564. 6 Strategies for Becoming Killer Confident

If there was one thing that I could teach people or one transformation that I could provide, whether that’s speaking to a live audience, teaching a workshop, or even in my church calling at church where I work with the young women, if there’s one thing that I could give people, it would be confidence. And the reason why is because being more confident makes every single part of your life easier. It makes you show up more like the person you want to be, and it is not only best for you, but best for everybody around you. The problem is most people have no idea how to build confidence. So today I’m giving you six strategies for becoming killer confident. Let’s go.

Hey there and welcome to Better Than Happy. My name is Jody Moore and my mission is to empower you to live the life you want today and create more of what you want for tomorrow. Buckle up because this is real talk, tough love, and insight into human behavior so that we can all be on to ourselves.

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Hey there, everybody. Thanks for joining me today on the podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you about six strategies for becoming more confident. Now, I purposely chose the word strategy, and I want you to think for just a minute about what a strategy is. A strategy is an action that we take with some intentional, thoughtful purpose behind it, okay? We ask ourselves, what is the outcome I’m trying to create? And then what do I think is the best possible way to achieve that outcome?

I’m reminding you of this because strategies are about what we want to create in a possible future moment. So it is not about what we want to do in the present, right? Some of the things I’m going to ask you to do are going to be uncomfortable as you’re doing them. And that is intentional, that is a strategy. So you have to remind the part of your brain that says, I don’t want to do that, that sounds hard, that sounds scary, that yes, but we’re doing it on purpose. It is strategic because we believe there’s a good chance that it will create the outcome we want of being more confident.

Some of the things that I’m going to ask you to do are going to mean forgoing some immediate pleasure or comfort, and part of your brain won’t like that. But when you go, this is strategic. I’m not just trying to punish myself here, I’m not just blindly following someone’s advice. I’m doing this because I think it might create the outcome I desire. So with that said, I’m going to give you six strategies, but you don’t have to execute all of them. The more that you execute, the more confidence you will build, but even if you just take one and you try it out and you can let yourself go slow with it and you absolutely don’t have to be perfect with it, but if you truly give it a chance, I promise you, you will be able to build your confidence and then maybe you want to add another one.

Now, as you become more confident, I just want to warn you what will happen. Your problems will become smaller or vanish altogether. Some of the things you thought were problems will just disappear. Others of them will get much more manageable and bite-sized. The goals that you want to achieve will become possible and available to you, and you’ll start dreaming and having more ideas about what you even want in your life. And everything will just expand from there. This is literally what happens as you build confidence, and then from that place, you become even more confident.

Confidence is one of those things that is sort of unfair in this way, okay? Here’s what I mean. There are other things in life that are unfair in this way too. For example, our physical health. I always found it to be really unfair that the better shape you’re in, the easier it is to go out and exercise, to maybe jog or lift weights or whatever. Somebody who’s strong and healthy, it’s easier to jog and lift weights than somebody who is unhealthy. And yet, the unhealthy person really needs the benefit of that exercise, we might even say more than the healthy person.

Money’s the same way. The more money we have, the easier it is to make money. And yet, the person that doesn’t have a lot of money needs the money more than the person with the money. Confidence is the same way, okay? The more confidence you have, the easier it is to build even more confidence. But if you don’t have a lot of confidence, it’s okay. I’m going to tell you the baby steps that will get you started, but just know it will get easier.

Let’s dive in. Let’s talk about number one. The first thing I want you to do is to do hard things on purpose. Find hard things, choose hard things, and then go after them. Now, sometimes we call these goals, okay? And if you don’t like that word goals, you don’t have to use the word goal, but a goal is just a hard thing that we choose to do on purpose. Usually, if it’s not hard, we don’t call it a goal, right? So why does doing hard things build your confidence?

