How to become more confident

Confidence is the key to getting better at anything in your life. And most of the women I work with are wanting more of it. They think that if they had more confidence nothing could stop them and they would be where they want to be.

And they are right.

But there is a difference between confidence and self-confidence.

Confidence comes from doing something over and over and knowing you can do it. I am comfortable doing it. I am not afraid of what will happen. I got this.

You are confident about a ton of things in your life, but it becomes second nature to you.

I am confident in:

• Brushing my teeth

• Pouring a glass of water

• Answering the phone

• Making dinner

• Driving my car

• Washing my laundry

• Taking a shower

I have done these things a ton of times. I am very confident in my abilities to do them. You might think I was born this way but at some point I didn’t know how to do these things. Over time I gained confidence. I have three kiddos, age 4, 6 & 7 and they are not confident in most of these things (though they would like to be). You should see my 4 year old answering the phone… she doesn’t know what buttons to push, where to speak into, if we are on a video call or what. She will look at the screen and not understand why someone isn’t there. It is so confusing. When I ask her to answer the phone she gets scared and nervous. What I know is that over time and practice they all will feel confident to do these tasks. They will fail for sure. They will spill water, run into things with their cars and burn some mac n’ cheese while we try, but eventually they will feel confident to do these things.

This is confidence. I know how to do this and I am confident in my abilities.

Self-confidence is different and what is needed to do new things. Things you haven’t done before and things that you aren’t quite certain of your abilities about. So if you try something new you want to be confident but you don’t have your certainty about your abilities to lean on. That is where self-confidence comes in.

Self-confidence is a multi dimensional concept. It is not just being secure in yourself and your abilities. It is your ability to trust yourself, have your own back, and knowing that you can handle any feeling that comes up. I will break this apart.

1. Your ability to trust yourself: This boils down to you knowing you will do what you say you will do. You will follow through on your plan. You will take care of yourself. You will be responsible and walk out the decision you made beforehand. I see this so often when I work with clients on weight loss. They will figure out the night before what they will do the next day. They have a plan. They are going to do this thing; lose their weight. So they must eat exactly what they decided yesterday. They know that what they said they would do they do. When you have that kind of relationship with yourself it is amazing. You trust you. You know you will do it even when you don’t want to and even when it is hard. Because believe me it will be hard. But you got this. Notice this is different from saying you will do something and then hoping it will happen. That way leaves room for self-doubt which is the exact opposite of self-confidence. If you can’t count on you, you will feel insecure and “at the effect” of you. This will not help you feel in control or self-confident at all. The ability to trust yourself comes from the consistent follow through on your word to yourself. You will earn this with yourself as you practice this and make this a concrete belief and understanding. I can trust me.

2. I have my own back: is your opinion of yourself. Understanding that to have your own back means I will choose me. When I am in pain (negative emotion) I will take care of me. I will not add more pain onto the situation by beating myself up or thinking badly of myself. I will think about myself in a way that generates self-confidence. I will think I am good, capable, and worthy. I will always choose to give myself grace, love, and care; not condemnation, hatred, and abandonment. I don’t avoid myself or shame myself. I see the pain I am in. I acknowledge it and then I have my own back. I got me. I know God does, so I might as well follow suit.

3. Knowing you can handle any feeling that comes my way; is just that, the ability to feel. The worst that can ever happen is an emotion. Knowing that you can feel your emotions and they won’t kill you, (they are just vibrations) gives you an ability to not live in fear of things. I know that no matter what happens I can and will feel the feelings that the circumstance brings up. Failure, I can feel it. Sadness I am getting so much better at. Worry is happening less and less because I know exactly where it is and when it starts. Understanding that the feelings are just vibrations that happen inside your body and that come from a thought you have is so vital for you to gain self-confidence. So if you are afraid of feeling failure you avoid it. If you are fearful of rejection you don’t put yourself out there. But if you know you can feel them, you have a super power that you carry into any circumstance. It takes the risk out and give you a “let’s go” attitude.

Having self-confidence is what allows you to try new things. It is what will open the door for dating or a new relationship. It will help you start or grow a business. It will steer you to paying off that debt or saving for a your own place. It is the key to creating a healthy lifestyle or give you that push to take on that leadership role at your church.

