Episode 274
The Secret To Boosting Your Confidence And Keeping It High (It May Not Be What You Think)
How high is your trust in yourself?
You may or may not be able to answer that question easily. But I bet you have an answer for this one – how confident are you?
The link between confidence and trust is so incredibly strong, yet we don’t usually think of those two things as related. Today I’m shining light on why confidence and trust go hand in hand, and I’m giving you a pathway to experience higher levels of both in your life.
Links:
- TRUST Challenge: https://www.matthewbivens.com/trust/
Transcript/Notes
Welcome to another having it all moment, I’m Matthew Bivens YOUR Balance Lifestyle Coach, and I’m here to give you some quick ideas to chew on that are going to have a huge impact on your day and your life.
Today I want to talk to you about Confidence and Trust.
A big part of my personal growth journey has been a confidence journey — in fact, that was part of my most recent Epic Challenge in my life group, which I’ll get into in a future episode.
I have not always been confident, most of my adult life I had very little confidence. I had to work on it, and I did, and over time my confidence grew. I’m doing things today with confidence and comfort that would have made me anxious as hell 10 years ago.
We all want to be confident, cool under pressure, humble yet powerful versions of ourselves.
What if I told you that the road to Confidence was through Trust?
Today is the kickoff for the Trust Challenge, so I’m not even going to pretend that this episode is not a huge “HEY YOU SHOULD SIGN UP FOR THE TRUST CHALLENGE IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY!”
Brene Brown did a Super Soul Sunday talk with Oprah about Trust. In the talk she likens trust to a jar of marbles in a her daughters school classroom.
When the kids were well behaved, a marble went into the jar. When they misbehaved a marble was taken out of the jar. When the jar got full the class received a reward.
It works the same with building trust. How did you build trust with your best friend? Probably little by little, one marble added to the jar at a time (they kept their word, they were kind to you, they were generous, they remembered a small detail about your life that made you smile, they were thoughtful) — all of those are deposits into the jar, and over a period of time the jar filled up. When it was full, you trusted them.
We make deposits with people when we do things to uphold the trust (deposit = adding to the jar).
We make withdrawals with people when we do things to break the trust (withdrawal = taking marbles out of the jar).
That same thing — deposits and withdrawals in trust building — is how you build trust with YOURSELF as well.
Keep your word to yourself, add a marble to the jar.
Speak kindly to yourself, add a marble to the jar.
Be patient with yourself, add a marble to the jar.
Break your promises, take a marble out.
Judge your decision making, take a marble out.
Fail to hold your boundaries or standards, take a marble out.
It’s deposits and withdrawals.
And guess what — here’s the kicker — the trust you have with yourself is the foundation for your confidence.
Yes!
Low trust in self == low confidence
High trust in self == high confidence
Why?
When my trust in self is high, I know that I can count on myself to show up in the way I want to in a situation…
- Leading my COI — do I trust I’ll be able to lead powerfully?
- Speaking at an event — do I trust I’ll be able to say what I want to say without forgetting everything?
- Having a confronting conversation with a family member — do I trust I will be able to hold my standards while showing empathy and love?
- Going to a networking event — do I trust that my self image will be strong and in tact if the people I introduce myself to don’t seem interested?
- Publishing something raw and vulnerable on the podcast, knowing you’ll hear it — do I trust that I can keep creating new things even if people don’t like what I’m creating?
When you can emphatically say YES to each of those, it’s because of all the marbles you’ve stacked in your jar over time.
Your self trust is high, your confidence is high, and therefore you believe you’ll be able to handle yourself in any situation.
Putting marbles in the jar is EARNING TRUST. Those deposits have to be made. The intention is not enough, you actually have to do the work.
You can build your self trust and do the work in a number of ways.
- Respect your boundaries. When you have boundaries or standards, hold them.
- Be responsible, own your mistakes, learn from them, clean it up (make amends), move on.
- Be loving and nonjudgmental towards yourself, allow yourself to be human, show yourself grace.
- Choose courage over comfort. Step into the scary growth situations. Do what you know your spirit is calling you do to, rather than what’s easy or comfortable.
- Be reliable, do what you say you will do.
Trust and therefore Confidence are things that can absolutely be developed.
If you don’t feel like you can trust others, it’s because you don’t feel like you can trust yourself. If you’re not feeling confident in the world, it’s because trust in yourself is lacking.
You can do something about that! You can add marbles to your jar, one at a time, over time, and can feel your Trust and Confidence grow.
What would your life be like if you felt 10x more Confident? How would your relationships (with yourself and others) change if you had 10x the amount of Trust?
Ponder that for yourself.
And if you’re ready to do something about it, I highly encourage you sign up for the Trust Challenge. It’s #1 goal is to help you add marbles to your jar. That’s it. Go to matthewbivens.com/TRUST to sign up and join us! We kick off today and we go through Feb 29th, and you can join at any time.
See you there!
That’s it for today!
Please, share this with 1 person who needs to hear this message today.
Wishing you the abundant loving life that is 100% possible for you. My name is Matthew Bivens, YOUR balance lifestyle coach, and I’ll catch you later.
Peace.
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