wrong is ok…but if you fear failure to the point that it immobilizes you from making decisions or taking chances, it has a devastating effect on your self-esteem and confidence.

5. Sweating The Small Stuff

Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? It states that 80% of our results come from only 20% of our efforts. That said, it stands to reason that most of the small stuff lies in that other 80% of effort that doesn’t actually have a dramatic effect on our results.

Sweating the small stuff is a form of obsession that stems from a fear of failure. If you can focus your mental energy on the 20% of things that actually make a difference, the small stuff tends to take care of itself.

6. Comparing Yourself to Others Constantly

There’s always going to be someone else to compare yourself to – someone stronger, fitter, smarter, more confident. People with low confidence and a lack of self-esteem can’t stop focusing on these comparisons. Always feeling inadequate, compared to…

But the only one you need to compare yourself to is yourself from yesterday. If you start to only focus on being better than you were yesterday, or last month, or last year, you have a clear path forward to always winning the comparison and building self-confidence.

7. Slouching

Body language is understood by everybody, even if you don’t realize you read it, you do…and so does everybody else. No, people aren’t knowingly judging you because of your posture, but if your body reflects how you feel about yourself.

A person slouching or making themselves smaller is trying to go unnoticed. They don’t want to stand out. In fact, they’re probably happy being left alone completely. Since low self-esteem or confidence is often associated with social anxiety, it’s no wonder that it manifests itself in slouching. It’s unattractive, and a game killer.

8. Social Withdrawal

Like slouching, social withdrawal shows a lack of the self-confidence necessary for meaningful social interaction. Always being afraid of interaction with other people, because you don’t feel confident in your ability to interact with them, naturally leads to withdrawal.

9. Excessive Preoccupation With Personal Problems

You’ve probably heard the phrase making a mountain out of a molehill. But people with little self-confidence are constantly making mountains, and even mountain ranges, out of molehills.

The inability to make a decision that would somehow change your situation means it never gets fixed, and you have nothing to do but sit and dwell on them. Unsurprisingly, this usually makes things worse, which further damages self-confidence. It’s a vicious cycle that can only be broken free from by attacking the root problem – the confidence to make a decision, wrong or right.

10. Taking Constructive Criticism Poorly

Nobody is perfect, but people without a healthy level of self-esteem feel the need to try and be. It can be tough to hear negative things about yourself, but it’s necessary to be able to process it in a healthy way. You’ll find, that if you’re open to criticism, it actually comes easier because your confidence makes other people more comfortable giving it to you in a constructive manner.