The Great Confidence Con

The Great Confidence Con

‘Fake It Till You Make It’ Is A Confidence Killer

It’s reasonable to postulate that everyone on the planet, at least one time has experienced a lack of confidence in themselves or their abilities. Confidence is an internal resource that you build as you stretch your comfort zone boundaries.

The opposite of confidence involves that part of you called your imposter. Let me be very clear, it’s normal human psychology to have an imposter self. Your imposter part formulates the thoughts, feelings and behaviours associated with your defensive survival program.

Your imposter part believes it is keeping you safe.

To clarify, your imposter is that part of you that fears failure or needs control, or things to be perfect.

Your imposter part is responsible for your overthinking and worrying about every little thing.

It’s worth stating again — everyone has an imposter, which is normal. Stressful experiences will cause your imposter to behave like it’s on steroids and amplify those negative traits to keep you safe.

It is often your confident part that can reassure you to have a crack, the negative feelings will pass. If however, your confident part is hiding, or is being sat on by your imposter part, guess how easy it is for you to remain focused, concentrate or succeed at anything?

Guess which part is out on deck yelling “The sky is falling”??

Yep, it’s tough to feel confident when you’re experiencing fear-based emotions.

So what is confidence?

Confidence is defined as the internal embodiment of your ability to trust in yourself — your abilities, decisions, or character. Your confident part demonstrates a strong presence to the outside world, is often assertive, and capable of making clear decisions.

Confidence is that trait that becomes the driving force for you to maintain learning new things, even when the lesson is hard. Confidence drives your motivation to continue through the perception of failure.

What isn’t normal, and can become quite destructive to the human psyche, is when your confidence account has run dry. This can occur when your imposter has been left unchecked.

Confident” describes someone, who is self-assured, while “Confidence” is the feeling or belief in one’s abilities or qualities.

Without confidence, your natural capacity to value your worth will be challenged. This is a dangerous place for the human psyche, for a person lacking in self-worth or confidence will struggle to face life and its experiences.

One of the worst pieces of advice I’ve heard, read and witnessed is the “fake it till you make it”. If your imposter part is operating at Olympic pace, faking and pretending to be something you perceive you can’t do will feel impossible, and further reinforce negative thoughts, feelings and actions.

You risk reinforcing the misperception of lowered self-worth and confidence. This can so very easily become the root cause of anxiety and depression, especially for vulnerable or traumatized children.

Instead of ‘faking’ anything try these tips instead…

1. Know your worth

I wish I had a dollar for every time I told a clinic client that everyone is deserving and worthy of unconditional love, just for being born. I am constantly reinforcing self-worth for clients working through their stress patterns.

For whatever reason, some people have had negative experiences that make them question their belief in themselves. Experiences such as bullying, cultural, or sexual discrimination can leave a person feeling disposable, unlovable, or just not good in some way. This type of negativity erodes your confidence foundation.

The reality is that only you can define your worth. You’re in charge of allocating the confidence credit score system. If your confidence has rusted in any way, implement positive action(s) with techniques such as affirmations, tapping, or therapy to address the root cause of your feeling good.

Your self-worth infiltrates every aspect of you and formulates the foundation of confidence in all ways, so deal with the confidence rust as soon as it appears.

2. Know your good qualities

An important aspect of confidence is understanding the associated good qualities that have built your ability to trust and believe in yourself. This is an all-knowing kind of thing. Awareness of your good qualities contributes significantly to having a strong sense of self-worth.

Knowing and acknowledging your good, positive qualities, involves honest self-reflection. You gain so much power when you can recognise that there are things about you that are good, maybe even great.

​Indeed, we all have good qualities. This is what makes us unique and individual. We all have something to offer the world. Be sure to make a list, as this will become your future evidence that you can refer to on days when you feel challenged in the future.

But if your imposter part is spending your mental energy thinking about the qualities that you perceive you lack, little time or energy is remaining to explore the good or positive qualities. Getting into the habit of regularly self-reflecting, also supports you to identify when you have a garbage thought (negative self-talk) and do something about that.

If your confidence has begun to rust and you’re struggling with identifying all your positive qualities seek support from someone close to you. So often when the imposter has been running wild, your perception or sense of the world becomes blurred and you can so easily lose sight of what others see in you. Simple things like humour, determination, humility, knowledge or skills. Then it’s just a matter of shifting your mindset to focus on these good qualities.

3. Recognize things to be learnt or mastered

Tony Robbins can be quoted as saying “There is no such thing as failure, only results”. What Tony references in his teachings with this statement, is that if your mindset is open and positive, you can never fail only learn.

When you allow yourself to attempt a task, especially if it is new, then adopting an open mindset and allowing yourself to become curious will naturally boost your confidence.

How?

Your perception of the outside world is based on failure, it’s based on curiosity and seeking more information. Your mindset remains open to being fed more information, rather than closing down and operating a survival-based program.

