What is Self-Assurance?

This dimension involves a high level of self-confidence and a belief that one can meet any challenge with hope and realistic optimism. Self-assurance also includes the understanding that, while the world is complex and challenging, one has the ability to find the opportunity and to succeed despite these challenges.

Self-assurance is evident in someone when they have a strong self-confidence and firmly believe in their ability to overcome the challenges that life lays at their feet. Self-assurance and self-confidence shouldn't be confused with hubris or an inflated sense of self-worth. While those who are self-assured believe in their own capacities, they also recognize their limits within the environment. Their self-confidence, grounded by their realistic self-assessment, enables them find a way forward when facing significant challenges.

Why is Self-Assurance Important to Resilience?

Self-assurance plays a critical role in resilience by enabling individuals to sustain a belief in themselves despite the challenges and set-backs that they encounter. Without this dimension, people may know where they want to go but lack the confidence to step up and pursue this vision. A central aspect of every person’s life involves dealing with setbacks, challenges, tests, and struggles. In the face of these tests of character, self-assurance enables people to find the inner strength to say: “Yes I can!”

Without self-assurance, setbacks become insurmountable obstacles that can overwhelm and lead to a sense of fatalism and defeat.

Self-Assurance Quotes

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
— Hannah More, English playwright, novelist, educator and poet (b. 1745, d. 1833)

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.
— Arthur Ashe, American activist and first black winner of a major men’s singles tennis championship (b. 1943, d. 1993)

Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that makes the difference.
— Winston Churchill, British politician and Prime Minister during World War II (b. 1874, d. 1965)

Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.
— Mark Victor Hansen, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul (b. 1948)

The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.
— Williams Jennings Bryan, American lawyer, orator, politician, and candidate for president (b. 1860, d. 1925)

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
— Samuel Johnson, English author, editor, critic, essayist, editor, and lexographer (b. 1709, d. 1784)

Strategies for Developing the Self-Assurance Dimension

As with all of the resilience dimensions, leaders, coaches, and mentors can only influence people’s thoughts and actions in a given direction. Some ideas for helping people find their self-confidence include:

On a personal, one-on-one basis . . .

• Demonstrate genuine confidence in the other person’s abilities and capacities.
• Don’t oversell your confidence in another’s abilities.
• Remind the person of key successes that they have experienced in their life, career, family, church, and so forth. Be as specific as possible regarding successes/accomplishments about which you are familiar.

Either on a one-on-one basis or when facilitating a group discussion . . .

• Ask people to make an inventory of their strengths/assets — physically, mentally, and spiritually in diverse environments such as work, home, family, school, church. Encourage them to identify even the small strengths — the little things in their own life that they lean upon when facing a challenge.
• Invite individuals to identify one or two major crises or setbacks that they have experienced in the distant or recent past. Now ask them to identify the things within that enabled him or her to successfully overcome this challenge.
• Ask people to identify something about themselves that they are most proud and then to share this with someone else. As they share that which they are most proud ask them to discuss why this makes them proud.
• Ask individuals to identify where they personally see themselves on a 10-point “self-confidence continuum” where 1 = not at all confident in my abilities and 10 = very confident in my abilities. Once they have identified their score on this ten-point scale, ask them to identify three actions that they can take to grow their self-confidence.

PDF Edition of this Page on Self-Assurance

Click here for a PDF version of this page: Self-Assurance Dimension PDF.