Where Can One Find Confidence?

Are you confident? Are you sure? If you are confident, where did you get that confidence? These are common questions that I hear from women in my life and often a difficult question to answer. It’s a shame that there isn’t a confidence store. You know, kind of like Nordstrom’s but with different variations of confidence. There’s the appearance section, the intelligence section, the relationship section, etc. You get the idea.

Coaching women into confidence is often difficult. Some women have never felt confident in their lives. It is a thought process and emotional state that is foreign to them and we really have to start from the beginning. Some women have been confident in the past, but feel as if they have lost it and can’t seem to get it back.

Developing Our Confidence Muscles

I know without question that confidence isn’t found in the eyes of others. If we want to feel confident in our appearance and we are dependent on the views of others, we are out of luck. Confidence also isn’t found in praise or rewards from others, though those can be helpful in driving us toward finding our own confidence.

So where can you find confidence? Interestingly enough, you have to develop it as you would a muscle. If you wanted developed bicep muscles, would you walk around looking at other people in order to find those muscles? Of course not! You would pick up a free weight, or hire a trainer, or take up yoga, and you would start to train those muscles in order for them to look more developed and to be stronger.

The same goes for confidence. You first need to pick out an area in which you want to develop your confidence muscle and then put a development program into place. Do you need to learn something in order to be more confident? Will repetition help? Do you need to change your mindset in order to feel more confident? Sometimes we need all of these in order to develop our confidence muscle.

But here’s the thing, you can’t do those things once! You must do them again and again and again until you start to act as confident as you start to feel. Are you afraid of meeting new people? Schedule in a networking event every week and build that muscle! Scared to show up to a gym because you aren’t in good shape?  Put some work out clothes on and face your fears. What’s the alternative? Not getting confident and not going to the gym? You can’t get confident about the gym without actually going to the gym. You know that, right?

So start right now. Pick one area in which you want to develop your confidence.  Schedule in at least three “workouts” a week in order to build that muscle. Put it on your calendar and get to it. Right now. Let me know how you do.

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC