The biggest thing that I’ve learnt over the last five years – is that inner confidence is the key to everything. One of the other things that I have found is that the later in life you find that you need it, the harder it is to procure!
Failure and resilience as a child can be the most powerful tools in building inner confidence – the belief that whatever life throws at you – YOU HAVE GOT THIS! The more you can get yourself out there trying, failing and surviving at a young age, the more your tenacity and resilience grows.
Unfortunately the more we stay stuck in our comfort zones as we age, any resilience that we have built up early on, can soon become a thing of the past. If you do not use it – you will lose it.
Midlife Comfort Zone
In the midlife we can find ourselves a little down at the thought of “is this it?” Children are leaving home, jobs have been sat in for too long and we have often completely lost a lust for life and the drive and confidence to try something new and make life exciting again.
The scary, but also quite wonderful and exciting thing is that at 50, we may only be half way through our lives. Yes!! If we are looking after our emotional health, exercise and nutrition, there is no reason why we should not be leading a happy and fulfilling next 50 years.
With that in mind it is worth making changes to your future now that make sure the next 50 years will be better than the last…..and building that inner confidence may just be the key to helping you break out of the chains of monotony and routine that are holding you back from magnificence.
The 2 Keys to Your Confident Future
There are all kinds of strategies, ways of thinking, patterns of behavior and practical tips for improving your life and feeling better about yourself, but they’re all redundant if the foundation isn’t there. That foundation is the real you, the you that you know deep down you are. The trick is that it takes confidence to find that and to bring out who you are – here are the two keys to real inner confidence.
1. Get To Know Your Values
Personal values are a big passion of mine and I often get carried away with myself when I talk about them. I make no apology for that though – they’re one of the most important things you can know about yourself and are vital in getting genuine inner confidence.
Your values are ten thousand feet down inside you, right at the very core of who you are; and they’re the building blocks, the foundations and cornerstones for you. A value is something in yourself, in others or in the world that’s most important to you, and could include things like beliefs, progress, family, fun, nature, achievement or freedom.
Why is it that some people and situations leave you feeling angry, frustrated, demotivated or deflated? It’s because one or more of your values is being denied, suppressed or repressed – and we experience that as a negative experience because it’s denying a fundamental piece of who you are.
You know those times when you’ve felt really alive, amazing or buzzing? Those are the times when one or more of your values are being honored, and you can get more of that by living according to them.
Your values are all yours, and no matter what happens, no one can ever take them away. You can have absolute confidence in them because they’re there all the time just waiting for you to notice and use them.
When you get to know your values, you can start to make choices and align your life around them. It’s so simple and it feels amazing because all that really means is that you’re allowing who you are to live in the real world.
2. Exercise the Muscle
Confidence is a muscle, and like any muscle you need to exercise it so that it doesn’t shrink and waste away. The problem is that unlike your biceps or glutes, which tend to stay in the same place, your confidence muscle can be harder to find.
How do you develop your biceps or firm up your glutes? By doing exercises that are designed to work that muscle over a period of time until you see the results you were looking for.
It’s just the same with confidence. Let’s say that you’re the kind of person that doesn’t take many risks, the kind of person who goes through each day doing what needs to be done and doing it well, but not really stretching yourself.
You might talk yourself out of doing something because it’s too scary or because you think to yourself ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘that’s not who I am’ or ‘I don’t really want it anyway.’ That kind of person lives within what they know and what keeps them safe and comfortable. The fewer risks they take, the less confident they need to be and so the less confident they become.
To work your confidence muscle you need to be prepared to take risks – big or small.
You need to be willing to stretch yourself in an unfamiliar direction, to try something new or try something in a slightly different way. You need to open yourself up to the possibilities around you and push yourself to increase what you know, what you do and who you are.
The more open you are to risk, opportunity and possibility the more confident you need to be, and so the more confidence you’ll develop. That’s your confidence muscle – the question is, what are you going to do to exercise it?”
As a health coach I don’t just work with clients to help them with their physical and nutritional health. Emotional health is often the final part of the puzzle that is causing the block to finally becoming your healthy and fit and happy future self.
Please drop me a message if you would like to chat through how I can help you.
