Common Confidence Breakers and How Think Your Way Into Self Confidence
BOOM! We’re born! We arrive here on the planet as little cute mushy babies. They quickly take us away from our moms and clean us up (unless your mom was into an alternative birthing which allowed you to be snuggled by her for however long.) Either way, our arrival is traumatic. Then we live in fear of being dropped and left alone. Then, more life happens to us between ages 0 to 10 and by the time we’re age 25, we have lost much of our confidence. Here are the common confidence breakers and how to think your way into self confidence.
Common Reasons Why We Lose Confidence.
We’re told to be careful!
When we’re little, we want to explore our world. Our parents want to prevent us from killing ourselves. So they tell us to be careful. They warn us that we can get hurt if we do things like ride a bike or jump on the bed.
As we grow up, it’s be careful while driving, be careful while walking, be careful when commuting to work, be careful when going to the movies, when going on social media. The whole be careful thing messes with our confidence. It programs us to think that the world is an unsafe place that people can’t be trusted and doom is just seconds away.
We play small. We stick to that cushy salary at a job that is sucking our soul because we need to be careful. This is what we’re programmed to do. Being careful means we are being good and being good means we get love. See how messed up this gets?
So we don’t believe that we can try new things and follow passions. We ignore the inner guidance calling us to our true profession because we’re told to be careful and get a degree in something you can actually get a job doing.
We can’t imagine going through the uncertainty of building businesses with the hope of earning millions of dollars. We just have to be careful.
New thinking: I am divinely guided. I am smart, and know to always trust my instincts. The universe has my back and there is nothing I cannot do with faith. I am loved no matter what.
2. We are praised for being introverted.
So when I was little, like 3 years old, my parents divorced. In the years leading up to their split, I heard yelling and there was tension and negative energy. I was constipated due to the stress and spent time playing quietly alone. I was a really good kid. The kind of good that my mom would brag about.
“Lisa is such a good girl. She is so quiet. She can be by herself playing for hours.”
It was more like escaping into a peaceful haven in my room. I developed a survival strategy and in inner programming that said, “whatever is going on is my fault and when I’m out of the way and by myself and quiet, things are peaceful so it’s gotta be my fault they fight. If I’m good, and by myself, out of the way, then there is less chaos.”
This led me to not have a voice. To hold things in (hello constipation) and to over analyze and seek my caretakers approval.
I became really sensitive to people’s energy and their facial expressions. I also became an observer. I was watching the people around me like a performance thinking, who the hell are these people and how did I get here?
Fast forward and I become an adult who is always “on” even when my world is crumbling. I’m not allowed to burden anyone else with anything I’m going through. When I did I got yelled at and made wrong for my feelings so I rarely asked for help, and reflexively responded, “Im okay” when I was really freaking out.
It made me fearful of intimacy and being vulnerable. “I got it. I’ll do it myself.”
New thinking: It’s ok to ask others for help. It’s ok to confidently ask for money when selling your awesome services. It’s ok to speak your truth. It’s also ok to feel negative emotions and use your emotions as guidance. I love myself no matter what.
3. We felt as if we were burdens.
Everyone in my family got divorced or had messed up marriages. Then the women would sit around and complain about how hard it was to be our mothers. They would do this right in front of us.
It was as if they wanted us to feel at fault for being alive.
There were bursts of anger, screaming, grabbing, then the random smothering of affection. It was basically love bombing and narcissistic rage.
The programming is, “I’m a pain in the ass, their life is difficult because of me and they don’t care if their words hurt me. They yell at me and then smother me with kisses and I’m still upset at what was said, then I get yelled at when I don’t respond to the smothering the way they want. I get called a cold fish. and I’m not. I’m sensitive, everyone is yelling and I just want to GO AWAY and BE ALONE IN PEACE.”
Welcome to childhood of a narcissistic parent. It’s their world and you acquiesce to their every mood and demand for your survival. You walk on eggshells.
You grow up codependent seeking love outside of yourself. You stay too long in relationships and you don’t know how to decipher if the treatment is bad because you just glaze over it. You question yourself asking, “should I be mad at that or is it no big deal?”
New thinking: I can have boundaries, speak up for myself because how I feel matters most to me. I am responsible for my own happiness. My worthiness isn’t in the validation and approval of others. Rejection is no big deal.
4. We thought we were “bad.”
When the elders in my family would say goodbye to me they would tell me to “be good.” My grandmother would say this all the time and in a very warning tone. I saw her so often that it was programmed into my subconscious mind, “be good.” Which I presumed, meant I was bad.
It makes sense. Why would everyone tell me to be good? It must mean I’m bad in some way. I was doing everything right? I was quiet. I’d sit there like furniture. I’d keep to myself. I was "on” entertaining, not burdening anyone with my struggles knowing they would be trivialized and I’d be told to not feel as I did.”
This leads to attention seeking. Validation! Tell me I’m good! Please! Hellllooooo!! Do you see how good I am? Let me prove my worth. I’ll be good when I have a husband, a great career, a house. They’ll think I’m good.
New thinking: I am good. I am a child of God. I am on a journey and learning as I go just as everyone else. I am good to others and I am mostly good to myself. I love and care deeply for my well being.
In my Self Love Mastery coaching program I help people fall in love with themselves and become their own truest love. Over the course of 12 weeks, people reprogram the false beliefs that kept them in patterns in their relationships, their careers, their friendships and addresses how they felt within their own skin.
I remember when I first started healing myself in 2015, reprogramming my brain and ridding any belief that wasn’t serving me. I became so consciously aware of my thoughts and learned how to pivot to a new thought. I felt powerful.
We can discipline ourselves to reach for a better thought. We can think our way back to self confidence.
These common confidence breakers can ruin our lives. It is so important to get your confidence, not from other people but from something deeper and more divine. Remember, you are love at the core and loved no matter what.
To inquire about the Self Love Mastery coaching program so you can learn how to shift the negative programming that keeps you stuck, small despite knowing there is a greater version of yourself inside yearning to come out to live big, please click here and schedule your consultation.
xo,
Lisa