Self-confidence is the beginning of it all because you trust you, you got your own back, and no matter what happens you can feel all the feelings that come up.

That my friends is an amazing feeling.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.” Jeremiah 17:7

I want to put ALL of my confidence in what God can do in and through me. I know you do to. I know you were created by Him. You were created for Him. But we need to get on board with who He has made us to be, and start working on our self-confidence so that He can do all that He is wanting to do in our lives.

He has got you. He will help you feel the feelings. He will remind you of the woman he made you to be. He will help you follow through on your word to yourself. Let Him teach you much about what a self-confident woman in Christ looks like.

As Christians we often fear that we will become prideful or arrogant.

God wants self-confident women not arrogant and prideful women. The difference is that arrogance is thinking you are better than others and trying to prove it. Self-confident women know that ALL HUMANS are awesome and capable. Prideful women deny faults because they can’t tolerate feeling any type of rejection. Self-confident women are humble because they are open to criticism or failure because they are willing to feel any of the emotions that brings up. Arrogance and pride are based on fear. Self-confidence is based on your understanding of how God made us all.

So many women don’t have it because they don’t trust themselves. They don’t manage their mind when they are feeling negative emotion and they add to their pain. They feel out of control with their thoughts and the way they act. They are afraid to feel their emotions. They don’t want to feel the negative emotions and so go into hiding. This keeps you stuck.

But women who do have self-confidence:

• set more goals

• take more action

• talk to more people

• take more risks

• achieve more

• live into their future

Your brain doesn’t produce self-confidence naturally. It does produce fear, worry and doubt naturally. So to create self-confidence you have to practice these new thoughts. You have to practice these concepts of trusting yourself, having your back, and feeling your feelings.

Here are some new thoughts to try on this week:

• The worst that can happen is a feeling

• I have my own back

• I can do what I say I will do

• I am becoming someone that believes I am capable

• God made me for this

• What others think of them is 100% about them

• I can feel any feeling

• Worry only pretends to be necessary.

• The more I fail, the more confident I can become

Do the stuff you are scared to do, repeat. Make decisions, honor those. Feel the feelings. Give up needing anyones approval. Learn by taking massive action. Don’t compare, and don’t be offended.

I can’t wait to see what God does with self-confident single women all around the world!

Angie

Feelings 101

Self-confident women have a secret weapon up their sleeves. It is this, knowing they are able to FEEL any feeling that comes there way.

Now, don’t get me wrong, they don’t want to feel rejected, failure, or disappointment. But they know they can do it. And that makes all the difference in the world. Because women who wonder if they can handle rejection, avoid it. Women who are afraid of failing actually fail ahead of time by not putting themselves out there and trying something they haven’t done before.

See self-confidence is what is needed to do something you have never done before. So asking all of your friends to set you up on blind dates would take someone who is self-confident. Creating an online profile takes self-confidence. Going by yourself to a singles event takes self-confidence.

A self-confident women is someone who knows:

1. who she is

2. that she can trust herself

3. that she has her own back

4. that she can feel her feelings

We will focus on the last one today.

Do you know what feelings are?

They are just vibrations we experience in our body that comes from our thinking. So the best way I describe this is when I am about to get in front of a large group of people and speak I think a thought like, “Don’t mess this up.” To which my body feels nervous. I might think that the reason I am feeling nervous is because of the crowd of people, or the way the lights are pointing right at me, or the stage that I am on. But, that is not true, it is actually coming from the thought, “Don’t mess this up.” What I feel inside my body when I am nervous is my heart rate goes up, I get goosebumps, I start to sweat in my armpits. Those are the vibrations and chemical reactions in my body. Those are all coming from the one sentence in my brain.

Now sensations are different than feelings. The sensation of hunger actually starts in your stomach and travels to your brain. Feelings are the opposite. They start in your brain and go into your body.

Emotions and feelings are the same thing. They are typically one or two words and after looking into it there seems to be 8 primary emotions and some 34,000 total emotions.

So understanding that I might really be sad but I am also feeling, disappointed, frustrated, and hurt has been really good for me to expand my vocabulary and learn the difference of these emotions.

