5 Tips For Building Confidence
What can we do to feel more confident?
Such a good question, and often seemingly impossible.
But sweet love, I’m so glad you’re here hanging out with me, and today I’m really excited to share 5 ingredients that will help you feel more confident!
So, confidence.
It’s an elusive yet important ingredient in our ability to show up for the life we want, but can often feel like it’s “missing” from our sauce.
But here’s the exciting thing, it’s not missing, you’re just not utilizing it yet! It’s like that strange unknown sauce you have at the back of your pantry that you bought for a recipe you never actually made.
Right now you are pulling it out, dusting it off, and finding a recipe for it.
Because the good news is we can all create confidence if we’re willing to work at it! But that’s the thing, like everything, it’s something we need to work at in order to get the results we want.
So, how do we do that?
Ok, so in my opinion, confidence isn’t something we necessarily work on directly, but also, if you’re into mantras and meditations I absolutely support that work as well! I bet there’s a bunch on my favourite free meditation app Insight Timer, so check those out for sure.
But in addition to that, confidence is something we build as we succeed at things.
Confidence comes from SUCCESS
Or failing at things until we succeed.
Ultimately the success part is essential to the growing of the confidence., even if it’s teeny tiny successes.
So here’s where it gets interesting, when we try things and succeed at them what we’re actually doing is building TRUST with ourselves.
So lack of confidence is a lack of trust or belief in our ability to succeed at things, and possibly shadow beliefs that we’re even worthy of succeeding.
That’s my case anyway, a combination of beliefs that I was absolutely NOT going to succeed at ANYTHING so I should NEVER try, AND I wasn’t worthy or good enough for it anyway so even if I did succeed for a hot minute I would shut it all down.
So when you mix all that up into a human, it comes out as a total lack of confidence, self worth, and an inability to commit to myself or anything in particular that might increase my ability to succeed.
Does that make sense to you?
Have you ever noticed anything like this in yourself?
Have you WANTED and DREAMED of doing lots of things, but never actually committed to DOING the things? Or maybe you made it for a day or 5 but gave up as soon as your thoughts told you it was too hard?
Your thoughts told you you couldn’t — so you didn’t.
So, confidence comes from TRUST
Here’s the thing though, in order to BUILD trust, we need to DO things that we will succeed at.
That’s pretty much the rule of life, but it seems that we forget this as we grow up and our fears of failure, ridicule and judgment, uncertainty, and looking like an idiot become HUGE.
The more we build trust the more our brain starts to think, “huh, look at us go, we’re actually succeeding at things!”
And that’s the thought that creates confidence.
But the next part of this recipe is that we need to set ourselves up to succeed, which we don’t naturally do in the world we live in right now.
These days the pressure to be perfect and do things perfectly and be doing ALL the things ALL the time immediately sets us up for perceived failure.
The bar has been set so high we are screwed from the start. And slowly this chips away at our already fragile, or non-existent self confidence.
As a coach I aim to guide people out of this place, because what can happen is paralysis in life.
The total disbelief in ability to succeed, so zero action ever happens, and zero action leads to zero success… which feeds the loop.
See what I’m saying?
Ok, so what we do here is start tiny.
Confidence comes from ACTION
If you’ve hung out with me on social media, which you totally should at @gwenjohnsonofficial on instagram you will know already that I LOVE talking about tiny actions to build success.
When we set our goals as something that is a challenge, but one that our brain is pretty sure we can accomplish we will actually do it. We will actually reach for it. Instead of throwing in the towel due to the perceived impossibility of it all.
Things like, before every cup of coffee I have I will have a glass of water.
Or if you want to start moving your body, commit to putting your walking clothes and shoes on before you leave work for the day… that’s it. That’s the commitment. Not even getting out the door for a walk, just getting the clothes on.
Or if you want to add more creativity into your life, create 5 minutes in your busy life that is dedicated to creative work. Maybe it’s reading a design magazine or sketching with crayons or jotting out rough ideas for your novel or show or podcast!
