Thoughts On Confidence
List of things which helped me change my perception on confidence
“Thoughts On Life” is series of reflections on what helps me get into the right mindset, builds me up as an entrepreneur, but also as a human being. Here I’m taking you through the emotional rollercoaster of my brain, sharing a list of things I’m doing, watching, listening, reading and trying out which hopefully you’ll find useful too.
In this post I’m talking about confidence and what helped me change my perception of it.
🌱 You know there are these periods in life when you know change is coming. You can almost feel it dangling in the air, whispering in your ears, settling into every pore of your being, nagging you to do something about it. Sometimes you’re ready for it, other times you’re not and that right there makes all the difference.
🧠 Before I underwent the incubator program at HER|Tech I wasn’t even aware of just how much I wasn’t ready for it. Sure I wanted things to change, because I felt stuck. What I wasn’t aware though was the fact that in order to evolve I had to alter so many things about me first, before even thinking of changing my business. Confidence was on the very top of that list.
💪 I’m sure most of you are familiar with the concept of it, but do you have it and what’s the best way to acquire it if you don’t? What makes you feel less or more confident and what’s the lack of triggered by?
This month these and so many more thoughts surrounding this topic consumed me to the point of starting to question everything that I did and do. I was convinced I was a confident person, but when the world has told you NO so many times, it’s natural to take a step back and reevaluate what you’re doing losing tiny pieces of that confidence along the way. What I realised is asking these tough questions is necessary to initiate change and regain that confidence back. As entrepreneurs, we’re consumed by so many things that need our immediate attention, making it very easy to trap ourselves in a hamster wheel, running a full marathon, tiring to the point of exhaustion. Unless you stop and come back to the very core values that make you you, the change you seek will never come.
📖 So I wanted to share few things that helped me break this vicious cycle I entrapped myself in and set me on the right path to actual change this month, as well as back to the “I’m the most awesome” type of thinking, if you know what I mean.
Finding Your Professional Voice: Confidence & Impact Course by The University of London on Coursera - I took this course because I got tired of hearing myself constantly saying that I wasn’t good at public speaking. I wanted to understand better what exactly happens that makes me so afraid when I get in front of people, why my mind completely shuts down, what’s happening to my body and why my voice melts down and gets so quite when I get in front of people. I discovered so many interesting things, one of them being this notion of me believing that people don’t want to hear what I’m saying. This is one of the reasons why I’m challenging myself to write these posts. To anyone struggling with this like I have, I highly recommend this course. It puts a spotlight on you and forces you to become aware of so many things from the way you stand, to the science behind why sometimes your voice totally cracks, The course is free and you can find it here.
This Youtube video on confidence, just blew my mind
Britanny Packnett Cunningham breaks down confidence on 3 different pillars:
permission bursts confidence
community nurtures it
and curiosity affirms it
Which it basically goes on to say that the environment you grew up in tends to have the most impact on confidence and how you perceive it, but also manifest it as well.
Practice makes perfect - While trying to navigate the maze of my brain, I realised that while I might not be the next Martin Luther King, the best thing for me at the moment is to practice pitching and public speaking in general to the point where I learn it by heart. It’s the only way for me to ensure that I won’t get chewed up and spit out by my own thoughts. It works for me, as it got me the 2nd place at Demo Day, so I’m doing it. Any attempt at improvising at the moment is just bad for me, as my mouth tends to just vomit incoherent thoughts and then shuts down completely. It’s a work in progress and one day I know I’ll get there. Until that day comes though, practice does make perfect.
If you came to this sentence, I would like to thank you for reading my ramblings. I’ll leave you with this, although life tends to get messy, I hope that you find the time to carve a space for yourself to better understand you. It’s the only way to move forward and be ready when that change comes.