Confidence is something that all of us, especially us women wish we had more of. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others who seem to have tons of confidence & we wish we were more like that. We wish we could just live confidently & authentically.
Related: Gaining confidence to be your true, authentic self, 9 things to stop doing to get the most out of life
Here’s the thing- YOU CAN! You absolutely have all the power inside of you to reach that level of confidence that you desire.
There are just a couple tips that I have to help you gain that confidence!
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PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU TELL YOURSELF
The most prominent characteristic of someone who is confident is that they believe in themselves. When you believe in yourself, you are more likely to carry yourself more confidently than when you don’t believe in yourself. It seems simple, but this is definitely the very first thing to do when trying to live more confidently. But, this doesn’t come without training your brain to stop saying all of those mean things to yourself.
Make it a goal to start creating awareness around all the things that you say to yourself & try to challenge yourself to replace negative self talk with a positive one. Once you start to train your brain to think of yourself more positively, the more likely you are to start believing in yourself & living more confidently.
CREATE HEALTHY HABITS
The more you take care of yourself, the better you will feel.
At the end of the day, how you treat yourself & your body will have a major impact on how you feel about yourself overall. Did you know that the food that you eat has an impact on how you feel? On your mental health? So, if you are eating crappy food all the time, you are probably going to feel crappy. The result of feeling crappy often leads to beating yourself up, getting angry at yourself, self sabotage, not believing in yourself to be able to do certain things, etc, etc.
Creating healthy habits into your lifestyle will have such a major impact on your life & how you feel about yourself, you might be surprised! When you take care of yourself, the better you will feel and the more confident energy you will put out into the world. These habits might look different for different people, but some ideas include (definitely not limited to):
- Moving your body
- Feeding your body healthy foods
- Picking up a book instead of watching so much TV
- Making it a goal to park further away in the parking lot so you can get in extra steps
When you take the time to engage in some simple habits, you are more likely to start feeling better about yourself. Incorporating simple healthy habits throughout your day can make a HUGE impact on how you feel overall.
Sometimes, it can often cause a ripple effect. Meaning, one simple habit is likely to lead to another, and another, and another.
SET THE RIGHT GOALS & ACTIONABLE STEPS TO ACHIEVE THEM
Here’s the thing, I’m actually not much of a fan of setting goals, but I have worked hard on creating more confidence around my ability to achieve all of my goals & aspirations.
Setting goals is something that we all know is very important to making sure that you are continuing to move forward, staying focused, but if you don’t approach them right, they won’t work right. When you don’t think you are achieving your goals, it really affects your overall confidence in yourself.
When I used to set goals, I only focused on the big picture & often on things that were not in my control. Things like, getting a job, making enough money to move out of my parents house, etc. These things are great goals to have, but achieving those goals are in the hands of someone else. Instead of focusing on the big picture, you have to break it down into things that you are in control of. Like, making it a goal to apply to 10 jobs a day & ask for feedback if you don’t get the job.
When you break your goals down into actionable steps that you can start taking, it’s so much easier to actually reach your goals and feel really good about it. When you see that you are reaching your goals, you have so much more confidence in yourself & your abilities!
What can you start doing TODAY to get you to that goal?
Grab my FREE goal setting worksheet!
FACE YOUR FEARS & START TAKING ACTION
One of the most important things that you have to do in order to gain more confidence in yourself is to start facing your fears. Fears in terms of something that you know you need to do in order to gain confidence in yourself. Something like, public speaking or taking the leap to start your own business.
In order to have more confidence in yourself, you have to start getting uncomfy & doing things that make you want to jump out of your skin. Trust me, every single time that I have done something that scares the crap out of me, I not only grow from the experience, but I gain so much more confidence in myself & my abilities.
So, what is something that you really want to do, but you know there is a possibility that it could take you to the next level?
Do that. Be okay with failing because that’s where growth happens.
Related: 9 Simple Tips to Improve Your Life, How to know if it’s time to hire a life coach
SEE THE OPPORTUNITIES & LEARNING EXPERIENCES IN FAILURES
When you start facing your fears & start taking scary action, you are more likely to fail & fall on your face quite a bit. That’s not to scare you or anything, but to empower you. There is such a negative connotation with failing, because it means that you didn’t succeed.
