Confidence like a boss

Hey friend,

How have your last two weeks been?  Did you create your mantra?  How is it working for you?  I hope the mantra is helping you to feel better about yourself and to feel a little more empowered!  Having a personal mantra is a great way to boost your confidence level and to combat that negative self-talk.  I won’t go into that any further since we talked about Mantra’s last time.  Just know, that Mantras are an option for you to boost confidence and you can read the last blog post if you want more information.

Do you ever wish you could just own the room?  To walk into a party (or room full of people) with crazy swagger and not care what anyone else thought about you?  Perhaps you want to dance, sing have fun, talk to anyone, or do whatever you wanted at that moment, without worrying about what others thought.  How often do you feel that way?  You are more likely to feel that way and be that person if you are confident in who you are.  So, the question becomes how do you gain confidence and be the boss babe you’re meant to be? You can gain confidence by making decisions, speaking up, watch what you say to yourself, by being yourself and by being okay with failure.

Before you do any of those things consider a little self-reflection.  When was the last time you felt out of place or lacked confidence?  How did you react?  Maybe you withdrew, got defensive, or even used alcohol to deal with your surroundings.  Next time that happens pay attention to what is going on to make you feel that way.  Think about what happened to trigger the feeling of uncomfortableness or awkwardness.  What thoughts did you start thinking and what were you saying to yourself?  What was the underlying belief? Next time you feel yourself losing confidence or feeling awkward, pay attention to what is going on around you.  Notice how you react, and what you are saying to yourself at that moment (or the moment just before you felt your confidence drain).  As we will talk about later, what you say to yourself matters.

The first way to increase your confidence is to make a decision and stick with it.  Being decisive helps you to gain more confidence.  Have you ever seen someone waffle around when it came time to make a decision?  The answer seemed so clear to you (or it didn’t seem difficult) but the other person just couldn’t decide?  Don’t be a waffler.  Pick something, pick anything and stick with it.  Perhaps you feel like you don’t know what the right decision is.  That’s okay, just make one.  Think to yourself “if I had to make a choice what would it be?”  And just go with it.  These don’t have to be big decisions either.  It can be as simple as picking a restaurant (or saying what sounds good to you) when going out to dinner with your spouse or significant other.  Sometimes being indecisive stems from trying to be a peacemaker.  Maybe you’re always wanting to make other people happy or not wanting to rock the boat.  Well, guess what?  News flash: your opinion and your voice matter!  It is great to give to others but not at the expense of always giving away your voice.  After you have made your decision assume it was the right one.  Don’t beat yourself up about your choice and who cares if it was the wrong one.  The real win here is that you made a decision and stuck with it.  If you don’t decide on the path of your life someone else will decide for you.  Be an intentional friend.

Make a habit of speaking up.  Even when you think nobody cares or nobody wants to hear from you.  If you don’t like to speak in a room full of people, that’s okay you will get there, but to get there you need to start practicing.  Make a habit of making one comment or asking one question when you are with a group of people.  I don’t know about you but I used to shy away from asking questions.  I didn’t want to be the village idiot.  I always used to assume I was asking a dumb question and everyone else understood and already knew the answer.  The truth is if you don’t understand it chances are someone else doesn’t understand it either.  I would also argue that asking a question shows that you are listening and wanting to learn, you may be helping the speaker or your boss to remember something else they had to say, or you engage other conversations in the room and encourage others to speak up.  Remember, if you don’t feel like you have anything useful to add, then ask a question.  Putting yourself out there just a little bit helps you to put yourself out there in bigger ways later.  My challenge to you is the next time you have a meeting (work or otherwise), speak up.  Another option is to take yourself out of the equation and think of it as your opportunity to help others.  Your question or comment could help them to make sense of a concept or spark an idea.  Sometimes it is easier if we reframe the way we think about things.  I am an introvert and don’t like to speak up, so I get what you’re going through.  I guarantee you, the more you do it the better you will become and the more comfortable you will feel.

