00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 114, "Confidence." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome, welcome. Glad that you're here. I hope that your summer is winding down well. It is the last week of August here, and I just started with students in my classroom this last week. And it has been a wonderful experience to be back with them. I've missed the kids in my classroom so much with this extended summer, with getting out early last spring for COVID, and they were so great. We're all wearing masks, which comes with its own challenges, but you would not believe these little 13-14 year old kids are just troopers. They are so good, and they're so sweet, and it's so fun to have them back in my class. So that's what I've been doing, and that's about it. Life is good here. I hope it's good for you. I hope that you are continually moving forward in your growth, making amazing things happen for you, because it all starts with you and what you choose and what you want. 

01:28 

And we are going to talk about that today. Today we're talking about confidence, okay? So, so many women that I talk to in regular life and that I work with with my business, they struggle with having confidence. So I feel that it's really important to explore it and discuss our confidence a bit today so that we can start to understand where it comes from and how we get it. So I'm going to start today by clarifying that there's kind of two basic forms of confidence that we're going to talk about: past confidence. and also future confidence. And we're going to call the past confidence, we're just going to say call it just "confidence," but we'll call the future confidence "self-confidence." And you will understand why after we get there, but I will kind of want to preface that for you a little bit. 

02:15 

So I always love to look upwards in the dictionary to see if what I think they are is congruent with the official definition. So when I looked up "confidence" in my Miriam Webster, it says that confidence is "a feeling of one's powers." So then when I looked up just "confident," it came up with "being full of conviction, having or showing assurance or self-reliance." So this is the question: how do we get to a feeling of our power, of a conviction within ourselves, being assured with who we are? How do we get there? I think a lot of people tend to think that some people are just born with confidence. From the day of their birth, they have an ability to strike out and do big things and they aren't afraid of others or themselves. And sometimes we see other people who seem to be born without confidence. We've even heard of people who seem to be afraid of their own shadows. We've heard of that phrase before. So what's the difference? What makes us all have different confidence levels and are we really just born with or without confidence? 

03:24 

So before we go too far I want to recognize that sometimes confidence is seen as a bad thing, so it can make people uncomfortable if they think that they're confident, because it can sometimes be confused with arrogance. But I want to clarify here that confidence and arrogance are not the same thing. Confidence has to do with us and arrogance has to do with others. Arrogance is comparing ourselves to others and working to see ourselves as better than others. Confidence doesn't compare with others at all. It is finding strength and ability within ourselves without any comparison to others. Alright, so confidence is a great thing. Arrogance...don't really want to go there, right? 

04:11 

So now let's move on to our confidence work for today. So I love going to the thought model whenever I have a chance because it always helps me to understand my own mind better. So when I put "confidence" in the thought model I put it into the feeling line, or the F line, a feeling of one's powers, right? So where do our feelings come from? They always come from our thoughts, or the T line, right? The T line comes right before the F line, so our thoughts create our feelings. And our past is a place we go to determine if we can do things today. 

04:49 

So I'll tell you what, I am really good at drinking water. I drink a lot of it every day and it's not very often that I spill down the  front of my shirt, although it does happen occasionally. I'm very confident in my ability to drink a glass of water without spilling it. So why am I so confident? Because I've done it so many times and I've proven to myself that I'm good at it. Now occasionally I will totally just miss my mouth and I'll spill all over myself, but even when that happens it doesn't deter me from immediately taking another drink. My successes with drinking water far outweigh my failures, so my confidence doesn't get shaken when it comes to drinking water. And even when I spill, I just chalk it up as a fluke because it's definitely not my normal, and I'm able to move on in the confidence that I can drink without spilling all over myself again. So because of my past experiences I think I'm good at drinking water and my thoughts create my confidence in my ability. 

