I just wanted to know how i can build more confidence in myself and enhance my speaking skill (small talk)
Good afternoon Moddy, and thank you so much for your question. Now, to answer your question directly, there are several things that you can do to improve your self-esteem.
One of the things that you can do is to utilize positive affirmations. Identify 3-7 things that you like or appreciate about yourself, and develop anywhere between 3-10 sentences or phrases that you can use to tell yourself to help improve how you perceive or feel. I would encourage you to come up with strong, emphatic phrases to use such as "I will do this", "I am amazing", "I can do anything that I put my mind to" etc that can help you feel more confident and assured when you use them. A couple notes on the affirmations, I would encourage you to start using these before you feel anxious or before you go into social situations. I would also encourage you to practice these in front of a mirror to see yourself and look yourself in the eyes when you practice these statements. They need to be strong, positive statements that you believe or feel about yourself. It may feel very silly and awkward at first, but the more you are able to practice these phrases, the more confident and comfortable you will feel using them, to the point where it can hopefully become second nature to you.
In regards to improving your self esteem, you can also do things or go places where you feel comfortable or confident, and work on stepping outside of your comfort zone in those areas. If you are good at puzzles for example, try to do the most complex puzzle, and ascribe a time limit to it, to push yourself and accomplish something that you believe will make you feel positive and confident in yourself. Using this approach along with the affirmations is a great way to start working on your self esteem. Another positive thing to help with your self esteem is to exercise in some capacity. There are several different ways you can exercise or engage in some productive physical activity, and that can be really helpful in improving how you feel towards yourself.
To address your question about improving in small talk, there are a couple different strategies you can try. The first is to go to a public place (supermarket, gas station, mall) and see if you can strike up a conversation with people there. Again, this will feel very awkward and uncomfortable at first, but you will get the entire range of responses, from people friendly enough to engage with you, to people ignoring you completely. This type of method is called exposure therapy, where you expose yourself to uncomfortable situations to where you eventually feel more comfortable due to the practice that you have had in those situations. Combining this method with the positive affirmations should be a huge first step in improving both your self esteem and ability to small talk. You may even find it helpful to write down topics that you would like to discuss with various people before you choose an establishment to go into. Asking people questions to initiate the conversations can be helpful to engage and extend the small talk as well. Finding a common interest that you enjoy talking about and bringing it up to the other person then allowing them to respond about the specific topic is another way to improve in the small talk department.
I hope these recommendations were helpful for you. Thank you so much for your questions and for your time. Best of luck to you!