Whatever area of your life that you want to grow into, set yourself up for success by creating a teeny tiny action that you can commit to and succeed at. preferably daily, or at least a few times a week.
Now, I’m not saying don’t have HUGE goals! I LOVE HUGE GOALS! And I strongly suggest making some.
What I’m saying is that in order to actually achieve or move towards your badass goal, you need to start succeeding at the small shifts required for you to reach the top of the mountain!
Tiny shifts in our behaviours that we can actually succeed at will start to build up wins, and those wins will allow us to start trusting ourselves, and that trust will turn into confidence.
Because think about it.
Would you trust a person who constantly lets you down? Would you trust a person who makes commitments but never follows through?
Say you had a friend who made promises to you all the time, who set up plans to do things together, and then every dang time, she chooses someone, or something else over you.
Something better came up so she just left you hangin’.
What would you start to think about that friend? What would your relationship be like with her?
Would they be someone you would call on when in uncertain times?
Would they be someone YOU wanted to show up for?
Would they be someone you felt confident in?
Now, here’s the thing, most of the time we would NEVER act like that to other people. We would of course show up for our sisters girlfriends aunts dog sitter if they needed someone to feed the goldfish!
We couldn’t possibly let her down.
But ourselves?
We most certainly would abandon our plan of taking a walk in the woods or a nap or making ourselves a nourishing pot of soup if our sisters girlfriends aunts dog sitter needed us to feed the cat.
Strange right.
It’s strange how we wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who constantly chooses someone over us, but so many of us rarely choose ourselves above anyone else. (Our world is built to create people pleasers, and to push against it makes us very uncomfortable!)
But before you get down about this seemingly dismal fact, let's instead use it as data.
Because if we have the capability to show up for other people, we can absolutely learn to show up for ourselves.
We just need to practice, and we need to set ourselves up for it.
We need to understand the feel good vibes we get when we do things for other people, and pour those into our own cool glass of awesomeness.
So how do we do that?
We TRY!
We start to show up for ourselves the same way we would show up for others.
We practice saying NO to things we don’t want to do or don’t like, saying YES to things that we think are the best, saying what we want about things we like and dislike.
We start tiny and we practice constantly.
We show up for ourselves over and over again in tiny yet intentional ways.
And it’s important to understand that while it might sound like I’m talking about things like diet and movement, this also applies to EVERYTHING in your life.
If you want to do more creative work, if you want to start something new, if you want to get back into doing something you loved doing but gave up on because life got busy…
What tiny actions can you fold into your life?
How can you show up for yourself?
This is actually huge because in my opinion this is how we tap into our youthful energy, and that’s essential for our happiness and fulfillment and enjoyment of life levels!
I did a podcast episode about it called Soul Charging Self Care for More Energy so check that out if you need some clarity!
We need to push aside all the sticky thoughts that tell us we have no time, or we’re not worth it, or we’re going to fail – like they’re cobwebs and keep going down the path. And know that just like cobwebs, they will stick to you and cling to your everything.
Just. keep. going.
Letting those tiny actions be the foundation that you build your confidence building framework.
Confidence comes from CELEBRATION
Here’s a kicker though, so many people ARE doing ALL THE THINGS, but still feel like they’re a failure, and this is often because they don’t let themselves CELEBRATE all the things they’re doing and achieving and succeeding at.
When we don’t celebrate our wins we don’t get the reward, and our brain really likes rewards.
If we go for a 1 k run and criticize ourselves for not going for a 5 k run, all our brain understands is “that was total garbage. Don’t do that again.”
It’s made double hard because when we eat things that turn into sugars (ice cream, carbohydrates like pizza or cookies, or chocolate) our brain gets a rush of dopamine. So, instead of doing the thing we WANT or need to do and feeling good about it, we end up rewarding ourselves with a bag of potato chips…
I digress! Always.
So if we want to build confidence we need to build trust with OURSELVES. We do that by doing things and succeeding at them. We do that by setting small, or tiny goals and doing them over a long period of time.
