What does it take to truly be confident in yourself?

Coming from someone who has struggled with self-confidence most of my life, I have a couple of thoughts on this topic, especially since I am the most confident I have ever been in my life.

Woo to the hoo!

When I would tell people close to me I lack self-confidence, they couldn’t believe it. I have held positions, titles, and been in situations that have required an incredible display of confidence. But that kind of confidence is a “trained” confidence and a front so that no one could detect how deeply unconfident I felt. 

Sounds crazy, huh?

However, humans have amazing will to survive. When we have a weakness, we often do whatever it takes to mask that weakness and to survive. So I became a student of positive thinking, leadership training, and all things related to the leadership position I was in so no one would question my confidence.

If these mental gymnastics sound exhausting to you, you’re right. It was!

Masquerading anything is emotionally draining and a pretty inefficient use of one’s energy.

In recent years, I decided to face my lack of self-confidence head on. It didn’t happen over night, but I embraced the process and it has paid off. My newly found authentic self-confidence has set me on the path to fulfilling all of the desires of my heart…the life I was uniquely made for. 

I know this sounds very etherial and aspirational…and if I wasn’t experiencing it myself, I may not even believe it was possible after decades of pretending to be self-confident. However, this is legit!

Here are a few of things I did to develop authentic self-confidence:

      • I identified past experiences in my life that eroded my self-confidence. One-by-one, I embraced them, the emotions that accompanied them and then let them go so they were no longer part of my identity.
      • I committed to getting to know myself better by observing my thoughts and how I responded to situations. I also did some self-profiling through programs like Human Design to better understand how I am wired. This was incredibly insightful and provided me a lot of validation. 
      • I started listening to myself more and slowly letting go of the opinions of others. We all have an inner voice we can trust, but sometimes the external voices in our life have become louder than our inner voice. Great confidence comes from knowing your inner voice as your guiding voice. 

As I mentioned, this process took a couple of years so it was definitely a marathon not a sprint. As a matter of fact, sprinting this process would have been horribly damaging to my nervous system and would have probably eroded my self-confidence even more. 

Trust me, there were times where I really wanted to sprint through this because there were some serious valleys of discomfort (followed by peaks of peace and joy). However, one of things I learned in this healing process is that it’s ideal to honor our physical and emotional bodies by not overwhelming them. Because when we overwhelm ourselves, our subconscious kicks into flight, fight or freeze—as if we we’re being chased by a lion in the jungle. 

Physiologically, when we’re in flight, fight or freeze all of our energy and resources are geared towards “outrunning the lion” so there are no reserves for anything else like healing. Furthermore, if we’re in a constant state of flight, fight or freeze, it is a massive drain on energy and physical body.

Plus, in this state, our peripheral functions like perception, understanding, reasoning and intuition are handicapped. And these are the very functions we need to build our self-confidence. So it’s best to take it one step at a time and to offer yourself an increased amount of self-love and calming activities to soothe the nervous system through the process. 

One of the best parts about this experience is that I learned to lean on people for support and compassion through the uncomfortable parts. I am so grateful for this that I want to be there for you. Therefore, if you’re wanting to increase your self-confidence so you can enjoy you and your life more, I am here for you. 

Just message me below and we can go from there.