Related: How to improve your mindset
Every failure comes with a learning experience. When you fail, you get uncomfortable, but you stand back up knowing more than you did before and you keep going. When you keep going, you start to feel more confident in yourself. It might be a journey, but when you look back at all that you have been able to accomplish, it really puts things into perspective about how much you have truly accomplished.
I talk about this in my post about how Getting Fired Was The Best Thing To Happen To Me. Getting fired is often seen as a bad thing, right? It’s seen as a “failure”. But, I took that learning experience and turned it into building my own business because I learned that I wasn’t meant to be proving myself to Corporate America.
You can let your failures hold you down & discourage you, or you can see them as a learning experience & allow growth to happen from it. It might feel crappy for a little bit, but when you are able to shift this perception, it is incredibly empowering.
JOURNAL ABOUT YOUR STRENGTHS, YOUR EXPERIENCES & WHAT YOU LOVE ABOUT YOURSELF
I often write about & preach about the benefits of journaling & I do because I truly believe in the therapeutic nature of it. In addition to practicing positive self talk, it’s also important to write about everything that is going on.
Write it all down! Get yourself a nice journal & make it a habit to write in it daily. Write down everything that is going right now- what you love about yourself, what you are happy about, what is bothering you, what you are going to do to continue moving forward. If you don’t deal with the emotions that you are feeling & also take the time to acknowledge & celebrate yourself, you are going to continue to stay stuck.
Many success stories & successful people include journaling constantly in their daily routine in order to get everything out of their subconscious & work through what is going on. It’s something that you have to do!
Journaling can even help with working through any limiting beliefs you might have, what is bothering you right now. It can help you have breakthroughs & “aha!” moments.
If you are struggling with what to write about, I wrote a post on 50 Journal Prompts For Self Reflection & Self Discovery that you might find helpful! Inside that post is also a free printable guide that you can download! ❤
STOP COMPARING YOURSELF & YOUR SUCCESS TO OTHERS
Here’s the thing that I really want you to think about. We are all on this journey of life- we’re all different & in different points of our journey. We have all had different life experiences that have lead us to where each of us are today, which means that we are all going to be at different point of our life. When you are comparing yourself to someone else, where they are, you are sabotaging your beliefs about yourself. You are looking at them and thinking, “why isn’t that me?” It’s not you because you aren’t them!
If you find that you are having trouble not comparing yourself, stop following certain people on social media- even if it’s friends or family. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care about them, it’s just something that you need to do in order to stop the habit.
Once you can your power back from other people, that’s when they magic can really begin.
I have gotten to a point where I actually feel EMPOWERED & MOTIVATED when I see others succeed. I absolutely LOVE seeing others, especially women, absolutely crushing it. It’s a form of motivation for myself & it lights a fire under me to continue working on myself and my own goals.
This ultimately helps me feel better, more confident in myself because I know that if they can do it, so can I. You have to b e l i e v e in yourself!
At the end of the day, confidence is something that we all want. We all want to go out and live life to the absolute fullest. I got myself fired up writing this post & I hope you got fired up reading it!
YOU have the power inside of you to get the most out of life. Confidence isn’t something that only some people are lucky enough to have. Sometimes, it takes a lot of inner work & lifestyle changes to get to that point, but it’s something so worth it.
You have this one life to live, don’t hold yourself back from getting the most out of it! <3
I do offer 1:1 coaching and invite you to check out my opportunities if that is something that you would be interested in. Click here for more information on my 1:1 coaching opportunities! <3
>> click here to download my 5 tips for crushing your goals
>> click here to download my self care planning worksheet
>> click here to download my 50 journal prompts for self reflection & self discovery
Xx,
Jess
Hi,
I admire your approach, and I definitely agree with you on the positive effect that healthy habits have on building our confidence in ourselves.
Stopping negative thinking is another cornerstone of one’s effort to build self-confidence.
I mean, if our own thoughts are always negative, regardless of the actual situation, i.e. we always see the glass half empty, we will never be able to increase confidence in ourselves, because this is just another case of feeling negative about something/someone; in this case, ourselves.
By increasing positive thinking and boosting the feel-good factor within ourselves, we will have the opportunity to set the foundations of confidence in ourselves.
This is a fantastic post!, Everyday I do 10 minutes of journaling, where I say positive things about myself, kind of like self-love.