Growing Confidence

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Emily Wood, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

A lot of the things that I share are struggles that I’ve faced myself. Learning to grow confidence is no exception.

As a teenager, I remember asking others how they were able to be so confident in themselves. I didn’t feel like I found a lot of good answers. So this one is for my younger self, and the things that I wish I knew then.

Confidence, like so many others things, starts with developing self love. A common fear that we all have is being rejected by other people. Some times we have this conscious or unconscious thought that if we reject ourselves first, before others have a chance, then things will be easier.

Choosing to love ourselves, to not reject ourselves no matter what mistakes we make is how we start to develop confidence. It doesn’t mean we’re prideful, we still own our mistakes, are self aware, and know where we can improve. What’s different though is that we decide that we’re going to love ourselves instead of shame ourselves. We’re going to recognize that we’re a growing human being.

Nothing good ever comes from shame. If anything is going to grow there must be love. If we are shaming ourselves for not being perfect in every moment what are we doing? Everything alive in this world is growing to some capacity, if it’s not growing it’s dying or dead. You are growing, you are alive! What could be more wonderful than living, learning, and growing!

So how do we develop this self love?

We start day by day, we recognize the good things we are doing, and we express gratitude for them.

A lot of times we look outside ourselves for validation, or permission to love ourselves. We want compliments from others, and to feel their love. Most likely, what we are really craving is the love we need from ourselves. Choose to be for ourselves, the mentor, or support we’ve always needed.

Talk to yourself the way you’ve wanted others to talk to you. Recognize how you are trying, compliment your efforts, and tell yourself that you will accept and love yourself no matter what. This will take some time, but if you work at it everyday you will be surprised how much you, and your life will change.

So what is confidence? Some other words I might use is trust, or faith. So self confidence is self trust, or faith in oneself.

How does anyone develop trust in anyone? It starts with getting to know the person, and there’s a lot more to learn about yourself. You’ll be getting to know yourself better and better as you grow throughout your life.

It’s a relationship with yourself. You’re learning to grow that trust within. Like in any relationship, you some times need to choose to trust without all the evidence. You take a leap in the dark, and have faith that it’ll work out.

So look at what you want to do. What things have you wanted to do if you had the confidence to do them? Sign up for a difficult class? Travel to a far away place? Introduce yourself to a leader at your work? Ask out the person you’ve been interested in for a long time? Take the leap and become an entrepreneur?

Whatever it is, you can do it. We’re not so much afraid of the physical outcome, as much as we are afraid of what will happen internally. If we ask someone out, and they reject us, what happens to us inside? Will we shame ourselves? Will we reject ourselves? Will we deny ourselves love?

That’s the real trust we’re trying to build. Isn’t that the trust we want in the relationships we have with others? Don’t we want to know that they’ve got our backs, will love us, and support us even if we fail? Everything else can be figured out.

Fail the difficult class? Ok, sign up and try again. Issues during your travels abroad? Maybe you get lost? Ok, ask for directions or help. Maybe you lose money? Ok, come back home and rebuild. The leader at work rejects you? Ok, love yourself and keep growing. Rejected by someone you want to date? Ok, love yourself and keep growing. Fail at building a business? Ok, get a regular job, love yourself, and try again.

Confidence is realizing that you will choose to love yourself no matter what. It’s loving yourself enough to take the lessons from the failures, and try again. Success isn’t a path without failure, it’s a path paved by failure.

Growing my own confidence has helped me to become an entrepreneur, and trust that I can fail, love myself, and try again. I trust that I can learn what I need to learn to succeed.

It’s helped me to trust that I have value to provide to the world, that I can help others through coaching, and business building.

It’s helped me to travel to places all around the world, places I thought were unreachable.

It’s helped me to love myself, and accept myself even at my worst.

What could this confidence do for you? What amazing things will you choose to do? How will this love inside of you radiate to all the world?

I’m so excited to meet the ‘you’ that loves you. The ‘you’ that has the confidence to love yourself in your failures, and in your successes.