Whenever I speak to women who share with me their supposed lack of confidence, it’s usually surrounding something they’d like to do, maybe a goal they have, and they’ll say, “If I had confidence, I’d do this” or “I just want to have more confidence so I can do that.”
Here’s the truth about confidence: it doesn’t come from an external source, like you’d go to a store and pick it up, pay for it, carry it home, and all of a sudden you have confidence. We know it doesn’t work like that, right?
Confidence is something we do and can create ourselves, because confidence is a state, and so it means that we can create confidence ourselves at any given moment.
Let me also give the dictionary definition of confidence, which is: ‘to have certainty in your ability.’ Confidence is actually defined as having certainty in your ability, and so when someone is saying, “I don’t have the confidence to do this,” then what they’re actually expressing is, ‘I don’t feel certain in my ability to do this thing.’
Let me take you back to that 1:1 client I mentioned last week. She’d said that she wished she had confidence, and so when I dropped this definition to her, she took a pause because she could see example after example, after example in her life, where she was certain in her ability.
For her to have escaped certain experiences in her life, she had to be certain that she could escape harm; she had to be certain that she could apply for that job. She had certainty. And although the uncertainty was unconscious, it was leading her to do certain things and make certain choices; and she was consciously telling herself that she lacked in confidence.
And what she was actually doing was holding and carrying herself to fulfill this belief that she doesn’t have confidence, when in reality, she had certainty and confidence in her ability.
As you’re reading this, I want you to consider how this definition and redefinition of confidence changes your perspective about yourself, because you create confidence through your certainty and ability to do things. Think about the things you know you can do, the things you know you do, or the things you are completely sure of that are exemplified in your life, and now attach the new meaning of confidence to those things.
What changes for you now?
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