5 Confidence Myths Busted: My Journey to Self-Assurance

Have you ever felt like you need to be really good at something in order to be confident or you have to be confident to do amazing things? Or if you're confident, you should never have doubt? Well, if you've ever thought these things, today's episode is for you because I am debunking five myths around confidence and what it really is like to live a life of self-assurance. So let's dive in.

Welcome to the School of Self-image, where personal development meets style. Here's your hostess, Master Life Coach Tonya Leigh.

Hello my friends, and welcome to today's episode where we are talking about one of my favorite topics, which is confidence, what it is, what it isn't, and I'll be sharing some personal stories about my journey to self-assurance. And honestly, I sort of think confidence is overrated. Even though I want you all to feel it, I want you to have it, you don't need it to live an incredible life. Believe it or not, it is not mandatory. I share that with you because I feel like so many of you don't allow yourself to go after incredible things, to go after what your soul truly wants because you don't feel confident and you think you need to generate the confidence before you take the action. And the reality is you can do that because confidence comes through our thoughts, but sometimes it's hard for our brain to get on board with doing things we've never done before, believing fully in ourselves because it's an unknown. It's you stepping into the mystery of life that you've never been in before so it's normal and natural to feel self-doubt.

So let's dive into five myths about confidence that I want to debunk. And hopefully in doing so, you will realize that you can do incredible things in your life without a lot of confidence. And the more you do that, guess what happens? Your confidence grows.

So myth number one I just mentioned, but I'm going to mention it again because it's super important, you do not need to be confident to do amazing things. What do I mean? As I was just saying, when you're doing something you've never done before, your brain is going to be scared. You have to understand that the way the brain works, it wants to keep you in a state of known. So the moment you decide that you want to move to the new city, the moment you decide that you want to start your business, the moment you decide you are going to get on stage and give a talk, your brain is going to fill you with all of the reasons why you shouldn't do it. "I'm not ready. I'm going to fail. I don't have what it takes." All of those kinds of thoughts, that is normal.

Now, in those moments, you can listen to the doubt or you can rely on the part of you that I rely on within me, which is what I like to call self-assurance. I think one of the reasons why I've been able to create so many great results in my life is that at the end of the day, I might not be fully confident in my ability to do this new thing only because I've never done it, but here is what I am confident about. I am confident in my ability to pick myself up, to figure things out, to learn and to grow, and to use all of those situations to make me a stronger, more wise and a better human being.

I think back to my very first retreat. I'll never forget it. It wasn't my first retreat, it was the first year that I ran a mastermind and I took this particular group. We went to Charleston, South Carolina, second place was Aspen, Colorado, and then our final stop was in Monaco. Now, sometimes ignorance is bliss, and it definitely was for me back in the day when I did this because I didn't have an event planner, I really didn't know what I was doing and I didn't have a lot of confidence of me being able to pull it off seamlessly. But what I did have was a deep desire and a knowing that no matter what happened, I would figure it out. So things went great for the Charleston and the Aspen retreat, but when we were in Monaco and I had this group of women and we were having to navigate to different locations for events and dinners, and I didn't speak the language, I found myself in this position of this isn't going like the way I had envisioned. I wasn't feeling super confident in the activity.

But what I did feel confident in is that no matter what, we're going to be okay. I felt confident in who I am, but I did not have confidence in what I was doing. There is a big difference. And a lot of you are trying to have confidence in something that you've never done before, and it is practically impossible, but you do it over and over and all of a sudden you feel very confident in your ability to do that thing.

So the work that needs to be done is not trying to be confident in thing, just be confident in you. Be confident in knowing that even if you fail, you'll figure it out. Even if you fail, you're going to extend yourself grace. Even if you fail, you are going to learn so much that you'll be able to apply towards your next endeavor. That is what builds confidence.

But you don't need confidence to do amazing things. I doubt when Picasso did his first painting, he felt confident, but he was confident in himself. He was confident probably... I act like I'm friends with Picasso, rest in peace, but I would imagine that he was confident in himself knowing that no matter how it turned out, it would be a learning experience, he would grow from that. So myth number one is you have to be confident to do amazing things wrong, you don't.

