Episode 53: The Confidence Challenge Day Two

Confidence is something that everyone wants but few people know what it really is or even how to get it. In these next five episodes I’ll be taking the mystery out of confidence and giving you real tools to be able to create genuine, rock-solid confidence no matter what the circumstances are or what’s going on around you. Join LDS Life Coach Hannah Coles and start your journey to a more confident, joyful life!

Welcome back to the podcast! I hope you’re having an amazing week. Before we dive in today I just wanted to make sure you knew about then current promotion I have going on right now. A lot of you have been wanting to try out life coaching and to dive in a bit more but are on the fence and so from now until the end of this month – may 2020 I’m offering you a trial month for just $20.00 which is ridiculously low. And when you come in you’ll get access to get live coaching so you can get help with your current struggles. 

You get access to ALL the bonus classes and there’s a ton on anxiety, procrastination, handling criticism, feeling negative emotions, relationships. There’s just a ton in there and that’s not even all of them. You’ll have access to the bonus podcast workbooks that go along with the podcasts. If you like the podcast, you’ll LOVE the workbooks! There’s what I call little pick me ups when you just need some extra love, help, and redirection. You get access to get questions answered anonymously in case there’s some questions that are sensitive and you’d just rather them be anonymous. 

The membership is incredible and I highly encourage you to come over and join me. It’s the real deal and if you’re wanting to up-level your life, this is the way to go! So…you only have a week and a half left and then the special promotion is coming down so come and check that out now! Use the code: special and dive in today.

I know you’re struggling with some things right now. I get it. I was too and then I found life coaching and the tools gave me all my power back. It taught me to not just look confident but really feel confident no matter what’s going on around me. The pandemic didn’t shake my world and a lot of this came because of the tools that I teach here and especially in the membership. I was able to stop worrying about looks, weight, or what other people thought of me. All of it is incredibly powerful and I want to invite you to come and be a part of this. Gain the tools to change your world. That’s why my program, my podcast, my website are all called the catalyst because you are the catalyst for the change you’re wanting in your life. But you need tools to be able to become that for you. Come to the membership and learn these tools and then stand back and watch your whole world change. 

So don’t wait. Come. The membership is $50 a month regularly but for the next week you’ll have access to try it out for just $20. Come join! I can’t wait to work with you!

Okay, let’s dive in. Today we’re talking about Day Two of the Confidence Challenge. Getting to know you.  I hope you were able to spend some time in day one. All of these days bridge off of one another so if you haven’t listened to day one yet – you’ll want to do that first. I mentioned last week that this first step in creating genuine confidence is probably the hardest. Which is why it’s carried over into day two as well. There are three main components to confidence. 

If you’re not feeling confident it’s because you’re missing one of these three steps. Every single time you look into your fears and doubts you’re going to see and notice that you’re missing one or more of these three.

I love knowing that because then it’s simple math. It’s not thinking that you’re just not a confident person but rather what’s missing and how can I make sure I have that?

So to remind you confidence is Knowing and Embracing all the parts of you and being able to trust in yourself and in your abilities. These three are the main components and I’m going to keep talking to you about how this all works. It’s completely amazing and ingenious and will take the mystery out of confidence once and for all and once you know you’ll forever be able to create and cultivate confidence no matter what’s going on in the world, around you, who you’re with, what activities you’re involved in, no matter what.

Which is incredible when you think about it because the one thing people believe they need to move forward, to accomplish their goals, to create the life they really want is confidence. So make sure you’re doing the work and diving in and really applying because theses tools are transformative but only if they’re applied. If you don’t have the pdf file yet make sure to grab that on my website: www.thecatalystcoaching.com under the confidence challenge tab. 

Day two: getting to know you. 

So here’s the thing with this one. We think we know ourselves really well but we don’t.  I can’t tell you how many times I ask a client a question about themselves and the response is, “I don’t know”. We’re pretty good at knowing what we don’t like, especially about ourselves and others but really knowing yourself and what you do like, what you do want, why you like certain things or why you think a certain way, what you’re afraid of, what thoughts spark joy for you – we tend to spend less time thinking about and that’s a bummer and a disservice to you because our thoughts create how we feel. Why wouldn’t you want to spend time daily thinking about what you love and joy?

Too often we don’t give ourselves any praise or validation unless we’ve done something big. Unless it’s tied to some external accomplishment we don’t even give it the time of day. My sister in law just was awarded teacher of the year and that’s huge for her entire district. She’s an incredible teacher and she was so proud and wanted to share it and I was so proud of her too and then I was thinking, why don’t we share more things that we like and are proud of about ourselves? Why is it only when it’s recognized outside of us that we share with others? Why not text, “today, I just wanted to let you know that I rocked as a teacher. These kids have no idea how lucky they are!”

Or even at home, “you have no idea but I just ROCKED at my kitchen! It’s kind of amazing!” 

I know some of you are laughing/scoffing whatever you want to call it at that last one but really, why not? Why does it have to be some big accomplishment or accolade to be deserving of praise?

Think about that I’m going to circle back to it. For you to create confidence, genuine confidence not just confidence IN something but confident in self or self-confidence you have to spend more time with self. Deliberately getting to know you. 

When we think confidence comes from the external accomplishments we then wait for outside validation. We wait for others to recognize us, to award us, to compliment use to validate us, and then we think because they do that THEN we can feel confident.

But that’s simply not true. You have to LIKE yourself FIRST and then because of this self-like, you’re going to validate yourself. That validation that came from inside – that creates how you feel is going to drive you to do more things, to achieve more accomplishments, and to have more fun in the process.

There’s a lot of that work and hustle to do more, to accomplish more, to be more and we think that when we get there we’re going to feel better, we’re going to feel more confident so we push ourselves and we’re mean to ourselves and then we accomplish the thing and we’re surprised when we still don’t feel good. We’re still not confident. 