So how do we learn the difference between emotions?

Well, each feeling has a different vibration in your body so actually sad feels differently than frustrated.

Let me explain. When I am sad and really present with the vibrations in my body I notice that it feels like a 100 pound weight is on my chest. It is so heavy, it is hard to breathe deep. I feel it behind my eyes like tears want to well up and sometimes they do. Today the thought that is making me sad is associated with my mentor of 92 years old that passed away in July. I have a thought which is I wish she was here. And from that thought I am feeling sad. It is a feeling I want to feel. I am working on allowing the feeling to be in my body and for me to be present with it too. I used to only push sadness away but really I only created anger for me because I wasn’t willing to feel sadness.

Feeling my feelings is a new thing for me.

Normally we resist, react, or avoid our emotions. Feeling them is something that we need to learn because we are taught by media, and social conditioning to escape them. We have even been taught that having the positive emotions is really not enough, we should then purchase something to make it even better.

1. Resisting them looks like trying to push the door shut. It seems productive, but it really creates more tension and only perpetuates the emotion. We think that resisting emotion is the same as feeling it, but it creates no relief.

2. Reacting looks like releasing something. It may seem like we are feeling them but really we are acting them out and not processing or feeling them at all. So screaming, yelling, or punching something is not feeling your feelings. Feeling doesn’t look like “acting” — feeling is something you can do sitting in a char and experiencing a subtle vibration.

3. Avoiding emotions might be the easiest and most acceptable. The two most common ways people avoid emotions is by overeating/over drinking and working. Typically people don’t know that what they are doing is avoiding. They are so used to an emotion coming over them that they don’t want, that they know how to not feel and instead eat, drink, work…. avoid.

So how do we allow emotions?

This is a skill that you learn and practice. It is not the same as reacting, resisting, or avoiding. It is feeling.

You observe the vibration with compassion. (What in the world is that, you ask)

The easiest way to do this is to describe it in detail. Write it down or tell a friend. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling? Where is it at in my body? How do I know that I am feeling sad instead of anger? What is specific about this?”

Instead of running from this you go towards the vibrations. You breathe it in. You allow it by opening up to it. You know you can handle it and you get super curious about where and what is going on in your body.

You are staying present with your emotions. When you master this skill you aren’t afraid to feel anything. Because you know this is just a feeling that is created by your thoughts and it is just vibrations in your body that aren’t going to harm or kill you. They will be there for like 90 seconds and they actually want to move. The vibrations want to flow through you and be released out. They don’t want to stay stuck, they want to go.

But if you don’t honor the feelings that your brain so wants you to have, you just keep pushing them down like a beach ball into the water, and it will eventually BLOW and then you react to them.

That used to be my cycle big time. I would stuff, not deal with it, then eventually lose it. Be embarrassed that I just acted that way. Pull away to journal, pray, confess, feel bad. and I always asked myself the same question that I could never answer. “Why is this so hard.” This being life. It was really me saying why is feeling your feelings so difficult. It was because I didn’t know how to do that.

I knew how to avoid them for sure, can anybody say Starbucks Frappuchino?

I knew how to resist them and push the negative emotions away. I am not feeling alone, I will just plan my life so I am so busy I will never feel alone.

I knew how to react, yell, blow up or literally melt down in a total mess of “I can’t handle this anymore”.

This was the cycle of my life. No wonder I was 30 pounds overweight, couldn’t figure out my dating life, always overworked, and 100% people pleased. Not only did I not know how to feel my feelings, I didn’t really understand my feelings and why I had them.

So, why do we have feelings?

Feelings are the reason we do everything. The reason I wanted a husband was because of how that would make me feel. The reason I wanted more money is how that would make me feel. The reason I wanted to be thinner was because of how I would feel in my size 6 jeans.

Feelings are what you are wanting in your life. And on top of that we do everything because of the way we feel. I overate last night because I felt frustrated. I slept in this morning because I felt tired. I wrote this blog because I felt excited to share with you.

Knowing that we do everything because of how we want to feel, and we do everything because of how we currently feel, has been a game changer for me.