05:57 

My confidence as a teacher comes from my years of teaching experience. I know that I can successfully teach middle school students. I know that I can manage a difficult classroom and that I can interact with my students in ways that help them to feel safe and loved. My past successes create my present confidence. But let me tell you right now, teaching is not what it has been the past 10 years. Starting last spring, I was expected to start doing a lot of online teaching. And this fall, I'm having to teach in person as well as have everything online for students who may need to quarantine at some point. And I'm having to learn the ins and outs of an online education site. So I'm a person who can manage technology, but I don't revel in it. I don't love it. Not having grown up with it, my past doesn't have a lot of experience being successful with it. So confidence in my ability to learn technology doesn't come so easily. 

07:02 

In this process, the last few weeks of trying to set up all my online stuff, I will often find myself thinking things like, "I just have never done this before," or "this is not an intuitive system," or "my brain still thinks in paper, it doesn't think in technology yet." Okay, so are those thoughts true? Probably. But are they serving me? Are they helpful for me? Are they creating confidence in my ability to accomplish the task at hand and get my online learning set up? Not at all, right? I can't say that they are helping me to feel any confidence. And if I don't feel confident, then I second guess a lot. I procrastinate a lot. I get more frustrated than I should with small setbacks. It's like spilling the water. It's a small setback. But actually, it's more of an annoyance because I know that I'm fully capable. So I don't think thoughts like, "I haven't drank water out of this cup before," or "this isn't a very user friendly cup," or "my brain still thinks in glass cups. It doesn't really like the plastic ones." So that all sounds ridiculous, right? Because I'm so confident in drinking water out of any reasonable container, my brain doesn't freak out. But it is freaking out a bit with the upgraded technology because it's new and because I don't have all the past experience of doing it. So confidence comes from our past experiences and our thoughts about those translate into our current situations when we're doing something that is the same. 

08:42 

But how do we feel confidence in present or future situations where we don't have a past experience that is the same to draw from? How do I personally know that I'll be able to fall in love and create a healthy relationship one day? How do I know that if one of my children were to die, that I could be strong and come out the other side and still be healthy and happy? How do I know that if I were to lose everything, that I could rise from the ashes and move forward? And how do I know that I can master this online education program in the next few weeks for my students? I haven't experienced any of those, so how do I know? What gives me the confidence to know that I can work my way through any of those situations and be successful? And this is where we make the distinction between confidence and self-confidence. 

09:38 

Confidence is based upon more specific past experiences. I can drink water today because I have a past record of drinking water, while self-confidence is based on my beliefs about myself being able to work through any emotion and any experience. Self-confidence means that I draw from my past thoughts, but not from really specific experiences like drinking water. It means that I have learned from my past that I can work my way through difficult experiences and emotions and still come out on the other side. I'm drawing from my lessons learned rather than from specific experiences. So, you know, the most difficult part of most experiences that we are looking forward to encountering is the emotions we feel while we're going to be going through it. The emotions of fear or anxiety or embarrassment or loads of others that we could put in there. That's what we're usually trying to avoid when we encounter new experiences. 

10:44 

So a few months ago, I started doing some Facebook Live videos and speaking and talking in front of a camera does not freak me out at all, but I noticed that I was avoiding getting started on them. Even though I was like, "I should do some Facebook Lives," I kept putting it off and putting it off. And when I explored my feeling of avoidance, I noticed that it came  from the thought that I could mess up because I was doing it live. And when I do this podcast, I use notes, and I can go back and edit out parts if I mess up. In fact, I already stopped once and went back and fixed something and started this again. But doing a Facebook Live, I can't do that because it's live, right? But my thought that was creating my avoidance was, "people might think I'm incapable as a coach if I mess up." Okay, so there you have it. I was not afraid of doing the video, but of how I would feel, what emotions I would experience when people judged me. So I was afraid of the emotion. And after I coached myself through figuring out that thought, I realized that I could handle the uncomfortable emotion of people judging me. I do that every week when I create this content for you. Right? I put this out there and people can judge me and however they want, right? And when I realized that I could handle being judged, it wasn't a big deal for me to move ahead and do a Facebook Live. 

