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Natural Awakenings Atlanta

Ask a Coach: How Do I Build My Self-Confidence?

Jun 15, 2022 12:20AM ● By Terri Kozlowski

Ask one of our three consulting coaches just about anything! To submit a question, go to bit.ly/naa-ask-a-coach. ❧


People with low self-esteem feel like they’ll fail no matter what they try doing. Those with low self-esteem can fall prey to a victim mentality, in which case they give away their power. On the other hand, confident people are determined to make circumstances work out for them.

If you’re in victim mode, you blame others for your situation; you don’t take responsibility for your role in the choices that brought you to where you find yourself. Our egoic minds—that voice inside our heads that is continuously taunting us with unwelcome thoughts—can be lazy and can shift the focus away from us and onto others so we don’t have to get our hands dirty doing what we need to do to overcome our obstacles.

Why do people with low self-esteem allow the egoic mind to keep them living a mediocre life when they really want more? Like I said, our egos can be lazy. It doesn’t want to work and will make up excuses and lies about why we shouldn’t bother to put in the effort.

The lies your ego tells you are harmful self-talk about your past failures, and they can tear down your confidence. The egoic mind does such a good job of it that it makes you depressed about your past and causes you to be anxious about your future to the point that you can’t move in any direction. You’re stuck with a life you don’t like, believing you have no power to change it.

What Does “Believe in Yourself” Mean?

To believe in yourself, you must first accept who you authentically are. You need to learn to love the things about yourself that are different from others by accepting those parts of yourself that are unique. You can even love the parts of yourself you think you don’t like. In short: To have self-confidence, love yourself.

This is how you retake your power. Personal power is based on the belief that you can overcome obstacles in your life. It doesn’t mean you’re always successful. As you gain self-confidence, reclaim your power and live each day with strength, you accept your life’s journey with joy and peace. You also recognize that the challenges you face bring you new skills, new knowledge and more opportunities.

Believing in yourself means you learn from your experiences, both positive and negative. As soon as you know you’ve taken the wrong step, your brain automatically wants to improve your performance so you are able to do that more quickly when the next situation comes up. Believing in yourself is a psychological process that affects your brain’s connections. It allows you to handle mistakes with grace because you know you will learn and grow from your experiences.

How Do You Build Self-Confidence?

The first step for making any change is awareness, so recognize that it’s up to you to build confidence and believe in yourself. Examine what beliefs you have that limit your growth. With awareness, you can alter your perceptions. Do this by reframing the stories you tell yourself, in other words, look at the situation from a new perspective. When you look for the lesson within a negative experience, you alter your outlook, and that allows you to see the positive effect of the event. Reframing reminds your ego that you can glean lessons from incidents—even undesirable ones—and growth can occur.

Self-respect is a requirement for believing in yourself, and having personal boundaries is one way to respect yourself. Your self-talk reflects how you feel about yourself and how you respect yourself. Are you talking to yourself lovingly as you would talk to a close friend, or is your self-talk demeaning, abusive and disrespectful? If your inner monologue is harmful, change it immediately so you’re not continually beating down your self-confidence.

Take action to build your self-confidence. Overcoming obstacles requires action on your part. You must take the risk and show the egoic mind what you can accomplish when your heart’s vision aligns with Spirit. Taking steps toward your goals, even if you have a few missteps, allows you to build your confidence and believe in your abilities.

How Do You Visualize Success?

When you meditate on, journal about or visualize the outcome you want to have, you let the Universe know what you desire. These practices also inspire you to take the necessary action to move forward. As you take part in life more fully, you experience more, which allows ample opportunities to succeed and build self-confidence.

Creating a vision board is one great way to put what you want your life to look like in a visual format. You will notice new opportunities when they arise, and you’ll have the courage to act because you’ll have the self-confidence to realize and expect success.

Visualizing what you want helps you keep going despite the obstacles you encounter because you know where you’re going. Since you know the result, you no longer react to issues. You respond confidently instead.

What is the Secret to Facing Obstacles?

Along your life journey, you’ll come up against obstacles you want to overcome. The fundamental reason anyone stays stuck is fear—fear of failure, fear of looking bad, fear of succeeding, fear of doing the wrong thing, fear of believing in oneself.

To overcome fear, you must take action. Action is the secret to facing obstacles and facing your fears.

Any effort is progress, even if the steps you take don’t get you exactly where you’d hope to go. Even a misstep has a lesson for you; any lesson you learn grows your self-confidence when you apply it to future actions.

Your actions—even the ones you regret—help you build your belief in yourself. They give you protection from the egoic mind by giving you lessons and achievements. You can acknowledge your growth and fuel your self-esteem for the next part of your journey. ❧


Native American Terri Kozlowski is a certified life coach and author of Raven Transcending Fear. She hosts the podcast “Soul Solutions,” which is available on many platforms. Contact her at TerriKozlowski.com

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