Believe In Yourself ~ 10/26/23 ~ Episode 8

​Welcome back Mamas. How are you today? I wanted to take this time to tell you about this topic today that I am super excited to share. It's all about believing in yourself and this knowing that you have about who you are. And we talked a couple weeks ago about, you know, what you want. And you know, I gave you a couple of ways to help you identify what it is that you want. And we're on this journey of discovering, like our true north, right, and where we're headed and what we ultimately want in this life. And I started to think about the things that got in the way for me along the way. And so I wanted to spend some time in this belief in yourself and the thoughts that you tell yourself on a daily basis and how that impacts how you think about yourself. So you may think that, I don't know, thoughts you have about yourself, things you want to be. You know, you may want to be an amazing mother, amazing wife, an amazing friend, and you may actually believe, like deep down you may think that you are or actually in your head, I guess you think you are a good friend, a Good Wife, a good mother. But when you are going through your day, you may not be talking to yourself as if you are a Good Wife, a good mother, a good friend. A lot of times the things that we tell ourselves in our head are not very nice 

to ourself, right? Like if you talked the way that you talk to yourself to someone else, if you talked that way to someone else, the way that you talk to yourself in your own head, a lot of times you wouldn't want to be in your own friend, right? Because it's not very nice. It's not always nice. We tend to say, oh gosh, I'm so stupid or I messed that up. I must be whatever I must be. You know, I'm horrible. I'm a horrible wife. I'm a horrible friend. I'm a horrible mother. You know, whatever it is. And you may say these things to yourself, you might not even say them out loud. Like, I talk to myself all the time. So I would actually literally catch myself out loud saying things to myself that were not nice, Not nice to myself, right. And so I just want to kind of give you a reality check or some, I guess ways that you can identify if you might be doing this to yourself. And chances are you are like probably all of us are like, I still probably, I know that I still do this to myself from time to time, but I do it a lot, a lot, lot, lot less now than I used to. And oh, I'm going to start with a quote. I have a lot of quotes today. Don't know if I'll get to them all, but so many good quotes when I was looking up this topic and just all of the things that we're going to cover today. So our first quote is from Brian Tracy, OK? And he says confidence is a habit, A habit, you guys. Confidence is a habit that can be developed by acting as if you already had the confidence you desire to have. OK, that is profound because a lot of times people like you hear the word impostor syndrome. You probably hear that a lot more now than you ever used to. Or maybe it's just me actually looked up the definition, because I'm 

like, what does what does the dictionary say that it is? And it says it's the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of 1 owns one's own effort or skill. So it's the inability for you to believe that you are as good as or, you know, like let's just say you're in a room with other moms and you feel like all the other moms have it together and you just don't and you can't act like you have it all together. Well, first, the reality is, number one, that they don't have it all together, right? Like they may have it all together in one area or two or three areas, right. But I'm sure there are areas that they are struggling in that they want to be better in that you may be really great in. OK. And so they don't have it all together any more than you have it all together. And so you have to develop that habit of confidence knowing that you're a a good mother, right. And so when you were with all of these other mothers, you don't have to feel inadequate because, let's be honest, being a good mother is loving your children well, right? Like, you can make mistakes as a mother. You can be a mess in this area or that area. You don't have to have it all together in order to be a good mother. You can be a great mother by simply loving your child and showing them that love and, you know, modeling behavior that you want them to, to have in this world to others. And you don't have to have it all together all the time, even if you lose your mind with them sometimes, like I've done it before, what do you do in that instance? Like, it's you're not always going to be perfect, but when you do mess up, you just go back and apologize, right? Because what if they mess up? Do you think they're going to be perfect in this life? No, they're not.
And if you were perfect, like, there is no perfect. But if you were, would that be something you would want them to strive for? I hope not, because no one is perfect, right? And so you show them that you know how to fix your mistakes when you make them right? Like, you go back and apologize to them if you lost your mind on them or if you made a mistake in some other way, just go back and point it out to them later. Like, hey, I know I messed up when I did this. Here's why. I promise I'm going to do better next time, right? Because that's what you would want them to do, right? You would want them to come to you and tell you when they've messed up so that you know, number one, you could maybe help them through that or just so that you are in the know, in their life, right? And if they make a mistake, you want them to apologize. So Confidence from being a good mother, a being a good friend, being a Good Wife. All the things that you can tell yourself in your head could knock that down. But if you practice the habit of acting as if you are already that mother, you know, you may mess up more now than you would like to, but you're working on it, right? And when you and you're recognizing it and you're going back and you're doing the things to make up for those mistakes that you make. So. So that is my first quote went went off on a little tangent, but it actually leads me to my next point and that is a quote from Tina Fey, which is don't waste your energy trying to change opinions, do your thing and don't care if they like it. OK. So this is all about believing what you believe about yourself. And one thing that can be kind of like a litmus test for yourself to like, recognize if you might be like if you don't catch yourself, like saying out loud to yourself, like how horrible you are or whatever your thought process you're telling yourself. Like if you don't catch that, but if someone else says something to you that, like, triggers you.
So if they may say something about, I don't know, your integrity or something about your mothering or something about, you know, you being whatever kind of friend you know, if someone says something to you and that triggers this huge defensive response from you, that's an indicator to me that something is off internally, right? Like, So if I am going on the defensive and trying to prove myself to someone else that I am, yes, I am. I'm a good mother. I am a Good Wife. I am a good friend, whatever it is. I am a good employee, like, and here's why. And like, you know, here you're trying to like defend yourself. If something, something little, you know, you know there are things that could set you off that are legitimate. But if something little that someone says or a comment you know, that someone makes sets you off in that way, that's an indicator to me that I may not be feeling like I'm feeling inadequate in that area. Like, it has nothing to do with their comment. Their comment could have been completely about someone else. Like it could have been about something else. It could have been about them. Like they might not have been gearing it towards me. And all of a sudden I'm on the defensive because it's an area that I'm struggling with that I don't feel as good as I want to be in. And so we really have to work on like what we truly believe at our core about ourselves. And that is why, you know, please go back and listen to the What You Want episode, how to figure out what you want in your life. Because this will also lead you to how you want to act like.