12:16 

So, self-confidence is knowing that I can feel any emotion, including being judged, and I can come out the other side successful. And even if my only success is feeling that difficult emotion and not quitting, then that is success. And a cool thing is is that I can tap into past experiences to know that I can overcome experiencing difficult emotions today. I may not be able to draw from the fact that I can serve a tennis ball and make the correlation between that and me being able to build a successful life coaching business. But I can draw from the fact that I spent hours serving buckets and buckets of tennis balls to learn how to serve. I didn't quit. I felt the frustration and annoyance of not getting that ball over the net, and yet I just kept serving. And eventually I started getting my serves over more and more frequently. So my ability to serve a tennis ball doesn't build my self-confidence, but my knowledge that I could be tenacious and not quit until I figured it out helps me to know that I can do the same thing with my business. I can just keep trying even when it's frustrating and annoying because my Facebook ads aren't working. I know that I can feel frustration and yet still be tenacious, that I can still keep working at it and not give up until I figure out how to get my Facebook ads working. This gives me self-confidence. Confidence in myself, right? Knowing that I can feel any emotion and that I won't quit. Knowing that I can feel any emotion and not shut down. Knowing that feeling tough emotions is the process to reaching my success. 

14:13 

For many of us, allowing ourselves to feel these tough emotions like fear or failure, anxiety, embarrassment, shame or guilt is the biggest challenge of having the self-confidence to move into a brighter future. We might have thoughts like, "who do I think I am to dream this big?" Or "what do I think makes me so special?" Or "what will people think?" Or "I'm sure I'll look like a fool if this doesn't work." And yet, when we can allow ourselves to move into a place of uncomfortable emotion, thinking that I can feel the emotions that come from that, that is where the growth is. The comfort zone will not bring us growth. The comfort zone is our primitive brain working its butt off to keep us from feeling uncomfortable emotion. But moving into the place of growth requires prefrontal cortex action. We have to intentionally work to experience those difficult emotions if we want to grow. Our primitive brain will keep us from that. It takes intentional thinking to use our prefrontal cortex and to move into a place of courage instead of a place of comfort. 

15:36 

When we do this, our self-confidence grows. And the next time an opportunity arises, we are more confident in our ability to experience a tough emotion and to come out the other side a stronger and a healthier person. When we are fearful of difficult emotion, we don't try. We don't put ourselves out there. We quit before we even start. We don't have confidence in our self to feel the difficult emotion and to work through it. We allow the thought of having a difficult emotion stop us from accomplishing our dreams, and the amazing emotions and self-confidence that come from that experience. 

16:22 

So if we want to feel self-confidence, we have to start with our thoughts. What thoughts can we think that will allow us to feel confidence that we can move forward? Start off by looking to your past, for examples of when you have worked through tough emotions. For me, I go back a lot to my marriage and my subsequent divorce. It was tough. For most of our 24 years, it was tough for both of us. And yet, I was tenacious. I kept trying. So the thought I can draw from that is I know that I can do hard things because I did it for a long time. With my ex-husband in the military I would often be raising children and running a household by myself because he was gone on military assignment and I rose to the occasion. I did a great job. So the thought that creates for me: "I'm strong and capable of figuring it out and doing it on my own." For me, making the decision to get a divorce was probably the single most tough decision of my life, and yet despite my fear and my apprehension I made the decision that I felt was right. So my thought is "I can make tough decisions." 

17:39 

Notice that it's important to go back to the lessons learned. What we know about ourselves from our past experiences. All of us have made it through some pretty bleak days, and drawing upon our strength from those days can help us get the strength to make it through these bleak days. It's also important to realize that the confidence comes from our thoughts about our experiences and not our experiences alone. Someone can go through a tough experience and come out the other side feeling like a victim. They can only see that they were taken advantage of, that the other person abused them, or that the other person broke them. But what if that same person shifted their perspective and started looking for the lessons they learned from those past experiences? 

