Three Steps to Cultivating Self-Confidence (Day 30 of 30)
Self-confidence is the ability to be secure in yourself and your abilities without any evidence. It is the unshakeable faith in your ability to learn, try and not give up! It is the emotion you want to conjure up to fuel your actions when you are trying something new, like relaunching your career after taking time off to care for our kids or transitioning to a new job. (See my blog that highlights the difference between confidence and self-confidence). Thankfully, it is not a gene that some of us are predisposed to but a skill we can develop. Self-confidence is the emotion of growth that will propel you towards your dreams if you are willing to cultivate it. Below are three steps to cultivating self-confidence.
1) Be willing to experience any emotion: If you are willing to experience any negative emotion such as embarrassment, defeat, humiliation, terror, judgement, fear, guilt, etc., you will be flooded with self-confidence. Why? Because nothing will stand in your way as you fail your way to success. So learning how to embrace and process negative emotions will allow you to go all in, which will increase your chances of succeeding. Think about it. The worst that can ever happen is usually a negative emotion, which is simply an uncomfortable vibration in your body. If you apply to a job and don’t get it, you may experience defeat. Defeat is a vibration in your body that you created with your thoughts in response to not getting the job. If you are willing to experience defeat, then you’re going to put 100% effort into applying to other jobs and not let anything stand in your way. You aren’t going to let fear, failure and judgement of your friends if be barriers to your growth. You recognize those are emotions created by your thoughts and you are willing to experience them as part of the human experience.
2) Manage your opinion of yourself: What you think of yourself is what generates or depletes your self-confidence. Our feelings come from our thinking, so what we think about ourselves determines whether we feel confident or not. So you must learn how to be kind to yourself and to have your own back. When you fail, you must know you aren’t going to make it mean anything terrible about yourself and increase your suffering. A self-confident person is going to think they are good, capable, and worthy no matter what. She doesn’t need to have evidence to prove this from her past. She simply generates the thoughts and feelings that fuel the action she wants to take in her life. For example, if you are applying for a job you might think “I have so much value to offer this company!” And if you don’t get the job, you might think “I have so much value to offer the world… the perfect job is out there waiting for me!” A self-confident persons knows how to have her own back no matter what hurdles life presents along her path!
3) Trust yourself: This means following through on your plans and trusting that you will do what you said you will do. You show up for yourself just like you would for your best friend or loved ones. The ability to trust yourself comes from consistent follow-through on your word to YOURSELF. For example, when you put something on the calendar you know it is as good as done! This develops a sense of integrity with yourself. You can rely on yourself just like your boss can rely on you.
Most of us lack self-confidence because we are afraid of feeling our emotions, don’t understand how to manage our minds, and have low opinions of ourselves. The good news is self-confidence comes from changing our thoughts about ourselves and learning how to embrace difficult emotions. It is a skill we can learn. Self-confidence is a practiced self-belief, and beliefs come from thinking thoughts over and over until we believe them.
Notice what thoughts you might be thinking on a daily basis that are creating self-doubt in your life and robbing you of self-confidence. Question them. Are they serving you? Then spend some time generating thoughts that you can think over and over that resonate with you in order to start cultivating self-confidence in your life. Here are some examples I use:
What others think of me is 100% about them.
Fear is no big deal.
The worst that can happen is a feeling.
I have my own back.
My potential is limitless.
Worry only pretends to be necessary.
What I make it mean is the worst that can happen.
Let them judge me.
Let them be wrong about me.
Self-confidence comes from only needing your own approval.
Increasing your self-confidence comes from changing your thoughts about yourself. It takes practice but you can do it! Practice it by picking something each day or every week that scares you and be willing to A) feel the any emotion that comes along with it, B) manage your opinion of yourself, and C) trust yourself. With each challenge you’ll build the skill of self-confidence and integrity with yourself.
If you want to dig digger on this topic, feel free to reach out to me and schedule a free consult.
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✨ That’s a wrap on my 30 lessons from 2019! Hope you enjoyed them. Check back for new blogs coming soon.
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