Talk nice. Confidence part 3

Think back to a time in your life when you have felt invincible. When what you were doing felt easy, in flow, and you felt powerful.

What were you doing?
Who were you with?

I bet you felt an inner confidence didn’t you?

Often we feel like a fish out of water, or like you shouldn’t be there, or didn’t quite fit in. In this place your confidence is being rocked by…. You. There are two things going on here.

1. When you live your purpose, have purpose and live according to your values, confidence radiates from you.
Your values are those ‘principles’ that have worth for you. They are unique to everyone and form your inner compass, your North Star and guiding light. When what your doing aligns to your values you feel alive. There is a feeling of purpose, lightness, energy and flow.

Example, your values maybe independence, credibility, recognition, support and connection. Now put yourself in a role where you have the autonomy to make decisions, you know the role or subject matter inside out, your manager, colleagues and peers give you praise and thanks for your efforts and offer to help and bounce ideas. This aligns to your values and you will feel confidence, positivity and flow.

Now think about joining a new company. You may have the independence, but suddenly you aren’t the expert, no one knows you yet, and what you can achieve. You haven’t yet built relationships so you don’t know who to ask for support. You sure won’t be feeling as confident.

So if you don’t have that feeling, reflect on what’s really going on inside. Are you aligning your life to your values or in pursuit of them?

2. You are letting negative self talk take over
Your inner saboteurs, gremlins or negative self talk are a primal safety mechanism. It is there to keep you safe, alert and away from failure. This is your mammal brain talking to you. Now just take a second to remember you are a human. You have the power and skill to overwrite that negative self talk and get confidence.

So take the example before. You walk into your new role. You know the company feels right, the culture appeals to you. As you sit there on your first day, the gremlins start talking.

What are you doing here?
Really? Were you the best candidate?
Don’t ask for help, you will just be bothering them
You need a pen? Why didn’t you bring a pen? Stupid!

Whatever the self talk is, just overwrite it with positives. You got the job because you were the best person. You have been invited there. You won’t be bothering them, they are there to help you. It takes practice, but you can do it.

So know you have purpose in what you do. Know what values are being honoured. Notice those gremlins in your head and kick them into touch.