What does stress have to do with confidence?

This month I have been pulling back the curtain on Confidence and examining how to build it, get more, and make it irrelevant. Today, in the final “confidence” installment (for now), I’m going deeper and having a look at the connection between stress and confidence and what we can do to make our bodies more receptive to feeling confident.

stressandconfidence

Stress.

It’s a hot topic in our always-connected world. But what if not getting a handle on your stress levels is also making it nearly impossible for you to feel confident?

And is there a way to prime our bodies to be more receptive to our confidence-boosting efforts?

These are the questions that inspired this week’s video. I also offer a little look at the stress hormone cortisol and offer a few ways to lower stress in your life. (Plus Wonder Woman and Science Nerd costumes).

Watch the video below and share your thoughts in the comments.

Links:

And be sure leave me a comment below and tell me how you’re going to reduce stress in your life.

P.S. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in an upcoming video, submit it here.

I wish I had more confidence.

I wish I had more confidence...-2

When I ask a new client what they are hoping to get from our coaching relationship, more often than not, their response includes “more confidence”.

This is what they want more than losing weight or finding the right guy or even financial abundance. Confidence is what stands between them and what they really want out of life (which deep down, underneath it all boils down to happiness… and isn’t that what we all want?).

Can you relate? I can.

When I first started coaching, I didn’t think I should admit that I struggled with confidence too. That to be a “good coach” I needed to avoid admitting to such weaknesses and so I would just nod and ask a good coaching question like “what would more confidence look like?” or “what would be different in your life if you had more confidence?”.

These days I fully admit to my clients (and to you) that I struggle with confidence. I want more too. (Of course, I still ask good coaching questions too, but I understand now that being real and human is part of being a great coach… and person).

I know what it feels like to shy away from asking for the thing I really want because I’m scared of having the spotlight on me.

I know all too well what it’s like to smile and nod on the outside while holding in what I really think or feel… feeling trapped and voiceless on the inside.

don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides

One day when I was twenty-six, I was huddled up in Sarah’s cubicle at work. Sarah was a good work-friend of mine of similar age and outlook on life. She and I were commiserating over how hard our lives were compared to others’. Sharing whispered laments of how no one understood how hard it was for us. How everyone else had it easy… and how we had to struggle to make it.

[side note: looking back, I realize just how silly we must’ve sounded… two young, well-paid professionals living in a major city and lacking nothing except maybe a little more love.]

We were overheard by Missy, who was a few years older and definitely wiser than we were in that moment. Missy poked her head into the cubicle, and looked at us not unkindly and said: “Girls, don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.

Screech… spit-take… whaaat did she just say?

your insides

Talk about life changing. That one phrase has helped me through lonely post-divorce dating droughts, disappointments due to being passed over for promotions, and a multitude of challenges as an entrepreneur/writer/stepmom/person.

I’ve shared that quote with more people than I can count, from friends to clients, and many tell me years later that they still think about it and how it changed their view of life.

(By the way, I found out years later that this saying is used in Alcoholics Anonymous… in case you’re curious where it came from.)

This one phrase is the ultimate counter to compare-and-despair syndrome. It is a great balance to your friends’ happy highlight-reel lives on Facebook. It reminds you that you’re not comparing apples to apples.

Of course you are going to feel inadequate or hopeless when comparing your deepest, darkest insides to someone else’s highly-curated public persona.

Of course you feel like no one understands you. Those unpolished inner thoughts are not the things we put onto Facebook or talk about in public.

Of course you feel like everyone else’s life is so much better when you compare their happiest & hippest moments shared on Instagram to your unfiltered day-to-day.

The point is, you don’t know how much someone has struggled (or still struggles) to be where they are today. You don’t know if behind that smile is a broken heart. You don’t know if your pain is any deeper than anyone else’s.

And that is okay.

So… stop comparing your insides to other people’s outsides. And…

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” ~ Philo

P.S. this is #12 of the 40 things I would tell my 20-year-old self.


how to build confidence

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Photo Credit: Son of Groucho via flickr

“I really need to work on my confidence.”

This is one of the most common things I hear from new clients. Confidence feels unobtainable to so many of us. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The things that most often stand between us and confidence are: distorted beliefs about your own self-worth, a fear of becoming arrogant or full of yourself if you actually were to start believing in yourself, some extra-shouty gremlins, and compare&despair syndrome in which everyone else comes out ahead of you.

First and foremost, I want to dispel the notion that confidence means having no fear. Nor does it mean being cocky, having everything together all the time, or being perfect in every way.

And as for the compare&despair syndrome…

Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.

Just don’t. You don’t know what those people that “have it all together” are feeling inside. They could be scared poopless. Or they could be fighting back their own gremlins. Don’t assume they’ve got some special magic you don’t have.
Continue reading “how to build confidence”