The High Esteem Podcast

Stop Waiting for Confidence (Cultivate It!)

December 28, 2020 Sarah Erwin: High Esteem Coaching Season 1 Episode 3
The High Esteem Podcast
Stop Waiting for Confidence (Cultivate It!)
Show Notes Transcript

"I just don't have the confidence to do that..."

We've all been there before: wanting to do something, but feeling so fearful and so completely self-doubting that we don't think it possible.

We hope that one day we just might have the confidence to go after our dreams, but until then, we keep ourselves small (after all, it's safer that way).

We look at others, knocking off their accomplishments one after another, and either think that they're much more talented than we are, or simply that they have a 'natural' confidence that you just weren't born with.

Well guess what, folks? You're not going to just 'find' confidence; it has to be built.

This means leaning into fear and discomfort, and letting yourself suck for a while so that you can give yourself a chance to grow. It means trying new things, celebrating your successes, and reflecting on your progress to prove to yourself that you CAN do hard things.

In episode 3, we talk about why waiting on confidence is the worst thing you can do for your growth. Join me for tips on how to move forward towards your goals, get comfortable with the uncomfortable, and build your confidence muscle... one day at a time!

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Hello and welcome to my final episode of 2020. The High Esteem podcast is now only about a month old and I am so excited to be winding down this. Oh, let's just say it, a shit show of a year. This year has been wild and for a lot of people. It's been really awful. And even for the best of us, it's been pretty darn hard. 

I think our lives have sort of been thrown into chaos and some things that we believed in some comfort that we took for granted has just been ripped out from beneath our feet. And I think that it has been a struggle to say the least. And I really hope that you all found a way to enjoy the holidays. And if you didn't, I want you to know that you're really not alone.

 A lot of people were struggling this year. We all were, and I think that is really important own where we are at and not to pretend it's something else or feel pressure to feel something else. Its okay if you're not feeling great right now, I wish you weren't feeling awful. I really, really do. But I'm just saying that don't let anyone tell you how you should be feeling during the holidays during a global pandemic.

 

And we all know that life continues to go on with those things. Nothing exists in a vacuum too so you are doing your best. I promise you, you're probably doing better than you think. And you know what, if you just wanted to let this year pass, that is okay. So here's to getting through it. We are all here on the other end and let's start talking about how we move forward with 2021, because no matter what state the world is in, we are continuing guys. 

 

We are moving forward and yes, we have some uncertainty to push through, but we always will. We've overcome mountains before we have overcome multiple hurdles and here we are doing it again. So I wanted to talk today about drum roll, about confidence. And that is the forefront of my entire business. High Esteem coaching is all about helping people cultivate the confidence and the self-trust that they need to push forward and do what they want in life and create that purpose and reach their potential on their own terms.

 

And I think that the biggest problem with confidence is that we wait for it. We wait for it to happen to us. We wait for confidence to come to us. We wait for it to be found, okay, now I don't want to be that hard ass person, but I'm just going to say it guys, if you don't have confidence right now, you're not just going to find it. And that's not saying you're not going to find confidence, but I want to focus on that word find, okay. You don't just stumble across it. It isn't like one of those little coins in Mario cart. I don't know why that's coming to my mind. For those of you who don't get my super nineties reference, it was a super Nintendo and or a Nintendo game way back in the day. So if I am dating myself that is fine.

 

I'm 31, I'm going to own it. Anyways, confidence is something we have to cultivate folks. We have to cultivate it. I can't tell you the number of times that I said, Oh; I don't have the confidence to do that. Or, oh, that person's lucky. They're more naturally confident than me or, you know what? I'm pretty good at that, but I would never have the confidence to do it. One of those things was building a business. Oh, I don't think I'd ever have the confidence to run my own business. Oh, I don't think I'd ever have the confidence to get through a master's degree. Oh, I don't have a confidence to flirt with people. I like, and that's why I'm single. I'm just not built that way.