I want to get this blog done and feel accomplished. To get this blog done I have to feel disciplined, focused, and not distracted. The thought that makes me feel focused is, “I am doing exactly what I need/want to do right now to get this done.”

Ask yourself how do I want to feel right now in my life? What am I believing will make me feel that way? We think it is the actions that make us feel things but really it is just the thoughts you are thinking that make you feel that way.

What feelings are you trying to avoid in your life? Why? What do you think feeling those feelings would actually do for you?

Understanding how your feelings work, how to actually feel them, and how to use your feelings to create the life you want is exactly what my clients are doing each and every week. They are feeling their feelings. They are creating self-confidence because they are seeing themselves feel their feelings and know they can feel any feeling that comes their way.

You can feel your feelings too. It takes practice for sure, but this is a skill worth mastering!

Feeling instead of eating,

Angie

Do you know who you are?

You get to think about you however you want to.

What you think about yourself, or your opinion of yourself plays into your self-confidence.

Self-confidence is a feeling about self. A self-confident person thinks they are strong, competent, worthy, and valuable. Not because of anything they say, do or others think about them. It is just because God made them. PERIOD. 

God has written over 360 verses about who we are. I love seeing His exact words about me. He says things like you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are able, and adequate. You are blameless and blessed. He also says we are cherished, chosen and cleansed.

But we think thoughts like we aren’t good enough. We are a mess. We are wrecked or damaged. We aren’t made well we would actually like to tell Him how to make us a bit better. “God couldn’t we have different hair, maybe different skin, different genetics so we wouldn’t be so heavy…” We think we should be better. God thinks we are unblemished and qualified.

I recently visited an art gallery in Bentonville, Arkansas and every single piece of art made me think about the artist. I was blown away that right there in front of me was something they created with their mind. They thought it and then created it. I was in awe of their choice of color, their technique and skills. I stood their staring and was overcome with beauty. That got me thinking about how I look at myself in the mirror. How I look at the art created by God. My brain is wired to find every flaw, imperfection, and problem I have. So I am drawn to the gray hair, wrinkles, and teeth that are out of place. When I stood in front of the art in Arkansas, I don’t think I caught anything wrong at all. I was free to enjoy the beauty right in front of me. I thought amazing thoughts about it all. But it got me thinking I don’t know if I am enjoying the art that God created and I get to look at and think about daily. I don’t know if I am thinking amazing thoughts about me and the woman God made me to be. I wonder if I am actually believing each and every thing that God spoke over me when He created me. He said you are treasured and upright, valuable, and worthy.

I used to think that was up for debate and the jury was the people. Now I know it doesn’t matter what other people think. It matters what I think and I am in total control of those thoughts.

Too many of us do not believe Him at His word.

We are either believing what other people say about us or we are coming up with our own ideas of who we are.

I’m just anxious.

I am not good enough, see.

She told me I wasn’t cut out for this.

He said I was dumb.

Oh, I know I am critical I am just made that way.

She is so much prettier than I am, I will never get any guy to like me.

I have a hard time loving people like that, it’s just how I am.

I am always late, that just in my DNA.

I won’t ever make a real difference, I figured that out long ago.

My family has always been like that, so I will too. 

These are thoughts that you think about yourself and they are your definition of you. But they become your self-confidence or your self-doubt.

Often when I am working with someone on their self-confidence they will fear becoming arrogant or coming across better than. Arrogance is thinking you are better than someone else and then trying to prove it. Arrogance actually comes from a place of creating false self-confidence by trying to put others down. Arrogance works by trying to raise your opinion of yourself by comparing yourself with others. Often instead of building yourself up, you actually are putting others down. Arrogance typically comes from a lack of self-confidence. Self-confidence, when genuine, understands that ALL HUMANS are awesome and capable. All humans are 100% worthy, valuable and lovable not because of what they do or have. They just are, because God made them that way.

Knowing that everyone is 100% valuable, worthy and lovable allows everyone to know they are amazing and exactly as God says they are.

If you really believe you were 100% what would that do for you?

If you decided today who you were, than anything you tried to do wouldn’t be about you. If you failed, it is not about you. If you succeeded, it is not about you. You have been decided. Your thoughts about you are not on the table to be re-decided all of the time. You have decided to focus your thoughts on ones that build confidence not doubt.

