From Insecurity to Confidence: 5 Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt

Don't feel paralyzed, boost your self-confidence with 5 short steps

Hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown and I am the host of this podcast. This is the platform that I use to talk about living a life without guilt and regret, so that you are living fully in your joy, the momentum of life. And leaving the shame and the blame behind. So if this is something that is of interest to you, I welcome you to leave a remark or leave a couple stars down as a review below.

So thank you again for your time today because all of our time is important. And today I wanted to really just hone in on the topic of self-confidence. And this is just something that kept propping up over the last week and I decided, you know what? I will make. Another show about this. I've done one in the past where I talk about five ways to kind of really boost your self-confidence, but I wanna delve a little bit deeper into what it is in the first place and why is it so many of us are looking to have some of it.

We know we need some self-confidence or confidence, but we're not really sure why, and we're not sure why we don't have as much as we would like. So we have to start first and foremost with. What is confidence? And I did my little Google search again, but there are a couple pieces to the definition that I really, really like that I never thought of before.

So the general feeling is that self-confidence is a belief that someone can rely on someone or something, and there's a firm trust. It's also a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities, and it's the state of feeling certain about the truth of something.

And I really liked the idea that there is a firm trust, so in self-confidence that we firmly trust our own capabilities. We trust our own. Ability to make a plan and to fulfill a role or to fulfill a task. So how is self-confidence then different from self-esteem? Well, self-esteem is more how you feel about yourself, which is primarily what I talk about in this podcast.

But self-confidence is how you feel about your ability or capability. To fulfill the role with hopefully having some self-esteem, and there are typically some unknown or unwritten set of rules that involve confidence. When you look at someone, for example, you know if your coworker has confidence or not.

You can know if one student is confident that they pass the exam. And the other one is confident that they did not. There is just a different way that we carry our body. There's a different way we carry our mind, our state of mind, and that's really where confidence is. It's a state of mind. And if that's the case, well how do we get into a state of mind where we feel confident?

And this is particularly important, I think when we've had episode after episode after episode in life where that confidence has been just taken, that confidence has been taken by someone important to us, someone that we placed a lot of trust in, and we felt comfortable. That's usually where we lose some of our confidence.

The other one is when we are really isolated. And whether it's out loud and like kindergarten laughed at for doing something or saying something or wearing something, but we are kind of pushed to the border of something, whether it be at work or in a relationship varsity team, JV as a senior, anything like that.

We tend to have a little less confidence on our overall ability, but. There are ways that we can train ourselves and kind of mold ourselves to be more confident in everything we do. I think it's almost unquestionable, and it's almost without a doubt that the more confidence we exude, that we are able to put out in the world, the less bullying we are susceptible to.

The less issues we will have in our personal relationships. We are confident and we feel confident in our ability and our capability to speak up for ourselves regardless of the situation and regardless if we are happy doing it. Have you ever had to be just very honest with someone, and I don't mean one of those brutally honest ones where you're just putting someone down, but just to be honest with how you feel.

In that moment or how you felt because of a situation and what does that all entail? And so number one, I'm gonna go over five things, but number one is planning and preparation. There are times that we don't get a lot of chance to do a lot of planning. I'm not necessarily, you know, planning to have a flat tire from my house to work or across the state of Texas.

In which I did have a flat tire just ahead of a tornado and a storm, but I had been prepared to change a flat tire on so many occasions, and that was something that my dad instilled in me, like he got how to change a tire. Yes, you need triple A, but you have to know how to change a tire. And I would go over it and I would go over it and I'd go over it just enough to really understand what I'm doing, but enough to also know I don't like to change a tire.

I would rather call someone else, but I can do it. And when we had this moment when our tire was flat, it was a girlfriend of mine and we were there. By Midland or so, and there was not much out there, but this gas station, I was like, well, you know, we gotta take everything out and, change the tire. And she said, I don't, I don't think I've ever done that.

I've, no, I know I haven't done that. And I said, well, we're gonna do it today. I felt confident in my ability to change a tire and I knew I could do it, and I knew I could get us to the next place, you know. And I knew I could do it before that storm was coming, cuz we had just driven out of hail and I did not feel like being in another story.

