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Do This for More Confidence
What do you really wish you had more of? More sweaters? Knick knacks? More coffee mugs? You know what I could always use more of? Confidence! Listen in to today’s episode to learn how doing this one thing will help you feel more confident. How about that for a gift?
Feeling confident is one of my favorite feeling states. Think about it. How good does confidence feel? Can you think of a recent time when you felt confident of a decision you made? It could be something minor like declining an invite to a holiday party that was the same time as your daughter’s dance recital. When I feel confident in a decision like that, I don’t spend a lot of extra emotional energy debating whether I made the right decision. I don’t worry what other people, other neighbors will think. Rather, when I feel confident, I feel emotionally secure and waste less mental energy.
Confidence eliminates a lot of mental drama and helps us make choices that are in alignment with our values, regardless of what others think.
Confidence to Live YOUR Life
Confidence is an integral part of life satisfaction. When we feel confident, we have the courage to make decisions and take action in ways that line up with our values and feels good. Unfortunately, most of us have been raised to “be the good girl” and to do what is “right”. When we have this idea that something is right or wrong and we need to look to others to see what that is, that’s pretty much the opposite of self confidence. Consequently, this sort of upbringing creates a lot of self doubt and insecurity.
Further, when we feel self doubt, we question our decisions, we ask others for validation, we look outside of ourselves for guidance. We ask things like: “Did I do the right thing? and ” What do you think?” It’s as if we think there’s a right or wrong decision judge out there.
Self Doubt
When we doubt ourselves we feel anxious and unsure; doubtful. Today I’m teaching how to feel more confident by feeling less doubtful. Self doubt is on the other side of the continuum from self confidence. The more we move away from doubting ourselves, the more we move into confidence and living lives in alignment with our goals. We build confidence by looking inward for approval instead of outward.
Think of confidence as a sliding scale. On one side of the scale is self doubt and the other is self confidence. In order to to increase your confidence, to move to one side of that sliding scale, we have to move away from, or decrease your self doubt.
So how do we do that? The big picture goal is we want to turn down our dial of distrust of ourselves. We need to show our sweet brains that we have our own backs. That we can depend on ourselves. Ultimately, we want to reinforce in ourselves that when we say we’ll do something, we do it.
Do This for More Confidence
Coaching is all about the how. Heres the how: Think of an area in your life where you feel annoyed with yourself or uncomfortable with a way you’re acting. I have specific examples of this in the show this week. What bugs you? That feeling of irritation is a sign you’re not keeping your word to yourself and thus, increasing your self doubt.
- Think of that area and ask yourself what is it about it that bothers you? What annoys you about your actions?
- Ask, what small shift could you make that would feel better? If you were lying in bed tonight thinking of your action around that area, what would you feel proud about? What would make you feel good?
That’s your area of growth. When you look kindly and honestly at your actions at that area, you will find your opportunity to decrease your self doubt and increase your self confidence. Let’s look at how to shift something in that area so you can decrease your negative self regard and increase your positive self regard.
Start Small and Be Specific.
Investigate that area and consider one small and specific way that you could shift what you’re doing. I like to ask myself how could I feel infinitesimally better about my actions. Say you normally eat on and off after dinner until bed and you don’t feel good about it. Instead of saying no more eating after dinner, maybe choose to put the food you’re eating in a bowl and when that’s gone, you won’t refill it. Or even smaller shift, you put the food in the bowl and only refill it once.
Please notice if your brain is like “but that’s not good enough” or “it’s wrong to refill the bowl”. This isn’t about right or wrong warriors, that’s what we were raised with. This is about building your trust muscle of yourself without the judemgent and shame. What’s right for you will look different from what’s right for me.
Our goal here is to learn to trust ourself and find evidence that when we say we’ll do something, we’ll do it. Which is why it’s imperative to start small and be specific. In this week’s episode of the Love Your Life Show, I provide multiple examples of small specific shifts that me and my client have made. Listen in because learning about someone else’s journey is instructive. Please tell me in the comments which small and specific shift you’ll make this week.
In conclusion, please choose an area where you haven’t been doing what’s best for your inner warrior, and shift that in a small and specific way this week. Listening and learning is one part of living a life we love. To really dig in and get that life satisfaction, we have to take the action. Take the action today.