Take all of the thoughts that create doubt and understand that those don’t really serve you to becoming who you truly want to be or who God created you to be.

Listen the world needs you to be you to it. But if you are over here making every single thing about whether you are good enough, or people like you, or you are accepted or chosen or valuable. You are wasting your time and energy on something that can be decided right now.

If you decided today what thoughts you were going to choose to think about yourself, what would you choose to think?

I like thoughts like:

I am amazing.

He created me and loves every part of me, so can I.

I was made for this.

What other people think of me is 100% about them.

What I think about me is 100% me.

My potential is limitless.

I have my own back no matter what.

I am capable.

God decided my worth and I am 100% worthy of love including my own love.

I am not less than or not enough. I am enough.

 These are available to you too! I hope you start believing them.

Walking right beside ya,

Angie

How to have your own back

I recently found some of my notes from middle school. One of my friends would always use the phrase “I got your back.” It was normally used right after she was encouraging me to do something that was bold or courageous or hard. For instance one note said, “Hey, you should talk to Stacey and stand up for yourself, don’t let her treat you like that, and oh, I got your back!” I love it, it was like this little extra nudge.

Hey I got you.

My friend was letting me know if Stacey does something to you, I am on your side. I will choose you. I will stand beside you. No matter what. I will not make it worse.

I feel like when I know someone has my back it doesn’t matter the outcome, I will be taken care of.

Many single women do not feel like anyone has their back. So I want to teach you how to actually have your own back.

Recently I grabbed this quote from a coaching session.

“To have your own back is to know that when I am in pain I take care of myself, I don’t cause myself more pain.” Brooke Castillo

My mind was blown. This concept of knowing no matter what the outcome of something is, I will take care of me. I will not add on pain, or create more pain because of actions I choose to take. I will not beat myself up even more. I will not pick apart all of the wrong. I will not buffer, numb out, or punish myself. I will take care of me.

I love this. When you know how to actually have your own back you put a flag in the sand and you say I will no longer treat myself horribly. I will not allow myself to think badly of myself. I won’t beat me up even more. I will step back, I will feel the negative emotions that I am creating from my thinking. I will with love and curiosity investigate what is going on with me and why I am feeling this way. I will not accuse or pick apart all the things I did or didn’t do wrong. I will simply see the pain and take care of the pain.

So, how do we do that?

Practically you get really good at noticing the pain. When I am in pain I am great at becoming the watcher. I sense the negative emotion and I get curious as to why it is there, where is it coming from and what is causing it. I own it.

Here is an example. I set my alarm for 5:25 and when the alarm went off I pushed snooze and went back to bed. I woke up at 7am to my kiddos hopping into my bed. I was immediately flooded with disappointment. I missed my workout and my quiet time. Ugh!!

Old me, the one that didn’t have my back, would go into an entire lecture on why my day is ruined because I am now behind, can’t make it up, rushed, etc. I would ignore myself out of an attempt to punish me for screwing up. I would go into all the mistakes i made in going to bed too late. I would somehow blame my husband or kids for why they played into me not waking up to my alarm. I would continue to beat myself up for this mistake in the hopes that this would really get me to wake up tomorrow to my alarm, or the beat down will be there waiting for me if I mess up again. It is change fueled by punishment. You better not mess up again or else.

So I used to not have my own back. I used to have pain and create more pain on top of it.

Now, the version of me that has my own back rolls over and notices the thoughts that make me feel disappointed. Thoughts like, “I really wanted to do a workout.” “I am bummed I missed my quiet time.” “This isn’t how I wanted my morning to go.”

I see those thoughts and I accept them. I totally get why I would think those thoughts. I did want to do a workout and I wanted my morning to start of differently, but it didn’t and that is okay. I didn’t have my quiet time but so what? Now what do I want to do.

I want to see that I am in pain (negative emotion of disappointment) and take care of me. I want to know and believe that I will always meet myself with compassion.

This is how I take care of me. I see me. I notice me. I pay attention, like really look at myself.

