05. It's Not Really Confidence You're After
6 things I prioritize when it comes to being more confident.
When I was a kid, I always looked up at my mom and saw her coordinated outfits, hair and nails done, jewelry all real good, bag and shoes designer but never loud. Her expensive fragrance was her daily, and she never forgot the shades; always had a big pair of jlo style sunglasses on. To me, she really was that girl; put together and a real life adult right, doing womanly things right before my adolescent eyes. I tried to take notes. I wanted to learn how to be a woman, I wanted to learn how to look put together. As I ventured into the rest of my adult womanhood, I moved across the country for school, where I met more put together women, all from different parts of the world who had their own ideas of what it meant to be a woman. I had never been surrounded by so many different perspectives, and my world had opened up tenfold. I learned perspective and I learned that it wasn’t “being put-together” I was after. It was confidence, and up until now, as in who I am today, I don’t think I ever had it.
Being a late bloomer in school, in addition to being decently taller than majority of the rest of my classes, I ate a few of my lunches in teachers classrooms. I was always pretty good at school and always enrolled in sports unless I got in trouble at home. I was never a confident person unless it was based on school and sports since that was really all I knew. Fast forward to college where I started really experimenting with who I was the more I was exposed to, and I guess I blossomed you could say, but I didn’t fully know it. I was still insecure and trying to figure out who I was, but I had grown into my face a bit more and my hair was a bit healthy. It was a mini glowup just based on the excitement of being in a new environment. I met more and more confident women who all eluded confidence in their own unique ways, which brought me to my first realization; I really didn’t know sh*t.
1. Being Open to GROWTH
One of the first things I had to learn to understand was that I had growth opportunities. I had things to improve on, so I had to push myself to get to a place where I could truly accept that in order to work on that growth, and what that meant to me. We’re not perfect and we never will be. In fact, I firmly believe that as a species, that fact that we only have 2 arms is a complete joke, and inherently makes us weak because why am I struggling to carry all of the things I need to carry, when I could just use my third and fourth arm that I so obviously should have. But alas, that is not the growth I am referring to. This will mean something different to everyone but what stands is the need to understand where you need to grow. This will take some serious self-reflection and hard internal conversations to understand what areas you can truly benefit from growing. Maybe you struggle with communicating with people. That’s where you start; being open to becoming a better communicator. Maybe you struggle regulating your emotions. You have to be open to the realization that there is a struggle there and that you 10000000% have the ability to improve on that. That entire process of the thought itself is growth. “Understanding your weaknesses, creates more strengths” - in quotations because growth opportunities aren’t weaknesses, but addressing them leads to growth, which in turn, creates more strengths.
2. Set S.M.A.R.T Goals
One of the biggest things we as humans are guilty of is falling into ruts, which makes us feel stagnant, which inhibits our growth and ultimately chips away at our self-confidence with each missed opportunity. That’s why it’s SO important to set goals for yourself based on your life and where you want to take it. I started following this goal setting method that was created to help businesses narrow down their goals in order to have a more meaningful impact as a company. The foundation for the method was developed by George T. Doran in a 1981 issue of a business journal called ‘Management Review.’ Okay, pero like what is SMART? Let me break it down…
S - Specific:
Make your goals clear and specific so you can accurately strategize/plan for them
M - Measurable:
Define measurable assets/goals. You should be able to track your progress and growth along the way. Just saying “I want to be better: isn’t settle a measurable or clear goal. You have to be more specific: “I want to be able to run 5 miles under 45 minutes instead of my current time.”
A - Achievable:
Make sure your goals are realistic. You should be able to complete them in within a certain time frame in order to track your progress.
R - Relevant:
This one is the biggest. Make sure your goals are relevant to your overall Big Picture. Your goals should be directly related to your field, industry, overall area of interest that you are currently in or want to be in.
T - Time Based:
Your goals should be achievable within a specific time frame. This allows you to clarify task management and create a realistic plan you can stick to where you will actually see and experience the results in real time.
3. Improve Your Skills
Do you have a hobby? Is there something you think you’re moderately decent at? Maybe there’s something you’ve always wanted to do or learn. I don’t care if that means learning how to paint or becoming the greatest chess player of all time. For me it meant improving on all the areas in life that I use everyday; i.e. communication, leadership, task management along with photography and creative direction. I want to be a certain type successful so that means I am going to improve on my skills in order to be the greatest (or try to) at whatever it is I’m doing. The goal really shouldn’t be to be the best (that’s just a me thing) but to be better than you are right now. To improve upon the foundation you have already built and the experience you have already gained. Regardless of what life is like for you, it’s always a little bit better when you’re really good at something or when you can physically see that you’ve made progress in some way. Maybe you want to dedicate more time to fitness, maybe you want to read more books every month. Whatever the thing is that you do or love, improve upon it. Be better than you were and than you are right now.
