Ep.10: A Gift of Confidence for You
Hi everybody, I want to give you the gift of confidence. I want to package it up in a pretty little bottle and put a big ribbon on it and just hand it to you. Here you go, you can have confidence.
Of course, it's not that simple. I have been actively working on building my own confidence and self-worth for 30 years. I have belonged to a 12-step group, I have been in and out of therapy, I have had spiritual guides, mentors, role models that I look up to and follow. I have read books and taken classes. What I want to do is share with you seven things, one thing that I think you could adopt to develop more confidence. Are you ready?
The first one is you have to decide that you're worth it. You have to know that you deserve confidence. It seems like a strange thing, right, wouldn't we all agree that, yes, I deserve confidence. But truly, your mindset has been getting in your way. You have been speaking to yourself negatively, you have been a perfectionist, you have been apologizing for taking up space. You've not given yourself permission to embrace confidence. First thing, I deserve to have confidence. Did you say it? I deserve to have confidence, that's it, that's the first thing. Second, and this sounds much easier than it is, take quiet alone time. What, dawn? What does that have to do with confidence? So much alone time does two things it allows you to reclaim your space. Do you give and give and give and sacrifice and fill your calendar and prove yourself and go, go, go? All of those things put others before you and have a way of eroding your confidence. If you make a commitment to quiet time alone at least once a day, that will help you build confidence. During that time that you're taking to yourself, I recommend breathing exercises In through your nose hold and out through your mouth. That helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system, it calms you down, it relaxes you, it brings you into your body, helps you to be present.
And then I want you to do some journaling, not just any journaling. Maybe you've done journaling in the past. You find that you write a couple of sentences in a beautiful new book and then it gets set aside and you never come back to it. I actually have a journaling practice that I myself have been doing every single day for the last several years. And those intentional prompts they're available for download on my website, so if you wanna go there it's a freebie you can print it out and use it. It gives you the prompts themselves and the reasons behind them. But I'll tell you that if you belong to a 12-step program, that 10th step where you take personal inventory, daily personal inventory this is a wonderful compliment to that. It also is each prompt is proven to be effective from different resources. Writing about your fear, writing what you're grateful for, bragging about yourself, writing down affirmations that counter those fears that you already wrote about and then visualizing the most audacious life that you could ever live. If you take the time out to do that every day, that will contribute to your own confidence.
Next up, stop talking shit about yourself. Do you have that negative voice that tells you that you're bad, that you're wrong, that you're ugly, that you're stupid, that you can't do anything right all the things that you know? Who the hell do you think you are? Get back in your place, get small. Let other people tell you what to do. If you have that voice, I call mine Claire. Claire is alive and well and she's always got the harsh words for me. She's always got negative things to say about what I'm thinking or what I'm doing. She's always the first to say you can't have what you want, you can't do that thing. Who do you think you are? You have to stop letting your Claire run the show.
Stop talking shit about yourself. It has to come from a conscious place. You may have been doing it your whole entire life. Someone put those messages in your head. You didn't come up with that negativity on your own.
It comes from external sources, maybe caregivers or the church or media television. You know glossy women's magazines somewhere along the line. Someone told you that you weren't good enough and you bought into it and you repeated it and you have convinced yourself that it's true. Because of that. You can convince yourself that it's not true, but you have to make a conscious choice. You have to stop. When you hear yourself say something negative, something critical, pull that thought out Symbolically, hold it in your hand, look at it. Is it possible that this negative thought is not real? Give yourself an opportunity to be the thinker, not the thought. If you stop with that negativity, just a little bit at a time, that is going to increase your confidence exponentially. I promise you. That was such an important piece for me to develop my own confidence.
The fourth tool that you can use to increase your confidence is to stop being sorry. Now, that's a two-parter. First, stop saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, all the ways that we say it. If we're interrupting someone or we don't think that we deserve to take up the space that we're in, we feel uncomfortable, we think someone might be mad at us. We say I'm sorry a lot, especially people socialized as women. Of course we should apologize if we've done something wrong I'm going to talk more about that later but the compulsory I'm sorry, that's got to stop. Not only do I want you to stop saying it, but you also have to stop feeling like you have to apologize for your existence. You have to believe that you get to take up the space that you're in physically, the space that you're in energetically. You get to be the person that you are, with all of your imperfections, with all of your likes and dislikes, whatever your opinions are about things. You get to have all of that. You probably give other people all kinds of space and leeway to be who they are, without judging them, without criticizing them. Give yourself the same respect, give yourself the same opportunity to be who you are without apologizing for it.
The next tool for having confidence, for developing confidence, is to make mistakes. That seems contrary, right? We think that we have to be perfect to be confident Absolutely not. Confidence actually comes from trying things, from making mistakes, from changing your mind, from doing it wrong, from doing it halfway, doing something mediocre. All of those things help to build confidence. We get to make mistakes. We get to be imperfect. When we practice perfectionism, it keeps us small. Maybe we are struggling to look good. We're trying to do things so well that other people notice and value us, but really you need to fuck up.
You need to give yourself permission to do it wrong. Give yourself permission to be late. Give yourself permission to cancel something, to change your mind, to say no, and allowing yourself to be imperfect builds confidence.
Two more Are you ready?
Number six Admit when you're wrong. You might feel embarrassed or ashamed. What will other people think of you. Trying to keep up appearances and controlling what other people think of you. That makes it so that you don't want to admit when you're wrong. You can't accept that you are wrong. It feels like a weakness, like a vulnerability, like someone's going to hurt you Really. It's quite powerful, quite confident, to say, huh, I didn't do that right, I was wrong when I said that I would like to correct my mistake, I apologize for being wrong. That that is confidence.
And the last tool for confidence may not apply to you, but for me. I used to have a drinking problem. One of the most important things I have ever done to increase my own confidence was to surrender and give up drugs and alcohol. For me, I do that with a 12 step program that I've been involved with for 31 years. Maybe that's not a problem for you, but because I drank and used, I created more problems in my life. I made more mistakes that I felt ashamed of and didn't wanna take responsibility for. I was incapable of being introspective and fully excavate what was going on on the inside. I couldn't be alone with myself and I did not think that I was worth the investment.
But I am seriously an expert at all seven of these tools now. That does not mean that I don't get scared, but I'm not afraid. I still talk to myself with a negative voice. I still feel like other people's opinion of me matters, but I know what to do with those things. I know how to handle myself. I know what steps to take to get me to the other side.
I am powerful, I am commanding, I am self-assured and certain. I value my opinions, my thoughts, my desires. I ask for what I want People love to be around me. Confidence is not the same as assholery. Not only do I feel good about who I am, but I lift other people up as well.
I want you to feel good about who you are. I want you to know the value that you have. I want you to love yourself.
Quick recap know that you're worth it. Take time alone. Stop talking shit about yourself. You don't have to apologize unless you've done something wrong. Allow yourself to make mistakes, admit when you're wrong and consider not numbing out with drugs and alcohol. That all seems like a lot, and just know that you don't have to tackle it all overnight. Pick one or two and start there. You're gonna build momentum, you're gonna start feeling more confident and it'll be easier to tackle the rest of those tools I love you. Keep going.
I know you're gonna want more tips and tricks and tools for confidence, so please sign up to get on my email list. You can plug in your information to get my freebie journal prompts by clicking the button below and that'll automatically put you on my email list.