(This isn’t a quick fix! But when you do this and combine it with some healing meditations and maybe some mantra work, it’s going to work.)
AND we also NEED to let ourselves FEEL our achievements.
We need to IMMEDIATELY celebrate our efforts.
Even if we only do a fraction of the thing, we celebrate that fraction. WE don’t let it slip past us and chalk it up as a failure.
We NOTICE the effort and we hold space for it like we would do so for a small child or someone we love.
The effort MUST BE CELEBRATED or the brain will shut it down.
When I look at my own life I can see how the lack of trust and confidence has impacted me and my ability to progress. I can see how I've held myself back and kept myself small and stayed safe and in my comfortable but uncomfortable zone.
Actually, even looking at things like changing how I eat has been piggybacked on my husband Scotty’s incredible ability to commit to things and follow through with them.
After a lifetime of sports he has built a resource of trusting his ability to do hard things.
In the beginning this was essential for my learning to trust myself, because I had his energy to piggyback on. I had his confidence as my guide.
I know from experience that I would have normally given up on myself after a few short days, but over the years I can see how I’ve started building my own self trust up, and how that has lead to more confidence, and how letting myself celebrate small victories has fuelled more confidence to try new things and risk looking like an idiot, and basically start living.
And if I’m being totally transparent, a lot of this started when I had kids.
My first born is naturally predisposed to being more anxious and lacks confidence, and I needed, and still need to SHOW him how to take risks and challenge himself.
And my second child is a girl and I really wanted her to grow up with a mom who was full of confidence, because I strongly believe that our children watch us and learn how to be.
I also strongly believe that they are their own people born with their own inherent things and stuff and way of being.
But as a mom and a woman, it felt like I needed to step up.
And that’s actually an important part of this recipe, and something I’ve probably talked about before…
When we want to start a new habit or behaviour or try something new or whatever, it’s massively helpful to be very clear on WHY we want to do it.
WHY do you want to eat better? Why do you want to start going to the gym? Why do you want to make more money? Why do you want to improve your relationship? Why do you want to work on that creative project?
Why is it important? Why now? What will your life be like if you commit and succeed? What will it be like if you don’t?
Don’t stay on the surface here, really push yourself to figure out WHY. A good way to get more clarity is to keep asking yourself WHY 5 or more times. This idea comes from the book Start With Why by Simon Sinek.
Now, I have one last thing to share on building confidence, and that’s that in order to do so we also need to practise making decisions.
Confidence comes from MAKING DECISIONS
We need to DECIDE to do SOMETHING and then we need to LIVE WITH THE OUTCOME.
Not in a self critical way, but in a way that teaches our brain that WE CAN AND DO MAKE DECISIONS LIKE A GROWNUP and WE ARE IN FACT STRONG ENOUGH TO BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE OUTCOME.
Making decisions and owning them is a skill, it takes effort and practice and it’s not always going to work out.
So a lot of us get scared of making the decision, and end up asking everyone around us to make it for us.
Or we give our power away by saying “I don’t know” all the time and letting and hoping other people fill that gap. BUT, if we want to grow more confidence, getting comfortable with decisions is an essential ingredient!
We learn to trust ourselves by making decisions and form that we learn how to listen to ourselves and our intuition.
That is big stuff.
How do we get good and more comfortable with decision making? WE PRACTICE!
We start small and we do it as often as we possibly can, and we celebrate when it works out and we celebrate when it doesn’t work out, and we learn to live with ourselves either way and we keep trying.
That’s how we get good at making decisions.
If you’re the person who constantly asks everyone around you to make the decisions, if you constantly say things like “oh, i’m easy, I like everything” or, I’m the kind of person who just goes with the flow so you guys choose and I’ll be happy.” I am talking to you.
And I’m talking to you with all the love and kindness in my heart, because I know and understand who you are. I was, and sometimes still can be, this person.
But here’s the deal, when we say and do this we are giving our power away over and over again.
