Confidence is a funny old thing.
I came across a post I wrote over 10 years ago discussing how I lacked confidence in myself.
I talked about the empowering aspects of exercise, gaining new skills in life, qualifications, self-improvement and accepting mistakes.
Recently, I’ve really started to change my narrative around confidence.
You can only really lack confidence if you believe in an invisible standard or criteria set by ourselves, society or the people around you.
You will always struggle to feel confident if you allow your self-worth to be defined for you and keep reacting to this definition by ‘doing’ and ‘being’ more.
A lack of confidence is really a symptom of becoming overly focused on clauses, judgements and any opportunity for you to be criticised.
If you constantly fight back by accumulating more knowledge, successful achievements, assets and enhancing your physicality – you keep the wheels in motion.
You risk losing huge amounts of time proving yourself and continually checking where you feature in the chart of comparison.
Confidence is really about trusting yourself and being yourself.
Regardless.
Or should that be less regarding of others.
You don’t know it all, need it all, have it all and you’re never meant to so please just breathe!
Swap the idea of lacking confidence for humble, curious, open minded and interested in growth – and now you sound like a great human being.
Your next challenge is to withstand failing, embarrassment, being wrong, messing up and then simply standing back up as your good self.
Once you begin expressing negative emotions like fear, anger, sadness when needed and doing a little people displeasing – you’re staying true to yourself.
Confidence is really a state that occurs when experiences give you clarity about how to be real and authentic in this life.
When you look at it this way, you’re already confident but maybe need to be a little bit louder about it.