 

Guys, do some of us have more confidence naturally than others? Yes and listen, I can't tell you how much of that is nature versus nurture and how much of that comes from our life experiences. But what I will say is it is not a permanent state. It all comes down to having a growth mind-set. And what that means is believing in your capacity to learn and grow and figure things out and that your abilities, the ones you have now, aren't set in stone. 

 

They're not something inherent that's prescribed to you. That is as far as you ever will go in life. We can develop new skills and even the things that we're not naturally good at. Now, I'm not saying that if you are terrible at math and hate math, that if you studied for hours and hours and hours, you could become a mathematician.I don't even know if I'll go that far, but could you get good at it? Absolutely if you studied, if you really wanted to, and it all comes back to that drive that passion, that perseverance and that ability to lean in to not knowing, leaning into that discomfort and letting yourself suck for a bit. 

 

I am doing a podcast right now, out of my closet. I'm just going to be real here okay. I have a candle lit. It is actually not a candle lit, is a plastic folk handle because I am scared a piece of clothing will fall down and I've made it kind of cosy in here, but it's a closet that doesn't have quite a floor. It's a bunch of shelves once you open the doors and it's a closet that's built in, carved into the wall. So my feet are right now on a shelf and I'm leaning over a microphone that is on the top shelf that is about chest height in my closet, on a bar stool chair that I brought in.

 

Now can I just say that I am not comfortable? And I know we're talking about mental comfort here or mental discomfort, but its all part of it, right? I could have put this off for another two years and said, I don't have the proper space for it. Or, Oh my gosh, my office is echo-e, which I found out as I was doing this, but guess what I didn't. And I figured it out. And is this podcast going to be a lot better a year from now and a lot better in quality? I really hope so, but you know what? This is a start and I'm really, really fricking happy with where it is right now. And the reason that I am able to say that is because I worked on this hard.

 

I worked hard on leaning into that discomfort and it really isn't about your ability to get confidence, to find confidence that determines your success or whether or not you will continue to develop it, or whether or not you will accomplish things. It is literally just your ability to feel the fear and do it anyway. And I wish I remembered who first said that, where I got that quote from, but I really don't, so kudos to whoever said that first, but really feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It's okay if you have butterflies in your chest, and if you feel a little sick to your stomach, take your time. Be gentle with yourself. Take breaks, go as slow as you need to, but do not abandon your goals in your dreams because you say you are not confident enough and that you will do it when you are more confident, because if you're waiting, but you're not doing anything and you're not leaning into that discomfort and that fear, you're not letting yourself suck.

 

You're not getting comfortable with that discomfort folks. You're not going to get there. Just like a muscle our brain has pathways is developed over time that when we think those ways over and over and over often in those negative ways about ourselves that have been reinforced over time through our experiences. The more we think those thoughts, the more we strengthen them, the stronger those thoughts get the more, the muscle memory of those pathways in our brain develops and gets stronger and stronger and stronger. But our brain has something called neuroplasticity and that means that it can be rewired. We can develop new pathways, just like we can develop new muscles in the body. Think about going to the gym. Remember that first time that you went when you were super awkward. Okay I saw yah. No, I did not, but I'd been there right?

 

And that first time that we go, when we can barely lift the weight and we feel so incredibly awkward and we go, I can't do this. I'm just not strong enough but a lot of us have pushed through that point. And we've gotten to the point where we've seen our muscles develop over time to the point where we're just doing it naturally. We don't even have to think about it. It is a practice, right? We practice every single day, getting a little bit better until our body just knows how to do it. Now it's the same with changing our thoughts and it's the same with developing confidence. But what really helps as well is collecting experiences that give us everything that we can do it and can push through while we're working on all that mental stuff. So if we're able to try small things and accomplish them, we feel good about ourselves.

 

It gives us a sense of reward but more than that, if we reflect on that as we go, if we knock off those things, we knock off those goals and we're able to look back at it and say, wait, where was I a few weeks ago with this? There's a tool that I use called a 555 rule where we look at where we were five weeks ago, five months ago, and five years ago. And compare it to where we are now in any dimension. And it’s something that I used to help people build their confidence because often we don't do that reflection and we just go, Oh, I'm not where I want to be. Well take a second and think about where you were before and then tell me that you cannot get better at things. So the confidence building doesn't only have to do with working on our minds, but it's reflecting on our experiences is building that evidence for ourselves.