Well, first of all, I want to say that most people won’t even do this, okay? Most people avoid doing hard things at all costs. They are looking for the easy way to do things, right? They’re looking out for easy buttons and our world is offering them to us in plenty. We have many opportunities to make things easy. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t make things in your life easier. I’m just saying if you’re not doing something hard on purpose, then you’re not building your confidence. Most people will not do this. They will only do hard things that they have to do instead of choosing hard things on purpose, and those two things are different. But most people are also walking around highly insecure.

So we’re going to do things because they’re hard. Why does this build confidence? Because after you do something hard and you succeed at it, you have that, “Oh my gosh, I did that” feeling. If it’s been a while since you’ve had that feeling, I want you to think back to being a little kid. Maybe you decided to learn to ride a bike at one point, and at first you couldn’t ride that bike and you were falling off the bike and you were tipping over, and then all of a sudden you got it and you started riding the bike, right? Remember that feeling? Oh my gosh, I did that.

This is why I love helping people do two things. Number one, work on their health, and number two, build businesses, because for me, those have been the two areas that have required the most development for me. And as I’ve been able to make progress in both of them, and I have a long way to go still in both of them, but as I’ve made progress, my confidence has grown so tremendously.

I love dessert. I blame my genetics because I come from a family that loves dessert and I have siblings and parents who love dessert and we’re just dessert people, right? But all the desserts I’ve had throughout my life have not really served my body in the end or my pancreas and my ability to regulate glucose and insulin. And so now I’ve created some problems now that I’m age 51.

So getting myself to change my eating habits, desserts only actually the beginning of it, but getting myself to change my eating habits has been very hard. I also actually love exercise, but I love cardio exercise. I’m a runner. I used to run marathons back in the day. I love a high fitness type class, right? A HIIT class, high intensity class. I was at step aerobics. I used to do turbo kickboxing. I can do a high intensity class and get excited about that anytime. Problem is again, now that I’m 51, my knees and my hips and my ankles and things don’t tolerate that kind of exercise, not to mention what my body needs a lot more is lifting weights, going into the gym and lifting heavy weights. Never sounds fun to me. I never crave it like I crave going to a turbo kickboxing class. I, in fact, have so much resistance and avoidance of it. So I’m doing it yes, for my physical health, but I’m doing it even more so to build my confidence because it’s hard for me to do. Every time I do it, I feel a little bit more confident. I build self-trust, right? So overall changing my eating habits, getting my health in order has been hard. Now that I’ve made so much progress, I’m so much more confident.

Some of you are like this with your businesses, right? That getting yourself to do the things that are necessary to serve your clients or customers or grow your business in the way you want to is hard. And so the reason I’m bringing this up is because when it’s hard, I want you to tell yourself, yeah, it’s hard and that’s why we’re doing it. Because we do hard things on purpose. Not only are we doing this to get healthy or to build the business we want to have, but we’re doing it because doing hard things really is good for my relationship with me.

Now, we tend to understand this with kids. This is why we encourage our kids to do things like play sports, go to school, get degrees, get jobs, learn a talent, maybe learn how to play a musical instrument, develop a hobby. All of these things build confidence, but not just in kids. It’s true for us as adults as well. And how many adults do you see enrolling in a guitar class who have never played the guitar before or a dance class who have never danced before or singing lessons if they’ve never sung before? Not very many. And we need to be doing this. This is what develops confidence, doing hard things on purpose.

Now, what makes it hard? It’s hard because you don’t know how. It’s hard because you have resistance and you have to overcome that resistance. It’s hard because you have to overcome your own self-doubt when your brain’s like, you’re probably not going to be good at that, it’s not going to work. As you overcome that, you build confidence. You have to override the primitive brain or the motivational triad that’s like, I don’t feel like it, that sounds hard. I’m too tired. I don’t want to do that. And every time you overcome that and you do things that you want to have done, that’s what I always tell myself. Of course, I don’t want to do it. Of course, I don’t want to go to the gym, but I want to have gone to the gym. So I’m going to go to the gym. And every time I do that, I override that motivational triad.