“Hey, Angie… I am sorry you missed your alarm and rolled over and didn’t get to do what you wanted to do, that is a bummer.”

I notice that I want to be disappointed and I allow it. I feel the emotions instead of stuffing or pushing them away. I open up to them and don’t explain it off. I just see that the reason I am disappointed comes from those thoughts. I get curious about what I was feeling when the alarm went off. What was going on in me that I wanted to push snooze and roll over? I am curious, not condemning.

Then, I take care of me. What is the kindest thing I can do for myself. Can I use other time in the day for those tasks? Can I put something off and replace it with my quiet time? I start to take care of me by not punishing myself but problem solving. If I can make it happen great, if I can’t, also great. But I took the time to have my own back. To love myself unconditionally and to not add more pain to the situation.

When we know that we have our own back we can depend on ourselves even when we mess up. And we know we won’t add pain onto the situation, so we feel safe. We know we will be met by ourself with grace, love, and care.

It is like we are writing ourself a note saying, “Hey girl, I know you are feeling bummed, and down and in some pain, but I got you, I’m gonna take care of you!”

I love relationships like that. Some of the most growth in my life came when I “messed up” and I met myself with curiosity, understanding, grace, love, and care. Some of the most painful experiences for me were when I “messed up” and met myself with more criticism, harsh words, and discipline.

So no matter where you are messing up, it could be you said something dumb, or you ate that cake and ice cream and bag of chips, or you blew up, or you didn’t show up the way you really wanted to, have your back. When you really have your own back you are on your own team. You know that you got you. You don’t have to have a bunch of people supporting and loving you, you do.

At the end of the day we all want to know we are loved and chosen. Why not love and choose yourself, have your own back and be certain you won’t add on any extra pain.

One of the things my clients say is that they can count on me to have their back. They aren’t so good at that yet and then I teach them how to do that. So if you need some help with this, I got you!

Loving myself through all the mistakes,

Angie

What to do when you aren't showing up how you truly want to

You aren’t going to bed when you really want to; you are staying up WAY too late. Or you keep pushing snooze when you told yourself you were NOT going to do that anymore. Here you are again rushing around, late. Not only did you not workout this morning, but you did NOT have your quiet time, and didn’t pack that healthy lunch you promised yourself you would do, because it is Monday. You get to work only to realize you forgot to do that thing for your co-worker like you said you would, and now you are done for.

Finished. You can’t stand you. You can never trust yourself. You never do what you say you are going to do. You forget. You don’t follow through. You are absolutely tired of this, but on top of it all you feel hopeless because this is ALWAYS the way it is. This is just who you are. You will never really change. 

So when it’s your lunch break, you head to Chick-fil-a grab the chicken sandwich, french fries, and the sweet tea. You have this horrible conversation with yourself about how you will never be the ideal version of you. You won’t ever lose the weight, feel connected with God, or stop being late in life. You won’t find a guy, get married and have the family you really want. You grab your phone and scroll through Instagram and see all of your friends better off than you. Susie from your sorority in college got married over the weekend; she is skinny, so of course she did. Then you see your other friend Jill, with pictures of her new baby and their adorable nursery that they made her. You start to feel frustrated and confused.

Why is this happening to them and never going to happen for you?

That reminds you of that guy Jason, that you just met online, that you started to trust and then he ghosted you, yeah, see, it never works out.  So you start playing Merge Blocks on your phone, get lost in the game and look up to see that you are now late. Where did the time go?

“Oh, I shouldn’t have gotten the number one, I should have gotten the salad. I shouldn’t have scrolled through my phone; I should have been walking instead. UGH!!!”

Your day goes on like this and it is only 1pm. This is the cycle of you creating a horrible relationship with you. You have zero trust with yourself. You have these thoughts, impulses, things that you think are going to make you feel better; the #1, the game on your phone, the scrolling Instagram. But they never do and they are keeping you from the life you truly want.

You are tired of being a victim to you. You aren’t even in control, you feel like something else is. You try and show up, but you never really do. You are just living at the effects of you and you are SO over it.

So what do you do?

Your relationship with you is actually 3 relationships in one. It is your past self, present self, and future self all in a relationship with one another.

