Over the last few years, I've developed a framework for understanding confidence challenges and what to do about them.
Other articles will go into more detail - this one is meant to give you a quick overview.
The main idea is that confidence, or a sense of trust and safety (how I define confidence), is supported or influenced by a lot of things - but these can be sorted into themes (what I call pillars).
When you look at the seven pillars, they will help you to:
- Discover what your individual confidence challenges actually are, and
- What actions will most likely be effective in helping you overcome those challenges.
The 7 Pillars:
- Emotional Health: This is the core pillar. Confidence is not totally, but is mostly, an emotional experience. If you want to improve your confidence but aren't sure what to do, I recommend with starting here and improving your emotional health.
- Ability - Knowing: There are 2 pillars related to ability. The "Knowing" pillar is the idea that to be confident in your ability there is usually some learning required.
- Ability - Doing: Often to feel more confident in our ability, we actually have to do the thing - we have to practice.
- Physical Health: Our bodies can send us signals that we aren't safe when we need to pay attention to our physical selves.
- Self Worth: Understanding - and truly feeling - that you are worthy of love and belonging, just as you are.
- Connection with Others: We need to feel connected to others, and accepted by them, to feel safe. This can happen with individuals (what I call your "soul family"), or at the level of a community. Either way, it's important that you both give and receive help (or know you can).
- Spirituality: This is connecting with something bigger than yourself. It's not necessarily about religion, but it can be.
I hope that this introduction has helped point you in the right direction! I'd love your feedback.
Here is the framework in visual form:
