How to Build Confidence in Midlife

Hey, you beautiful, bravehearted women, welcome back to the bravehearted woman, courage, confidence, and vision in midlife!

This is the podcast dedicated to raising the brave in you. What does that mean? It means that when you listen to this podcast, you're going to feel so fired up. You're going to be so encouraged. You're going to believe in yourself like never before, but I'm going to talk to you about something today that, well, actually don't really have to believe in yourself. We'll talk about that in just a moment.

But first, as we get going, I want to mention two things today. If you haven't purchased my book yet, I want to remind you that you need to grab a copy. It is changing lives. The Making of a BraveHearted Woman: Courage, Confidence, and Vision in Midlife. Yeah. What else would I call it, right? Well, I just got back from the National Religious Broadcasters Convention and I did a book signing there and for 45 minutes, I did nothing but sign books every second of the moment and I loved it. It was powerful, but you know, what's even more encouraging are all the reports that are coming back to me. This book has changed my life. This book is encouraging me. It's stimulating. It's motivating. It's challenging me. So if you haven't gotten your copy yet of the book, you need to do so. You can find your copy on amazon.com.

Secondly, if you love this podcast, will you please leave a review? We're going to put it in the show notes and teach you how to do that. But if you leave a review, it lets others know that you are gaining value from my podcast. But not only that it tells those algorithms that this show is important and the algorithms start boosting my podcast so that people find us more easily. It becomes more visible. So take a moment and do that for me today.

Today I want to help you focus on how to build confidence. Now, the first thing that I'm going to tell you in the next few moments that we're together, I'm going to just give you two points. The first one is this. You don't have to believe in yourself to start building confidence. I know now if you already have healthy self-esteem and a belief in your capabilities, awesome. A lack of confidence is probably not your issue. And yet, still, we all face moments where we have to remind ourselves to stop playing small, stop showing up intimidated, and stop shrinking around giants or people that we think are really out of our league. Stop playing small. We all have to be reminded of that. I have to be reminded of that.

Sometimes I'll find myself showing up and I feel like I'm shrinking and even my posture will become small as if to be invisible. Stand up, put your shoulders back, put your hands on your hips, and let them know, you know what? Wonder Woman just showed up here. But you don't have to believe in yourself to start building confidence. Believing in yourself needs to come, but it'll come later. Here's what I mean. What you have to do is take action. Take action. That's my second step. It's just very easy today. Actions come first and confidence comes later. Let me give you an example because sometimes we get in our heads, right? We get paralyzed because we start to engage in fearful thinking, even fearful talking, and pessimistic beliefs and mindsets start ruminating. Stop it.

For example, let's say, like me, you want to write a book, or maybe you just want to write anything, all right, but you're fearful, and you don't know where to start, and so you sit down, and you open up your laptop, and you're met with a thousand piece ensemble of voices telling you, who do you think you are? You don't know what you're doing. You're not a writer. No one wants to read this stuff. You'll never get this published. And now, all of a sudden, you are in your feelings. You're feeling overwhelmed with the inner critic talking to you. And you're tempted, and maybe you even do, slam the laptop down, shut, close, and walk away. Well, what happened? Okay. A couple of things happened. First of all, you thought you had to believe in yourself before you could start writing. You thought you had to answer all of those naysayers and all those nagging questions. You thought you had to cast them down and replace them with truth and say all your affirmations before you could start writing.

Well, I am a huge believer in affirmations. They have their place, but you don't have to do any of that to start writing. You can just. Write. You don't have to believe in yourself. You don't have to answer those questions. You don't have to prove you just sit and write. Secondly, what happened was you just had a negative experience with your writing and with your laptop. Your brain catalogs this negative experience and it says, this is something to avoid. Remember your brain's number one job is to keep you safe and to detect threats. Well, it does not distinguish between unsafe and uncomfortable. You just had a really uncomfortable negative experience and your brain is saying, you know what? This is something to avoid. And the next time you go to write, you're going to have to scale a mountain or silence a louder orchestra of naysayers to get yourself writing because you just made a connection. Your brain just made an association, a negative experience with writing. Now you've got two things to overcome. Not only your lack of confidence, but all of the deluge coming against you.

You know, I have a little grand dog. In fact, he's here somewhere today. I'm not in the studio today, but I did want to bring this podcast to you because this episode is fresh in my heart and my mind. I just got done with some coaching and I wanted to share this with you. So I have a little grand dog named Axel. My son adopted him and Axel had been with another family. Axel is pretty much afraid of everything. I don't do well with fearful people or animals because I feel really strong and I'm like, I'm about to mow you over. So I've had to be really gentle. But his little gentle soul has captured my heart and I love dogs and I love pets anyway. But he's only five pounds. So yeah, it's It makes sense that he would be afraid of everything, but he's specifically afraid of dishes. Yes, you heard me right. Dishes. In other words, when I set his food down in front of him, he'll start to run away. If I'm eating something on a plate and I offer the plate, he'll start to run away. So, we guess that the previous owner smashed his face down into bowls or plates to get him to eat because he has some digestive disorders. So he doesn't eat well. He's very picky. We have to almost hand-feed him. He's a special needs little dog, but if we place that bowl in front of him, he's out of there. Well, what happened? Much like, you know, Pavlov's dogs that were conditioned, Axel's been conditioned and his association is that bulls equal pain.

