I do a lot of coaching and training on confidence because I do believe that without it, we live under a cloud. A cloud that brings in self-doubt when things in life get stormy. We need a healthy level of confidence to be successful in both our personal and professional life.
Will we be able to be completely confident at all times? Maybe not, but we can certainly build it to a very high level with a good amount of resiliency to weather even the strongest storms.
Confidence is based on our perceptions, our thoughts and our feelings. It is built upon all the messages that we learned at a very early age and that were reinforced into adulthood about what is acceptable and not acceptable.
For example, if you were raised in a home where blame and shame were prevalent, your confidence and self-esteem will most likely be low and remain low into adulthood. Think about the small child who spills a glass of milk and the parent says “How many times have I told you to hold onto your glass with two hands? Look, what you did. What a mess you made? I paid good money for that milk and now it is wasted!” And then the child gets sent to bed without any dinner.
What messages do you think this child takes away?
- I can’t make mistakes
- I have to be perfect at all times
- I am not good enough
- I don’t deserve good things
Can you see how this child’s self-confidence is impacted?
And how these messages come up time and time again into adulthood?
These messages can be reversed using a variety of tools and exercises. And even if you have a good amount of self-confidence, these tools and exercises will help you increase it and build resilience.
Self-care is essential to building and maintaining self-confidence. When we feel good about ourselves our confidence soars.
Self-care practices include:
- Healthy eating
- Getting good sleep
- Moving our bodies in some way
- Taking time to be quiet and go within
We also need to surround ourselves with positive people. If you are hanging out with friends or family who constantly judge you, make you feel bad about yourself or do not accept you as you are, it’s time to move in a different direction.
Be kind to yourself, especially when you make a mistake or have a setback. Know that making mistakes and having setbacks is completely human. We all are perfectly imperfect. Having compassion and love for ourselves gives us the opportunity to enhance our connection to ourselves and increase our confidence.
We also need to stop comparing ourselves to others. Especially if you’re comparing yourself to others on social media. One of my clients was so stressed out comparing herself to others, that it completely derailed her and her confidence plummeted. When she took a step back from social media for a period of time it helped her gain clarity and realize her own worth. We are all unique in our own way and the more we can embrace our uniqueness and our natural gifts, the more our confidence will soar.
Self-talk is another area that is so important to pay attention to when it comes to confidence. When we are telling ourselves that we can’t do something, or it’s going to be hard – guess what? it is going to be hard and we won’t be able to do something. The other two words that we need to watch out for with our self-talk are the good old should and sorry. “Should” is a judgment word and does nothing for our confidence building and maintaining efforts. It only brings it down. And saying sorry is okay when we really need to, but it’s not if we say it all the time. When sorry is used habitually, it takes away from our personal power and confidence. So again, how we speak to ourselves and about ourselves really matters when it comes to having healthy confidence.
And finally, we need to become aware of our “triggers”. Those actions and situations that bring in anxious feelings and self-doubt. Once we become aware, we need to address them. One of the main tools I use in my coaching practice is the Emotional Freedom Technique or commonly known as tapping. We use tapping in combination with visualization and voicing to clear away the resistance in our nervous system that we feel when we are triggered.
When we have a healthy sense of confidence…
- We know ourselves and what we want at any given moment
- We are all at once authentically joyful, fun, powerful, humble, charismatic, caring, sensitive, vulnerable and confident
- We are dynamic and exude an irresistible presence and energy that others feel as real, passionate, and bubbling aliveness
My deepest desire and wish for you is to feel totally confident in yourself, to know how special you are, to love yourself flaws and all and to have your goals and dreams be fulfilled.