Most people dread the idea of confidence building in fear of not being accepted, failing to fit in, or being judged by other people. To make this process much easier, Coach Tracy Pontarelli presents three simple steps you can follow. She explains how to reexamine your beliefs to shift your mindset and why you must rely on others to cultivate your courage. Tracy also explains how consistency is vital in keeping your confidence strong, rinsing and repeating the entire process to always show up as your highly confident self.
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Confidence Building: How To Eliminate Doubts And Limiting Beliefs
I wanted to talk to you. We had a great conversation with my team about confidence. If you are reading this and you feel like you look around and other people have more confidence, and you’re not that kind of person, and you feel like you can’t be that kind of person, you can’t have that level of confidence. This episode is for you. I do believe some people are built with a little bit different wiring. They are willing to get out there and do things and make it messy. They don’t care. I do believe more times than not that is a learned skill.
A lot of things could have happened to you when you were younger that impacted your confidence. I want to start by saying you are amazing. The fact that you’re reading this and you’re looking to build your confidence shows that you believe inside you is a person that can do this. I’m proud of you. We can’t control the stuff that happened before that has chipped away at our confidence, but we can change from here on out.
I want to give you a couple of tips. It’s going to be short and sweet, a little bit of a pep talk for you as you go to build your confidence. Three steps. The first is check your beliefs about the stories you’re telling yourself. My guess is if you don’t feel like you have enough confidence, it’s starting from what the stories are that you’re telling yourself about how it’s going to go.
We’ve talked a lot about mindset and how the brain works on this podcast, but for anybody who’s new, welcome. Here’s what’s fun about the brain. It comes up with lots of crazy stories about why you should stay in your comfort zone. It’s built on some faulty wiring. When we first evolved as cavemen, cave people, cave women, we didn’t have a lot of reasoning skills. Our brains were designed to help us stay out of danger. If we ate a berry and got sick, we learned that the next time we saw those berries, don’t eat those berries, they make you sick. We learned to run from dangerous animals. All of this skill of learning how to predict and prevent danger has now manifested into our little monkey brains telling us all of the reasons why we shouldn’t do something.
A lot of that is just based on fear, and wrapped around it, maybe some things that have not gone well for you or things that people said to you throughout your life that have solidified your beliefs about why you cannot do something. I’m here to tell you that a belief is just a story that you keep telling yourself. That’s all it is. It’s not true unless you decide it is.
Number one is to check your beliefs, and get into the work of changing those belief sets. You don’t even have to completely change your belief. You just have to shift it where you believe that change is actually possible for you. Open the door to the belief that maybe that story is not true. Once you do that, that’s where courage comes in.
This was a great conversation we had because the courage builds the confidence. The confidence builds the competence. The courage to just do it. The doing is what’s going to build the confidence, the abilities. The confidence is going to build the competence. Sometimes you just have to say, “I’m going to take ten seconds of courage and go.” Mel Robbins calls it The Five-Second Rule. I call it Ten Seconds of Courage, but 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, just do it. Stop listening to your brain. You’ve got to short circuit that little fear loop, and go ahead and do it.
I’m sure you all have a story on this. When I was little, my family had this membership to this little pond in our town in Rhode Island. It’s called Camp Westwood. I have to go back because I’m sure that the diving board is not very high. When I was little, the diving board felt like I was an Olympic diver going along with this diving board. I was terrified, but everyone was jumping off the diving board. There would always be a huge line of kids jumping off the diving board. I would watch them and I would be so sad because I was afraid to do it.
I can still remember the day that finally, I don’t know how I got convinced, my siblings stayed by my side, and I was terrified on the diving board. I can still remember the kids behind me getting so aggravated because I was at the edge of the diving board and I was crying, I didn’t want to do it. My family decided, “This is the day. You said you were going to do it. We’re here for you. Whenever you’re ready, go ahead and jump.” I jumped, and it was the most fun ever. Then I spent the next hour in the line jumping off the diving board.
The fear I had was completely unrealistic. You can look back to your life and remember things that you did that actually worked out to be okay, and borrow that courage as you go to do something else. I also want you to take some time here during this ten seconds of courage, and do a little gap and gain exercise. When you’re feeling worried about what will happen, you’re in the gap. If you spend some time looking back on your life and thinking about all of the things that you’ve done and all of the things you thought you couldn’t do that you did, you start to build up a little bit of courage to go for it.
“Build your confidence by calling a friend and telling them what you’re doing. Borrow courage from them, then rinse and repeat.”
Step three is rinse and repeat. The confidence is going to come from the repetition. If you do it one time, your brain can also say, “That’s a fluke. You got lucky. It’s not always going to work that way.” The confidence is going to come from doing it over and over again through times that are hard, even though your brain doesn’t say so. The more you do it, the more confident you will become.
You can’t wait for confidence, you’ve got to build it. It’s a muscle just like everything else. I know you can do this. I’m going to give you one final little tip. Check your beliefs and then start to do the work. I would go read The Gap And The Gain, or go back and read my last couple of shows on the topic. I went through the entire book. It’s one of my favorites. It was life-changing for me and my whole team. You can go back and read that. Start to look at what are the stories you’re telling yourself. Because once you start to realize that they’re just stories, you can start to change the script, start to change the ending, start to change the middle, do a plot twist. You do anything with the story once you realize it’s a story.
The second is that ten seconds of courage. Borrow old courage. Phone a friend. Tell someone what you’re doing. Get some confidence from other people. Borrow some courage from other people, and then rinse and repeat. That’s what’s going to build the confidence. I hope this was helpful. Let me know if this resonated with you. You’re doing a great job. The fact that you are trying to get out of your comfort zone means you are doing what most people won’t. Congratulate yourself for that. I’m proud of you. I’ll talk to you more the next time. Bye.
