Rosie, you have high confidence.

Confidence is the trait that makes people feel self-assured and certain that they have what it takes to be successful. You have high confidence. As a result, most of the time you probably feel quite stable and emotionally calm. However, it's not unlikely that there are also times when you feel insecure or overwhelmed by stress. When stressful things happen, try to maintain your perspective and avoid emotional extremes. Remember that you can choose to look on the bright side of any situation that presents itself. Chances are you already know how to snap yourself out of negative patterns of self-doubt when they happen. You may just need a little push in the right direction to be encouraged to do it.

Because of your usual high level of self-acceptance and belief in yourself, you're generally open and accepting of others. This graciousness can include a tendency to be warm to those around you. It can also mean that you reserve your judgments of people until you get to know them well. People who come in contact with you likely appreciate this generous nature and may seek out your company.

When it comes to dealing with yourself, you're usually equally kind. You're not really one to engage in self-blaming behaviors. You'll usually cut yourself some slack when it comes to feelings of guilt and shame. In most situations, you appear to understand that positivity is a more productive approach to life's challenges. However, even with high confidence, you're going to experience off days. Whether due to adverse judgments made by others or unreasonably high expectations for yourself, sometimes you're bound to feel vulnerable, insecure, or hurt. When this happens, be gentle with yourself. Confidence can be a great personal strength to help get you through rough times. But remember that for this trait to thrive, you need to feed it with love and acceptance of all your positive and negative attributes, as well as your mistakes and your successes. Strive to avoid being a fair-weather friend to yourself.

When you take advantage of it, your high confidence can be an energetic force that propels you to enjoy your life and succeed in reaching your goals. It can also help you to make significant contributions to those around you, including your family, your friends, and your community. Use this positive force to make the most of every day, which will provide you with a sense of inner peace and happiness.

Emode's test measures the two primary components of self-confidence:

(1) Your self-esteem — how much you like yourself

(2) Your perceived level of competence — how capable you feel

The combination of these two elements makes up your overall confidence score. Looking into each of these pieces more deeply will help you understand why your confidence score is high. It will also help you uncover self-perceptions that may be affecting your confidence level.

Take note that your confidence level is a very changeable measure. You may even be able to think of a time in your past when you were distinctly more or less confident than you are today. You can improve your confidence level by getting in touch with any negative feelings you have about yourself and striving to remove them. If you're not satisfied with your confidence score today, consider retaking this test after you've had time to practice the strategies our experts recommend. You may find that your results dramatically increase the second time around. All the same, realize that some of your more ingrained tendencies may take months or even years to change. Do your best to be patient and give yourself time to improve.

When experts refer to self-esteem, they're talking about:

• How much you like yourself
• How kind you are to yourself
• How much acceptance you have for yourself

Besides these important factors, self-esteem can affect how well you treat others and how your aspirations and fears tend to take shape. It is because self-esteem touches so many areas of your life that it is such a powerful force. Yet a notable quality regarding self-esteem is that it doesn't always have much to do with the reality of your life. Instead, it's based on your perceptions: How do you feel about who you are, what you do, and what you have? These are the questions that are important in determining self-esteem.

You may have heard before that the presence of love creates more love. When it comes to self-esteem, the first person you need to love is yourself. Once you possess a genuine love for yourself as you are, you can more easily share your love and happiness with those around you. In most cases, those people will in turn become more open and loving toward you. In this way, the quality of your life can increase exponentially by simply thinking more highly of yourself. You don't necessarily need to be better at anything, nor do you have to spend a lot of money. You just need to begin making a commitment to yourself to appreciate your finer qualities and give yourself a break on your less admirable traits. This approach allows you to improve the areas of yourself that you want to be better, but to do so in a way that allows you to feel good about yourself every step of the way.

What's Your Self-Esteem Score?

To help you better understand your present level of self-esteem, Emode has employed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. This scale is one of the most widely used psychological instruments to measure this trait. The results of your personalized assessment are scored on a scale from 10 to 40, with 10 being a low score, indicating low self-esteem, and 40 being a high score, indicating high self-esteem.

