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When was the last time your confidence took a hit? Maybe a failed launch, or not getting enough views on your Instagram stories? How about unsubscribes from your list? Or a negative review.
Shaky confidence happens to everyone, especially entrepreneurs building businesses.
Think about it. You’re quite literally building something you’ve never done before, constantly learning new skills,tech and tactics. Of course you’ll question yourself, feel like a fake or consider burning it all down, every now and then.
But what you do in those moments matters. Do you get back up quickly? Do you spiral out? Do you look to others for validation? Or push through reciting affirmations?
Confidence seems “fluffy and intangible, but often shows up in a physical manifestation. On today’s episode we’re talking about how confidence impacts your business, how to recognize the symptoms of lost confidence and what to do when it inevitably shakes.
Episode Highlights:
- Why we think and feel that confidence is a fluff
- Confidence (and lack of confidence) can take a lot of different shapes
- What it means when you’re confident 100% of the time
- Reflecting questions to redirect your thinking and help you build your confidence back—these made a profound different in my career and business
- Plus confidence boosting tips that I do whenever my confidence shakes
EPISODE SHOW NOTES
Here’s a series of higher quality questions that I asked myself to direct my thinking so I can build my own confidence back. (Check this article where I talk about how to reframe poor questions to high quality questions.)
Note that this is not a step-by-step process but these are really just big ideas of things that I think about when my confidence shakes.
❓What’s happening? The Physical Manifestation
The first thing I always ask when I am feeling a lack of confidence is what’s happening?
Were you doing something that was a physical skill, like speaking or creating video or making a pitch? Were you theorizing potential outcomes of the thing you were doing?
It might be something like nervous about getting on video but also I would imagine you go through seasons in your business where you feel like nothing is working and everything is against you and you feel like it’s taking way too long. All these big dramatic moments that we have every couple of weeks or a couple months in your business
Here’s the thing—most likely you have scattered thoughts.
So you have to start paying attention to how this is actually surfacing for you? You have to discover what is a lack of confidence for you and how does that actually show up in your world?
I invite you to explore and know if these bits of confidence are being eroded because you are growing. You have to notice it to be able to call it out.
❓Where’s my focus? Attention to the Problem.
When you find yourself with a gap in confidence, I want you to pay attention to what are the thoughts that are rolling through your head.
If you often feel insecure or feel doubtful when you are doing a new task, it’s because you’re thinking about what other people think. What if this fails? What if no one buys? All these what-if scenarios that aren’t positive, rather they’re destructive.
Keep in mind that where you place your focus and attention is going to create more of that for you. So if your attention is going there, of course, your confidence becomes shaky and I want you to pay attention to that.
By just raising your level of awareness to where you’re spending your time thinking about things, it helps you put the power back into your hands to say, ‘okay, I can redirect what I’m thinking of where I’m focused.’ And you’ll instantly notice your little wins of, ‘yeah, I did that!’ which will start adding to your confidence.
❓What is my goal and why does it matter?
Clarity is critical for me with confidence, and what I always do to help me get the instant clarity that I need is to pause, go back and say, ‘what is my goal? What am I focused on this month or this quarter? What is the thing I’m working toward?
I know this is so basic and simple, but I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I’ve talked have lost sight on what their goal is when they are feeling overwhelmed, or if they’re being super honest, they had a clear goal to begin in the year but come the fourth quarter, they are just trying to survive and hang on and they don’t have a goal. They don’t know what they’re moving towards.
What I find most helpful for me is to sit back down and say, ‘what is my goal?’ I do that by doing actual math in my business and knowing the financial goal and how I’m going to get there.
You have to figure out what’s that for you and what are you working towards because once you have that goal then you’re able to drop that anchor and ride the waves for a hot minute because you know where you are and where you’re going. So come back to—what’s your goal? Why does it matter? Is that ‘why’ big enough and do you need to recalibrate?
You and I both know that when your ‘why’ is big enough, you will work for it but you have to take some time to explore these things.
❓Who’s involved?
This is super cheesy but this is my hack of anytime I’m feeling a lack of confidence. I pay attention to the people who will benefit when I take action. I’ll sit down and think about the people that are involved and what happens if I don’t show up.
We have all these things we speculate on. There’s all these excuses which can be very valid but what I like to do is when I’m not feeling so great about myself or my confidence is shaky, I switch the narrative and I start thinking about you.
I make up stories in my head thinking about you or the person that could be sitting next to you in the audience who just needs some kind of kick in the pants and the weird stories that I share. Somebody is waiting to hear it the way that I have to say it even if it’s not the most earth shattering brilliant thing. That’s why I show up, and I invite you to think the same for yourself.
You do not have to deliver the most earth shattering keynote of your life but you do need to bring these magical moments when you do show up. If you start thinking about the people that you serve, you will stop focusing so much on your need to feel confident because you have the reason to get over that and show up.
Remember that the more you shift that focus to think about the people you serve, the more that you have the courage to show up and the more you’ll have confidence that you can do it again and again.
❓Where can I find confidence?
Here’s my practical tip for you to boost your confidence—start finding the proof to show you that you do have confidence. Look around and find the proof to the breadcrumbs of your confidence.
Start finding the proof around you and looking for the facts. What have you done? Have you done scary things before? Have you put yourself out there?
You need to find questions that are going to be a, hell yes for you. Don’t set yourself up with questions that you’re going to be like, ‘no, I haven’t done that.’ That’s a poor quality question because it’s not serving your purpose here. Your purpose is to help find the facts to tell you that you have done things in the past and you can do more things in the future.
One of my favorite ways to do this is I keep a ‘rah-rah’ folder in my Google email. It has all the kind things that people have sent me or reply to emails or thank you follow ups from speaking sessions and replies to podcast emails. I also have a folder of screenshots of people who have sent me a DM on Instagram or Facebook.
I keep these because social proof, it makes good with marketing. But also, I keep those things because it’s my ‘rah-rah’ folder that when I need to find the confidence, I just need to look at these and remind myself that the work that I’m doing is good and that it’s worth it.
These are the moments where my confidence is built more than anything because it becomes real and not just a theoretical number online. It’s not just this idea of building this huge brand but most importantly, it’s helping people.
Previous Episode Mentioned:
- One Ridiculously Simple Strategy To Increase Sales Before The End of the Year
- Make this Shift With Your Language to Operate Like 7 Figure CEO
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