We’re overriding our thoughts, feelings, wishes, desires, needs, and the big ones; INSTINCT and INTUITION.
This is no joke.
When we disconnect from these things, when we ignore our instinct and intuition we sever trust with ourselves. We continuously sever the connection to self confidence.
And also, we drive the people around us nuts.
Decision making is a shared task. It’s exhausting AF and can really burn a person out if they are left to ALL the decisions on their own. So while we think we’re being “easy going” what we’re really doing is putting unnecessary strain on our relationships, giving our power away, AND severing the connection to our self trust and self confidence.
Not awesome.
SO in recap:
Confidence comes from SUCCEEDING at things. This means we need to set small goals for ourselves that we can actually succeed at.
Confidence comes from being in ACTION. This means we need DO things! We need to be doing things to create change.
Confidence comes from building TRUST with ourselves. The process of building trust with ourselves creates confidence.
Confidence comes from CELEBRATING our achievements. This is how we actually create the emotions that help us feel successful.
Confidence comes from MAKING DECISIONS. When we hone our decision making skills we connect to our intuition, our instinct and build trust with ourselves.
RANDOM BONUS:
In order to help us succeed at our goals (an essential part of all of this working) it’s massively helpful to be very clear on our WHY we want to do it. In the beginning it can be helpful to have outside help like an accountability partner, or to attach your WHY to something deep and very important to you. Possibly something that will impact the people you love the most because initially that can be quite motivating.
SECOND RANDOM BONUS:
Think of someone who’s succeeding in an area you’re interested in, and find out if you can piggyback on their success and confident energy. Find a coach or a mentor or a friend who’s keen to share energy with you! This is immensely helpful when we’re trying to increase our confidence and trust in ourselves. Especially if we’re really struggling and don’t understand or know that path to take.
Having a guide can change our life.
If you work at these 5 things you will over time start to feel more comfortable and confident in yourself.
The outcome of this is huge.
If you can, I really suggest taking a minute and image:
How would it impact your life if you felt more confident?
How would you feel if you trusted yourself to make good and powerful decisions?
How would you feel if you actually let yourself celebrate your success and accomplishments?
Would you be free of all the second guessing, the harsh judgment, the hurtful internal dialogue, the restricted, small or careful life.
Would you start living into your most authentic and joyful self? Would you start doing things that set your life on fire? Would you feel light, loved, and be full of laughter?
What would your life be like if you were more confident?
What would your life be like if you loved and accepted yourself with all your flaws and F ups and human-ness?
Let yourself sit with these questions and truly imagine your life if you felt confident in yourself.
If you felt comfortable.
We all want to feel comfortable in our skin, and this is a checklist recipe that you can follow.
And remember, confidence will ebb and flow so that’s ok. we don’t need to do this on a straight line. Expect there to be times that you’re doing amazing and feeling good about yourself, and then it will dip. The goal is to never get too far way from this work, because if you stay close with this recipe you will always be looping back and building more trust and confidence in yourself.
Now you know I love a gut reset and a plan to manage your stress load, but building self confidence is an essential ingredient in our health and healing because it lets us actually be in a state of action towards our goals.
ALL our goals!
It can be really powerful to spend time reflecting on what it is you're working towards, what goals you really want to reach for, and then breaking them down into these small actions.
Like, what daily habits would a super confident person have in your opinion, and then start folding them into your life batter.
The thing is, it really doesn’t need to be anything specific, like it doesn’t need to be a health related goal, or a work related goal, or whatever. It’s about the progress you will make, and while the progress can be uncomfortable, it’s also incredibly important and powerful in healing self esteem issues.
So make it personal, and make it something interesting, and most of all, make it something important to YOU.
Thank you for hanging here with me today, and if you found this helpful please share it with your loved ones!
And if you have any questions or want to hangout with me more, come and hangout with me on IG at https://www.instagram.com/gwenjohnsonofficial/
I love hearing from you and connecting with real life people.
Kindness for a million days,
Gwen
