You Gotta Fake It until YOU Believe You Can Make It
Yeah, Yah do. When it comes to becoming more confident, not only do you need to work on the deeper wounds around self-esteem, some healthy boundary work and finding your voice, you now also have to change old behavioral patterns and the way you carry yourself. See, if we struggled with confidence for years, we also developed ways to not stand out, to not risk standing tall, and to hell with speaking up in healthy ways.
I wrote an IG post the other day about how your subconscious has no choice but to eventually believe you the data it sees, hears, and experiences. It is gathering the data of you holding you head higher, using better eye contact and speaking more assertively. It really doesn’t know or think you CAN’T do this, because it SEES you doing it. As the evidence piles up, it will become hard to argue that you actually can become more confident and relaxed.
Yes, awkwardly at first but eventually smoothly. Learning to ride a bike was too. Anytime we do something outside of our comfort zone it will feel unnatural at first, but every new behavior does…for awhile, until one day you notice it’s just what you do, and your new normal. Just as adjusting to the new normal during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have all had to acclimate to new ways of doing things. Don’t hyper focus on doing anything perfectly. Just focus on practicing until it feels more genuine for you.
No, you won’t regret taking the chance to just SEE what’s possible for you. You begin to experience how good it feels to put the Real You out there finally, a little at a time. This is important, because the other thing your subconscious is built to do is to slowly automate and normalize new data, until we don’t notice it anymore. You slowly acclimate, and what was new yesterday becomes your new normal!
The key is to do this long enough for the magic to start to happen. Start small, such as with practicing better eye contact, walking with a bit more grace and ease, yet do one thing different for about 60 days, until you are doing it more naturally. Then add other thing, like speaking more confidently….and so on. Before you know it, six months from now you will be operating SO differently! As you show yourself little by little how you can truly change, the doors blow wide open to what you can continue to become.
So remember, you can’t become more confident up in your head. You have to start making it real on the OUTSIDE by “acting as if” until you incorporate the new behaviors. What’s great is that this will actually MOTIVATE you to want more and better for yourself. We naturally desire congruence and alignment.
So get moving ?
