How to Improve Confidence (brought to you by a man in a speedo...)
One Sunday morning I rolled over in bed and did something unusual, I started scrolling through Facebook. A gut instinct told me to do it. I stumbled across a video that changed me. Picture this…
Combine the gloriousness of all that is Justin Timberlake and a man in a speedo with some serious moves groovin’ gloriously, and I got a killer confidence booster. If he was bold enough to not give a flyin’ leap what anybody thought, I shouldn’t either.
We all have moments where our confidence dips and dwindles. A mean comment. A nasty text. A failing grade. A bad relationship. Some moments last longer than others. After I was bought out of my first online business, I spent two years licking my wounds in my own little corner of surrender and defeat. I questioned my ability to do anything, even the stuff I knew I was good at.
(WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR CONFIDENCE, YOU QUESTION EVERYTHING.)
With every new idea, with every new possibility and opportunity, I questioned whether I could do it. Fear of another failure kept me trapped in a seemingly unending spiral of doubt. Even when I took a step or two forward, I would move three steps back with each fear-based question. Can I do this? Am I good enough? My fear was trying to protect me from getting hurt again.
The problem is, it wasn’t helping improve my confidence and it wasn’t helping me take my dream of Crown Yourself into reality. However, with these three steps (and a dancing man in a speedo, I claimed my confidence again and strutted boldly into my future.
How to Improve Confidence
NO.1 TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
The first step’s always the hardest. No one can change the way you feel about yourself, except yourself. The reason why you lost your confidence in the first place is you accepted what someone said about you as true. Even though someone else incepted the idea of unworthiness into your beautiful brain, it’s your prob, because you accepted it as true.
YOU LOSE CONFIDENCE BY CHOOSING TO LIVE BY SOMEONE ELSE’S DEFINITION OF WHO YOU ARE.
The consequence is you lose your luster because you question whether you should even be luminous. You made their false perception of you, as true in your mind as it is in theirs. Believe me, we’ve all done it.
So, first, you must accept that you are partly to blame for your confidence loss. It was, after all, you who accepted someone else’s lie as your truth. Own your part. Then move on.
NO.2 TAKE AN ASSESSMENT
Think of yourself as an anthropologist, assessing a human behavior. Without judgment or derision, ask yourself, “Is their criticism valid?” Is there actually something you need to fix within yourself?
SOMETIMES THERE IS. SOMETIMES, THERE ISN’T.
If you got a poor grade on the test, did you actually study? If you’ve continued to gain weight and are losing confidence in yourself because of your body, ask yourself, are you actually eating healthfully (more veggies less processed)? Or, are you exercising? If not, these are habits you have to change. You have to (No. 1) take responsibility for your actions. If your diet is crap, and you’re feeling like crap, you have to take responsibility that no one is putting that crap into your mouth, but yourself.
NO.3 SCREW THEM (NO, NOT LITERALLY.)
After your own internal assessment, remember to assess the source of the criticism.
A lot of people project their own feelings of inadequacy onto you. People love pointing blame, to take the blame off of themselves. Politicians seem to be particularly adept at this skill. You know the ol’ saying, "When you point one finger, there are four more pointing back at you."
(There's a reason cliches are cliches...even if they belong in a fortune cookie.)
For two years, I accepted someone else askew definition of me as real. It truly hindered me getting any new project off the ground, because every time I did, someone else's voice would pop into my head saying I was a fraud, or too young, or incompetent, or just plain couldn’t because of some other stupid reason.
It took a while for me to realize that the truth was, I had adopted someone else' limiting beliefs as my own. Once I took responsibility for repeating those lies in my own head (No.1), and took an assessment of his criticisms to see if there truly was anything for me to improve on (No.2) when I realized it was only MY fear and MY limiting beliefs popping up, I said, “Screw it. I’m doing this.”
And my confidence followed suit.
NO. 4 TAKE ACTION
Taking action is how you prove that our lack of confidence was all an illusion. You need to show your false perception who’s boss. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Nobody else can. You have to act.
ACT YOUR WAY TO CONFIDENCE. YOU ONLY ACHIEVE CONFIDENCE BY TAKING ACTION.
As soon as you do, Poof! The fear that you couldn’t do it is gone. Whether it was your own dialogue or someone else’s rotating through your head, you just proved it not to be true!
That’s why I loved this video. This dude just took action, not caring what anyone else thought of him. He rocked his mad dance skills and owned his authenticity. It was in the moments of watching a large man gyrating in a speedo that I denounced the lies that I wasn’t worthy of achieving my dreams.
This quirky, joyous viral video made me realize I just needed to just DO. I needed to muster up all my confidence and just dance my dreams out of my head and into reality. I literally danced out of the darkness of my bedroom to the light of my computer screen. It was a beacon, calling me, welcoming me home.
I would so give this man a hug if I saw him on the streets and join him in a gyrating J-T jubilee. Because whether it was the magic of the man, of the song, me, or all three, I saw my need to Crown Myself. To live confidently crowned.
Fast forward a few months later and with "Can't Stop The Feeling" on repeat, and now Crown Yourself is real. In the Olympian worthy, creative battle between Fear vs. me, we can just let the score speak for itself.
FEAR: 0. KIMBERLY: 1. TAKE THAT RIO!
Now you give it a try. Let me know in the comments what victory over fear you've recently had as you claim your confidence! What song gets your confidence going? I look forward to hearing from you.