18:25 

I worked with the client just this last week on this exact process. She was caught up in the victim mentality of seeing how she had been on the receiving end of some emotionally abusive behavior in a previous relationship. But when we went back and looked at what she had learned, looked for the lessons learned, here's what she came up with. One, don't rush relationships. Take your time to see and to understand the other person. Second lesson, I manage myself. He manages himself. Let go of trying to control his thoughts and behaviors. Third lesson, it's important to have a variety of people around you that you trust. Fourth lesson, healthy relationships help you become better and unhealthy relationships hold you back. The fifth lesson she learned, I learned not to people please, but to be true to myself, my wants and desires and needs. 

19:22 

So this was an amazing coaching session. When she focused on the lessons learned, rather than on feeling like a victim, she no longer felt like a victim. Her fear of another relationship was replaced with confidence. She wasn't scared of being taken advantage of again, but rather she felt confident that she could recognize the negative patterns earlier if they occurred and that she could engage in healthier behaviors herself. This client created confidence with her thoughts by what she chose to think about the experience. She was very unconfident about engaging in a new relationship when she was focused on the victim aspect, what this relationship took from her. But when she looked at what the relationship gave her, what she learned from it, her confidence to engage in another relationship increased. And oftentimes we think that if we go somewhere and someone tells us that we're beautiful or amazing, that our confidence is going to increase. But this is not the case. Our confidence doesn't increase from the outside, from our experiences or from other people complimenting us. Our confidence increases from the inside, from our own thoughts about our own experiences from our beliefs about whether we are beautiful and amazing. 

20:50 

And it's so important to think confidently about the experiences we have had. I could look at my divorce and only see negativity and victimization and failure. And those thoughts will do nothing positive for my confidence. But looking at the amazing growth and the lessons that came from my divorce experience create the confidence that I need to propel me into the future that I want. Knowing I can do hard things and come out into a better and healthier place gives me the confidence to try to keep going and to not quit when small hiccups happen along the way. Or even when big hiccups happen. 

21:33 

So my friends, how you choose to think about yourself and your past is what will create your confidence. No one is born with confidence. We all have to create it. And we create it with our thoughts. If you are struggling with your own confidence, tell you what, coaching is an amazing tool to help you jump start your journey into greater self-confidence. I can help you learn how to look back and see the amazing lessons rather than only seeing the failure. If you are struggling with confidence, the patterns in your brain of only seeing yourself as a victim may be so strong that you can have a difficult time by yourself identifying those patterns and learning to see the lessons. And an investment in coaching may be just what you need to help you move out of those unhealthy patterns and into healthy ones that increase your confidence. Growing up is the bomb. I love it. I love this middle-aged gig so much. What an amazing place. At this point, we have so many experiences to draw from to build our confidence. If we can learn learn to look at them in the right light, from the perspective of lessons learned. 

22:54 

Okay, if you are interested in coaching, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can learn a little bit more about it there. Best opportunity, though, is to get on a call with me. You can go to the "Contact Me" button, and you can set up a one-on-one session where I can coach you. You can ask me all kinds of questions that you have about coaching. We can discuss the specifics of how it works. We can help you to see your options for moving forward in your life in whatever way you need. If confidence is one of those places, I got you. I got you, we can do that. 

23:33 

Alright, if you feel this podcast is adding value to your life, please do a few things for me. Make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Please go on and leave me a review. I've got a lot of listens, and not very many reviews. I would love some. That would be so great for me. And share this with people in your life who you feel could benefit from this help. This is such good information and I'm so happy to share it with you every single week. Okay, I wish you the best this week and I wish you a place of learning lessons from your past, learning lessons from your present, right, figuring it out and building your confidence. Have a great week, and I will talk to you next Monday. Bye. 

24:20 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.