This was enough of a story. And when I talk about planning and preparation, I'm gonna still, I'm gonna still talk about the same story because we were prepared because I knew how to change a tire, but we had not planned on changing the tire. So as she packed up the car and got everything ready, There was a vital piece missing that involved the ability and the capability of changing a tire, and that was the actual jack.

So I knew how to change a tire, but I could not do it because I still couldn't lift the car. So, It's a longer story how it, it finally all went down, but it is both together. You know, you need to plan and you need to prepare because if you don't, it's not my quote, if you don't plan correctly or if you fail to plan, you are basically planning to fail.

So having a plan in place is important. Now, if it goes to plan, you know, there's certain, uh, certain jobs, you know, especially as a physical therapist in the hospital, I had a plan of who I was going to see at what time. And for the most part, at the end of the day, my day looked nothing like my plan, but I had a starting point.

It wasn't all willy-nilly. You know, there is a certain amount of change that can happen. You know that little bouncing back and forth, but it needs to happen within parameters. And when you have a plan in preparation, you know you are in a better place, you are more comfortable and therefore confident in your task.

Plan it out. If you have an interview coming up, say it over and over again. Say it in the mirror. Say it with confidence. Say it with high tone, say it with low tone. Get to the place where you have just said it so many times that you believe because you've prepared and you walk in there saying, I have given everything I can to get to this point.

It is what it is. So planning and preparation are key. The second thing is learning knowledge and training. We have to learn and a lot of us get old and we don't wanna learn anymore. We're done learning. And especially, you know, you, you go through life and you're just like, I put in all this time into learning my trade or learning, you know, this education portion, and now I owe a lot of money.

I'm tired of learning. But it is important to gain that knowledge. And gaining that knowledge requires having an open mind. It means you need to be able to be teachable to new systems and new procedures. And basically, this is where lifelong learning comes in because this learning process is in all areas of your life when it comes to learning a job.

Even if you get promoted. Then you have something new to learn. You've never been there before. If you do a lateral change and you're in a new position with new responsibilities, you're learning again. What about if you have children? Every year, they turn one year older and it's almost like you start over because this child has never been this age before and you're not sure how to interact or you know, this child, the child A, acted this way, child B is acting this way.

It's constantly learning, constantly learning what to do, how to adapt, and training is so important if we, if we fail to adapt to training. Ourselves to open ourselves. Then we stunt our own growth. And anyone who's stunted or shortened does not tend to look a little more confident, I'm just saying on that one.

And number three is find yourself a confidence role bottle. You know, I've read a lot of books. I've read a lot of the books that Tony Robbins has suggested. I've read books that Gabby Bernstein has suggested. I've read, read, read, read, read, and it's the same, same thing, basically over and over. Even my own book, I think there's a lot of the same stuff.

It's just we mash it up and change it for a different audience. People who relate to us a little more. But the thing that keeps coming up is role model. You know I mentioned two people, Tony Robbins and Gabby Bernstein, and they are role models, but they are role models in self-confidence and self-esteem and a lot of other self, self-awareness because they have planned, they've prepared themselves to learn.

They've trained, they've gained their knowledge, and through that, they've actually gained some confidence in the way they speak, even the way they speak about their failures. Have you ever heard someone talk and, and their voice goes down and they almost whisper because, you know, that didn't work out and well, you know.

The, the whole body changes those lines from the nose to the mouth. They get those creases get deeper, their shoulders slump, their head goes down as they're talking about it. And then have you ever seen someone just say, yeah, you know, I made a poor decision. Um, it was about, you know, a $2 million mistake.

And, and they're saying it the same way they would probably order from a fancy restaurant. They are, they have the same posture with them because they are owning. That quote unquote mistake as a learning opportunity the same way they are owning a positive thing and it's the lack of arrogance. It's, it's still the humility in both, but there's a lack of arrogance, but it's more of just point blank truth and false.

This is what happened and this is what I learned. But they have also been able to disconnect an event from their being. But they've used it to learn. So when you need a self-confidence model, you have many, you know, a lot of us don't have this sort of one-on-one contact that we would like to have. You know, our families are spread apart and some of our families, we are glad we're spread apart and we don't tend to build the same sort of deep connections with people.

