Ep#96 Confidence Thought Error

Listen to the episode here 👇

What is confidence?

I am in the middle of planning another launch for The School of Less Effort and while talking to dozens of women entrepreneurs as part of a survey one common thought error that has popped up for many of the women in my survey that could be holding many of you listening back as well.

It is a thought error that I myself struggled with as I was building my business, and my brain still loves to offer it to me on a platter every so often. However by recognising this thought and releasing it allows us to keep creating the results we want to create in our business.

Another thought that came up was that you need more certificates or another degree in order to grow your business. The women I spoke to framed it as “I will feel more confident in my business once I have this behind my name.” What they were actually saying is that if I change something in my circumstance. If I change something out in the world. Then I will feel more confident within myself and my capability as a business owner.

Some of the women that brought this up have over a decade of experience in their field. They are really really good at what they do. People speak very highly of them and their business. And yet they still feel like they’re not experienced enough. And they think that a piece of paper, some certificate, is going to fill that hole of not feeling confident in themselves.Of course it’s important to improve your skills, to learn and grow. To evolve as a business owner. There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve your knowledge and gaining extra credentials might be one way to do that. 

But you need to ask yourself what are your reasons behind wanting to add more credentials or academic achievements, If you want to add something to your name because you want to learn more, improve your knowledge in a certain area or achieve a certain academic goal. Then by all means go and do that.

If on the other hand you are doing it because you think it will change how you feel about yourself…that’s something I would shine some attention on.The thought error here is we think that confidence is an emotion. That if we simply change our thoughts or change our circumstances then we will automatically feel more confident.

Of course it does matter what you think and sometimes changing our circumstance can have an impact on our mental health and how we feel but when it comes to confidence simply adding more certificates to your name won’t impact your confidence. 

It’s because Confidence is an action. In order to feel more confident in something we need to take action in that thing and create results in that thing and show ourselves proof that we can do the thing. The more proof we stack, the more confident we will feel. You cannot think your way to more confidence. You cannot “learn” your way to confidence. It comes with application. With action. And more importantly what you learn from that action. 

Confidence is a skill. It’s something you can develop through action. Whenever this sneaky thought of “I need more knowledge to feel more confident’’ I want you to question it. And ask whether this is really what you need to do or should you rather get out there an take action on those things that feel really hard and really scary.

These 3 steps below will help you master taking action and staying confident

• Enhancing what you know you’re good at.

There are things we do from a thought or mindset perspective that impacts how we take action and in turn impacts how confident we feel and it is minimising or downplaying our past experience and accomplishments. 

• Doing Hard Things

The more hard things you do, the more you will discover that you CAN do hard things. The more you push beyond what you think you’re capable of the more you will realize that you are capable of more.

• Surround yourself with people who stretch you

I have also noticed that most of the women I spoke to aren’t surrounding themselves with other women entrepreneurs that can boost their confidence. If you’re in rooms where you are surrounded by high vibe confident women it rubs off on you.

• Evaluating Failure (it’s not about you…look at the data and solve for that)

Being confident isn’t about faking it until you make it. It’s important to look at the data that is in front of you. If you’ve set a goal and you fell short then it’s important to look at why. To evaluate the results you got. What worked. What didn’t work, and what are you going to do differently next time.

Applying these will help to show you where you can improve and when those thoughts come up again you will have the awareness of how they impact your results.You will also be able to redirect your mind to thoughts that serve you in creating the results you want.

Long story short - Confidence doesn’t come from changing your circumstance. It comes from creating evidence from action.

LOVE THE WILDLY ALIGNED PODCAST?

Okay, friend! I'm gonna give it to you straight, 'cause you know that's what I'm all about. Podcast reviews are super important to Apple Podcasts and the more reviews the show receives the more likely it is that we'll be rewarded with better reach. We want to reach more fierce female entrepreneurs who can add extreme value to our amazing tribe. Help a sister, out?

We already love you, for real, but we’d be extremely grateful if you would review on iTunes! If you've loved this podcast, never miss another one! All you have to do is SUBSCRIBE to the Wildly Aligned Podcast on iTunes/Apple Podcasts.