Want more confidence? Here’s the recipe…

Taking a quick look at my client intake forms, about 80% of the folks who set up a discovery coaching call with me share that the main thing they want to work on is their confidence. 

And I hate to burst their bubble, but…

You can’t talk your way into confidence. Confidence is the outcome of taking a repetitive action. 

I can’t coach you into having more confidence. 

But, I can give you the recipe. 

And I won’t even make you read through a long cooking blog to get it. 

Recipe for Greater Self-Confidence

1 part Courage

1 part Capability

A whole bunch of Self Compassion

COURAGE

The first step is to find some courage and that I can help you with. We can talk about your mindset, the idea of experimentation, what you think it will feel like to do the scary thing, what your fears are, and why they’re not that important when you have a values-driven goal. 

And sometimes the best question I can ask you is what will happen if you don’t do the thing? 

Because here’s the deal, we’re all motivated to move toward pleasure or away from pain. And if you spend 5 minutes watching commercials, you’ll see advertisers understand human behavior better than most. We are more motivated to move away from pain. 

But we can also sit for wayyy too long in the uncomfortable because that’s what we know. We like the idea of change, but we don’t actually want to change. Courage to do something means we’re going to have a new experience and a new result, and that can be scary. 

Before you get to confidence, you have to have some courage to try what is scaring you.

CAPABILITY

This is the forgotten ingredient. When people tell me they want more confidence, they often want that confidence to build a new business, begin dating again, or put themselves out into the world and share their stories. 

But they’re brand new at it! How can you have confidence in something you’ve never done before? 

In every area of your life where you have true confidence, you also have some capability. You’ve worked at it, failed, got back up, learned, taught, failed again. You can’t rush to get to confidence without expanding your capability. 

You’ll have to continually lean on courage to keep at it until you have confidence. 

SELF-COMPASSION

Mixed throughout this whole recipe is self-compassion. You’re going to need self-compassion because of all the failing required to get to capability. 

Because without it, you’ve got a pretty good shot of giving up when things get hard. 

I used to be BRILLIANT at the giving up part. I can look back and see repetitive patterns of great starts that lead to nowhere in all areas of my life.  

For some reason, I thought that voice that would say things like, “Come on, Deanna, what the hell are you doing? You can’t do this. Who do you think you are?” was just a part of the landscape, and I wouldn’t be able to turn it off. And worse, that the voice was right. 

Now, I know for some people, a brutal voice can be a real motivator. David Goggins, the author of “Can’t Hurt Me,” was perhaps the least self-compassionate person I know, and he was able to achieve amazing things. 

But for me, and maybe you, that self-abuser living in our heads does more harm than good. We may not be able to quiet that voice entirely, but we can start practicing a more self-compassionate conversation. 

If you ever need help creating a more loving dialogue with yourself, please schedule a time to chat with me. 

So, that’s it, my recipe for more self-confidence. It’s not the only recipe, and I’m sure you might have other ingredients to make your self-confidence yummy. 

Hit reply and let me know what’s in your recipe; I love hearing from you!