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Welcome to the Upside Podcast, where we help you get unstuck in your life and your business by elevating your thinking and provoking meaningful change. Always from the inside out. Anything you want to see change in your life will always happen inside to outside. And so that is what this podcast is all about. And today we're going to talk about confidence. And I know that there are some of you listening today that you need a confidence boost. And what happens when our confidence gets shot. Oftentimes, we're going through life feeling great. We are on cloud nine. Things are going well, we're feeling successful, we're feeling like we have everything together, and then life happens. And where we once felt strong and powerful, now we're feeling weak, we're feeling vulnerable, we're feeling insecure, we're feeling unsure of ourselves. We're. We're filled with self doubt. And what always seemed easy to us or maybe always seemed very clear to us now suddenly seems very scary. And so I want to ask you, have you ever felt this way or do you feel this way right now? And I'm telling you, if you feel this way right now, do not stop listening. This episode is absolutely for you. And so maybe you have experienced a job loss that was sudden and unexpected and it has completely shocked your confidence. Maybe it was a health crisis that has left you wondering if you're ever going to feel like yourself again. Maybe it was a relationship that ended unexpectedly, maybe it was a divorce. Maybe you are typically a top performer in your field. You're Normally a top 10 in your real estate office. You're normally one of the very best of the best, and you're having an off year, you're not hitting goal and you're feeling just. Just unsure of where you stand. It could be that you're having struggles with a child and your self confidence, self confidence is shot as a parent. Maybe you've gained weight and you're feeling uncomfortable in your own skin and it's affecting your personal confidence. Uh, maybe you're doing something new that you have never done before and you're dealing with imposter syndrome and you're wondering, do I really have what it takes to be successful in this? So if you can relate to any of these things, or I'm sure there's a whole other plethora of reasons. I didn't specifically mention that your confidence could be shaken. This episode is for you. So what I want you to realize is even the most confident of people, the people that you would look at in the world and say wow, I really admire their confidence. Even those peer people deal with confidence loss at time to time. So the question is, is how do we get our confidence back? What does that really look like? So realize that you're not alone. Everyone experiences this and you're not experiencing the loss of confidence because you're a failure. You're experiencing the loss of confidence because you're a human being. This is part of our human experience. So the choice that we have when we start to feel our confidence being lost is are we going to sit around in self pity? Are we going to sit around in self doubt? Are we going to feel sorry for ourselves? We or are we going to take the tools that we have and build back our confidence? Because here's the thing, you were not born confident. Confidence is built. So I want to give you seven things today. I know seven, oh my goodness, one of them is going to be life changing for you, I'm sure. And it's probably a different one for each and every one of you listening on this call. But I want to give you seven truths that will help you get intentional about building your confidence. Okay, you with me? The first one is to keep the promises that you make to yourself. This is the principle that Stephen Covey wrote in his book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And the first time I read this it was absolutely revelatory to me. He said, when you keep the promises you make to yourself, that is the number one way that you can build your self confidence. Because you realize that no matter who lets you down around you, no matter what the uncontrollables are in your life, when you know that you keep the promises you make to yourself, you are a person of self integrity. You are a person who follows through on your own word. Most of us do a pretty good job of keeping the promises that we make to other people. We're not constantly standing people up or ignoring appointments on the calendar or not following through on the commitments that we make. Many of us are not making the promises that keeping the promises that we make to ourselves, we tell ourselves, when my alarm goes off in the morning, I'm going to get out of bed. And instead of keeping that promise, we press the snooze. Or we say, I'm going to start a workout routine, I'm going to start pushing myself at the gym, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to, I'm going to start focusing on the right activities in my job or my business. And when we don't follow through on that or our personal integrity is questioned and it causes our confidence to be shaken. So if, if this speaks to you, I'm going to encourage you to figure out what are the promises and you know, you know, what promises you're not making to yourself. And in the areas that you've lost confidence, start to say, I'm going to start making some promises and I'm going to follow through on them. And that is your personal integrity that's going to start to increase. You're going to feel proud of yourself no matter what anybody says about you or around you. You're going to put your head on the pillow at night and you're going that you are somebody that you can trust and depend on. All right, number two. Number two is I want you to know your strengths and your weaknesses. Sometimes our confidence is shot because we are too focused on being good in the things that we're just not naturally good at. Too focused on worrying about being great at everything or not ever letting anybody see that we are weak or we are not perfect or what have you. Uh, but when we can focus and hone in on our strengths and not worry so much about the weaknesses. And when I say this, I'm not talking about character issues, I'm just talking about what your personality and your giftings and your talents are. And when sometimes in, in for instance in your professional life, you might be struggling with feeling like a failure in a particular way. You maybe didn't hit goal and so your confidence is shot. But when you remember what it is that makes you good at what you do, uh, it's gonna remind you you are a talented salesperson, you are ambitious, you are great with people, you are good in front of a room. You have great follow up and follow through skills, you have great empathy. Remind yourself of the things that you are great at. Know your strengths, know your weaknesses, and remember you're not gonna be good at everything. And that is a. Okay, all right, number three. This is a big one. And that is don't compare your insides to everybody else's outsides. So many times our confidence gets shaken because we are looking at everybody else and we see the perfect exterior. We don't see the struggles, we don't see the self doubt, we don't see the, the work and the price that was paid for them to get where they are at. Uh, and so we're comparing all of our own internal insecurities, battles, all of the mess that we have behind the scenes to the perfectly curated exterior of somebody else. And if we Want