Is self-confidence the key to everything?

It definitely is.

1. But what is self-confidence exactly? Think of it as loving yourself deeply. Trusting your capabilities, knowing your worth. Being proud of your uniqueness, your weirdness, your values and principles. There is nothing more enjoyable nor empowering than feeling a very strong love and admiration towards your self. This means that you basically have to master yourself entirely. You need to be in control of yourself all the time. It is a very tough exercice that requires an enormous amount of practice and persévérance but what you gain is priceless. Some people see self-confidence as arrogance, snobbery or narcissism but that is not true. I actually believe there is nothing more important than working towards loving yourself everyday a bit more than yesterday. It is truly essential to your wellbeing and to your accomplishments in life.
2. Why is it so important? For the simple reason that when you are confident in yourself, everything you do, everything you touch is empowered by you. You dare to ask for what you want and you get it. You take chances and spot opportunities. You let yourself being freed from your biggest fears. You surpass your own limits and you truly enjoy it. You can be in the worst of situations, you will handle them like a king/queen. You can manage your feelings way better, and respond to situations accordingly. Being confident is something you will acquire by imposing a constant discipline into your mind. Thinking positively, not only of your exterior environment, but mostly of yourself. Another way of thinking about this question is to reflect on what insecurity brings to your life. What value does it add to your daily experiences? Being insecure is a nightmare for all people that experience it. When you are insecure, you miss out on amazing opportunities and chances. You feel disrespected and abused by people that see your insecurity as a weakness they can benefit from.
3. How can you acquire self-confidence? Self confidence is acquired with intense work and discipline. Your brain is a muscle and you need to work on it everyday to shape it in the way that YOU want. It is your choice and your decision only. I think we all have very different ways of acquiring self confidence but a few things that can apply to must of us are the following:

• Create a space for yourself everyday - whether it's through meditation, silence, prayer or words - everyday impose a routine on yourself. Take 15–20 minutes each day and reconnect with your mind and your body. I cannot emphasize how important that is. To grow your confidence, you need to get closer to yourself - reconnect with your mind just like you would do if you met with an old friend. We are constantly distracted by everything that is around us: medias, social networks, films and series, etc. We barely think about or spend time with ourselves anymore. It is absolutely necessary that you choose very carefully what to concentrate your mind on. It is your decision and not anyone else’s.
• Create a positive monologue inside of you: we don’t realize it either but we are constantly putting ourselves down. Constantly criticizing ourselves for the things we do. But what is the problem exactly? What are we so afraid of? Everybody makes mistakes sometimes. Even the best of us. Why do we see our failures and mistakes as something so terribly frightening? We should switch our inner monologue to a positive one. If you make a mistake, be nice with yourself and think that it is a good thing that you made that mistake now cause you will learn so much from it. If you look at yourself in the mirror and feel like you hate what you’re seeing: change that voice in your head and force it into a loving one, an appreciative one. Even if you do not believe it at first, your brain will cooperate with you and make you feel the impact it has on your wellbeing.
• Choose a physical activity that you like: yes, physical exercice helps build confidence!!! It can be anything, going to the gym, doing yoga, swimming, walking, anything! Just do it, as Nike says. In addition to working out, being attentive to what you eat and how you treat your body is very important. You need to treat your body well, and this stands for your alimentation, sleep and exercise. Discipline needs to be implemented on all sides of your life.
• Force yourself to get out of your comfort zone: this is, in my opinion one of the most important actions that you can undertake to increase your self confidence. When you are insecure, there are so many situations and things that scare you. You are scared to be confronted to a situation where everybody will look at you and judge you. You’re scared to be and do so many things that you are limiting your life in ways you can’t even imagine! You need to break that dynamic by forcing yourself to be in situations that are very scary to you. For example if you are scared to meet new people and talk to a stranger, do it regardless of your fear. One step at a time, slowly, you will be more comfortable with doing these things that use to scare you to death!

Anyway, I think all of us learn everyday how to grow ourselves and become a better person. I can't emphasize this enough though : don't expect to become confident or to love yourself overnight. It's a constant work in progress, and you'll learn everyday how to do it.