The Secrets to Having More Self Confidence: Part 1

There is one thing that I love that my girl has been doing lately.

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, she will burst into random songs at the top of her lungs.

This means that if you pass us in the grocery store or the gas station or even walking through the church (we’re still practicing reverence) you might hear her.

Usually her song of choice is “Let It Go” from Frozen, and her singing is so incredibly beautiful. I just love it so much.  (Though I’m not going to lie. My heart feels an extra special warmth when she chooses the Star Wars theme song, which does happen every now and then.).

My girl sings loudly, off-key, and half the time she’s not even singing the right words.

But you know what?

She doesn’t care.

I don’t care, and usually I don’t even try to stop her.

This girl has got come serious self confidence.

I’ve been hearing a lot of the same things from several clients, family, and friends lately.  

“I can’t do xyz. I don’t have any confidence.”

“Well, SHE can do that, because SHE’S so confident. I could never do that.”

“I can’t go after this thing that I really want, because other people will judge me. I really care what they say and think about me.”

“I’m not good enough for something like that.”

I know at least one or two of these thoughts have resonated with me like 500,000 times.

And guess what. Every time I let those thoughts take over, my result is the same every single time.

And the result has been the same with my clients every single time they think they don’t have any confidence: They’re too scared to do something they desperately want to do, and nothing changes.

Nothing. Changes.

Since this subject has been coming up quite a bit lately, I’ve decided to devote the next few blog posts to the topic of self confidence.

Here’s the deal. If you remember nothing from any of these posts, remember this:

Self confidence is a LEARNED attribute. Likewise, the lack of self confidence is also LEARNED.

You were not born with a set amount of self confidence. 

Yet so often we believe this to be true.

We believe that we were either born a confident person or we were born without confidence, and we will stay that way until the day we die.

Those sneaky beliefs show up all the time in the way we talk and in the way we think.

“I’m not a confident person.”

“She is just so confident.”

“I have never had any confidence.”

“I’m not good enough to do that.”

“If I’m confident, I’m not humble. Therefore, confidence is bad. Putting myself down is what I should do.”

These thoughts show up in our brain, so we think they MUST be true. When in reality we’ve thought them for so long, we now accept them as truth.

But here’s the thing. None of those statements are true.

We have learned how to have self confidence or to not have self confidence.

And so often our culture has conditioned us to not have self confidence.

So what exactly is self confidence?

I love how Brooke Castillo defines it, because it’s not how we typically think about it. Brooke states that self confidence consists of 3 things:

• The ability to trust yourself.
• Knowing that you can experience any emotion.
• Your opinion of yourself.

Notice how Brooke’s definition of self confidence is based on internal factors. It doesn’t come from any source external to ourselves.

So often we expect to generate self confidence, because we’ve been praised or because we have tangible results or successes to prove our worth. 

The problem with basing our self confidence on those things is that they are all external and temporary. 

When we do that we are looking for validation outside of ourselves, and so often the world is going to disappoint us. 

Brooke’s definition, on the other hand, is so much more empowering. 

Self confidence is created internally. 

We get to control the amount of self confidence we have.

Like my girl. 

Girlfriend is not afraid to feel any emotion when it comes to her singing.

You and I might feel embarrassed to be that open, but she worries about none of that. 

She feels complete and pure joy.

She also has a very high opinion of herself and her own abilities.

She spends a lot of time thinking about how brave and strong she is (seriously. But that is a post for another day.).

What if we were willing to just let it all go like that? 

What might we achieve?

More to come on Thursday . . . .

Originally Published 1/7/20