As you identify things to learn, you are creating milestones for a future-forward path. This builds momentum and motivation and your confidence can soar.

4. Be kind to yourself

When your imposter is out for air, you can experience a myriad of fear-based thoughts and feelings associated with failure, and needing to be perfect or in control. Your imposter can so easily become a cruel inner critic if left unchecked.

Quite frankly, your imposter can be a bit of a bastard. But here’s what I’ve learned working clinically for over two decades — your imposter shows us self-doubt, perfectionism, needing control and all of those behaviours when you ignore its presence.

What would happen to your imposter if you loved it?

When you can observe those self-critical inner thoughts, you can meet the imposter’s negativity with kindness. Try using re-framing statements like, “I did the best I could”, or, “I’m proud of myself for the effort I put in”, or “I’m glad I had a go”.

Alternatively, you could call bullshit on the garbage thoughts and feelings. Take a couple of deep breaths, go for a short walk, scream into a pillow, or even tap.

This self-talk can help you re-write internal scripts that can help you become more confident.

5. Give everything your best effort

By doing your best, we have a locked and loaded response to your inner critic. When you hear those inner monologues starting to put you down, you can respond with, “I did my best.” And that is all you can do. When you do your best (while not striving for perfection and telling yourselves you could do more), you may be able to give yourself a bit more of a break and perhaps be more self-accepting.

Conclusion

Boosting self-confidence can be challenging and even at times, quite difficult. Focussing on these key skills can help. I hope that these suggested strategies can support you on the right path towards increasing your self-confidence whilst you soothe your imposter part.

First published with Illumination, a Medium Publication. Click here this piece.

If your IMPOSTER self is running your life and training like an Olympian, then maybe it’s time to show it some kindness?

Did you know I run a one day retreat? I’ve created an experience that allows you to meet your Imposter and call forward an internal cheerleader – so that you can soothe the fear of failure or imperfection, overthinking, or need for control.

We are all deserving of unconditional love and kindness – just for being born. We also deserve to ackowledge our internal imposter doesn’t need to run our life!

Prefer audio – visit the I am Change-ing podcast!

Click here for the episode

Want to read more like this?

This is My Roarsigned copies of my first published book can be purchased from this website.

Self Reflection – A little Look Withinclick here

8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself?Click here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, LEAP & NES Practitioner, Intuitive Meditation Facilitator, and published author. She is a self-confessed laughaholic.  She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

6 Tips To Self Reflect

6 Tips To Self Reflect

A Little Look Within

Self Reflection enables you to face the awkward, uncomfortable and dysfunctional aspects in your life  can change your life!

I have multiple conversations in clinic every week with clients who have moments, and even periods of time, where they feel stuck? Perhaps this immersion into darkness only lasts for a couple of hours, or worse, the stuck lasts several days. Some report that it extends out to weeks and gasp, maybe months!

There’s a common denominator for nearly everyone I see — they don’t know why they are stuck.

I talk to these clients about the need for real honesty with yourself, in order to seek a deeper understanding of that close and very personal relationship called ‘me’ or ‘myself’. Diving deep into the relationship with yourself can support you to overcome sub conscious habits that restrict or inhibit you to live your best life.

If you’re nodding your head then self reflection might just be the thing you’re looking for.

Self reflection is not an activity to beat yourself up. Nor is it designed to instigate shame, blame or guilt yourself. And let’s continue with a bit more honesty and agree, that when you first actively begin to explore yourself, it can feel a little uncomfortable — if you allow it.

Self Reflection is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as
“a serious thought regarding your actions”
.

 

In other words you’ve got to dig for the good stuff. For example for you to return to your heart space and perceive what worked well or what didn’t?

Self Reflection is a process of observing yourself. This includes your feelings, thoughts and actions. It’s a process that requires being honest with yourself and should not ignite negativity of self sabotaging behaviour of shame, blame, or guilt.

Self Reflection requires a couple of things in order to achieve a positive outcome. You require courage to explore your darkness as you search for your hidden treasure. This includes your flaws, mistakes and reprimands. Your darkness hides the quirks in your values and belief system. Your darkness hides your strength by running a vulnerability based survival behavioural program.

It means you have to be prepared to accept yourself and get the hell out of your head and step down into your heart space. Connecting into your heart space, you are accessing your innate wisdom. You are activating your intuition and perception of life from a space of love. When you disconnnect from all that over thinking, you are actually stepping back into your heart space.

Allowing yourself to be willing to explore within incorporates the need to embrace six ‘self’ attributes.

These include:

  1. Self-confidence —embracing that feeling of trust of your own abilities, qualities and judgement.

2. Self-image — how you see or perceive your abilities, appearance and personability.

3. Self-Worth — sense of your own worth or value as a person.

4. Self-Respect — pride & confidence in yourself.

5. Self-Belief — the belief that you can do things well.

6. Self-Esteem — confidence in your worth & abilities.

Self Reflection is therefore a personal growth tool which allows you to pause and determine how well you’re travelling your journey path. It’s so easy to reflect on your life with a negative filter like overthinking, worry or fear. Your nervous system drives this defensive type of mental based energy.