And again, this is because it was never the achievement or the accolade that creates confidence. It’s all in what you’re thinking about yourself and what you’ll allow yourself to be happy and pleased about. When others compliment you I just want you to recognize what’s really happening. It’s not the compliment that felt good. It’s not because someone else said it. It’s because you’re finally allowing yourself to believe it. When it’s you saying it you’re more easy to deflect it, to not believe it because you’re too busy reminding yourself of all your flaws and how far you still need to go.

So when someone else recognizes it and compliments you it gives you an opportunity to try on that thought and believe it because well, if they believe it then it must be true. But this is what we need to work on. Spending time getting to know you is looking for, deliberately looking for the things that you like about you, the things you appreciate about you, the things you’re proud of that may have been hard and not difficult in skill even – it can be but it doesn’t have to be. It can simply be hard just overcoming your mentality over it. 

And so when you’re actively looking for these things about yourself, noticing them, making time to intentionally think about them and feel proud of you you’re able to create that validation, that love, that self-like within yourself.

Elder Oaks once said, “you owe it to yourself to make an extra effort to discover, in every detail possible, who you really are—to discover your true potential” Make that extra effort to discover in every detail possible who you really are and what your potential is.

So a lot of this knowing lies in understanding what you need. And of course we have temporal needs but I’m specifically talking about emotional needs. 

Think about all the things you WANT from others. We talked about compliments, validation, understanding, patience, love, respect, to be valued, seen, heard. Maybe you’re wanting time or interest. 

A lot of these are sometimes chalked up to love languages and while I think it’s helpful to understand yourself and learn to pinpoint what you need and what you respond to it’s equally important to understand why you think you need that.

I know it seems self-explanatory but I encourage you to really think about it. 

Why do you NEED those things from others? 

Think about this, if you had that, if everything worked out as you wanted it to, if you had more friends, if you had that respect, if they spent more time with you, if they were genuinely interested in you and your life – how do you think you’d feel?

Really think about that one. 

This is crazy important and not something we generally think about. Because this answer is what you really want.  This feeling is what you REALLY want. It’s not the external thing we seek but the feeling. 

This is what it means to get to know yourself and your emotional needs. Giving yourself the time to figure out what you’re needing and what you’re hoping to get from others. Because you have to remember, feelings don’t come from others, they only come from what you’re thinking.

Remember, the opposite of confidence is insecurity and doubt, or fear. It’s basically saying there are unknowns. There’s some dark areas that we don’t know yet. So by giving yourself time to think about ponder and to give yourself the gift of answering these questions you also uncover the need.

It shines light on what’s really going on.

You’re not insecure because someone said something to you. You’re insecure because a part of you questions that what if that negative thing is true? What if that is me and people don’t like me? 

And for a lot of us we kind of stop here. These fears feel too terrible to continue so you just resist the feeling and seek outside validation. Notice your actions. Do you call a friend and vent hoping they’ll say, “noooo. Of course you’re not like that! They’re just crazy” – validation and then because someone else said that you’re thoughts turn to, “oh phew…okay at least someone doesn’t think of me in that light. They like me. I must be likable” and then you feel better because you finally gave yourself permission to like you.

But what happens then if you call them and they don’t validate you and it just makes it all worse?

Where are you left then?

I’ll tell you, you’re left with even more dark areas, more insecurity, more fears and more doubts. So learning to utilize this tool will not only save you from needing to vent and seeking that outside validation but will also help you to skip the middle man and give it to yourself.

So here’s what you need to do. The next time you’re feeling negative emotions – fear, worry, doubt, insecurity, whatever that is. Ask yourself two questions. This is getting to know you and understand you. Ask yourself what do I think I need? Or what do I think I want?

And this is always the surface layer. This is thinking things like, “well I want them NOT to say that thing to me or even think it about me”

And then you need to dig deeper and ask, if that happened, if they did that, if I got that how do I think I’d feel?

Really allow yourself to spend some time here. If they didn’t say or even think the thing, how would you feel?

This is what you really need. It’s always a feeling. When you’re getting to know you and spending time here understanding you you’re shining light on those dark, scary spots.

It’s like being self-conscious over your weight. And maybe no one said anything to you but inside you’re really insecure about how you look. There’s dark areas, there’s fear there. So you’d ask yourself, what do I think I need?

And again it’ll probably be surface-level thinking, “well I just want to be thin and lose weight.” And we think this – this accomplishment means that if we could get here then we could feel better. But feelings don’t come from things or accomplishments or what we do. 

So before jumping to the how and thinking that’s what you need. Stop and ask yourself question number two: If I looked how I wanted, if I weighed that certain amount how do I think I’d feel?

Beautiful?

This then is the road map because it doesn’t require that you lose weight or do anything for that matter. It’s a feeling which comes from your thoughts – not others but yours.

So now you can move forward creating that for you.

You can start noticing the things you do, start paying attention to the kind of person you are, the daily battle that you overcome that no one else sees or knows about. Be proud of yourself and start paying attention to what you really need which is always a feeling.

Remember, you owe it to yourself to get to know yourself in every detail. This is a huge part of that. It requires paying attention, being mindful and curious. It means that you need to start looking inward instead of waiting for outside validation. 

When it comes from within you’ll start noticing that you don’t need outside validation anymore. You can feel full and confident because you’re the catalyst in your life. You’re able to overcome doubts and fears. You know what you’re needs are and you have a road map to help you in overcoming them. Take the time, give yourself the gift to ask yourself these important questions.

Then come back next week to learn how to add on step two: embracing all the parts of you.

Have a fantastic week my friends!