Building Confidence & Self-Esteem: What Worked For Me

Jun 29, 20235 min read

My working definition of confidence is this:

Confidence is feeling deeply rooted in one's sense of self.

Knowing that no one or nothing can take you away from you.

Noting that no matter what happens, you'll find a way to thrive and alchemize it for good.

Feel that, try it on...

What would you do if you didn't have any fear of feeling like a failure?

Confidence and self-esteem offer us the gift of living that.

It's from this place that one is able to meet every moment with a fullness of self.

I consider myself "average" when it comes to the amount of confidence I carried with me from puberty to my early 20's. In my 20's, I didn't take confident action often. I did not do things decisively, or boldly advocate for my needs. I was still focused on the illusions of celebrity/influencer culture being what I wanted for my life.

This led me down a path of "lessons" and trials. Things like...

Taking hormonal birth control for almost a decade because I didn't dig deeper, and it was easy.
Wasting my energy, and time either people-pleasing, or beating myself up.
Dating a person who desired to keep me small.
Being really, really freaking hard on myself.
and more...

Self love is a journey and I've got plenty of a ways to go in this life, but since I started getting to know my body on a deeper level, I feel I made a breakthrough in this arena.

Below, a list of things I've been actively doing that have helped this process, and detailed them below to inspire your own thoughts.

Meditating on the word 'intention' - Being intentional with your life requires a set of skills that build confidence. It requires you to ask a lot of questions and be a curious seeker. You also need to get comfortable with trial and error, which is the only way to say for certain what works and what doesn't. This includes asking others for help, and it doesn't stop there. Intention goes the extra steps to gain something like firsthand experience, so one can state one's opinion confidently once it is rooted in a felt or known truth. It's also choosing those experiences from a full understanding that the time and energy you spend somewhere is never coming back to you, and you only have a finite amount of it. Choose wisely!
Prioritizing ruthlessly - I used to get upset when I felt like friends were neglecting me in favor of other life responsibilities. Now, I understand that the only way to actually achieve your goals is by being laser focused. You'll go through seasons of life where you have more time and energy to output, and you'll experience just as many seasons where you need to be giving all of your energy to yourself, and your family. When you do this, you'll be saying "NO" a lot, and it will help you see what in your life is truly a yes. Over time, the no gets easier, and you gain confidence knowing you have the space needed to take full responsibility for your needs! Remember, an overly busy person is numbing themselves the same way a person addicted to alcohol is numbing themselves. What aren't you paying attention to in your life? This is a sure way to disempower yourself.
Not giving your power away - Emotional adulthood, aka taking full responsibility for your life, is a potent space to live. This is a tough one! Do you need/expect anyone else to meet your needs? This includes your partner! Simply put, where you put your energy is where you put your power. If you are worried about what other people are doing or thinking, you are giving them your power. We enter energetic agreements with others all of the time. The key is creating ones that are a harmonious balance of give and take. However, quite often, we are in exchanges unconsciously. We can bend ourselves into a different shape solely because we're comfortable in it. Once we are willing to look at where our attention is going, we can clearly see where we have power leaks. Back to expecting your partner to meet your needs - they cannot! Only you can meet the needs you have for feeling good in your body. It's why the quote, "You cannot truly love others until you love yourself," hits so hard. In order to give love, we must know love, and love is not manipulatively looking at ways to get its needs met. I do have a theory that unconditional love is spread through being shown, so thank God for those who've known it and can show it. Y'all are true heroes! For a good example of how this works, I recommend watching the show 'Ted Lasso'.
Awareness. This leads me to awareness. Starting to observe things occurring in my life made me much more confident as a person, I mean, that's literally the definition of confidence! If you have a hard time cultivating your own awareness, join the club! We all have "blind spots", and that's why coaching or counseling can be so powerful - it's as if someone is holding a mirror up for you to bring awareness to your behaviors and thoughts. Since you are ultimately the only person you can change, having this awareness of why you are creating the results you're creating in your life is life changing. Taking responsibility for your thoughts and emotions is always an option, and it is a very empowering one. Please know I have so much compassion for you if you aren't there yet - but will also hold the vision for you to get there. I know you can.
Looking at myself in the mirror, and loving what I saw. This may be my number one! Most if not all of us have a challenging history with how we feel about how we look. We have so many opportunities throughout life to look at others, and wish we looked that way, too. It's not our fault! It's in our primal wiring, and media is manipulative to sell things (If you want an entertaining example of this, watch Mad Men.) So here's what I challenge you to do: Stand in front of a mirror and think of your child self, your child-like essence. Hold that in your mind, and then open your eyes and look at yourself. Observe your thoughts, did you have an immediate criticism jump to mind? Love the part of you that criticizes you to keep you safe. Love yourself despite the ugliness of any thought. Whatever comes up, love that. When you're done observing, find something you genuinely love about yourself; focus on it, and expand it. Feel cute, sassy, sexy, or whatever genuine emotion comes up when you love this part of you. Practice this again and again. EXPAND IT. Journal your experience, then date, and fold up the paper, set it somewhere you'll remember to look, and read it again in the future to see how far you've come.