We have a lot more superficial connections, but you can have plenty. Of superficial connections by having a confidence role model online. You don't ever have to meet Tony Robbins or Gabby Bernstein or Maria Forlio or any of these people, or any pastors, you know, Craig Rochelle or Steven Feick. You don't have to meet them in order for their confidence as, as.

People in their roles and people who know that they are in their calling and in their purpose to still rub off on you. They're still people, but they are competent. Use that, use that as inspiration and use that as guidance. So number four. Number four is be assertive. Being assertive is not being. In your face, it's, you know, it's not being aggressive, aggressive, and assertive.

Am I gonna sound a little bit alike? But they're not the same. There's aggression is basically violence. It doesn't matter if it's, uh, psychological aggression or physical aggression, emotional aggression. It's just plain violence. Assertive is strength, but it's not violence. It's having power, but humility.

Having that strength, but having control, aggression, aggression to me just lacks control. It lacks self-control. It lacks awareness. It's just bra out there. But being assertive with our conversation, being assertive with our posture, being assertive with our voice and our tone and our appearance, and even assertive with our body language, that will actually give you confidence.

Just changing that your body is like your biggest barometer, your biggest temperature feeler of like, well, what's going on? And even though other people take cues from you. Your body takes cues from you. So the more you've planned and prepared and learned and have a confidence model, the more you'll be able to be assertive and have that kind of roll off with you.

And the last one I'm gonna talk about is positive thought. So, you know, I'm gonna say this quote, it's optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. And as a person that's often called the Pollyanna, I love this quote by, Helen Keller because she is the first blind and deaf person to earn a bachelor degree in the United States.

But she was also someone that, most people gave up on. But it is someone's positive belief in, in her, her tutor. That allowed her to take that positive belief from someone else in, invest it in herself, and then come up with this optimism and with this positive thought. Ultimately, I love the first sentence.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Negativity is already, it's on the other side of zero. So if you're going into a relationship with negative thoughts, you're coming in from a, a place of lack. How are you gonna fulfill from a place of lack? I don't know if you're going into a job with everyday, oh, it's awful.

You know, this is gonna be bad. Oh, this is not great. Where are you coming from? What positive can come from that? And if you're going into that with your own voyage into your self and your self-awareness, your self-esteem, your self-confidence, if you're coming in with negativity, There's nothing there. In fact, it's less than nothing.

How does that build to something, you know? That's only in math and credit cards. But when you have a true belief, a true optimism, you know, I will meet a person in life that is important to me. I will. Know and be and act as a strong parent and a role model for my child, I will go into this meeting and present the best picture I can.

I will have a good day today. You already set yourself up and that is the mindset. You have to have some positive thoughts and it's not just, well, it's a positive thought to say a positive thought. There has to be. Some energy behind it because that is what we all are, is energy. Emotion is energy in motion.

So if you're motioning the negative way, then the negative things that kind of come along happen there is ultimately a way of looking at our circumstances that we have control over, not the circumstance. Cuz I hear this a lot. From certain people that, um, especially growing up, well, you know, the circumstance is bad.

The circumstance is bad, the circumstance is bad, the situation's bad. But that doesn't mean that you have to stay and remain negative about that situation. You own your experience, you own it. So if you wanna give up that power to someone else that's on you. But you own that opportunity to view that situation for a positive way or learning way or something, a better way to plan.

When you have instilled those five things of planning and preparation, put a jack in the car learning knowledge. Finding a confidence role model, being assertive and just having some positive thought. Using that optimism for hope and for confidence, you will have a higher self-esteem and you will have a higher confidence.

You will then build a firm trust in your capabilities and your qualities, and you will know. And feel certain about the truth of that. So thank you guys again. I appreciate your time. This was a little bit longer than usual, so I will see you guys next Tuesday. Again, if you like this episode, share it with somebody or go ahead and hit a couple little stars on the review.

I appreciate that so much. I will see you guys next Tuesday and until then, let's build one another up!