Your score on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale is 33. This score is simply a reflection of your self-esteem at this point in time. If your self-esteem score is high, congratulations to you. However, if your score is lower than you would like it to be, you have no reason to feel shame or embarrassment. Remember, you have the power to change!

By digging deeper into your self-esteem score, we can tell that one reason your self-esteem is high is because you have great self-talk habits. You appear to have a strong sense of self-worth that allows you to give yourself positive feedback and encouragement when you need it. In fact, you're likely the first person to give yourself a pat on the back when you've done something well. You also probably know how to tell yourself to "keep your chin up" in the rough times. Whether you're talking about yourself to others or just thinking to yourself, you seem to steer clear of negative words or ideas about yourself. After all, who needs all that negativity?

Since you were very young, you've been unknowingly creating a complex image of yourself that strongly impacts how you view yourself and your capabilities. In fact, you create the story of your life every day. You base this story on:

• The way you were brought up to feel about yourself
• The feedback you receive from people around you
• Comparisons you choose to make between yourself and others
• Your experiences with success and failure

As a result, if someone interviewed you today, you would probably have reasonably firm opinions about your personal traits (e.g., "I have a great sense of humor"), your strengths and weaknesses (e.g., "I'm an excellent cook"), and the events that have shaped your life (e.g., "My older sisters were always mean to me for no reason"). However, the answers you would give are not facts. They are simply your interpretations. All the same, these beliefs can have a powerful impact on your present and future.

Why perceived competence matters
One reason your feelings about yourself are important is that people tend to seek out experiences that reinforce their beliefs about themselves. For example, imagine you are a high school student who believes yourself to be stupid. One day, you receive scores on two exams. One you passed, and the other you failed. Which test do you think you would give more weight to in the long run? Believe it or not, it's the test you failed. This is true because the test you failed reinforces what you already believe about yourself: that you are stupid. You would also likely find a way to write off the test you passed as a fluke, rather than giving yourself credit for a job well done. This behavior, too, would perpetuate your negative belief about yourself.

Another way your beliefs can impact your day-to-day life is by affecting the way you present yourself to others. Experts have found that people often act and speak the way they feel about themselves. For example, if a woman didn't think she was very attractive, she might talk her looks down to her friends or make self-deprecating jokes about how ugly she is. She might also act like a wallflower at parties, thinking that no one would want to talk to her because she's not good-looking. These kinds of actions illustrate how negative beliefs can adversely affect how people choose to speak and behave.

Realize that people will tend to treat you the way you believe you deserve to be treated. You might be thinking to yourself, "Well, that's ridiculous, why would I ever think that I deserve to be treated badly or be disrespected?" However, if you act like you're not a valuable person and put yourself down to others by saying negative things about yourself, don't be surprised if people treat you poorly. Your words and behaviors can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

As general advice for improving your self-image and perceived competence, remember these three things:

1. Accentuate the positive. Put your energy into emphasizing your better qualities rather than trying to be an unrealistically "perfect" person.
2. Cut yourself some slack. Just because one incident goes badly, don't assume its result is determinant of how other situations in your life will turn out.
3. Accept yourself as a whole person. Try not to be so judgmental of your less favorable qualities. Learn to love the entire package that is you.

How did you score?
On a personalized level, Emode measured your perceived competence in five major areas to help you begin uncovering your beliefs about yourself and your capabilities. These areas were selected based on the attributes most often valued in Western society. They are intellectual competence, social competence, artistic or musical ability, athletic ability, and physical attractiveness. Feelings about your competence in each of these five areas is affected by your perception of how competent you are in a particular area, coupled with how important you think it is to be competent in that area.

Below you'll find a detailed chart of what your personal results indicate, followed by advice to advance your level of competence.

Remember as you go through each one of your scores that this test is not designed to measure your actual level of competence in these five areas. It judges only how you feel about your competence in each one, because that's the factor that most closely affects your confidence level.

Your intellectual competence

Intellectual competence deals with how mentally sharp you are, how sound your judgment is, and how rational you are when making decisions. Perceptions of intellectual competence can be expressed in positive terms, such as, "I consider myself a smart person," or negative terms like, "My ideas are stupid and worthless," and any range in between.