So back to you. Every time you have to write, you feel like maybe your face is being smashed in by your inner critic, right? So how much incentive do you have to write? Not very much. You're going to put it off, you're going to put it off, you're going to put it off. That's true for anything, whether it's going to the gym, cleaning out that closet, decluttering your house, starting that business, closing that business, or ending a relationship. If you have a negative association, you are going to avoid it. That's where procrastination comes from. But what if you showed up and just did the thing? What would happen? Whatever it is, whatever the thing is, you know what you have to do. It's that thing that you promised yourself. It's that thing you said, I want to do this. I'm gonna do this. It's that thing that you wrote down that said, this is my New Year's resolution. I want to do it. You even add it in your affirmations and you say, I am this and I'm that.

But what if every time you started doing the hard thing, you didn't have to believe in yourself? You just did it. Then, while you're doing it, you add affirmations that say, Good job, girl. Way to show up. You're crushing it. You got this. You are a bad woman. What if you did that and you promoted yourself because now when you start doing the thing instead of that negative association, you're giving yourself a little bit of dopamine? You're giving yourself a little boost and what's going to happen is that you're going to find yourself building trust with you. You're starting to do the thing that you said that you're going to do. One way that you will build confidence and self-esteem is when you show up for yourself and do exactly what you said you wanted to do. Think about it this way. If I asked you to think about someone that you have confidence in, what would you say?

With someone that you have confidence in, and I say, describe that, you would say, well, I can trust them. They're going to do what they say. They'll do. They come through for me. And I know that I don't have to worry. I don't have to text them. They're gonna come through. They're responsible. They show up. Isn't that what produces confidence in your heart for that other person? Trust? Conversely, what would happen if you had someone in your life who didn't show up, didn't keep their word, and broke their promises? You'd say, you know what? I don't trust you. I don't even really know if I want to be in a relationship with you. I'm just going to love you from a distance. I forgive you, but I don't need to be doing life with you because you are not trustworthy. I have no confidence in you. In fact, that's where we get the term “conman” and that's a negative example, but a “conman” is someone who has earned your trust with the purpose of deceiving you.

But what if you had someone in your life who earned your trust because they want to help you, promote you, reward you, and boost you? That my bravehearted sister is how you need to feel about yourself. That's where your confidence comes from. You build trust in yourself. You begin to prove to yourself that when you say a thing, you'll do the thing, that you won't let yourself down, and that you don't feel like quitting because you've made a promise to yourself. That's where low self-esteem comes from. Like, I don't show up for me. I say I'm going to do something and I don't do it. I let myself down over and over again. I'm embarrassed to admit that. I just throw up the white flag and say, forget it. I haven't been able to defeat this thing. I haven't been able to get on the right track. I can't lose weight, I can't make it to the gym, I can't write the book, I can't open my computer, I can't make that phone call, I haven't cleaned out the closet. I have clutter everywhere.

So back to the illustration of writing. Remember this, I don't have to believe I'm a great or even a good writer to write. I don't have to believe that anyone will read my book to write. I don't have to believe that I can publish this book to write. All I have to do is write. Get out of your head. Disassociate for a moment from your emotions. It isn't whether you feel like it or not. Just do the thing. I think Brian Tracy wrote a book called Eat the Fraud. I don't have to believe in myself to write. All I have to do is write. All I have to do is keep my promise to myself. As I'm writing, I'll say, girl, you rocked it today. You are a rock star and reward yourself for taking action. When you step out and you do the thing, you will get that burst of dopamine. Your brain will start supporting you and it'll start making new neural pathways, new neural connections that eventually you'll say, I enjoyed this. Then what happens? You'll start seeing results because if I start writing a little bit every day, what do I have at the end of the week, at the end of the month, or at the end of the first quarter? I have a book or I have a chapter or have an article or I have a course that I've written. When I start seeing results, whoo, man, for me, I get so motivated. What happens then? Belief in myself has been cultivated. Eventually, I say, you know what? I do believe in myself. I am growing in confidence. You did it. You smashed it. You did the hard work. You took a brave step. You have moved yourself out of apathy.

Now I have a track record with me. I did it before. I can do it again. That's what I say. Every time I go to start a new project, this is book number six. I sit down, I open that computer and I think, Oh man, but you know what? Then I say, I did it before. I can do it again. I can build confidence. I can build this self-esteem. I can smash it and now you've given yourself evidence. You have experience. You have proof. You've gained wisdom. You've sharpened some skills. You feel proud of yourself and you shut the voices down that said, I wish I wasn't such an introvert. I wish I wasn't so shy. I wish I had more guts. I wonder if it's too late for me. I could never look like that. I don't have what it takes. I guess this is just how it's going to be. No, you have proved to yourself that you can accomplish a task. You did it before you can do it again. You have knowledge that you are capable, not in just one circumstance, but you have this confidence and this bravery that says, I believe that I can do this in every circumstance. You won't shy away from opportunities. You won't live small. You won't show up like a shrinking violet. You don't miss out on opportunities because you're willing to take the risk. You won't suffer from insecurity. You won't have to overcompensate with a confident disguise. Why? Because I'm doing the hard stuff. I'm taking the steps. I'm risking. I'm taking uncomfortable action. And I'm telling my brain, uncomfortable does not mean unsafe. So, will you do it today? Will you get out of your head and out of your emotions?

Stop worrying about believing in yourself. Belief in yourself will come. Ultimately, believe in God. Believe that you are exactly who he says you are because God's got greatness in store for you.

All right, everybody. That's what I have for you today. I hope this episode has been helpful for you. I hope that you will write a review and share with others how amazing this podcast is. And I'm going to leave you like I always do my beautiful brave heart sister. It's time for you to find your brave and live your vision!