Confidence. Love. Trust. In that order.
If I asked you to think of two people you know, personally or not: one who is exceptionally confident and one who is not (insecure, self-doubting etcetera), do two people come to mind quickly for you? When I did this exercise a short while ago, two names came to mind immediately. My first person is Gary Vaynerchuk, and believe it or not, the latter person is myself. Now ain’t that a kick in the teeth. There are times when I am talking about things I know about with great confidence and ease, and there are other times when I feel out of my depth, but in fact, I don’t need not feel this way at all. I just automatically default to this belief system If you fall in to the latter category too, you know just how debilitating this can be.
So I got to asking myself, what does it take to build up my confidence, and the answer for me is pretty simple. The quickest way to build self-confidence is to do the things that scare you most — before you even feel ready. Confidence doesn’t magically appear; it grows from evidence. Every time you take action, even in tiny ways, you prove to yourself that you can handle it. Start small, keep promises to yourself, and celebrate progress, not perfection. The more you show up, the stronger your inner voice becomes — the voice that says, ‘I’ve got this.’
The next thing I took a long hard look at, for the past decade plus, is the whole ethos around the word ‘love’. Love has to be the most diluted word I have ever come across. We love our pets, our spouses, children, parents, school, friends, cars, houses, new technology recently acquired and on and on the list goes. But is the way we love our spouse or partner the same way that we love our new laptop? No, they have different nuances, depths and meaning. The love I am referring to here, is the love of self. Perhaps one of the most difficult to comes to terms with, because we are the only person that knows the very depths of our soul’s intentions, motives and beliefs. We know ourselves better than anyone else can. So it might seem odd to someone when they see you self-sabotage, for example, but if they knew your thought process and beliefs around certain topics and situations, then perhaps it would be easier for them to understand your actions. I have had to truly dig deep through the muck and mire to forgive myself for things I have done, said, implied etcetera, to others that could have caused them mental or emotional harm, or harm in other ways too. When will we realize that it is time right now to let go of all that is behind us. Unless, of course, you want to continue living in the muck and mire of your past. As for me and my house, I choose to move on, forgive myself, truly learn to love myself, and to move forward each moment in each day, to being the best lovable version that I know I am.
Now as for trust, well, this is one of the hardest things for me to do. Trust does not come easily to me. I want to trust simply because trusting others is kind to everyone, but, for me, staying safe means that someone has to gain my trust first. And who knows, perhaps our yardstick to measure when someone has jumped through enough hoops to earn my trust, is unrealistic. If we all went around trusting everyone and everything we hear, just how much fake news and information would we be blinded by? If we trusted everyone just as they are, how many scam artists and some people, take advantage of our unconditional trust? I choose to love unconditionally, but I do not choose to trust unconditionally. I am open-minded, and do have a close-knit group of friends that I can trust to give me honest and open feedback without any form of malicious intent. But you need to be wise as to who you tell what too. If people speak to you poorly of other people, chances are they are doing this about you too behind your back. But who cares! Let them. It is not your concern what people say about you, it is your concern about what you say about others. Are you being kind or hurtful? Are you perpetuating the cycle of distrust amongst others, or are you stopping gossip in its tracks. And best of all, do you trust yourself enough to make wise decisions to live a happy, healthy and successful life. One of the victor and not the victim.
When all is said and done:
- grow in confidence daily
- love yourself no matter what
- trust in yourself to make the right choices and decisions to live your best life yet
You’ve got this!