Episode 54: The Confidence Challenge Day Three
Confidence is something that everyone wants but few people know what it really is or even how to get it. In this series of 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!
Episode 54: The Confidence Challenge day three: Embrace Yourself
Welcome back to the podcast and to DAY THREE of the Confidence Challenge! Before we dive in I just wanted to remind you that there are only a few days left to access the membership promotion I have going on until the end of May 2020.
When I talk to people about confidence they struggle to identify themselves with a lack of confidence. They say things like, “I am confident but I struggle with worrying about what others think of me. I struggle with certain relationships, I struggle to know that I’m enough sometimes and if I’ll ever feel like I’ve found my purpose and what I’m supposed to do”
So here’s the thing here, that IS a lack of confidence friends. Confidence is synonymous with certainty. We can be certain in a great many things and feel confident in those things. You can feel crazy confident in tying your shoes and insecure in giving a talk or teaching a lesson.
You can feel super confident in walking across the room and feel insecure in wearing a bathing suit at the pool.
You can be both confident AND insecure and what I’m offering you is an opportunity to create a life of confidence without the insecurity and doubt.
And all throughout your life, you’re going to encounter insecurity and doubt because all through our lives we’re operating with our human brains that are wired to look out for fear and potential danger – prone to worry about the future and what things could mean for us. Confidence, however, helps you through all of that. It shines light on the dark areas as they arise. It brings certainty into the unknowns.
We will always have unknowns because the future is unknown. It hasn’t happened yet. The beauty of confidence is that it doesn’t matter what the future brings, you can create confidence, certainty, and security ahead of time so that you can walk into the unknown with your head high.
This is the power of confidence. In knowing what confidence really is and how to cultivate that for yourself.
This is a skill that is undervalued simply because it’s misunderstood.
I’m so happy you’re hear on the podcast today, I hope you have the challenge already downloaded and that you’re going through day by day as well. But I will invite you to go deeper. To cultivate confidence so that circumstances and things outside of your control feel like water off a duck’s back and you can say with certainty, confidence, and with security, “come what may” and love it, and look forward to it.
That’s the gift of diving deep with me in the membership. There’s a TON that you’ll have access to. I’m so proud of everything on there and that’s available to you. It will up-level your life. Come join me. Be a part of something incredibly amazing.
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Okay, let’s dive in. Today we’re talking about Day Three of the Confidence Challenge.
Today is all about embracing all the parts of you.
Let’s review what confidence IS first, Confidence is knowing and embracing all the parts of you and being able to trust in yourself and in your abilities.
The last two episodes I talked about getting to KNOW yourself on a deep level and to understand what’s going on in your mind. Really taking a flashlight and shining light into all those dark areas so you can make it known, tangible, and actually have something to work with.
A lot of us like to think in generalizations. We say things like, “It’s scary”, “They might judge me”, “What will THEY think?”, “People will think I’m fat” and I always ask them, “who is they?”, “What is it?”
And it’s harder for them to come up with something, usually, the answer is “well, I don’t know, people” and that’s too broad and general for you to grab hold of.
I’m reading the Wizard of Oz to my kids right now and when they first go to see the wizard he’s all big and powerful and to them terrifying. In the book, he takes a different shape and form to each person and that made him even scarier because they didn’t know who or what they were dealing with.
But then later Toto the dog accidentally knocks over a screen where a little old man is hiding pretending to be the big, scary wizard – sorry spoiler alert – I’m hoping you’ve all seen the movie that’s been out since 1939 but sorry if you haven’t.
But that’s what happens in our minds. When we’re generalizing we’re creating the big, scary, not tangible Oz so when you challenge yourself to get more specific and really understand what it is you’re afraid of that’s when the screen comes down and you see it for what it is, for who it is you’re worried about, and it’s always smaller, more tangible, more workable.
So when you find yourself saying things like that, generalized, big, nameless things challenge yourself to know who exactly, what exactly, and make it manageable for you.
