4 Tips to Greater Confidence

When was the last time you felt confident?

Yep, confidence is a feeling and your feelings are created by your thoughts. Meaning, you have more control than you may realize.

A quick online search yields this definition:

“a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities”

You’ve seen those women who exude confidence. Maybe you are that women. Yay, you!

We all have our moments, but let’s explore how we can tap into our feeling confident more readily.

I invite you to take a minute. Close your eyes and embody when you last felt confident.

• What were you wearing?

• What were you feeling in your body? Note your posture.

• Who was with you?

• Where were you?

• What were you doing when you felt confident?

How long did it take you to recreate that feeling? How recently did you experience feeling confident?

It’s time we celebrate our gifts and embolden our confidence. 

Here are 4 tips to use when you’re struggling to be your amazing, confident self.

1. Ask for help. This may seem counterintuitive, but recognize you are not alone and there’s no prize for struggling through life figuring it all out on your own. Asking for help is how people who are confident in their own selves move forward. Asking for help is how growth occurs.

I imagine you do not feel any shame when you hire a plumber – which is asking for help. When you take a class, you are asking for help.

Reframe asking for help from being a point of weakness to developing confidence in solving a problem. Ultimately, the goal is to have the issue solved. Be confident in what you know and be confident in knowing when you need to bring in someone more knowledgeable than you.

2. Collect positive feedback. Now I’m not suggesting you need to base your confidence on what others say. Far from it. I’m suggesting when you receive a compliment, you graciously accept it and tuck it in your back pocket. Actually, you need an entire bag like the one Mary Poppins carried to collect all the validations you receive.

Can you feel the weight of your bag filled with all the compliments and validations you collect over time? Carry your bag with pride.

We can receive 10 times as many compliments as negative comments, yet we fixate on that one negative comment. Peek into your bag when you feel yourself getting bogged down and note how your mood shifts almost immediately and your confidence is bolstered.

3. Use positive affirmations. These are positive statements that resonate with you and reflect your true core values. They serve you best when you repeat them daily – especially if you feel those sneaky saboteurs or negative thoughts creeping in. Saying positive affirmations daily can improve your self-esteem and thus your confidence. Looking in the mirror while repeating can be especially powerful.

Not sure where to get started? A quick online search of positive affirmations will yield a plethora of examples, but here are a few I especially like for building confidence:

• I speak my truth.

• I am capable and confident.

• I am proud of my accomplishments.

4. Trust yourself. I believe confidence comes from trusting yourself and listening to your intuition. Too often we let our saboteurs overpower our true selves when we know deep down, we are capable. Many of us have lost touch with our intuition and we confuse those feelings of dissonance with our saboteurs. But if you really tune in and explore what’s most important to you, your core values, you will begin to trust yourself again. With trust, comes confidence.

How are you feeling now?

It’s your time, my friend, to be that woman exuding confidence like no other.

Until we meet again ~ enjoy your journey!