Have you met a confident woman? You may have wondered what is it about her that made her that confident.
Confidence is a SKILL. It is like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets.
The oxford dictionary defines confidence as a “feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment.
It is all about total ownership of your greatness and your weaknesses.
You cannot leave part of yourself on the side. Otherwise, you won’t be complete. As you cannot prefer one organ to another, you have to have all, so your body functions properly.
Because as I mentioned in the beginning, you have to practice confidence, and to make it part of your daily routine, you got to create habits around it.
Habit 1: A confident woman only says “yes” when she means it
And I am purposely starting with, in my opinion, one of the most challenging things we must do as women.
I am sure that you have one woman around you, or it may even be you that says yes to everything. In my case, it is my lovely mom.
Why do we say yes when we don’t mean it.
Some reasons may be that:
- We don’t want to let anyone down
- We don’t want to disappoint or offend people
- “No” is a strong word that closes the conversation
- we are a people pleaser
There I will be other reasons too? What is your motivation to say yes when you don’t mean it? Comment below and press the like button if you said yes when you did not mean it in the past week.
So what ends up happening is that you do for others and not for yourself, putting yourself last on your to-do list.
Does it sound familiar?
So as a confident woman, you understand that when you say NO to others, you are saying yes to yourself.
When you have your priorities straight, and you are saying yes when you genuinely mean it, your delivery and the intention behind it won’t be the same. You will do it with more purpose and with your heart; therefore, chances are you will do a great job at it. You are not compromising your time, your energy, and yourself to do it!
Habit 2: A confident woman has clear goals and takes action
Here is one big lesson I learned in my life as Fatima and as a coach:
The lack of clarity in your life creates space for fear, doubt, and unproductive behaviors.
So your job is to get clarity, fix your goals, so you know where you are going, and create an action plan that you will IMPLEMENT daily to get you there!
Where should you start?
One of the easiest and fast ways to create reasonable goals is to use the SMART framework:
· Specific
· Measurable
· Achievable
· Relevant
· Time-bound
Specific:
- What do I want to accomplish?
· Why is this goal important?
· Who is involved?
· Where is it located?
· Which resources or limits are involved?
Measurable
· How much?
· How many?
· How will I know when it is accomplished?
Achievable
· How can I accomplish this goal?
· How realistic is the goal, based on other constraints, such as financial factors?
Relevant:
· Does this seem worthwhile?
· Is this the right time?
· Does this match our other efforts/needs?
· Am I the right person to reach this goal?
· Is it applicable in the current socio-economic environment?
Time-bound
· When?
· What can I do six months from now?
· What can I do six weeks from now?
· What can I do today?
Then you follow up this goal with an action plan. What will happen daily to achieve that goal?
Track your actions weekly. And make setting clear goals a habit in your quest as a confident womant.
It reminds me of how an airplane gets to its destination. It is 99% of the time, of course; it gets to its final destination by constant adjustment through data analysis. And your job is to do that daily as much as you can.
Habit 3: A confident woman challenges her self-limiting beliefs
Most of the Girls have these thoughts during and after adolescence:
“I am not good enough.”
“I am not smart enough.”
“I am not pretty enough.”
You may have had someone tell you you are not pretty, may a boy you liked, or even someone from your family. And as you grow up, these beliefs are in your subconscious and in some way impact your reality.
However, not all your thoughts and beliefs are true.
We all have the ability to challenge these beliefs. Here are three steps you can take:
Identify your self-limiting beliefs.
This is the moment where you start paying attention to yourself by observation. You can either use a journal, ask someone how you reacted or what you said to a particular situation…
- You will take time to observe your inner self-talk and patterns. This step is about self-awareness because you don’t know what you don’t know.
Challenge your self-limiting beliefs.
If you tell yourself you are not pretty. Find something about you that you think is cute or like or someone gave you a compliment about.
- If you find that difficult to do by yourself, you can imagine you advising your best friend about that. What would you tell them if they tell you they are not pretty.
Change the narrative
replace your self-limiting beliefs with a more rational, reasonable, and optimistic narrative
- Once you have the awareness and the understanding of how you change your self-limiting believes, it is time to replace those negative words with positive self-talk.
Example:
If you start by saying I am not good enough for this job.
- How can you believe this is not true?
- Have a look at your CV and list all your experience work and non-work related and your skills technical and interpersonal.
- And then, you will rewrite this sentence by writing: I am ready for this role, and I will learn whatever I need to know about that job.
Habit 4: a confident woman is objective with her failures
When you fail at your task, it does not mean you are not good at your job.
You can have a look at this video about defining success and failures in your life.
Women tend to blame the failures on their lack of effort or abilities when men find it easier to blame it on an external circumstance like the task’s difficulty.
So, you got to be objective with yourself and attribute a failure to its real cause, and at the same time acknowledge what you are good at.
One of the most significant narrative shifts that happened for me regarding defining what failure meant to me was to say that failure is part of the process. If I never did a task in the past, of course, I will suck at it in the beginning.
So cut yourself some slack and think like Thomas Edison when he said:
“I have not failed 10 000 times, I just found 10 000 ways that don’t work.
Habit 5: A confident woman lives with purpose
Knowing why you do what you do gives them the confidence to build resilience.
Resilience is your ability to prepare for, go through and recover from life’s challenges.
When you believe in your heart that what you are going after in life is aligned with your desires and values, it makes it easier to stay motivated and gets chaotic or super-complex!
If you do not know what your purpose is, here are three questions to jump-start your search:
- What are you good at?
- What do you like to do?
- What does this world need from you?
How do you develop self-awareness? here is a blog post that will show you how.
