Jun 29, 20234 min read

How I Built Confidence & Self-Esteem in my 20's

What is confidence?

My working definition:

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 one's 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.

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

Taking hormonal birth control for almost a decade because I didn't research
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
Unworthiness wounding

I've got plenty of a ways to go, but my Saturn Return (age 28 to 29) was a breakthrough year for me in terms of my confidence level.

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. It 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.
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 walk through life peacefully is by slashing TF out of your list of commitments. 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 yourself. Remember, an overly busy person is numbing themselves the same way a person addicted to alcohol is numbing themselves.
Never giving your power away - Emotional adulthood, aka taking full responsibility for your life, is a verrrry potent space to live. When you do this, you don't need/expect anyone else to meet your needs. You get full control over how you show up when you do not give your power away. Regardless of what has happened in your life, you can choose a new story today. We enter energetic agreements with others all of the time. Most of the time, they are positive. However, sometimes, we are in that exchange unconsciously. We bend, and fold ourselves in to shapes that fit what we think someone else wants from us in order to get what we want from them. Read that again. We are always gaining something from our energy exchanges, even when they appear negative. The key to changing our patterns is to unearth that truth, what are we gaining there? Bringing deep compassion for the part of us that feels familiar in chaos, and slowly, tenderly, coming back to ourselves. Taking our God given power back.
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 what results you're creating in your life is life changing.
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 criticizing (and 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. Journal your experience, then date, and fold up the paper and look at it again in the future to see how far you've come.