Self reflection can be used as a tool which supports you to evaluate, and celebrate what you have achieved in your life. With a little kindness for yourself, self reflection can support you to step out of self sabotaging patterns whereby negativity swirls around inside your head.

You can do this be using the power of reframing your perceived failures, simply as lessons not yet fully learned. In turn this creates a positive energy of acceptance and allows you to shift gears or direction to achieve success in the future.

So let’s explore what Self Reflection can do for you!

So let’s explore what Self Reflection can do for you!

Tip #1 Be Honest With Yourself

Self reflection is an invitation to be honest with yourself about how things are going in your life. Your observation should simply assess your behaviour during your experiences, in terms of your values and beliefs.

Are you aligned to your core values? 

Tip #2 Observe your behavioural patterns 

I invite you to gently lay down the need to judge yourself on this one and simply look at whether the same trigger consistently arises for you to address. This creates an opportunity to become aware of the habits that best support you to live your best life, or address the ones that are holding you back.

Tip #3 Understand Your Core Values

From the persepctive of Self Relfection and understanding your core values means reaffirming assessing what is important in your life.

Assessing your values (because some may change throughout your life as you mature) is like maintaining and re-affirming your inner compass to always point you in the direction of your true north.

Tip #4 Be Kind & Gentle!

Self reflection isn’t intended nor designed to beat yourself up about what has happened doesn’t change your experiences. All this does is make you feel like crap.

Remember to not use why questions, because they only leave you looking in the rearview mirror of the journey you’re taking. You need to ask what questions which enable you to open up to a different reality or version of your truth.

Tip #5 Be Forgiving

Self Reflection should encourage you to be gentle with yourself, especially when you don’t meet your expectations, don’t get it right, or completely mess it up.

We all make mistakes.

This is why reframing thoughts and feelings is so vital. Remember that our expectations are often unrealistic and set you up for a perception of failure or fear of not being perfect.

Tip #6 Keep Track Of Your reflections

Capture your observations, thoughts, feelings and whatever burns up your internal barometer in a journal. This enables you to monitor change over time. It helps you map the evidence of your success, or further identify where you can make small adjustments along the way to living your best life.

So Self-Reflection is really like a form of internl auditing.

It’s just like placing your thoughts and feelings in front of a mirror, and being able to examine what the heck has been going on. The reflection enables you to examine what is seeping out of the cracks or what has arisen from the dark depths of your sub conscious. As part of your internal audit, instead of going straight into reaction mode, you can choose to become curious and explore why certain emotional responses arise under specific conditions, or be triggered by specific places or people.

Self reflection is a very useful tool, especially if you’re trying to manifest that next big thing in your life. Perhaps you’re using affirmations or the law of attraction and you’re not quite reaching the desired outcome you seek. Self reflection enables you to look at various aspects of your life where you may be running a hidden sabotage pattern.

Self-reflection is a tool that instantly brings you into the present moment because it forces you to explore how am I feeling about x?

It’s a particularly useful strategy if you know you’re about to face something that may re-trigger stress such as a work situation or family gathering. Additionally it’s a useful tool when you’re studying or working on a project as it supports you to measure actual success and celebrate that!

So where in your life can self-reflection support you?

Let’s begin with your relationship with yourself.

We all know that knowledge is power. When you can acknowledge how a person, place, or thing can push your buttons or stress you out, you can take action to defuse the stress trigger. The relationship you have with yourself needs to be based in self love in order to manifest positivity and productivity. 

If you waste your energy and time with the negativity of shame, blame, guilt, judgement, or even resentment you’re wasting your life. This is because negativity stifles your energy to thrive and shifts you into a space of survival, in other words flight or fight.

The relationship you have with yourself is therefore vital in order to thrive in your life. The person who looks back at you every morning in the mirror is going to be the most important relationship you have in your life. It’s imperative to therefore consciously assess where you perceive any weakness or areas for improvement and this starts with where does your negativity spring up?

What pushes your buttons? What trips you up? What causes you to fall or go splat on your face? What fucks you up?

When you can sit quietly with yourself and honestly replay a stressful situation, accepting the flourish of emotions that may have transpired as a component of your reaction (rather than response) you are creating an opportunity for growth. It’s a choice point when you explore this quiet space because you get to decide how that reaction made you feel afterwards. 

You get to decide whether you might do it differently. You also get to explore where that reaction came from so that you begin to understand yourself on a far deeper level.

Want to read more like this?

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

How To Stop Making Excuses & Start Living Your Best Life – Click here

Healing Emotions Hurt More Than The Physical Wounds – Click Here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, LEAP & NES Practitioner, and self-confessed laughaholic. She is an avid Breast Cancer Advocate residing in Gippsland Victoria Australia. She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland