Many of you have asked me, “How do I cultivate confidence? How can my children become confident?” In order to cultivate confidence, you have to start by asking yourself: “What gets in the way of confidence?”
To lay the foundation for being confident, you have to consider what seemingly harmless questions you are asking yourself that are actually undermining your self-belief. I call these “crappy questions,” and they usually sound something like: “What’s wrong with me? Is this normal? Why is my life so hard?”
These questions make you into a victim rather than the leader of your life. They trigger shame rather than understanding.
You can respond to the shame storm with compassion. Remind yourself that everybody struggles. Nobody is perfect. There’s no need for the Trauma Olympics.
Listen in to this episode, which originally aired in 2019, as I talk about how you can move away from shame and toward confidence by embracing vulnerability and self-compassion. I’ll share some of my favorite affirmations for cultivating confidence, as well as some tips for taking small steps toward a more confident you.
LISTEN HERE
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
- Why it’s important to ask yourself what thoughts + stories are getting in the way of your confidence
- How crappy questions mislead us into focusing on evidence that proves how wrong or broken we think we are
- Key things to remember when you are in the middle of a shame storm and want to stop it
- What you gain by approaching your story + your feelings with compassion instead of judgment + shame
- Why confidence is the willingness to be vulnerable and figure things out as you go, rather than knowing the outcome
RESOURCES FOR YOU
- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, and Douglas Abrams
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