I’ve been doing some research in the last couple of weeks for my upcoming course and one of the questions I’ve been asking is how do you define self-confidence and on scale 1-10 how confident are you?
So, how do you define confidence?
To put it in simple words it would sound something like “to be 100% yourself and be proud of who you are, and happy about it".
So let's break this down:
1. To be 100% yourself
We want and need to be liked and accepted. So that makes us automatically afraid to show our true nature because we are afraid we won’t be liked. And it’s true that it can always happen that someone might dislike us. What we are forgetting here is-someone will always dislike us for one reason or another. Sometimes that person will be triggered by something in us or about us and she will feel all insecurities emphasized when she’s around us. Then she’ll go into the mode of trying to project all that negativity back to us in order for her to feel better.
This happens a lot when we meet people that are rude. They are deeply insecure, unhappy or have some troubles and rather than going inside their own life and trying to fix it, they choose the road of least resistance where they spray poison to everyone around just so they wouldn’t feel their own pain.
One of my biggest pieces of advice to all my clients is to practice not taking things personally! And I say practice because this is not easy. You really need to be high up there mentally and emotionally to be able to stay unphased when someone is calling you names. I still fail at this from time to time but mostly I live in I don’t give a fuck bubble, and it’s awesome!
So, back to being 100 % you. When you accept that you won’t be liked all the time and when you realize that people will be attracted to you the most when you are YOU and not pretending to be something special, then the pressure is off and you just need to establish this habit.
2. Be proud of who you are
This is the second part of my confidence definition-being proud of YOU!
And that’s where the confidence mentality kicks in. Some of us had a lifetime behind us of straight out hating their own guts, others don’t even know that they don’t really love themselves.
How does not loving yourself without knowing it look like: you are never happy with the way you look, you have a hard time speaking up in a group, you are always a yes-sayer in your relationship even though sometimes you really want to say no, your parents are pulling you around, your boss is looking through you and your friends never want to make an effort for you and you STILL smile and take it all in and do like you always do-never daring to change something.
That, my girlfriend, is not loving yourself and not being aware of it. It can also be that you are not happy with your weight but you still choose to sit in front of Netflix instead going to the gym, maybe you are eating candy like crazy while telling yourself you shouldn’t, maybe you go on to have kids when your husband thinks it’s time to have kids, but you actually want to focus on your career instead.
My head is spinning of all the examples that come to mind but the one thing is clear- if you are not living your best life, exactly how you want to live it, if you are dissatisfied and you are not doing anything to change it-you are not proud of who you are and you don’t love and appreciate yourself. Bottom line you are wasting your life!
3. Be happy about who you are
I think I stepped into this just a moment ago- if you are afraid to be yourself, if you are not proud of all the weird things about you and all of your flaws, you can’t be happy and if you are not happy most of the time-you are not able to be confident BUT most importantly you are not able to live the life you are meant to live! You’ll get to your death bed as hopefully a very old person and you’ll wish you can go back and do it all over again because then you would say your parents I’m moving out because I want to be an actress, and you’ll tell your spouse fuck you the first time he raised his hand to hit you, and you would color your hair red and dance in the rain with your mascara running down your face!
Don’t let yourself down so badly that you feel like you wasted the whole life living a lie!!! Wake up now and start making changes!
Ask yourself
So what are the questions you can ask yourself to check the pulse of your confidence and happiness level to see where you are and what needs to change:
1. Am I able to speak up my mind in any situation?
2. Am I afraid to do the things I want to do because I'm afraid how others will react?
Another thing we are forgetting is that people care more about how we make them feel then how we are personally.
3. Am I designing my life around avoiding to face my insecurities?
This is important to think about because sometimes we are staying in our comfort zone just because we know that getting out of it would be uncomfortable. Even though that comfort zone is very unpleasant to be in, we make up all kinds of lies just so we would have to make changes!
Create a plan
Now that we understand what’s going on let’s get to the next step: creating a plan so that you can actually start to make some changes!
1. Journal and be honest with yourself about what you want to change
2. Pick one thing, one major thing that you know that you absolutely must change. Pay attention that I didn’t say pick three or five. Just one is enough and it will get you going. Once you start feeling that changing things is not so scary and that you are actually feeling better, you’ll want to change more. Stepping out of your comfort zone will become fun! I promise, pinky swear :)
3. List steps you will take and make a to-do list with times and dates. This major-goal without a detailed plan is just a wish, you won’t get anywhere if you don’t break it down for yourself into easy to execute steps.
Good luck and tell me how it’s going for you!
Commentaires