How are you? How has your week been? This week has been all about confidence for me (and my clients!)
This is a topic that comes up time and time again in my world. Of course, you’d probably expect this in coaching sessions in clients (where it’s often the bedrock of the work we do).
But it also seems to creep in to a lot of my casual conversations. And it often isn’t something we’re necessarily aware of. I’m particularly attuned to it - firstly because of the work that I do and secondly, because of my own journey with confidence over the years.
So I notice whenever it pops up in my personal life - with friends on a walk, chatting with other women down at the gym, or chatting with other coaches after a group supervision. Confidence (or more often, not having enough of it) seems to be an underlying theme to a lot of the challenges that life throws at us - and particularly when it comes to supporting our own physical, emotional and mental wellbeing.
When we need to have a tricky conversation with our partners about sharing the domestic load more fairly - that’s about confidence.
When we’re worried we’re starting to burnout and we know we need to ask for help - even though we’re scared and exhausted - that’s confidence.
When we say we want to carve out time in the day to get out for a run while it’s still light - but we aren’t holding the time sacred in our day and letting other people’s priorities be more important than ours - that’s about confidence.
When we need to stop procrastinating and make a difficult decision that we’ve been putting off - that’s about confidence.
When we need to say no to a friend, even though we know that they’ll be disappointed - that’s confidence.
When we talk about how we’d love to learn something new but we’re nervous that we won’t be any good - that’s confidence.
Because here’s the thing: Confidence can be really misunderstood.
I’m not talking about the loud sort of stereotypical, extroverted confidence that feels alien to so many of us - and yet is ‘sold’ as the version of confidence to aspire to.
No, what I’m talking about here is confidence in terms of what it actually means - to have trust in yourself (the word stems from the latin ‘confidare’ - to have trust). And self trust is deeply powerful - far more powerful than the external facade of loud confidence that we are told by society that we need to adopt.
Of course ‘confidence’ also covers self esteem, self worth, self belief - and a whole host of overlapping elements. But self trust is often at the core of all of these.
We can’t ignore the fact that there are multiple systemic factors that slowly chip away at our confidence over time (Thanks, patriachy)
We also can’t get away from the fact that confidence and burnout are inextricably linked - when confidence is low, we’re more likely to burnout. And when we’re burnt-out - our confidence is often rockbottom. This is why working on both confidence and wellbeing pays off in dividends - we can’t do one without the other.
This means that defining what confidence/self trust looks like for YOU is deeply important. You get to decide how you embody confidence - not anyone else.
Have a brilliant weekend,
Rachael x
If you’d like to explore how 1-1 coaching can help you to build your self trust and confidence to help you get unstuck from the cycle of burnout and thrive in your life and your work - you can find out more about my coaching below.