to be miserable in life. Here's my key. If any of you listening want to be miserable in life, then I would suggest you just compare yourself to everybody else. And that is a surefire way to be completely miserable. But if you want to be happy, if you want to be full of joy, if you want to be confident, quit comparing yourself to other people and quit comparing your insides to everybody else's outsides. All right, number four. Number four to build confidence is I want you to do hard things on purpose. So life is going to happen. It's going to give you a whole host of things you did not ask for that are going to be hard things in your life. Many times, life just throws us something. We're like, I did not ask for this. I did not sign up for this. And when we look back in our lives, we can say, you know what? Those really hard times made me who I am. Those really hard times refine my character. Those really hard times strengthened me and made me better. And I will tell you, if you look back, you will also see that your confidence increased on the other side. So I'm not suggesting that we just have a bunch of hard things happen to us in life. I am suggesting that you go choose hard things to do on purpose, meaning put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Put yourself in a situation that's going to cause you to grow, cause you to have pressure, and do it on purpose instead of waiting around for that to happen to you. Because what will happen is that you will start to understand, your mind will start to believe, I can do hard things. I am capable of more than what I think I'm capable of, and your confidence will increase. This is a great thing to do with your kids. When Jett was little, she had a real tendency to not want to do hard things and to be nervous around trying some new things or experiencing new things. And we started as part of her affirmations was, I can do hard things. And we celebrated when she put herself in uncomfortable situations and pushed herself outside the comfort zone. And so I want to encourage you today, if you're experiencing a confidence loss in any area, go do something hard on purpose. Put yourself in a room that's uncomfortable. Put yourself in front of a room that's really uncomfortable. Do something that requires you to be somebody different, and watch your confidence increase. All right, number five. And that is courage. Because sometimes confidence doesn't look like confidence. Confidence looks like courage. That's how confidence shows up. Let a lot of the people that you look at and say, wow, they are so confident. They're actually just courageous. They're courageous. They're choosing to push past fear and do it anyways. So maybe it's, you need to start something that you've had on your heart to do for a long time and you feel like you don't have the confidence to do it. Fine. To have the courage to do it. And the confidence will catch up. Because the confidence comes not by being new at something. The confidence comes from the repetition, from the doing it over and over and over again. The confidence comes from mastery. The confidence comes when you get results of the intended purpose. And so maybe it doesn't look like confidence for you. Maybe it looks like courage. Behind the scenes, though to everybody else it's going to look like confidence. So you have permission to go out and step out and be courageous. Okay, so so far we have talked about keeping the promises you've made to yourself. We've talked about knowing your strength and weaknesses. We've talked about not comparing your insides to everyone else's outsides. We've talked about doing hard things on purpose. We've talked about courage. And number six is I want you to borrow somebody else's confidence. Sometimes the best gift somebody can give you is believing in you. And each and every one of you I know have people in your inner circle that believe in you. You have a mom, you have a dad, you have a spouse, you have a friend. You have a leader in your life that believes in you. They see something in you that you don't see in yourself. I am so blessed to have parents that believe in me and champion me. And I will tell you, Tommy is my biggest cheerleader. That man thinks I can do anything that I set my mind to. And when self doubt comes in and I start to second guess and my confidence is shot, he will speak courage into me. He will speak belief into me. And I'm able to borrow from him that confidence. And so if you're sitting here saying, I don't know if I have anybody in my life that believes in me, you can borrow my confidence right now. And I want to tell you, I believe in you. You can do this. You are made for great things. You can accomplish even more than what you have ever dreamed of or what you have ever accomplished in the past. I believe in you. So borrow that confidence and move forward. And then the last one is I want you to remember, and this is so important, I want you to remember that your worth is not tied to your confidence. Meaning who you are is not attached to what you do. And this is a hard thing a lot of times for those of us who desire to be successful, who are ambitious, who are goal oriented, who are results oriented, oftentimes we, we tie our self esteem, we tie our worth, we tie our confidence only to what we do. And I want to remind you that it is about who you are at the end of the day, not about what you do. And this is where my faith I'm so grateful to know that I was created by a loving God. You were created by a loving God who fashioned you in your mother's womb. Every day ordained for you has been written and he called you out and and you are uniquely created for purpose and for plan. And so regardless of all of the things that I said at the beginning that might be shooting your confidence down, whether it was a job loss, a divorce, a broken relationship, a bad year in business, whatever that that confidence loss is, what I want to tell you is that regardless of any of that, you are worth it. You are loved and you are, you are worthy. So today that is what I have for you. Encourage you to whatever one of those seven things resonated with you the most. Maybe take some time to journal about it. You go on a journey of saying, I'm not going to sit in low confidence, I'm going to build it and it's going to be one day at a time. There's no magic pill. There's no instant remedy for it. Maybe you need to keep promises that you're making to yourself. Maybe you need to start focusing on what your strengths are and not your weaknesses. Maybe you got to quit comparing yourself to everybody else. Maybe you need to do something hard on purpose. Maybe you just need to be courageous and start something or be courageous and finish something. Maybe you need to borrow somebody's confidence or maybe you just need to remember who you are. But regardless, I believe in you. Let's go out, win the day, walk in confidence. And as always, thank you for listening to this episode of the Upside. If you have not subscribed to teresaflood.com, please do so and I will send you a teaching guide every Thursday that you can turn around, use for your own self reflection and personal growth. Or you can turn around and take it and teach your team or a group of people that you lead. I believe one of the best ways for you to grow personally and in your leadership is to teach others what you are learning and so that resource is available for you when you go to teresaflood.com so thank you for being an upsider, and we'll see you next week.