Another myth about confidence is that it comes from external validation. A lot of you may rely on this to feel confident. So what this looks like is if your coworkers, if your partner, if your friends tell you that you're doing a great job, they tell you you look amazing, they tell you that you are the most incredible human on the planet, which you are, but if you rely on that, here's what I know to be true, there will be a day where that is non-existent. There will be a day where you don't have the people around you to tell you great job. You won't have the people around you to give you that assurance and so what ends up happening is that your confidence becomes this rollercoaster. It becomes this thing that needs to be fed from the outside world. And when you don't have it, you use that as a reason not to feel confident. That's why I love thinking of confidence as something that I get to have about myself. I get to feel confident based on my trust and my ability to figure things out, my trust in my decisions, my trust in who I am.

Now, if I start outsourcing that to other people, I'm going to be in trouble because some people may not understand my decisions, some people may think that what I want to do isn't going to work, and if I listen to the outside world then I lose sight and I lose connection with that inner knowing, that inner part of me. So I know the first myth was you don't have to be confident to do amazing things, but there is a level of confidence that we all can begin to establish within ourselves. It's not being confident at doing something, it's confidence of just knowing that you have your own back, knowing that you are there for you, and what that requires is that you build a level of self-trust.

If you are someone that is constantly breaking promises to yourself, if you're someone that is constantly letting yourself down, it's very difficult to have that confidence because you don't trust yourself. Self-trust is built little by little day by day. And if you have spent years not trusting yourself and letting yourself down, this doesn't happen overnight. This could take a year or more to reestablish that relationship of trust with yourself. If you think about if someone betrays you, it takes a while for them to win your trust back, and so that's how we have to think about our relationship with ourselves. If we've been betraying ourselves, it's going to take a minute for us to build that level of self-trust. That's where I want our confidence coming from, knowing that no matter what situation that we find ourselves in, that we have that level of confidence within ourselves to be okay to figure things out and to learn and grow from that situation.

Myth number three around confidence is that you must be the smartest and loudest person in the room to feel confident. This could not be further from the truth. I used to think this. I've been around some very smart and extremely extroverted, outgoing, loud people in my life and I used to think that they were confident. Some of them are and some of them were not. What I've come to understand, it's the person who is comfortable with herself, that is true confidence. If you are an introvert, if you are on the quieter side, and even if you aren't the smartest person in the room but you own that, you own that gap of learning that you need to do and perhaps that's why you've placed yourself in the room and you own all of that, that is true confidence.

There have been many times that I've been in a room and I've tried to perform and act like I was confident by pretending to know things I didn't know or being loud, and it just felt out of alignment. It was coming from insecurity. It wasn't coming from confidence.

Now, someone may have seen me and thought, "That girl is confident," but the reality inside, I didn't feel that at all. And from doing this work, I now can sit back, I can be the first to tell you, "You know what? I don't know. That's why I'm here. Can you teach me?" Or I can sit back and just listen and observe and perhaps be the quietest person in the room knowing that that confidence is within me because I am comfortable with who I am. I know who I am and I own it. That is true confidence.

The other myth that I want to debunk is that confidence is the same as arrogance. These are two very, very different things. Arrogance is about feeling superior to others, thinking you are better than. And if you think about that, if you think you're better than someone, that means you think there is something to prove and therefore where is that coming from? What energy? It's coming from insecurity. We've all been around those people who are vivacious, they are telling you how great they are, they're bragging about themselves, and you can look at that and be like, "Wow, this person is so confident." But if we look at the intention, we'll probably find that they are trying to prove something to you. They are trying to get your validation in order to feel good about themselves.

Now listen, I'm all for us bragging and celebrating ourselves from a place of joy, from a place of self-love, but never as a reason to make someone else feel bad in order for you to look good, because that's not confidence. That is a very different energy. Confidence really has nothing to prove. Think about it. Confidence has nothing to prove. That's when you know you've reached the ultimate confidence where you just get to show up as you are, however that is, and you have nothing to prove to anyone because again, you are owning all of you. You have accepted all of you. That is true confidence, and that is something that you develop as you develop a relationship with yourself. When you understand your strengths and your weaknesses, what you love, what you don't love. You own your past, you're not a victim to it, but you own the mistakes that you've made. You've dealt with all of the healing that's needed to be done in order to do that. When you get to that place, you can show up in a room and just be you, and that is true confidence.

