3 Actions To Find Truth & Confidence

You know you're confident. Go on and admit it. When you think of yourself and your confidence, you're being honest when you say, "Oh yeah, I'm confident."

Oh, just a second. You didn't, did you? Just tell a little fib? You're really not so confident as you tell others? Oh well, that’s okay since we all do it: stretch the truth, that is. However, if you can’t be candid with yourself, then with whom can you be candid? Knowing your truth is the second critical element to having self-confidence. Your first is making the connection between your actions and reactions to life’s dealings and their impact on your self-confidence. Truth is what empowers you to confidently step out of your comfort zone and take the steps necessary in life.

In "3 Simple Steps to Improve Your Self-Confidence" you were presented with your two major life accounts - integrity and confidence - where all your actions, decisions and experiences either will make deposits into or a withdrawals from. You know both these accounts affect your level of success in your career, your relationships, and your overall personal wellness.

Your confidence dictates how you handle and manage your stress or anxiety. A certain amount of stress is essential in life, but severe anxiety can be harmful. Your intention with managing your stress is to be able to handle yourself during times of crisis as well as you do in ordinary situations. With lower self-confidence it's more difficult to make valuable decisions.

Examples of normal or common, everyday stress can be managing your family calendars, prioritizing how to spend your time, or coordinating the carpooling for your children’s school trip. While working through these situations, your physical, emotional and mental bodies are working as per usual. You may experience emotions like frustration when coordinating other people's availability, but these frustrations are simply worked through and released. There are no feelings hovering around. In other words, you’ve let them go and moved on.

But what transpires as you go through a crisis or heightened state of stress? Using the same situational example as in "3 Simple Steps to Improving Your Self-Confidence": Somebody else has taken acknowledgment for your job well done and management has publically praised him. You congratulated the individual and gave yourself a pat on the back for taking the high road. Did you simply "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? You aren’t stretching the truth and pretending you’ve let it go when in actuality you’ve only just stuffed it and are trying to persuade yourself that you’re over it, are you? Have you adopted the motto “Fake it till you make it”?

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Externally you might have let the situation go, but you may have triggered your internal stressors. External stressors indicating you’ve not let the emotional element go might be: (1) choosing unhealthy foods; (2) forgoing your normal exercise routine; or (3) less patience when dealing with others. (I’ve included a longer list at the end of the article for your reference for both internal and external anxiety indicators.)

These external worry indicators can lead to digestive issues that affect your metabolism and energy levels, and your internal organs may not work so efficiently as they were. Yikes! I realize it’s not Halloween, but these side effects are scarier than the ghosts and goblins that came knocking! Imagine over the course of several weeks what your body is going through as you "convince yourself" you're over the situation.

To continue to increase your self-confidence, you need to be able to understand your body well so you can clearly detect when you’ve "stuffed" a situation and didn't address it. The only way to know yourself well enough is to be straightforward and be in touch with yourself consistently. Having "the talk" with yourself is not what I mean. It's very easy to tell stories to yourself about how you're doing. Your ego loves to misdirect you.

Here are three actions you can take to eliminate your ego from the conversation and get to the center of your truth.

1. Keep a Daily Journal. Keep a daily journal of what's happening in your life. Be sure to include your anxiety level and rank it between 1 (normal, everyday tension) and 10 (off the chart emergency situation). Be sure to incorporate the emotions you were feeling. By journaling you will be able to look back and learn what might have been the root trigger to the stress you felt, which will provide you the opportunity to “Step Up Your Emotion” and gain a new viewpoint.
2. Rate Your Behavior. Begin setting objectives. Write them down in your journal so you can review, alter and identify newly acquired behaviors you’ve picked up. Take into account that you're getting to know yourself and your body on all levels. You will need to rate these new behaviors as (a) helpful, (b) indifferent, or (c) unhelpful. When you’ve rated your behaviors, you have to immediately review every unhelpful behavior so you can understand why they're non-supportive and know how you will have to alter your actions so they either become helpful or you remove them from your routine totally. When you have reviewed the non-supportive elements, move on to the "indifferent" list of behaviors and duplicate the process. Your objective is to be honest yet gentle with yourself so you can improve your self-confidence in any situation you might find yourself.
3. Support Network. Find support from outside means such as a coach, networking groups, mentors, or consultants to provide an independent view of what is or might be happening in your life. In order to be open and honest with yourself, you also have to be able to hear independent views of your circumstance. Hearing another person’s viewpoint will not be easy, particularly when it's a moment of crisis. But bear in mind the "whole" or big picture and that this new information will ultimately improve your self-confidence. Another person’s truth does not need to turn into your truth, but hearing an outside view will allow you to gain a point of clarity within your own perspective. Remember that in order to “Execute Actions” in life, you must to be open to a new outlook.

Your truth is what empowers you, and your feeling empowered enhances your self-confidence. Being self-confident enables you to go after what you really want.

To your success!
Coach Karen K

Examples of external stress signals:

• Fitful sleep, waking more than once per eight-hour period;
• Unable to fall asleep within 10 minutes of going to bed;
• Missing family dinners, eating quickly or while engaged in another activity such as working on a computer, watching television or reading articles;
• Missing normal exercise routines; or
• Biting your nails.

Examples of internal stress signals:

• Irregular bowel movements;
• Increased or decreased urine output;
• Feeling overheated or needing to wear additional clothing due to feeling chilled more than normal;
• Craving a certain type or quality of foods could indicate the need for additional types of nutrients your body needs or an "addiction" to certain foods has begun (such as sugars); or
• Pains where before there were none.

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Life Coach and Business Coach Karen Kleinwort is the founder Therapy in Transition and is a Certified Professional Coach specializing in the integration of her clients' mind, body and spirit into her Personal Empowerment Coaching practice. For more information, visit www.coachkarenk.com. www.therapyintransition.org or contact her at success@coachkarenk.com.