 

And it's looking at it, looking at it and seeing what we have done, what we can do and pushing the limits of where we believe we can go by allowing us ourselves to try new things and feel uncomfortable. That might not be strength now, that thing you want I do, but it absolutely can be. And you don't have to wait for confidence to fall into your lap in order to try it out. And in order to start to move forward towards that goal. And when we are cultivating this confidence, when we're trying new things and pushing ourselves to new limits and reflecting as we go, when those thoughts come up, where we go, I can't do this. I'm not good enough. Or I'm not talented enough or I suck. We can look at that evidence. We can say, wait, I thought this last time, when did I think of this before?

 

Oh, right maybe that was five months ago when you were trying a new thing for them first time. And did you get through that? Yes, you did and this is we build self-trust. We move ourselves forward towards goals; trust her to figure it out. And then we collect evidence for the fact that we did that we can look back on over time instead of betraying that trust with her, by giving up. And then what does that do? That actually just reinforces the idea we had in the first place that we weren't good enough and that we couldn't do it because after all we couldn't. We gave up, we didn't get there. All we're doing there is self-sabotaging and building evidence that we can, but that is a choice we can choose differently. We can continue to let our self-suck until we suck a little bit less, collect the evidence, reflect, keep trying again and challenge your thoughts when those thoughts when those come up to show yourself all the other times where you have done it.

 

Okay. Every time you're reflecting in that way, every time you're challenging your thoughts, you're working on your self-esteem and your confidence. You're building it a little bit. How by at least not knocking yourself down and sometimes it is just about starting there. And about those other people who appear more confident than you, who seem to have, but altogether, and they come at it more naturally because they have that confidence. I want to remind you that you don't know their story. You don't know where they started. You don't know what they're saying to themselves in their head. You don't know what fear they're feeling inside. Maybe they're doing those things and they're pushing through and it's becoming more and more natural, but maybe every time they try something big like that, almost sick to their stomach. And those butterflies are just going crazy in their stomach.

 

Maybe they started a few years back, completely sacked, and then kept going to this point where they can confidently do it and know that they can. You don't know their story and this is perception. You're reading their minds and you're reading their circumstances and you're deciding them so that you can prove to yourself that you are not the same. It is a classic way that we self-sabotage by letting our perceptions get in the way of where we want to be, how we feel and how we perceive the world around us and in contrast ourselves. So let's just check that a little bit and admit that we know nothing. We know nothing of where we could be, what we can become, and we know nothing else about how other people got there as well, unless we've read their story and even still, maybe not.

 

So food for thought, guys, think of that going into the New Year, as you plan your goals, where do you want to go in the next year? And just start to think of a place that you would like to start. Start somewhere today, before you are ready, feels scared, feel uncomfortable, feel all things. And that sheer excitement and terror that come together when you're doing something that is worthwhile and will grow you. And with that, I want to close off the High Esteem podcasts, very short 2020 chapter, and wish you all the best for 2021. You're going to do great. Wherever the world is at, if you set your mind to your own growth, to building your confidence, to learning, to trust yourself, everything else will follow, because that is the most important thing that you can have in this world is your own self-trust okay, guys, that is it happy holidays and happy new year. I wish you all the best for 2021 and I will see you soon in the next episode.

 

All right, everyone. That is it for today, but if you liked this episode, don't forget to hit subscribe so that you don't miss future episodes, and then go ahead and leave me a review because of course it really helps me and my podcast out. For more tips, training, and tools to help you hold yourself in high esteem, follow me over on my Instagram page @your_high_esteem_, and join the your High Esteem Facebook group through the link in the show notes to join your community, to do this work together.

 

To learn more about me and my private coaching, you can also head over to www.highesteemcoaching.com, and then browse my new programs and free tools there. 

 

Thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll see you all in the next episode!