Myth number five about confidence is confident people never doubt themselves, not true. Even me knowing myself like I do now and being very comfortable in my own skin, even with all of that, I sometimes have insecurities and I sometimes doubt myself. Why? Because I'm a human being with a very human brain.

The difference between what may be perceived as confidence and what isn't is that confident people don't react to the doubt. What do I mean by that? Whenever I go out to do something I've never done... An example is a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago, I decided to host a big event in South Beach in Miami, and I had never done an event at this scale. I had a lot of doubt being able to manage the energy of a room for three days, being able to manage my self-care, being able to deliver so that people felt that it was worthwhile. There was a lot of doubt in that entire experience all the way up until the final day. But the difference is I didn't react to the doubt.

A lot of times what happens is that you will start to listen to the doubt and you'll let the doubt talk you out of it. I don't do that. I like to doubt the doubt. I like to question it. When doubt tells me, "You can't do this," I like to ask doubt, "Why not? Let me tell you why I think I can." When doubt tells me that I may fail, I like to tell the doubt, "But it's possible I will succeed. And even if I do fail, I will be so proud of the courage that I had to go after this." When the doubt tells me that, "Why bother? It may not work out. You're going to make a big mistake." I just don't react to it. That is the difference.

Confident people don't let doubt determine their actions. It's not that they don't have doubt, it's not that they don't have insecurity, they just don't let that run their lives. And what ends up happening is you go out and you do things with the doubt, you just bring it along with you. But as you're doing things and you're learning and you're growing and you're getting better at that thing, whatever it is that you're doing, then you start to feel that confidence in the ability to do that thing. But all along you get to feel confident in who you are and your ability that you trust yourself to figure it out, to pick yourself up if it doesn't work out well, and to learn and grow from these experiences.

I will tell you in my life I experience doubt on a daily basis, and yet I still feel confident. I feel confident in me, but I may not feel confident in that thing that I'm doing, and it's not required. You don't need that confidence to do amazing things. What you do need is a relationship with yourself, building that confident relationship with you. That is within your control. You feeling confident in doing big things you've never done before, you can try, but chances are your brain's going to have a hard time getting on board. But over time, doing it over and over, that repetition, all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, wow, I'm really great at running a business. Oh wow, I'm really great at speaking on stages. I'm really great at," whatever it is you want to do, but you're going to have a lot of doubt along the way. Doubt is not a reason to stop. It's a reason to keep going. Follow the doubt, question it along the way and know over time your confidence in your ability to do that thing will grow as a result.

So to recap, the five myths that I just debunked is number one, that you need confidence to do amazing things. Yes, you need confidence in you, but you don't need confidence in your ability to do that thing yet. That will come in time.

The second one is that confidence comes from external validation. You can try to get it from that, but true confidence comes from within.

Myth number three is you have to be the smartest or the loudest person in the room to be confident. It's not true. You can be the least informed and the quietest person in the room, and as long as you own who you are, that is true confidence.

Also, confidence is the same as arrogance, very different. Arrogance comes from insecurity. Confidence comes from just believing and trusting in yourself.

And then finally, confident people never doubt themselves. We do all day every day. It's part of the process. But the difference is we don't let the doubt determine our actions.

All right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed today's episode and I'll see you in the next one. Cheers.

I used to think happiness was a fairytale, forever just out of reach. I felt stuck a lot of the times, helpless and like I was constantly failing at life, but then I discovered a simple shift or three that changed everything. Now I help women like you create their own powerfully ever after. In my free masterclass, you'll learn the secrets to unshakable desire, fearless action, and finally believing in yourself. You deserve a life you love so stop waiting and start creating. Watch the masterclass and unleash your inner powerhouse. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/after and watch it now.