Next, be careful of what you tell yourself.  What you say to yourself matters and in a big way.  You are the only you that there ever will be, so take care of yourself.  I heard Marie Forleo on a podcast say “The most powerful words in the universe are the words you say to yourself!” Write that down, memorize it and implement it in your life.  Speak to yourself about the important stuff, the good stuff and be your own best friend.  What you say to yourself you start to believe, which is why it is so important to cut out the negative self-talk.  As I have said before when you say something negative to yourself say the opposite three times.  Pay attention to when you talk down to yourself and what you are saying to yourself.  Is it in the morning, or at night?  Are you negative after getting on social media?  Maybe you limit your time on social media to 30 minutes.  Or maybe you just pay attention to what you’re saying and make a concerted effort to stop saying those things.  Consider writing down every bad thing you say to yourself for an entire week.  It can become so normal for you to talk down to yourself that you don’t even realize you are doing it. Whether or not you change how you talk to yourself is up to you.  Knowing that you have the option to create your own reality, why wouldn’t you?  You could do this one small thing (positive self-talk), and it could be a game-changer for you.

Another way to increase your confidence is by being yourself.  The more you behave in a manner that is true to who you really are the more confident you will feel.  When you act a certain way to impress people, it takes away from who you really are.  My favorite thing to say to myself is “let your freak flag fly.”  Has anyone ever seen the movie “Family Stone” with Luke Wilson and Sarah Jessica Parker?  In that movie, Sarah Jessica Parker was dating Luke Wilson’s brother and she was trying so hard to impress his family that she wasn’t being herself, or owning her uniqueness.  As a result, the family didn’t like her.  Luke Wilson’s character turned to Sarah Jessica Parker and said: “You have a freak flag…you just don’t fly it.”  I loved that line because it is so true.  We all have a freak flag and we need to embrace it.  Stop caring what others think and own that part of you that stands out or is unique.  You will truly be confident when you are comfortable in your own skin.  When you aren’t acting like yourself people can sense that and they just don’t like it or they just feel like something is off.  I’m sure it feels off to you too.  It is a lot of work trying to be someone that you’re not.

Last of all, to improve your confidence, be okay with failure.  We often think failure is so bad and we beat ourselves up for failure.  The truth is a failure is where we learn and grow the most.  Anyone successful in life has failed but they just got over it quicker than the rest of us did and they tried again.  When I am feeling intimidated or nervous about something, I sometimes say things to myself like “oh yeah, try to stop me” or “good luck with that” or “challenge accepted.”  When I used to play fastpitch I would say in my head to the pitcher “Try to stop me from getting a hit.”  It makes it more of a game that I play with myself, to take the nervousness away.  I am not saying it to be egotistical and I may not even say this stuff out loud, but when you lack confidence and say things like that it tends to balance things out.  Sometimes you have to hype yourself up to believe you are capable of doing something, and that’s okay.   If you do something hard an don’t back down (even when you failed before), it boosts your confidence.  I have even heard that it has now become a thing to fail X amount of times each year; that is now a goal that people set.  If you can get over the failure ahead of time, it doesn’t seem so bad.  What you will find is, that it’s the journey and pushing through the hard stuff that will make you stronger.

I was talking to my mom about failure after a Weight Watchers class.  We were saying failing was where the good stuff was at.  Okay, truth be told we may have gained some weight that day and wanted to feel better about ourselves (-;   My mom said that she wanted to sign up for a self-defense class, but thought to herself she would make a fool of herself doing that at her age.  She then told me how she was watching her grandson and he was hopping on one foot.  She realized she could no longer hop on one foot.  She said she just couldn’t do these things anymore because of her age, and she worried she would get hurt.  I suggested she try to do these things no matter how little.  For example, she could hop with her grandson every time she saw him.  How cool would it be if she could eventually hop on one foot again?  It’s such a little thing but that little thing could have such a big effect on her self-confidence.  We always think we need a huge life-changing moment to give us confidence, but that just isn’t the case.  We need to work on the little wins (like hopping on one foot) every day for the rest of our lives.

How long have you been talking down to yourself?  How many years have you lacked confidence and treated yourself worse than you would treat an enemy?  That is no longer acceptable for you.  If you have spent 20, 40, 60 years of talking down to yourself, that self-talk isn’t going to change overnight.  But don’t worry it will change, slowly but surely.  I don’t believe that it will take you the same amount of time to gain confidence.  Keep in mind confidence is like a muscle that needs to be exercised, so continually work on it!

I will leave you with this thought…..Think about who is looking at you and learning from you.  Do you want them to model your current level of confidence?  Consider it your duty as a mother, daughter, sister or friend to be the confident person that you want those around you to be.  It starts with you.  Get after it, my friends!

Please comment below and tell me what has helped you improve your self-confidence!

Marie

P.S. If you’re wondering what we will talk about in the next blog post, it’ll be all about mental health!

[mc4wp_form id=”335″]