Then we want to learn how to embrace all the parts of you. This is bigger than it sounds. In this step, we’re validating your self worth and who you are as a human being. When we’re insecure and doubting we worry that we’re not okay, that something is wrong with us, if only we were different THEN they’d treat us better, like us more, be able to do more, etc.
So we operate from this insecure, low to no self-worth stance and it feels terrible. For a lot of us we spiral down into this shame cycle where we start taking note of everything that’s “wrong” with us and why we are the way we are and it’s a dark, lonely, awful place. Lots of tears, lots of stress, lots of unhelpful things.
Let’s not do that. That’s why step two is so essential.
You have to be able to see yourself as a worthy, valid, perfectly normal human being. You have to give yourself the gift of making sure your worth as a human being is intact.
This looks like adding: And it’s okay to the end of your phrases
Like this, “I’m freaking out over that comment and it’s okay”
People struggle with this. They don’t like to use it at first because they worry that if they say, “and it’s okay” that they’re really endorsing that, that they’re agreeing with it and they don’t so it’s not okay, they’d rather punish themselves and then the negative self-critical thoughts come back and before you know it you’re in the dark, lonely, negative space I talked about just moments ago.
Not a fun place, remember?
Adding, “and it’s okay” doesn’t mean you’re agreeing with or endorsing what happened. What it means is that you acknowledge that you’re human with a human brain. It means that you’re working through some things and all of THAT is okay.
It doesn’t mean you’re staying there. It means that nothing is wrong with you. There’s a challenge here, something to understand, to examine, to work with but nothing is wrong with you as a whole.
Remember, Sheri Dew reminds us again and again, “you didn’t come to this earth to gain your worth, you brought it with you”
Step two isn’t proving you have worth or that you’re worthy of this self-worth. It’s to remind you that nothing you do here can alter that. You are 100% worthy, valid, and perfect at being a human being.
It’s okay that this thing is a struggle. That’s what you’re saying. It’s okay because it won’t always be a struggle. Challenges are meant to be overcome. Trials are mean to be difficult so they can make you stronger, more compassionate, more of who you want to be. That’s what’s okay.
Think about what embracing looks like to you.
It’s not just validating or high fiveing – it’s embracing.
What visual do you get when you think of embracing?
Hugging, and not the barely patting hug but a real, deep, bear hug embrace.
That’s what this step is about. It’s about holding you tightly and reminding you that you’re human. That you’re worthy, that you’re okay, that you’re going to be okay. It’s reminding you that you’re in your corner. You’re not alone. Nothing is wrong with you.
Russell M. Nelson when asked how to help others overcome personal challenges responded with two things:
1.) teach them who they are
2.) and what their purpose is
Notice how beautifully these two coincide with confidence.
The first component of confidence is knowing who you are – it’s getting to know yourself in every detail possible – and as we continue to grow, to evolve, to change, to be presented with new things, new opportunities, new challenges there’s even more to get to know, to understand – getting to know yourself is a lifelong – if not all eternity kind of thing. We’re never done getting to know ourselves because we’re never done growing.
Now the second part is to teach or remind them about what their purpose is
Your purpose as a human being, as a child of God, as an individual, as a member of a community, as a daughter, friend, wife, teacher, mother, person.
It’s reminding you of your worth because when you know who you are and what you’re capable of you’ll also remember how incredible that is, how amazing you are and just how precious you really are.
This is embracing.
It’s seeing the challenge for what IT really is and not muddling it up as a self-worth problem because that’s not accurate. We are always 100% worthy. Nothing we could ever do here would take that away or devalue our worth.
Think about that $20 analogy where you can step on it, run it over with your car, get it muddy, wrinkle it up, throw it in the dryer, draw a face on it, etc and it’s still worth $20. Nothing you can do will devalue it’s worth. It will always be worth $20.
The same Principle is true here. Nothing you do will ever devalue who you are as a human being and as a beloved child of God.
And think about that, what does knowing that mean to you? Knowing that you’re a child of God? Who is God? What does that mean to you? What does that mean FOR you?
