Ever wonder how to be confident? Me, too, because I used to doubt myself at every turn. In fact, I’m still not completely, 100% free from self doubt. I’m going through a bout of it right now.
The difference between then (a decade ago) and now (as I sit on my bedroom floor writing this post) is that I know what to do when self doubt strikes.
WHY SELF DOUBT HAPPENS
You doubt your self and don’t feel confident because of one teeny, tiny thing.
Ready?
Your thoughts. They fill your mind with a stream of negative juju all. day. long.
You may think you’re not confident because your body isn’t the right shape, or because your parents didn’t love you, or because you didn’t get good grades.
While that may be true on one level, what’s really going on here is that someone (your family, your teachers, society at large) filled you with thoughts that absolutely did not teach you how to be confident, and now you’re continuing to have these thoughts 20, 30, 50 years later.
Instead, the people around you taught you to doubt yourself. They didn’t do this on purpose (in most cases), they were just trying to protect you. Because the thoughts in their own heads said they should make sure you stayed safe, and knew if you looked like that/talked like that/tried to do that with your career, you might fail. And that scared them, so they scared you into playing small. Into doubting yourself at every turn.
it takes time to build self confidence
But that’s not working for you anymore, just like it wasn’t working for me. I needed to know how to feel confident so I could build a business, be a good wife and mother, and so I could stop feeling so down on myself all the time.
To let go of self doubt, though, it takes time. I wish I could give you a magical potion that would fix all of this stuff right this second, but I can’t. You need to do the work to get the result.
How long does it take? Well, that depends. How quickly are you willing to stop believing your thoughts? How much time are you willing to spend out of your head and into your heart?
As I mentioned, I still go through periods where I doubt myself. Where the voices creep in and say “you can’t do this.” Just yesterday I was overcome with all sorts of thoughts about how I was going to fail and how this would never work and how I should just pack it in and give up.
But now that I know how to feel confident (at least a good portion of the time), I was able to get out of it pretty quickly. Here’s how I finally stopped doubting myself.
How TO BE CONFIDENT
#1 get older and wiser
One of the ways I gained confidence was simply by getting older and learning more about myself and the world. I know, I know, you need more concrete advice, but I wanted to make sure i included this one, because you’ll also get older and wiser, and you may feel more confident with time.
#2 Learn to use your internal guidance system
Something that helped me immensely was grounding myself in the knowledge that I have a reliable and readily available internal navigation system that I can trust.
Even if you’re not on the woo side of things, you must sometimes feel that instinct come through, that pull toward or away from something.
The more I learned to tap into my intuition, the more i was able to start trusting myself and build confidence. Once you know you’ve got someone or something there that always wants to help you, you feel anchored in a way that makes you feel better about life, and you’ll naturally be more confident.
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#3 Realize it’s your thoughts making you feel bad
I think the other thing that really, really helped me with overcoming self doubt is realizing that my mind is the one creating all the doubt, not my spirit.
Like I said in the opening, your mind is spitting out nonsense ALL THE TIME, and that’s what creates so much doubt. Seriously. Imagine life without someone whispering mean things in your head all the time.
Now when I feel doubt come up, I go to a place beyond the mind, one where I’m steady and still. One where I observe the mind rather than letting it take me away.
#4 KNOW WE ALL GO THROUGH THIS
Darling, you are not alone. Every single person on earth (except maybe a monk or Eckhart Tolle) feels bad about themselves sometimes.
You may see a movie or hear someone laughing and it sets off negative thoughts that your parents instilled in you when you were 3.
You may put yourself out there and feel embarrassed because thoughts surface from that time in middle school when you split your pants in gym.
You may get rejected in a relationship and it brings you right back to high school, when your crush turned you down in front of the whole cafeteria.
We have all been there, and we will all be there again. The important thing is to disengage from those negative thoughts and stop believing what they are telling you. You are, indeed, a worthy human.
#5 DISTRACT YOURSELF WITH POSITIVE ACTIVITIES
You know how I said I’d been down on myself and not feeling confident? Well, I could see that I was all up in my head and starting to spin out.
What did I do? For a while I read a book that was happy and uplifting, and then I went to a group exercise class.
Both of these things took me out of mind (which is a good thing!) for a while, giving those negative, self-doubting thoughts a rest.
Sometimes you just need to let your mind focus on something else, rather than how much you think you suck. Once you have a little perspective, it’s much easier to feel confident again.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
You’re awesome. You’re capable. You can change the way you feel about yourself, you really can. It all starts with noticing that your thoughts are not you and without them, life is much more positive.
The mind in me is probably going to keep creating doubt for the rest of the time my human body is alive. But by separating from it and letting those gut feelings come through, doubt doesn’t rule my life anymore.
If you’d like more help on how to be confident and start trusting yourself more, you’re in luck, because the free 5 Day Confidence Building Challenge will get you on your way. We’ll go on the journey from self doubt city to confidence central in just 5 days. Join now.
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