Finding the confidence to be you

So often we want to work on our confidence – to feel more confident, to behave with more confidence, to do things more confidently. Is your desire to be more confident linked to a specific outcome or action? For example, wanting to be a more confident public speaker, wanting to dress more confidently, wanting more confidence in your career.

Perhaps the secret isn’t in growing your confidence in that one particular area, but might it be in growing the confidence in who you are as a person so that you can consistently and unashamedly commit to your truth.

Take me as an example. I can take myself back to the day (many moons ago) when I said to my coach at the time, "I want to be more confident at public speaking". As any good coach would, this is exactly what we explored and worked on together for several sessions. I made good progress and had a plan in place (how to prepare my talks, how to hold myself and body language, how to get in the right energy and so on). I also felt I needed to do some deeper work to solve my ‘problem’ and so took myself off for some hypnotherapy and worked on it there, too. It was all well and good and for a short time, I felt more confident in public speaking at work.
 
Soon enough, however, the same discomfort returned and it felt as if nothing had worked and I was back to square one, feeling even less confident than before. I sit here now, with the beautiful benefit of hindsight and recognise, that it wasn’t confidence in public speaking that I really wanted. What I really wanted was the confidence to say no to things not meant for me and to say yes to the things that are meant for me.

I can see that in the moment of wanting to improve my public speaking (and I write this with zero judgement on myself), I was seeking to fit in a box not meant for me (albeit one I had also created for myself). I thought that I ‘should’ try and improve my public speaking because it’s what I perceived my office job required of me and I also had no idea that I was ‘allowed’ to pursue a different route out of the norm. I also genuinely did ‘want’ it, it’s what I thought was best at the time.  

I share this as an invitation to you, simply to be curious about where you are at right now when you think about which route you’d like to take with your confidence…
 
I see it as a spectrum. At one end, the ‘quick fix’ and at the other end doing ‘the work’.
 
At the end where I took the ‘quick fix’, I took the road (which was exactly the road I needed to take at the time) of doing the surface-level work, of ‘fixing’ myself to fit into my perceived expectations of the job. I managed to connect myself to the benefits of improving my public speaking and also to battle through and step out of my comfort zone, to come up with a plan of growing my confidence and doing some subconscious work too.
 
At the other end where I took the ‘doing the work’ route, I took the longer road. I took the road where I really started to listen in to my truth. The truth that says, no matter how good I am at public speaking, right now, it is still not enjoyable for me. The truth that says, no matter how good I come across and feel in the moment, afterwards I feel unsettled.

This is the path where I didn’t resist my innate truth. The path where I had to make some decisions, put some new boundaries in place, sit with myself and heal the parts of me that felt that in order to be loved, I had to meet a certain set of requirements. I mean, this isn’t at all really about public speaking, it’s about permission to be ourselves.

This ‘doing the work’ path is where we choose to actively uncover and to be lovingly curious about ourselves in the name of healing. The end goal is not to be good at something we don’t really want because we think we have to fit in a box, but to be so confident in ourselves that there is no longer a box to fit in because we live in a world where we create the rules, where we really are the author.
 
A note of caution, if you choose the second path, once you step on, you’re not getting off, because it is the path that is filled with freedom, joy, love, abundance, the path that is filled with the energy of ease and flow and comfort, the energy of you. Where you feel confident in being you. Of course, in order to experience all of the beautiful light energy, there are absolutely moments of having to dig in, to face your shadow part and to sit amongst the murky discomfort.

Both paths are, of course, beautifully valuable. After all, this life is a non-linear journey, where, if we like, we can choose to continually learn and express our truth.

If you are working hard in the office job, deeply knowing your calling is to be a personal trainer, or constantly delivering group coaching sessions as an associate coach but feeling the discomfort as deep down you know your truth lies in working with 121 clients in your private practice, then is it time to commit to your evolution and your expansion into the embodiment of your truth?
 
If you are done squeezing yourself into boxes when you deeply have a sense that they’re not meant for you but you’re not sure where to begin, book a free discovery call to learn more about how therapeutic coaching and dynamic hypnotherapy can support you to do ‘the work’.