4. Embrace Failure
It’s okay to fall, as long as you get back up. It’s okay to lose, as long as you never stop trying to win. You will not get everything on the first try and you will lose so many more times before you win, regardless of what you’re doing. Whether its art, sports, academics, fashion what have you, you will see a lot of failure before the success and that is NORMAL. We only learn to avoid a hot oven AFTER we’ve already burned ourselves, so failing is honestly a part of the process. You have to know what it feels like to fail, in order to never want to fail again. With each failure comes growth, comes learning from your mistakes and improving on what you already had. Without failure, you don’t ever win.
4. Talk to You NICE
I’ve always been a fan of talkin to myself in the mirror, or talking myself through certain situations. Either way, I talk to myself A LOT. Mainly to figure out the next move or process my emotions and thoughts. But also to hype myself up and tell myself how great I am when I need to hear it. Most people need background music when they’re working or getting ready. This can be for many reasons but one in particular being that it can be hard to be alone with your own thoughts; not everyone can handle that, but this has always been a point of comfort for me. Even as a little girl, anytime I would get in trouble, I would talk it through to myself when I was sad. Talk about what I would have said or done differently, talking through my emotions as I cried in the mirror. Now as an adult, I can sit there for hours in silence with my own thoughts (and something to actively do of course) and process. I can process my emotions, plan out conversations and do a lot of self-reflection since I don’t feel the need to be distracted by my mind. So for a little while, close your Spotify, open up you windows, and let the air and sounds and life be your background noise. Talk to yourself. Tell yourself anything you want to. Be your own hype man and tell yourself how proud you are. Whatever you have to say, say it.
5. Step OUT of Your Comfort Zone
Meeting new people, experiencing new things, putting yourself in unfamiliar situations, all these things help round you out as a person and force you to really think about your reactions in those new spaces. The more you put yourself in new territory, whether that be learning something new, going out when you’re naturally a homebody or signing up for a group fitness class that you have never done before. There a bunch of small ways to slowly build yourself up to trying something new, cause let’s face it, that $hit is scary. But every time you do, you grow a little bit more. And every time you grow, you gain a little bit more confidence than before, up until all these scary new things don’t seem so scary anymore. The less you fear, the more opportunities you will open yourself up to and the more ready you will be to make the most of them.
6. Prioritize Self-Care
This may seem like a small thing, but as a college athlete, one of my biggest mantras was “Look good, feel good, perform good” and I still live by that to this day. Whether it means slapping on some mascara and lip gloss for the gym or spending 6 hours doing your own gel nails in your living room like me lmao, do the thing that makes you feel good. Self-care doesn’t only mean to go to the spa or getting a massage, although you can definitely do that too. Self-care is whatever that means to YOU. Whether that means doing your makeup, going to the gym, taking a silly little trip to Target or TJ Maxx, just do the thing that makes you happy. Don’t bring anyone, don’t call anyone, don’t make this about anything else but you. Enjoy your own company in whatever way you see fit, and your performance will start to reflect the security you find in that.
Last Thing…
“I will not be judged by you or society. I will wear whatever I want and blow whomever I want as long as I can breathe and kneel.”
- Samantha Jones
When we all watched Sex and The City for the first time, the whole world was blinded by Miss Carrie Bradshaw. She was thee New York fashion icon and also a talented writer living this glamorous lifestyle we could only hope was real. We knew NOTHING!! Carrie/SJP got the It Girl treatment while the world dubbed Samantha Jones a whore. Fast forward to day, and TikTok is full of “Carrie was the real villain” memes; society woke tf up and realized that we were rooting for the wrong blonde when we had the blueprint of confidence and womanhood right in front of us. Samantha MF Jones / Kim Catrall. Samantha Jones never gave a single F what anyone had to say about her or the decisions she made. She was a career woman who got hers, always supported her friends no matter how stupid their decisions were, and never judged anyone for how they live. She wasn’t afraid to make certain decisions because she knew who she was and nobody else was paying her bills but her. Thanks for hanging out and I’ll see you next week <3
KLOVEYOUBYEEEEEEE 🫶🏽🤎