Self-Confidence

Today we are going to talk about confidence: Self-confidence … being comfortable in the skin you’re in … learning how to feel secure in who you actually are.

I would like to start by just asking you: Does confidence hold you back in some area in your life? Do you feel that if you were more confident you would do A, B, C, D, E ________ (fill in the blank)?

What does it hold you back from? And what is confidence? What does having confidence mean? What does “being comfortable in the skin you’re in” mean to you?

Is it a way that you feel? Is it a way that you look? Is it an experience that you would have, or wouldn’t have? What does that actually look like in your life experience right now?

I really like this quote by ee cummings: “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

I love that! Once we believe in ourselves … I think a lot of times what does hold us back is the lack of self-confidence and overcoming the fear.

And what is the fear … and how do you overcome the fear? Well, fear oftentimes is “I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy. I can’t do it.  I’m not ever going to be able to do it.” And so, the key answer to the question is you’ve got to work on your self-confidence. You’ve got to work on your self-esteem. You’ve got to work on your value. You have to begin to put more attention towards what’s good and what’s working in your life, than what you’re afraid of, what you don’t know, what might not be good enough, or where your struggles have been.

So, I want to share a few ways that you can start to gain self-confidence. Each one of these could be a whole topic in and of itself. But I want to list a few here now and have you begin to see which ones jump out to you … and those could be the inspiration to make a little shift for yourself going forward … and allow you to gain some momentum to live more fully in what you want in this upcoming year.

I don’t believe confidence is about the external: the way you look, or your comparison to other people. I DO think confidence is much more about the story we tell ourselves. It’s so much more about our internal dialogue … and we use the external clues, people, experiences, events to prove to ourselves externally what we’re telling ourselves internally … which is usually “I’m not good enough. I’m not going to add up. It’s never going to work. I can’t get there.”

I think sometimes learning how to be comfortable in our own skin means learning how to embrace the parts we don’t like about ourselves. The point is that we want to start stepping into who we are, into our confidence. And that is about allowing ourselves to be seen. It’s about being vocal.

The first thing we can do to have more confidence is Self- care.

There’s a lot of ways to have self-care.  But one of the important ways to have self-care is to actually take care of yourself: like you wash your hair, brush your teeth, take a shower,  get dressed … those are things that just help you to show up for the day.

Now I know that that’s not always easy and it doesn’t mean you have to get all dressed up, like with your heels on your makeup and hair done, but just taking physical care of yourself is one great way that you can gain more confidence. 

One of the things that I believe creates so much confidence is thinking positive.

When you think positively, you start to change / transmute some of those negative thoughts. And as you do that, you start to attract more positivity. You know, it’s like Dr. Wayne Dyer said,  “When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.”

That is an absolute truth in my world.  I think we need to be more aware of the negative thoughts … and how much energy & attention we’re putting on them and do something that transmutes them. Something that shifts them. I call it “flipping it”, like let’s flip that … flip it to a positive.

So, if I have the negative, I’ve got to catch it … and then I need to be able to release it. So, for me, that’s flipping it into something that would be a positive.

A negative thought is like a bug basically. And if the bug comes in, you want to release the bug. I’m not saying you need to kill the bug, but I’m saying you want to release the bug because it is a bug. It’s a bug in your mind. It’s a bug in your spirit. It’s a bug in your energy. It’s eating away at the positive energy when you have those negative thoughts.

So just flip it … flip it into a positive.

Another one of the things that I think is really important is getting to know who you are.

Getting to know who are you really … Really!

Who are you when you are stepping into a job? When you’re stepping into a relationship?

Who are you? What’s important?

What matters to you? What do you think about? What are your goals?  What are your values?

Who are YOU?

And the more that you know who you are, you start to see the things that are positive about yourself. And you also see your limitations. You also see the areas that you have some weakness and you become maybe more aware of those … but you also become more gentle with yourself about those.

It doesn’t mean that when you get to know yourself, you only see all the perfect things. You also see the things that aren’t perfect.

Be who you are; step into your truth of who you are.

Be who you are and own it. Just own it.

Next is: Being Kind.

Being kind to others, being kind to yourself – that gives you a level of confidence.

When you’re kind to others, especially when it isn’t easy to be kind, especially when there is challenge, whether it’s within yourself or something that you’re witnessing outside of you … when you are kind, you start to feel better about yourself because you see yourself as someone who is loving and good.

