A recent hot topic with my mastermind has been that of confidence. About two months ago, we did a webinar for the first time on it, and found that it was such a deep and wide topic. This episode is a two-part one … today you’ll get to hear part one on my show and on Wednesday, part two is airing on Liz Applegate’s show, Midlife Schmidlife.

There are a couple of things I know to be true about confidence: nearly everyone, at some point, struggles with feeling self-confident. While it’s not unusual for other people to look and act extremely confident, the thing I’ve found (especially in talking to so many guests for the podcast) is that at some point or another, everyone doubts themselves. And I want that to sink in for you. Even published authors, even rock stars, even the front man of a band, or the voice of a super villain – every single one of them has shared with me that they don’t always trust in themselves, and, they feel like other people likely have it more together than they do.

The other thing that’s tricky, and interesting, about confidence is that it’s an emotion you only feel after doing the thing that scares you. This is also universally true – even with outwardly confident people – that you’re going to run into things (often those things that are most important to you), that scare you. And, doing whatever it is for the first time? You won’t feel so confident about it.

The tricky thing? The confidence comes AFTER you do the thing that is scary. It’s a bit of a leap of faith, and that’s what makes it so tricky, so scary, and why so many people stop in their tracks before even trying to do the thing that they are scared of.

There’s another way of thinking of this – it’s not so much that you don’t have confidence in yourself, it’s that you’re feeling fear and that’s uncomfortable.

In this week’s episode, Liz Applegate, Julie Houghton and I are tackling the questions of confidence. I hope you’ll join in.

In this episode we talk about:

• How confidence shows up for us in our lives and work
• What it means to reconnect and claim your voice when you’re not feeling confident
• How being kind with yourself about your human experience of feeling afraid is a key component to working through your fears
• That everyone experiences not feeling confident
• The myth of comfort and safety vs discomfort
• How people pleasing, boundaries, and being afraid to speak up play into confidence
• Learning to communicate more effectively to feel more confident
• Identifying what is in your control, and how that builds confidence

Resources Sign up for our Workshop on April 20th Listen to Part Two on Wednesday on Midlife Schmidlife Liz Applegate’s Website and Podcast Julie Houghton’s Website Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (book on Amazon)