Where Your Truth Goes, Your Confidence Follows

So you now know how confident you are, right? I mean, when ranking yourself regarding your confidence level, you were truthful, right? Oh, you mean you stretched the truth a little? Oh well, that’s okay because we all do it: stretch the truth, I mean. But if you can’t be honest with yourself, then with whom can you be honest? Knowing your truth is the second critical piece to being confident. The first was realizing that all your actions and reactions to life's events and decisions impacted your confidence level. Truth is what empowers you to step out of your comfort zone confidently and take the actions or steps necessary in life.

In the first part of this three-part series you were introduced to your two main life accounts into which all your actions, decisions and experiences are either made deposits into or taken from as withdrawals from your integrity and confidence accounts. Remember that both these accounts affect your level of success in your career, your relationships, and your overall personal wellness.

Your confidence level will dictate how you handle and manage your stress. Some stress is important in life, but extreme stress can be hazardous. Your goal is to be able to handle yourself regarding decision-making during times of crisis as well as you do during normal circumstances. With a lower confidence level it becomes more difficult for you to make effective decisions.

Examples of normal stress or daily triggers of your stress might be balancing your checkbook, creating employee schedules at work, or arranging a food drive for the local food bank. While moving through these situations, your physical, emotional and mental bodies are working according to plan. There may be emotions you experience such as frustration due to trying to coordinate others' schedules and availability, but these frustrations are easily worked through and released. There are no residual emotions floating around; in other words, you've let them go and moved on.

But what happens when you experience a crisis or a heightened state of stress? Go back to our initial case in Part One of the Building Confidence series: Someone else has taken credit for your job well done that management has publically praised. You congratulated him and gave yourself a pat on the back for taking the high road. Did you easily "let go" of the emotions you felt, or are there residual effects occurring in your physical body? Your emotional body? Mentally you've let the situation go, right? I mean, you aren't stretching the truth are you? You're not pretending you've let it go when really you've only just stuffed it down and are trying to convince yourself that you're over it. As a result, you adopted the motto "Fake it till you make it."

Externally you may have let the situation go, but have you triggered your internal stressors? External stress indicating you've not let the emotional element go might be 1) change of priorities in food choices that reduce proper nutrition; 2) reduced exercise; or 3) a change in sleep habits change (staying up later, sleeping longer or having trouble getting up and going in the morning). (I've included a longer list at the end of the article for your reference for both internal and external stress indicators.)

These external stress signals can lead to digestive issues that result in reduced metabolism and storing more fat energy, which causes your internal organs not to work as effectively as they did. Yikes! I know it's not Halloween, but that's scarier than the ghosts and goblins who came knocking! Imaging over the course of months what your internal body goes through as you "convince yourself" you're over the situation.