It also helps you see that you’re capable of growth and change, which is a very healthy thing to remind yourself of. And finally, even if it doesn’t work, even if you don’t succeed at whatever outcome you were trying to create, like you don’t change your health in the way you were trying to in the timeline you wanted, or you don’t achieve your business goal in the timeline that you’d set out or the way that you set out, even if you don’t succeed, you still have the opportunity to build confidence, and I would argue maybe even more so when you failed. Because failure is an opportunity to stop and connect with yourself and be compassionate and say, “Hey, girl, what’s up? I’m so proud of you for trying. I love you. I’m not mad at you.” I did a whole episode on failure a little while ago you can go back and listen to, but failing still gives you just as much of an opportunity to build confidence if you approach it the right way. So do hard things. That’s number one.

Number two, ask for what you want. How often do you just ask for what you want? Like, maybe you go into a restaurant and they seat you at a table and you don’t like that table. Do you ever say, would it be possible to sit at that table over there by the window? Would it be possible to get a bigger table? I’m not saying you have to be a jerk. I’m not saying demand what you want. I’m just saying ask for what you want. How often do you ask your spouse or your children or whoever else you live with for what you want? Again, I’m not saying be a jerk about it, but do you make requests and ask for what you want? Or do you tell yourself a bunch of nonsense stories about your own worthiness or whether or not you should have wants or desires? Most people that I work with, especially women, do not ask for what they want. They feel bad, they feel selfish, they feel very uncomfortable asking for what they want for several reasons.

Maybe they don’t even know what they want. This is very common. If you don’t know what you want, you need to get more in touch with what you want because how are you going to create what you want if you don’t even know what you want? Get in touch with what you want, journal about it, ask yourself, be curious, pay attention to your own mind, to your own desires, to your own interests.

Next, most people, again, especially women, don’t even think that it’s okay to have wants. They don’t think they should have needs. This might come from your upbringing or what have you. It really doesn’t matter. If you have this voice in your head that says what you want doesn’t matter, you don’t have time for what you want. You have to pay attention to what everybody else wants. Don’t be selfish or don’t be needy. Then you need to pay attention to that voice and rewire it in your mind because we all are needy. We all have needs. We all have wants, and it’s okay. You’re supposed to, okay? You should absolutely have wants and needs. And if you understand what they are and you’re willing to ask for them, you’re much more likely to get them met.

Next reason I see people not ask for what they want is they don’t want to bother anyone. Now I want you to think about what that tells you about yourself. If I have a child who every time they ask for something, I say, don’t bother people. We don’t want you to bother anyone. You’re being a bother right now. Then the child starts getting the message that they’re not very important. Their needs are definitely not important. And in fact, they should be making sure to keep everyone else happy instead of trying to take care of their own needs. That is not a healthy message, my friend. That’s the message you send yourself when you think I don’t want to bother anyone.

So again, when I ask for what I want, I like to say, please feel free to say no, but I have a request of you. I had a friend one time who was moving and I said to her, do you need any help moving? And she said, yeah, could you come over on Saturday morning at 10 AM and help me pack boxes for a while? And it was like, what a revolutionary idea to actually just tell people what you want and ask for help. I was so glad that she asked me because I did want to help, but I wasn’t expecting it because most women don’t do that. Mostly we go, oh no, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.

As you ask for help and you be willing to help others and you be willing to get no for an answer and make it very safe for people to say no, you start building a relationship with yourself that says it’s okay that you have wants and needs and desires. I’m going to help you get them met. It’s a much more healthy way to live your life.

The third strategy that will build confidence is to get better at feeling emotions. Get better at emotions. Now, we don’t have to get better at positive emotions. Most of us, most of the time are pretty good at feeling positive emotions. The reason I say most of the time is because sometimes positive emotions don’t feel natural and normal to us and so even if there’s a lot of positive, we sometimes will try to escape that. But for the most part, I’m talking about negative emotions that we have to get better at feeling. Negative meaning they don’t feel good. We don’t like them, they’re not ideal, we don’t prefer them. But I want you to get better at feeling them.