How does that understanding change things for you?
Embrace you, understand you and where you’re coming from. So the first tool for embracing you can use is the, “and it’s okay” tool, the second is understanding by adding, “Of course…”
“Of course I’m freaking out about that because that’s what my brain is wired to do”
We all have what’s known as the negativity bias – it’s entire job is to scan for potential dangers and threats and unknowns and to sound the alarm. It’s not that you’re a worrier or that you’re not strong or that something is wrong with you. It’s that your brain is doing what brains do. It’s doing a perfectly good job at what it’s designed to do.
So instead of resisting it or arguing with it you just acknowledge it.
“of course my brain wants to worry about that”
Have you ever been so afraid of something – illness or a spot, a new mole and before you go to the doctor you’re freaking out about it, you’re reading WebMD and you’re 99.99999% sure you’re dying and you have some rare diseases you’re that 0.00000001% that has it
Then you go to the doctor and they’re like, “oh yeah, that’s totally normal” and they write it off as being unimportant and like a regular old thing?
All the sudden you feel a huge weight lifted off your shoulders because you were so worried that something was wrong with you when really it was nothing. You’re totally okay, it’s totally fine and you can move forward.
It’s the same thing here. Your brain is going to worry that something is wrong with you, that this isn’t normal, that you’re not okay, that you’re the special snowflake and only you struggle with this and you shouldn’t and all dark and scary and not fun.
So when you see your brain for what it is and what it’s doing you can then understand it and embrace its craziness. “of course I’m worried about this, this is what my brain does” which again, is why step one is so pivotal. You have to understand what your brain likes to do.
For a long time, my brain liked to jump to rejection. Someone would say something or not say something and my brain would take a huge leap to rejection. They’re rejecting you. They don’t like you. You’re different.
And seeing those patterns and understanding them was really helpful for me because then I was onto my brain. I was mindful of what it was doing. It wasn’t a shock or believing it. It was realizing, “okay, brain, I see you. Of course, that’s what you’re thinking because that’s what you like to do and it’s okay. It’s okay because I’ve got you.”
And next week I’ll talk about step three on the how and how things are going to work out and how you can feel secure in moving forward but right now what you’re really looking for here is validation, for understanding.
Have you ever stopped to think about why you do the things you do after your confidence has taken a dive?
Right after you give a talk or teach a lesson or even make comments to the group more than likely you seek feedback. Did you like it? Was it okay? Did I look okay? What’d you think?
And it’s really because you put yourself out there – into the unknowns so of course your brain is on alert and starting to wonder and worry and it leaves room for questions, will people accept me? Am I enough? Did I do enough? Did it sound okay because if it sounded okay then that means I’m enough? I’m worthy of acceptance and belonging and I can move forward.
But even if they say exactly all the right things, yeah, you’re great! I loved it! It’s not enough because you’re still you with your brain who is still questioning and wondering, are they just saying that? They’re just being nice. What do they really think?
So I invite you to skip that middle man and work straight with your brain. I gave a talk, I taught a lesson, I said words in a group or posted or whatever you did and it’s okay. Of course, my brain is wanting to freak out, high five brain for doing your job but I’m gonna take it from here.
That’s embracing. That’s knowing and embracing all the parts of you.
It’s giving you something tangible to work with, to understand, to shine light on and it’s keeping you whole and intact. It’s reminding you of who you are and what your purpose is.
Embrace all of you.
It IS okay because you’re human and whole and worthy, and so, so capable of accomplishing everything you want to accomplish.
Okay, friends, I’m excited to come back next week and talk to you all on TRUST and learning to trust in yourself and in your abilities.
Don’t forget – this is the LAST week to jump on that promotion. Again, these tools are revolutionary and will transform your life in ways that you can scarcely comprehend. Come join me, come join us. We’re a community of incredible human beings and we can’t wait to enfold you into this special group.
Okay, thanks again! Talk to you next week!
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