As you’ll recall, last week we addressed Ashley’s (a serious student of confidence) first question, which focused on uncovering specific strategies for becoming more confident.
This week we’ll dive into her next three questions, and finish off with the final one next week—
“How do you handle negative people?”
“What encouraged you to tell your story?”
“(I know everyone is different) but how long did it take you to become confident?”
“Do you have any advice for people who are struggling with self image?”
Handling Negative People
The best way to handle negative people is with gentleness, kindness and strong boundaries. In essence, don’t give them too much of your ear space, but try not to judge them either.
Asking thoughtful questions or recommending resources that have helped you is a great way to shift negative energy into an opportunity for growth, while deepening trust. If they are complaining just to complain, they soon go away and you’re free to focus on nurturing connections that bring you joy.
Sharing what you’ve learned from various experiences and resources helps you better understand the teaching. By serving as a resource—rather than the one who has all the answers—you set yourself up to keep studying, experiencing and evolving.
To Strengthen Your Confidence, Tell Your Stories
Telling your stories, experiences and lessons learned gives you an opportunity to deepen your understanding of what you’re learning. Sharing removes pedestals and encourages depth in connection. Authentic connections are the foundation for trust to emerge. Trust in yourself and your experiences leads to trust in relationships.
Whenever someone has a big platform (title, stage, etc.), it’s easy to think, “She must have something I don’t.” But, the truth is that we all share common challenges and we’re far better off sharing the burdens, along with the triumphs. Sharing helps breathe possibility into all our lives.
How Long It Takes To Become Confident
Arriving at self-confidence is sort of like arriving at peace.
I wish I were there. Like, “There, I did it … now I’m confident. Now I’m peaceful.” Instead, there seems to be a continuum, depending on what you’re doing, how much experience you have doing it and your belief about what you think you should know or be able to do.
You will easily find areas of your life where you are more confident than others. And because life is constantly changing and challenging you to grow with it, you’ll always have room to grow in self-awareness.