How to Have Confidence in Any Situation
Written by Kristin Brown
When I was a kid, I was pretty sure everyone else had things figured out and I was the only one who wasn't sure who I was supposed to be, how I should act, and who to play with at recess.
I had a really hard time in social situations throughout my whole childhood and hated feeling scared and insecure all the time. I just knew that wasn’t who I really was.
At home, I was confident, funny, and interesting. But nobody got to see that besides my family.
As I grew up, I realized that many of us actually do have to learn confidence. I found that it was actually possible for me to grow my confidence! And it wasn’t even as hard or mysterious as my childhood self would have thought.
I want to share the three tips I’ve learned about how to find true confidence and move through life feeling capable, secure, and happy as your real, true self.
Here are three tips to help find true confidence and move through life feeling capable, secure, and happy as your real, true self:
You are perfectly worthy and enough ALREADY
Confidence seems to be all about how we relate to others in the world.
I used to walk into a room and instantly begin to rank myself based on who else was there. I’d look around and place myself where I thought I belonged on the totem pole of importance. The popular, outspoken, most attractive kids were at the top and the quiet, scared kids at the bottom. When I oriented myself based on that, I was usually somewhere on the bottom third — what I thought of as comfortably invisible.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit that but it’s how I saw things. And if I’m not cautious, I can still fall into that old thought habit of feeling intimidated by someone who seems to be higher on the totem pole than me or even, I’m ashamed to say, feeling proud of being higher on the totem pole than someone else.
But when I see things clearly, I understand the truth as it really is: each one of us is already whole and complete. We are divine beings with innate goodness and worth. We don’t need to prove it or explain it, we just ARE.
I am worth just as much as every other person, no matter how righteous, popular, smart, famous, or beautiful they are. (AND no matter how unrighteous, clueless, unkind, or terrible they are.) No one person has earned a better standing in the world than another. No one has more of a right to be in a certain place than anyone else.
When we truly understand and believe this, we can relax. We can stop making comparisons and deciding how we feel about ourselves based on who we are standing next to.
2. You can change what you believe about yourself
Did you know you can actually CHOOSE what you want to believe about yourself? If you discover that you habitually think negative thoughts about yourself, you can track those thoughts down and change them!!
Be willing to challenge and change the beliefs about yourself that aren’t serving you well.
Here’s an example: As I explored my own beliefs about who I was and how I felt about myself, I discovered that I had always believed that some people are born with confidence and others aren’t. I believed I was one of the ones who just didn’t have it.
As I took a closer look at that thought, I realized that it couldn’t actually be true — plenty of people develop confidence throughout their lives, whether it’s in a particular area of life, a certain skill, or just generally becoming more confident in their everyday lives. Not only did plenty of other people learn this skill, but I had too! I could find tons of evidence of ways I had already grown in confidence since my shy days as a second-grader.
Once you see proof that the thought you want to change isn’t true, it becomes easier to let it go. It will probably still be a habitual thought you need to train your brain to stop thinking, but that just requires a bit of redirection from the old one to the new one.
I decided to believe that my level of confidence IS within my control and that it can be developed.
Every time I caught myself believing I just wasn’t a confident person, I redirected to this new thought instead. Soon it became easy to believe.
3. Continually improve yourself -- but also find self-acceptance
Once you have the foundation of knowing your innate worth AND you have the ability to change what you believe about yourself, you can approach the work of personal growth in a healthy and exciting way.
I feel more confident and proud of myself when I know I’m doing the work of improving myself and making the little changes that keep me growing from year too year.
If you feel there’s something you can improve about yourself and your life, you can change it! And if you can’t or don’t want to change something about yourself, you can just change your thoughts about it.
For example, for a long time I didn’t feel great about how I dressed. It seemed like a small thing, but it affected how I felt about presenting myself to the world and I knew I could feel more confident if I liked how I looked. That was a relatively easy thing to change and improve.
But maybe there’s something about yourself you can’t change, like a physical feature, a part of your personality, or something in your past. Can you change how you think about it instead? Can you make it mean something different than you always have? It could become a defining feature of who you are rather than something you try to hide.
I always thought my introversion was a flaw and I wished I could be outgoing and loud. But now that I understand it’s a part of who I am by nature, I’ve learned to embrace it and take care of that part of myself. I love being an introvert because I recognize my own power and potential when I lean into that part of me.
Ask Yourself:
What is something you want to change about yourself or your life?
What is something you can’t or don’t want to change that you can think of differently and accept?
Having a solid foundation of confidence in my life has come from knowing who I truly am and loving that person. I know my innate worth, I know I can believe whatever I want about myself and the world, and I know how to tell the difference between what I need to improve upon in myself and what I need to accept without judgment.
These principles have absolutely changed my life!
I have come to believe that confidence is the foundation for any kind of personal growth we are trying to make and that it is THE place to begin work on yourself.
Ready to take the next step in growing your confidence?
Then you’ll want to check out our Developing True Confidence mini course!
In this mini course you’ll learn:
How to develop and strengthen your confidence
How to find your own patterns of insecurity/fear to overcome and replace limiting beliefs
Why developing confidence is one of the kindest gifts we can give to ourselves AND to others
This course includes:
Three short & value-packed videos of the course.
A beautifully designed pdf workbook filled with thoughtful writing exercises to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and develop your true confidence.
An audio version of the course
Help & encouragement along the way from Laura + Kristin
For pricing, reviews and more info just click HERE.
p.s. This is our most popular mini course…and for good reason! It’s an incredible way to improve your life without being overwhelmed with a big, expensive course. It’s simple, but impactful and is one of our favorites because it’s personally helped us live with more confidence in every area of our lives!
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