What's Your Confidence Level?

If someone were to ask you to state how confident you are, what would be your response? Ten? So very confident that you easily articulate your point of view, present ideas as required, make decisions swiftly without a lot of second guessing? Or zero? You have no confidence at all since you believe others have desire to hear thoughts and you are hesitant, can't make a decision without wanting to know at least three people's opinions. Or is it somewhere in between?

I was shocked to learn recently there is a crisis in self-belief running rampant among women these days: not just professionally, but in their personal lives as well. Women, it seems, are missing the self-confidence to articulate or offer up their two cents or receive acknowledgment for a job well done.

Sounding at all familiar? At first the thought seemed foreign to me, but then I started looking around at the ladies in my life and I realized that yes, the truth of the matter is that a good number of my conversations with friends and associates indicate they lack the confidence to move out and into doing more than just merely existing in their lives. Wow!

Did you know you were born with two accounts? And no, I'm not referring to a money account. Yet there are individuals who are born with those as well. But really, you were born with two very specialized lifelong accounts that your actions, decisions and experiences will make either a deposit into or a withdrawal from. Your first holds your integrity and the second your self-belief or confidence.

Both accounts are fragile and instantly affected no matter whether or not you're consciously aware of it. The variation between these two accounts is you are born with your integrity account full and your self-belief account empty. The basis for the difference is that as an infant you are asked to trust and have confidence in the individuals who care for you, so you immediately start making deposits into your confidence account. Your integrity is full; this is based on the idea that all your actions are aligned with your integrity at birth, as you are in the max-learning stage - meaning you don’t know any better, you have no experience on which to draw to make decisions, and therefore you are required to depend on what you're being taught and exposed to is well, supportive or in alignment with your life's purpose.

As you progress through life, your actions and decisions affect these two accounts. If you elect to live with integrity, you will continue to grow and develop your self-belief. If your decisions are supportive of your integrity, your account balance stays put; if not, then a withdrawal occurs. To make a deposit into your integrity bank account requires a lot more work. You need to rebuild your integrity, and that needs time. Similarly, your actions and decisions influence your self-confidence, but your self-confidence is also affected by your re-actions to how other people react to your judgements.

How you react to decisions under common situations and during times of crisis can be entirely different. What allows your judgments in periods of crisis to be similar to normal circumstances is your self-confidence. The more confident you are, the better judgements you will make when finding yourself in an elevated stress level.

Remember that your analysis of tension and explanation of crisis can and will change, transform and be entirely redefined depending on your experiences. So what you consider to be an emergency may not be considered even vaguely traumatic to another.

Let's assume you know the true meaning and impact anxiety can have on you and your ability to formulate valuable judgements. But are you aware of the difference between internal and external stress? No? Don't lose sleep just yet, as you are not on your own. For the most part, people lump all stress into one big ball. But for you to be self-confident in your life, you have to understand the difference between inner and outer stress, which we'll go over in Part Two of this Building Confidence series.

Right now what really matters is you possess the tools and abilities necessary to formulate judgments effectively and increase your confidence. Here are three very easy actions for you to take now to begin improving your self-confidence and getting what you not merely deserve in life but really want.

Action 1 Identify the emotion originally triggered when you're in a heightened stress state. An example is if you're in the workplace and someone else takes credit for a task you completed. What did you emotionally feel? Was it powerlessness? Grief? Anger? Discouragement? No matter what it is, just receive it. Don't judge yourself for feeling it. That's what we do as human beings because we're emotional beings; we experience life through our emotions, so go ahead and feel the emotion being triggered. By feeling your emotion, your self-confidence is immediately increased due to obtaining newfound wisdom -- and wisdom is empowering!

Action 2 Step up your emotion. If you're feeling angry, then look to elevate your emotion to discouragement. If you've been feeling discouragement, then lift your emotion to frustration. If you were feeling insecure, then raise your emotion to jealousy. The secret is you must elevate your emotions so you can start to perceive a new view on the situation that has triggered your stress. With a new perspective you're free to increase your confidence regarding the situation.

Action 3 Execute! This is twofold. You have to basically "put to death" the lower emotion and continue raising your feelings to a higher intensity until you're back being positive. The next is take action or execute the step(s) needed to fully embrace your newly established self-confidence. You need to take at least one step to resolve the situation triggering your panic or crisis. Back to our example of someone else taking the credit for your job well done, an action for you might be to approach the person who took the credit and congratulate him on his accomplishment while making sure to give yourself a pat on the back for taking the high road.

Confidence breeds confidence. And with each action you take, the greater your self-confidence will strengthen.

Until next time, embrace your inner wisdom.

Namaste,
Karen