You perceive your intellectual competence to be high, with a score of 10. This means that you tend to believe you can approach a variety of intellectual problems and succeed. You probably also enjoy being involved in abstract conversations or working through complicated problems using the strength of your mind.

When you value what you're good at, your self-confidence soars. You appear to highly value intellectual competence — you think it's important to be smart, and you perceive yourself as an intelligent person. This combination indicates that you're likely very confident intellectually. As a result, you probably don't need the action steps listed below to improve your confidence in this area. Consider applying them as a tool to help you rethink negative perceptions you may have about yourself in other parts of your life.

Your artistic or musical ability

Artistic or musical ability involves how sensitive to art or beauty you are, how much you appreciate artistic or musical things, and how creative or skilled you are in these kinds of endeavors. The spectrum of perceptions of artistic or musical ability can include everything from "I am very creative" to "My singing voice is dreadful" and everything in between.

You perceive your artistic or musical abilities to be high, with a score of 10. You likely fancy yourself a creative type and may enjoy using your artistic or musical talents to create beautiful things for self-expression.

However, you don't tend to that think creativity is particularly important. Nor do you appear to really value artistic or musical abilities. At the same time, you perceive yourself as an artistic person. This unbalanced coupling suggests that you're probably less confident in this area than you could be. Self-confidence is decreased when you don't value the things you excel at. Although you probably feel content with your level of artistic or musical ability, try to acknowledge your artistic gift with a little self-praise from time to time. You may also want to consider the advice in the action steps that follow. They can help you to silence your inner critic at times when you're not appreciating your talents.

Your social competence

Social competence centers on how well you interact with people, particularly in group settings, or how talented you are at cultivating and maintaining friendly relationships. For example, people's perceptions of their social competence can range from being very positive, "I am really good with people," or very negative, such as, "People always think I'm a loser."

You perceive your social competence to be high, with a score of 9. You're probably right at home in a wide variety of social situations. You may also love being around people or enjoy using your social talents to organize, to entertain, or to help others.

You seem to highly value social competence and think it's important to be socially graceful. You also perceive yourself as a socially adept person. As a result, you're likely very confident in this area because you believe that what you are good at matters. In this way you're maximizing your level of self-confidence. Even though you may not want to improve yourself in this area, you can apply the action steps below to learn from your mistakes in areas where you feel less competent.

Your physical attractiveness

Physical attractiveness deals with how beautiful or handsome you are, along with how likely you are to turn heads with your pure animal magnetism. People's perceptions of their physical attractiveness can be expressed in a wide variety of ways, from the most positive terms ("I am gorgeous") to the most self-defeating ("I look awful").

You perceive your physical attractiveness to be about average, with a score of 6. This means that you tend to think of yourself as a moderately attractive, but also can feel a little plain or unfashionable at times. Chances are you also feel that no matter what adjustments you make to your looks, you'll never be the most attractive person you know.

You don't seem to really value physical attractiveness, and you may believe that people place too much emphasis on their looks. Because you don't think being good-looking is that important and perceive yourself to be of average attractiveness, your confidence level in this area probably isn't suffering too much. Still, it could be higher. If you'd like to feel better about your appearance or about other areas, check out the following action steps. They can help you learn to use visualization to better leverage your strengths. You might be surprised to find that as your self-perception of your physical attractiveness increases, being good-looking becomes a trait that gains more value to you.

Your athletic ability

Athletic ability consists of how physically active or strong you are, as well as how skilled you are as an athlete. Perceptions of athletic ability can be expressed in positive terms, such as, "I rise to physical challenges with ease," or in negative terms like, "I'm always the worst player on the team."

Rosie, you scored a 5 in this area, indicating that you perceive your athletic abilities to be about average. This means that while you generally think of yourself as an active individual, you may still feel overly challenged by some physical activities. You may also feel like your talent as an athlete is noticeably less developed than in many other people you know and wish that you could perform athletic feats with more ease.

