Is overwhelm affecting your confidence?
Confidence is important for personal growth, decision-making, communication, relationships, resilience, self-esteem, success and happiness. Confidence allows us to try new things and even if we don’t succeed, it helps us to try again. It allows us to worry less and follow our path without over-focusing on the view of others. It allows us to handle challenges and pursue opportunities. Ultimately it allows you to unlock your full potential.

A little bit of psychoeducation. There is a simple neurological explanation for why we find life so difficult when we are overwhelmed. Put very simply, when we are overwhelmed or over-anxious we are operating in a state of fight/flight/freeze. It might feel like hypervigilance. Our thinking brain (pre-frontal cortex) goes offline while our emotional brain (amygdala) takes over. This sees us unable to think clearly, make decisions, organise our time, in short, to cope.
A study by NCFE found that people who spend as little as five minutes a day of confidence-building activities saw a 14% increase in their confidence scores which corresponds to the ability to function effectively. With this in mind, I have created a list of suggestions that are achievable to everyone, with the right support.
Confidence-boosting activities
Exercise
Regular physical activity releases endorphins and lowers cortisol. Even five minutes a day can count as an achievement for those doing none. Baby steps are just as valid as big goals, just identify your achievable goal and decide when you want to start the change
Guided visualisation
This can be done with a coach or an app until you are able to do it alone. Visualise yourself doing what it is you want, be it going for that first run, saying no to a colleague at work, or finishing a piece of work that you have been avoiding.
Reflect on your achievements
Reflect on your achievements, both big and small. This can allow you to recognise how much you are achieving rather than focus on what you aren’t.
Gratitude
Write down three things you are grateful for every day, nothing is too small or irrelevant. This helps you develop new positive neural pathways allowing you to occupy a space of positivity more often. This can move you into an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset.
Random acts of kindness
Making someone else feel better is rewarding to both them and to you. Kindness can release neurotransmitters like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, which can boost your mood and make you feel good.
Travel
Explore somewhere new, either near or far from home and meet new people. This is like fresh oxygen for the brain, it is stimulating and the need to make decisions can develop self-assurance.
Self-compassion
Be kind to yourself, allow yourself to rest when you need to and tell yourself out loud that you are proud of yourself for the things you have achieved each day.
These actions will calm your mind, which in turn will calm your body. You can then start to think more clearly and consistently make better choices. These suggestions are equally relevant for neurodivergent and neurotypical people.
It can be very helpful to explore with the support of a coach where in your life you can achieve more balance and identify areas needing the most urgent change. It could be one of the most important choices you make this year.
How can coaching help?
I very often start a coaching conversation by looking at how a client starts their day. It sounds simple, but this can be the first step towards a positive change. For example, scrolling on social media while drinking coffee will raise cortisol (stress) levels and do nothing to achieve an early dopamine (the reward chemical) hit that increases motivation, but sometimes it takes having a coach to be accountable to before a client actually makes a change.
By ‘dumping’ the overwhelm onto someone else in a conversation, clarity very often forms around where the main issues lie. Simple questions like these can be used to start the process:
- Where would you like to start?
- What would you like to consider first?
- Would you like to create a list of priorities?
Creating clear, achievable, time-bound goals is the first step. Achieve one goal and you are on the way to achieving another. The questions can then move onto slightly broader-reaching questions:
- What has gone well?
- What do you think you would like to tackle next?
- How would you know if you were making progress?
- Who else is involved?
If this sounds a little similar to a set of exercises given by a personal trainer, it is not that different. These exercises are just designed to develop life strategies instead of fitness ones.
A coach trained in guided imagery can help you create a personalised visualisation of the changes you want which can be a powerful tool. As they say, energy flows where focus goes, so focus on the improvements you want and visualise the improved confidence and there is a greater chance that it will be realised.