How do we get better at feeling them? We feel them. We notice opportunities of when they come up, and then we get really present with ourselves and we take a deep breath and we relax and we notice it in our bodies and we try to relax. I try to relax my shoulders and my neck and my face and my gut and I try to just be with it in my body. Deep breathing helps a lot. And I just go, okay, we’re feeling sad. I’m feeling anxious, I’m feeling scared, I’m feeling frustrated. And you do the feeling.

The alternative is to push it down and resist it or to try to talk yourself out of it and tell yourself that you shouldn’t be feeling that way and that you should just get over it or to distract from it in some way like scrolling social media, eating food, whatever other is your distraction of choice, shopping online is one of my favorites, right? So I like to ask myself, okay, wait a second. Am I get getting better at feeling these feelings, which will build my confidence? Or am I getting better at escaping the feeling, avoiding the feeling, scrolling social media? Make sure you’re getting better at something that’s going to serve you in your life.

Now, why does feeling negative emotions help us to gain confidence? Because a lot of what we’re actually afraid of is feeling a negative emotion. And so we don’t trust ourselves. We don’t put ourselves out there. We don’t try doing hard things. We don’t live the life we want to live. We don’t ask for help because we’re afraid of feeling defeated, rejected, discouraged, embarrassed, or any other number of negative emotions. So when you get better at feeling negative emotions and you learn like I could do that one if I want to, I don’t love to feel negative emotion, it’s not my preference, it’s not my choice, but if I need to, I can do it. And I know how to be here with me through it, and I know how to process it. Then you start to feel safe with yourself and it becomes safe to create the life that you want to create.

Number four, connect with yourself daily. How do you connect with yourself? Well, there can be a lot of ways and I want you to find the way that feels the most natural to you because I’m going to give you suggestions, but if you try it and you’re like, no way, that is not me, I’m never going to do that long term. Okay, but you just need to find a way.

So I was just listening this morning to Mel Robbins on a podcast talk about how she every day in the mirror gives herself a high five. She became famous for all kinds of awesome tools she’s put out in the world, but one of them is the high five, right? So she high fives herself every day in the mirror because she has a positive association with what it means to give someone a high five. You don’t high five someone that you can’t stand. You don’t high five someone that you don’t believe in. You only high five someone to say, good job, I like you, I believe in you. It’s a small moment of connection.

It could be as simple as a high five every day in the mirror. I personally like to as I’m brushing my teeth in the morning and at night, make eye contact with myself and have a little a couple sentence intentional conversation that sounds something like, “Hey, good job today. I’ve really appreciate you,” or “Hey, what happened today? Sort of lost the plot. That’s okay. I got you. Tomorrow’s a new day,” or something like this that’s intentional and thoughtful that is just me noticing me, acknowledging what I did or what’s coming up and just getting my own back. Some people like to do this through journaling. Maybe it’s more comfortable for you to write down your thoughts and examine them, but be a little bit intentional with the way you’re talking to yourself, I would say, if you’re going to do it through journaling.

Now, when I say connect with yourself daily, sometimes people go, do I have to do it every day? And I ask them, whoever you live with, let’s say you live with a spouse. If you only talk to them once a week, would that do wonders for your relationship or would that hurt your relationship? If you saw them every day, in fact most of the day, but you didn’t talk to them at least one time, might that impede your relationship? So yes, you need to do it every day because you see yourself every day. In fact, you’re with yourself all day, every day. So I think one quick moment of connection is not too much to ask.

Number five, and this is one of my most favorite strategies to try out, is to just allow other people to judge you. Allow them to not believe in your potential, to not think that you know what you’re talking about or that your business is legit or that you’re going to succeed in the way you want to succeed. Just allow them to think that you’re cringey, allow them to think that you’re cheesy, allow them to notice you being not good at things. Just give people permission to not believe in you or like you or accept you. Isn’t that nice of us to do? Because of course, people get to no matter what.