However, you don't really seem to value athletic talent or think that being physically active is important. If you couple these values with your vision of yourself as being mediocre athletically, it stands to follow that while your confidence level likely isn't too low in this area, it's not very high either. If you want to improve, try using the action steps below set small goals for yourself. They can help you rise to new heights with your athletic abilities or in other parts of your life. Over time, if your perception of yourself as an athlete increases, you might find that physical activity and athletics become of greater interest to you.

As we've discussed throughout this report, your confidence doesn't depend on how good or bad you are at something. It's almost wholly dependent on your self-perception. However with that said, realize that not all people always act according to their self-perceptions. In fact, the people in your life whom you view as being the most confident probably pretend to be more self-assured than they actually are, at least on occasion. Very few people are highly confident in all areas of their life. As a result, some individuals choose to put up a front when they feel unconfident, rather than let other people in on their weaknesses. This is especially true in the business world. Have you ever watched someone get up in front of a group of people and give a fantastically polished presentation, only to confide in you later that they're terrified of public speaking? This false projection of confidence may seem untruthful, but it can actually provide just the momentum you need to get yourself through times when you feel unsure, overwhelmed, or afraid.

Based on your test results, when it comes to letting people believe that you are more confident than you are, you tend to act differently depending on the situation. Sometimes you're honest about your abilities — or lack thereof. Other times you hide your weaknesses by letting people get the impression that you're better at something than you actually are. If you maintain a good sense of when it's appropriate to reveal your faults and when it's all right to hide them, you're not likely to sell yourself short or be off-putting to others. However, if you pretend to be better than you really are too often, you may come off as arrogant, or worse, as a liar. Alternately, if you're too open about your faults, people around you may take them to heart and treat you accordingly. Understand that you're probably much more aware of the scope and depth of your faults than anyone else is and know that it's fine — even beneficial — to keep some of those details to yourself.

While you may wish to come away from this test with instantly improved confidence, that's not the way this kind of change happens. It will take some time and sincere effort on your part to permanently improve the way you feel and think about yourself. But it doesn't have to be a chore. On the contrary, this improvement can become an exciting part of your life. It can allow you to focus on yourself and can also become a guide that impacts the ways you change and grow. If you develop the kind of good habits described in this report, including:

• avoiding negative self-talk
• focusing on your strengths
• encouraging self-love
• visualizing ways to improve your future
• you will naturally begin to lead a more richly rewarding life.

Keep in mind that you're a unique individual with your own special blend of excellence and faults. The objective of your quest for improved confidence should not be to become the very best in all areas. No one can be the best at everything. Be honest with yourself about who you are. Gaining self-confidence is really about connecting with your strengths and learning to actively enjoy them. Accept that you might not be good at some things but also acknowledge that you're likely very good at many others. Find out what makes you feel good, and do it over and over again.

Now that you have a better understanding of your patterns concerning self-confidence, you can use this knowledge to improve perceptions of yourself and the world. Emode's Confidence test is just your first step to improving your confidence levels. To reinforce what you've learned about your self-esteem and confidence patterns, we're going to send you four follow-up emails to help you turn around negative habits and build new positive ones. You'll receive one per week for the next four weeks.

In the meantime, make sure you focus on taking care of yourself above and beyond anyone else. We encourage you to do this because when you're healthy in mind and body, you're more likely to enjoy your life, as well as the people around you.

Look for your first mailing in one week!

Emode's Confidence test was developed using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the concepts behind Pelham and Swan's Self Attributes Questionnaire (SAQ). The Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale, originally developed to measure self-esteem in adolescents, has been one of the most widely used measures of self-esteem since the 1960s. In the late 1980s, further research on self-esteem indicated a strong correlation between self-perceptions about competency in five areas (intellectual competence, social competence, artistic/musical ability, athletic ability, and physical attractiveness) and the individual's level of self-esteem. Research shows that if a person values what they are good at, they will enjoy higher confidence and self-esteem. Additionally, if a person values something they are not good at, their self-esteem will suffer. By using this research as a foundation, Emode was able to develop an accurate measure of confidence.

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