That helps lift that self-confidence.

When one of your principles is to love and be loved, then you feel more confident about how you’re showing up and who you’re showing up as when you follow that.

That absolutely matters.

I think also another one is not comparing.

It’s looking at yourself as a unique individual instead of comparing yourself to all of the people around you. Because we measure ourselves in this moment compared to everybody else in this moment. And the thing is, when we do that, we’re always putting somebody down – whether we are putting them down and making them less than, or putting us down and we’re making us less than … and that is never going to feel good.

Another thing that I think about confidence is body language.

Do you walk or even sit with confidence? I think that that can create more confidence. Do you walk with your shoulders out? Do you walk standing fully upright? Is your chin up or is it down? Are your eyes looking at people or are they looking away from people? That shows confidence.

I think that when you let go of bad habits, that shows confidence.

Whether it’s that you quit smoking, you quit drinking caffeine, you stop having the mental abuse that you’re taking … whatever unhealthy habit you let go of … that helps to give you confidence.

And when you start a healthy habit, that helps give you confidence. So, either side of that: Letting go of an unhealthy habit or embracing a healthy habit … either one of those. Making that change starts to give you confidence because you’re showing up for you. And that makes a difference.

Another one could be focusing on solutions instead of on excuses.

Just being in a place where you tend to be a solution-oriented person instead of sitting there and complaining about why it doesn’t work … by shifting gears to, “okay, what can we do?”

Being solution-oriented versus kind of a victim or excuses-oriented approach can also allow you to gain confidence.

Smiling gives confidence.

I can tell when I’m on the phone with somebody if they are smiling.  I can hear it in the conversation. That is an easy way to begin to exude confidence.

I think learning of any kind gives you confidence.

One of the reasons people don’t have confidence is because they don’t know how to do something, what to do in a particular situation. They’re unsure. So, gaining knowledge, wisdom and learning is something that absolutely will help you gain confidence. When we can start to get to a place where you believe “I can figure anything out” … and that might not mean I figure it out myself … but I can call somebody. I can ask for help. I can pay somebody. I can find the people to help me understand … that gives me confidence that everything is “figure-outable”.

One of the things I think can raise your confidence level is moving your body.

This gives you a feeling like you are doing something to help promote your strength and your stamina and your energy … and moving your body in whatever form that is – whether it’s dancing or cleaning or walking or swimming or running or working out – whatever it is … moving your body gives you confidence, especially when you do it consistently.

The last one that I have for now is knowing that I have a team in the spirit world that’s behind me.

I have the support, even if I don’t feel like I have the support in my human world at times. I have a spiritual team that is here to support me in this journey. That gives me a lot of confidence … knowing I have angels and guides and loved ones all around me.

It is a blessing that I have a spirit within this body, this skin that I’m in … that I have a spirit within this body that chose and was chosen to be here in this exact time and purpose.

That spirit knew that you had gifts and messages to bring to humanity at this time and trusted you with the ability to express this through this skin that you are in.

That’s a blessing.

So, it might be easy to look at the wrinkles or the lines or the spots or the fat or the cellulite or the sags or the whatevers … and say, yeah, I don’t feel confident.

However, my friend, that’s part of what you came here to embrace. That is part of what you came here to show up for. That is part of what you came here to do.

So, confidence … it’s not about how you look and it’s not about the situations that have happened to you. It’s about how you stand in your power. It’s about how you honor the journey that you’ve been on. It’s about how you recognize that this skin that you’re in is an absolute blessing. And it’s how you show up to work with and to harmonize with that Spirit within you and the physical-ness that you are.

Find the harmony … take the time for that self-care and that self-love. That’s where confidence comes from. It isn’t something that can easily be taught. It is something that can be modeled.

It can’t be taught because words don’t teach. I can tell you all this, but the reason I’m telling you this is so it can bring the feeling to you … the desire to you … because a feeling – that will teach you.

So, as we walk this journey – wherever you are on it and whatever you’re using as your excuse to not do what you can or that you want to do … I want you to ask yourself this question:

What would confidence look like right now? What would showing up look like right now? How would it feel? What could I do in this moment to step closer to how I want to feel?

And make that choice. Reach for that feeling. Start right now. Begin the shift. And watch what unfolds for you going forward.

I look forward to the adventure!

And leave me a comment below so I can support you in these new intentions you are setting for yourself as we move onward together!