3 Steps To More Confidence (+ Self-Trust)
In the last article I shared five truths about confidence with you and in that article, we journeyed from confidence meaning “not caring what other people think” via “deep self-trust” to “being confident for the benefit of others”.
We established that confidence is beautiful, powerful and deeply connected to your sense of worthiness and self-acceptance.
But how do you develop a sense of confidence?
I have three steps/activities for you.
1) Make a list of your successes and celebrate yourself
This is a very simple yet effective exercise and I recommend doing it at least once every quarter, but especially so, when you doubt yourself and your skills. It helps you see how far you have come, how much you’ve achieved, what struggles you’ve overcome and what you’ve learned. All of these things help you to see your own greatness and feel trust in yourself and your abilities. Which, as you know by now, supports you remembering your confidence.
Questions you can explore are:
What are 5 things you’ve overcome in your life?
What are 3 things you are proud of this year?
What are your achievements/wins/successes this year? (List the big and small!)
What struggles did you overcome this year? How can you see your struggles as achievements and learnings? (Your struggles are the real wins because we grow outside our familiar zone.)
What is something you acknowledge about yourself from what you've realized?
2) Do the inner acceptance work
Learn to embrace all parts of you, especially those that you don’t appreciate or the parts that doubt you or are fearful.
All these parts are just looking to be loved and seen, they are looking for a hug, too.
Think about it – when there are aspects of you that you don’t like or judge, you are pushing away a part of you.
But true confidence comes from embracing all aspects of you, your body, your personality.
Developing self-compassion for all of you is absolute key to feeling grounded and confident.
This inner work can include mindset work, working on your emotions, or orchestrating a dialogue between the loving part of you and the part of you that feels incomplete, or doing specific forgiveness practices.
3) Start to take mini actions
We also “gain” confidence by taking action and collecting new evidence of our greatness. Important here is that the actions are really small.
I like to call it making it a promise to yourself.
When you make a promise to someone else, you’d do everything to keep that promise.
When you make yourself a promise, for example, to get up 15 minutes earlier, it’s important you keep that promise.
The more we break the promises we make to ourselves or, in other words, don’t keep our word or do what we planned, the more we lose the ability to trust in ourselves and there goes, bye-bye, confidence.
Take mini actions.
Make yourself mini promises and take them as seriously as you would take a promise you make to someone else serious.
And grow from there.
As you take the actions you said you would, you develop a deeper sense of self-trust and self-reliance. You realise that you CAN do what you put your mind to.
But start small.
That’s important.
I recommend doing them in the order as suggested below (to first look at the past, then do acceptance work and FROM THAT PLACE ONLY start to take action). And once you’ve done the order, circulate back and forth between these points and do them over and over again.
Let me know how you go with these! And remember, I am fully here for you. I am not just writing this to get it out, but I am here to connect with you.
PS.
If you would like to feel more confident and explore the topic further 1:1, I am here for you. All the way. Because you are so beyond worthy and it would be my honour to hold space for you and support you in seeing it for yourself.
My passion is to guide and coach you into more joy, love, self-compassion and freedom. And to support you in the most easeful and accessible way, I currently have a unique and special offer: Individual Coaching Sessions.
You can book anywhere from 1 to 6 individual coaching sessions at a time and sessions are 90 minutes long. Only available for a limited time!
Book under the link in my bio or here: https://www.ninagruenewald.com/individual-coaching-sessions
PPS.
The next YATO is happening on 2 July! A 3-hour online event called You Are The One, diving into your greatness, taking stock of the year, sharing, MUSIC, dancing, recalibrating and setting new intentions and actions for the next 3 months! It’s going to be a blast. Are you joining us?
