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Feel More Confident Today!
One thing I hear a lot as a coach is: “I want to feel more confident” or “I want to be more confident in this area of my life”. I get it. There are areas of my life where I want to feel more confident also. Isn’t the feeling of confidence the best? It’s one of my favorite feeling states. I feel like I’m standing in my power. I’m not looking around to see if others agree with me or my actions, I feel confident, sure, and certain of myself.
Since most people I know also enjoy this feeling state, it’s part of my job to help teach how to feel more confident. Confidence isn’t something fixed that we have or don’t have like brown hair or slender wrists. Rather, confidence is something we can cultivate and grow. 
When I hear from people they want to feel more confident, I get to remind them that confidence is not something we have or don’t have, like a fancy purse or pretty bag. Rather, it’s something we generate with our thoughts. Which is great news as that means it’s something we can grow and generate!
And I’m all in! I love the feeling of confidence and I love teaching warriors how to feel more confident because guess what happens when we feel confident? We take action. When we feel confident, we stop caring so much what others think and start living our best life. We are in a higher energy vibe. I’m here for all of it. Let’s build some confidence!
Workshop to Feel More Confident
Step One: Set an Intention
Choose one area where you want to feel more confident and say it aloud. Set an intention for where you want to feel more confident: do you want to feel more body confidence? Would you like to feel more confident as a parent? When you’re speaking? How about in social interactions? Choose one area and say it aloud to one person. Where do you want to feel more confident and why?
Step Two: Think of a Model
Who is someone who you think is confident in the area you want to feel more confident in? Perhaps you look up to them and think “I could never…” Or maybe you are jealous of them or even resent them a bit. Jealousy usually shows me more of what I want….who is that person? If you chose to work on your body confidence in step one, who is someone who you think is confident in their body? Or if you chose to work on your speaking, who is someone who is a confident speaker? Truly – choose one person.
Step Three: Question and Consider
Get out a pen and question and consider how the person you chose in step two lives. Ask yourself questions like:
- What sort of routines do they have?
- How do they spend their time or their days?
- What are the characteristics about them that you admire?
- Why do you think they’re confident in the area you think they are?
- How do they speak?
- What do they wear?
- Which podcasts might they listen to or which books might they read?
Step Four: Inward Reflection to Feel More Confident
Here is the opportunity to answer those above questions about yourself! Write down how you spend your days. Describe your habits:
- When do you wake up and go to bed?
- What do you wear or do to care for your body?
- How do you speak of yourself to yourself and to others?
This is NOT about beating yourself up. Rather, it is about kindly looking at the differences and seeing that your lack of confidence may not have so much to do with the things you have or don’t have but about the things and actions you’re taking or not taking. Which leads to step 5
Step Five: Be Do Have
It is time to flip the cultural message that we need to have something in order to feel or be a certain way. We have been conditioned to think that once we have the body, we’ll be more confident. Once our kid is thriving, we’ll feel less worried. We think that once we have the job title, we’ll feel more confident. Unfortunately not only doesn’t it work that way, it’s the opposite. We have to take the action to shift the thoughts to change the feelings. To feel more confident, we get to do, be, have.
We get to act as if. To feel more confident, we need to act as if we’re confident. What that looks like is taking the action. Jumping before the net is in sight. If want to feel more confident speaking, speak more. In order to feel more confident in your body, act as if. Wear the shorts, the shorter skirt, the tighter pants. Take the scary action warrior. Reminder, confidence is a feeling. Feelings don’t come from circumstances like a certain weight or job title. All feelings come form our thoughts. Act as if you’re that person you thought of in step two. What would she do? How much time would she spend on social media? What sort of morning routine would she have? How much time would she spend thinking negative thoughts about herself in her head?
Extra Credit Step to Feel More Confident
The final step to feel more confident is to come up with a practice to disrupt your brain’s natural programming. Right now, your brain’s natural programming is set to thoughts that don’t generate the feeling of confidence. Maybe your brain is used to pointing out negative aspects of your body or speaking style or way of parenting. This step is thinking ahead of time about a pattern interrupt that you will do to stop the negative thinking patterns. I’ve done lots of past episodes on how to stop or start habits and you can find those episodes here.
If you’re interested in a tool I use, leave a comment below and I’ll share my favorite way to break out of habitual thinking. It works really well for me and I’d love to support you too! Your power lies in expecting your brain to talk back when you’re learning a new way of thinking about things and to interrupt it before it grabs hold.
As Byron Katie says: When I believe my thoughts I suffer. When I question my thoughts, I no longer suffer.
Use whatever tool you need to snap you out of believing your thoughts. We are here to thrive and the more of us feeling confident and standing in our power, the better this world will be. Lets got get it this week, warrior!