This relationship is complex. Present self has a lot of thoughts about past self. Present self also has a lot of dreams for future self. But present self is with present self, and it all boils down to present self’s trust or self-doubt. That is where we must begin. Your ability to trust you. Present self has to trust present self. As you do trust yourself and start showing up as you say you will your relationship with your past self and even future self changes.

Re-building this relationship is vital for you to start having self-confidence.

So let’s use the example of you staying up late last night. Your present self at 7am when you have snoozed your alarm clock four times, is frustrated with your past self that chose to stay up late. When you were your present self (at midnight) choosing to stay up late binge watching Netflix, you were only thinking about your present self and feeling good in the moment. You were NOT thinking about your future self at all.

There are 3 ways to make this relationship better.

1.     Accept yourself as is.

So when you do wake up after pushing snooze, accept that past self chose to feel good in the moment setting up present self with this current circumstance. Don’t beat past self up. Seek to understand past self. Think through what was going on with past self that she would want to binge watch Netflix. Seek to see her. When I understand that the reason I feel tired this morning is because I chose to stay up late last night. I chose that. I want to understand why I chose to stay up late. What was I feeling last night that made me choose to binge watch Netflix?

When you can begin to understand that you make your choices based on how you are feeling, you can understand what you want to avoid feeling or want to feel more of. See yourself, accept what is, don’t add on self-hate. Get to the root of where you are and accept that version of you.

2.     Take ownership of your actions

Get really honest with what you are doing. I chose to not get out of bed when my alarm went off. Own it. Don’t blame past self. Don’t throw ammunition at past self and give it a beat down. You only build up more evidence that past self can’t be trusted and is no good. Just deal with it. So I didn’t wake up to my alarm. So what? It is fine. I can still create the day I want with this small set-back. I will still make a super healthy choice today for lunch and grab a salad at Chick-fil-a. I will go walking for my 10-minute break this afternoon. I will still make the choices I want to make today. I am not living at the effects of my past self’s decisions. I am not a victim to myself. I can make present decisions that set up my future self. I am creating the life I want in the future, one decision at a time. Own it.

3. Start thinking more about future self, and delay present self’s instant gratification.

When you can feel the discomfort, or handle your negative emotions without escaping or numbing out, you will start to get good at staying present right where you are. When you are present you can start to make great decisions that set-up your future self. Delayed gratification leads to greater long-term satisfaction. When you choose to not eat the candy bar now and feel the urge or hunger, you delay the gratification for the greater satisfaction of those size 10 jeans fitting. You start to honor your future self more and more. When you want to stay up late you remember your future self and think I know how rested and amazing I will feel tomorrow if I can stop numbing out on this Netflix series right now.

When you start rebuilding your relationship with your past, present, and future versions of you, it can be a game changer to becoming who you really do want to be.

You start trusting you will do what you said you will do. You will follow through on your plan. And when you don’t, you know exactly why you didn’t. You will take care of you. You will do the responsible and useful thing for yourself, even when you don’t feel like it. This is very different from saying you will do something and then hoping you follow through. When you continually don’t follow through you create a lot of self-doubt, which is the opposite of self-confidence. If you can’t count on yourself, you will feel insecure and “at the effect” of yourself instead of in charge, in control, and self-confident. The ability to trust yourself starts from consistent follow through on your word to yourself. You weren’t born with this innate ability to trust yourself and have self-confidence. You earn it from yourself by keeping your word and doing what you say at the highest level.

Remember this is going to be a process of changing your thoughts.

You will have to let go of these thoughts:

• I will always be this way

• I never change

• It doesn’t matter because we know I won’t do it

• I can never be trusted

• I knew I couldn’t

• I am no good at this

• I don’t know how to fix this

• I don’t know if I will

• There could be things that come up or happen

And start believing these thoughts:

• I can become whoever I want to be

• I create change for myself

• I know I will do it

• I can trust me

• I know I can

• I can get better at this

• I am learning how to fix this

• I will commit to this result

• No matter what I will stick to my plan

Once you begin to trust yourself you can start to build your self-confidence. Which I will talk all about next week. Let’s start with trust and see what that alone starts to create.

Working on trusting myself right along with you,

Angie