But when you just decide in your head, it’s fine. I totally give people permission to judge me. Other people don’t have to believe in my dreams or goals. That’s my job. They don’t even have to like me. I’m not for everyone. I don’t even always like me. When you give people permission to judge you, it will require that you already have a solid foundation with yourself. So it’s okay to even kind of fake it in the beginning until you develop that foundation. But giving people permission to judge you says, I got you. It’s okay if they don’t understand your worth and if they don’t like you because I like you and we don’t need anyone else to like us. Not everyone’s going to like us. And that mindset, I’m telling you will require that you shift into confidence if it’s going to become truly something that you believe. It’s so powerful. I highly recommend it.

Okay, the sixth and final strategy I want to offer you to become killer confident is to never stop learning and growing. Don’t ever stop learning and growing. I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care if all you can do is read a book, read a book, okay? But never stop learning and growing because if you’re willing to be bad at things, if you’re willing to be, like I said, cringey or cheesy, or to not know things, or to be not prepared or to be not the expert in the room, even to be the newbie in the room, you will start showing yourself that you’re there for you, that you got you, that you don’t have to win your own approval by being perfect at things or even being the best or being good at things. When you learn how to approve of you as a beginner, as a newbie, as somebody who doesn’t know and isn’t good at the thing, it will require a connection with yourself to do that.

So don’t ever stop learning and growing. First of all, it’s how we’re wired. It feels best to us. It’s how we feel fulfilled. It’s how we feel like we’re progressing. But I want you to do it with a solid connection with yourself. That all has to do with your inner dialogue that you’re going to have to manage. You’re going to have to manage your thoughts.

So here’s what I want to leave you with. Pick one of these strategies and give it a try. But what you need to know is that your value is a done deal. It’s already set your worth. It’s already off the charts, and you had nothing to do with it and there’s nothing you can do that diminishes it or increases it. It’s just already done. And everybody else is equally valuable. You’re not better than anyone else, but your value just is and getting away from yourself is not an option.

I want you to think about the person in your life who’s the most difficult for you to be around, or maybe there is somebody who you’ve cut out of your life because it’s actually really toxic for you to be around them, okay? That’s possible if it’s another person. But you can’t cut yourself out of your life. You can’t set boundaries with yourself. You can’t get away from yourself. And then I want you to think about the person in your life that you most love to be with, the person that you have the most fun with, that you just enjoy, that you feel like you can be yourself, you feel very safe, you feel very comfortable, you just love to be with that person. Would you say your relationship with yourself is more like the toxic person you want to get away from or is it more like the person you love to be with? And why wouldn’t you want to get closer to being the person that you love being with? Because like I said, you can’t escape you. Getting away from you is not an option. So you might as well learn to love being with you.

Now, sometimes people say things to me like, well, I don’t want to be overly confident. And I say, what does that even mean? That’s not a thing. There’s no such thing as loving yourself too much. I’m not talking about thinking that you’re better than anyone else, but I don’t think you can love yourself too much or be overly confident. Confidence is just recognizing your own value and enjoying being with you.

People might have said things to you growing up like, well, don’t get too full of yourself. And I want you to ask the question of yourself, who should I be full of then? If not myself, who should I be full of? I think you should be full of yourself. Don’t get too big for your britches. What does that mean? I think you should keep getting too big for your current britches and outgrow them and get new britches and then outgrow those and get new ones. I want you to keep growing and evolving and becoming more of yourself. That is actually how you’re designed. That is how the healthiest of people live their lives and create tremendous success. And you could be one of them too, my friend. All right, thanks for joining me today. I’ll see you next week on another episode. Take care.

Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Please do me a favor and make sure you’re following or subscribed to the show if you got a lot out of this and share it with a friend. Make sure you never miss an episode and help me spread the message of mental and emotional health and creating your best life. I’ll see you next time.