So you maybe working on certain things so that you can achieve them in your life, on whether you know whatever that might be for you, right? But you may have to work on yourself at a deeper level before you can get what you want so that you are confident that you are grounded in those core beliefs that you have about yourself and other people's opinions or what other people say about you or comments that they make. And even if somebody is blatant enough to come out and actually say something against you, you don't need to give that any weight or give that any thought or justify yourself in any way, shape or form, because you know who you are and what they're saying about you isn't going to Rock You. It's not going to send you in on the defensive because you know who you are, right? And so if we do this work on our inner self, then we don't have to waste our time proving to other people what we are or what we are not, right? Because we know and it doesn't matter. Like, I know and God knows and I don't care who else knows, right? Like if they want to think what they want to think, let them think it. Let their opinions be their opinions. And like Tina Fey was saying, do your thing and don't care if they like it. Great, great, great, great advice. And you know, one thing that I want to talk about is, is just this fear that can come up when you're starting to go after your goals. You're starting to go after your dreams. You're starting to try to add these different things in your life and trying to make your life better, trying to figure out who you are and what you want and how you gonna show up in this world. You're going to have these insecurities and these fears that come up.
One of them may be based on how you really think about yourself, but another one is just based on fear. And it's of fear of really it's it's not anything other than what is living in your head. Fear is if you've never heard it before, fear is false evidence appearing real, an acronym, FEAR. False evidence appearing. Real fear, right? We don't know what other people are, you know, saying what they're doing. We might be afraid to speak up, or we might be afraid to speak our truth or live our life or take this make this business decision or make this decision for your kids that, you know, maybe you want them to change schools. Or maybe you're moving and you know, maybe you're taking a new job and maybe you're going back into the world workforce. Maybe you're deciding to stay home. Like all of these decisions that you're going to make for yourself. Maybe you decide to start a new business, right? And you have this fear of what other people are going to think about that decision, this fear that they are going to judge you in one way or another for that. And it may come from, you know, something that you're in inherently believing about yourself at a deeper level, but it may just come from this like you don't really know if it's the right decision or not. And now all these other people are saying things. And so you're afraid to put it out there because you're afraid what other people are going to say. And that might change your mind. And you have no idea, right? Like you have no idea what will happen. It's false evidence appearing real at the time. Like we don't even know.
Even when someone speaks to us about a certain thing or has a comment or whatever, we don't truly know unless we ask 
them what their intention was. We can take things that people say the wrong way because of how we're feeling insecure about something. And so that is even like false evidence appearing real. Like that is like real. It's not just living in your head, It's actually, you know, happened. And it's still false. It's still not true, right? But one way I have learned to kind of deal with this is to write things out. So if I'm writing something out, what I want to do and the reason that I'm afraid to do it right. If you like, take and get down on a cellular level and you literally write out the reason that you're afraid to do it, sometimes when you write it out you might literally start laughing because it's so ridiculous. When you're actually writing it on a piece of paper. Like the reason that you're scared of it, the reason that you're fearful to do it is so ridiculous. When you write it down, you can have these thoughts and thoughts in your head, but and then you all of a sudden you write it down and you're like, what? Like why? Why would I think that, Like, I'm sure that's not going to happen Or you know, even if it does, like, I can deal with it this way or here's why I'm doing this. And so it's not going to matter what actually happens outside of what happens to you or your family or whatever the decision is about, right? Like. So you need to just have this belief in yourself and this knowing that you know, you know who you are, you're, you know what you're trying to become and you act as if. So you act as if you are that amazing mother that you want to be, that you are going to live up to that in your eyes. Again. It's not about not making mistakes, it's about what you do once you make them right again.
Same with being a wife, right? Like, there's going to be conflict, there's going to be disagreements, but it's about how you handle those once they have happen, right? And the things you tell yourself in your head that make you not as good as you think you should be. If you were like saying that to someone else, like someone else would call you out on it like you are, you are a good mother, you are a Good Wife. Like you are. Like you're just telling yourself, and you're nitpicking yourself with these things, that you are essentially just, I don't know, you're chipping away at your own armor or you're chipping away at your own confidence. You need to be your best advocate. You need to know who you are and act in a way that you want to be. And even if you aren't that person today, like don't get caught up in the fact that you aren't quite that person yet. Do not live in imposter syndrome, because everyone starts somewhere. Everyone starts somewhere, like the first time. Even, like, you know, professional athletes and professional singers and movie stars and all of that. When they first started, They were probably awful, right? Like they had to practice and practice and practice and act as if they were going to be in the NFL. Act as if they were going to be on the screen one day, act as if they were going to win a Grammy, right? Like you have to act as if insert whatever that is that you want to be in your life and you are not an impostor. That is who you are and you are working towards that every single day. You are becoming that person.

So Eleanor Roosevelt said you wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realize how seldom they do. And that's good too, right? Eleanor Roosevelt said this. People are not thinking of you as much as you think that they are. So go and do the things. Be the person that you want to be. If others judge you for it, let them. But you do the work on you. You figure out who you are. You act in a way that is, you know, as close to that as you can. And if you mess up, you apologize or you do whatever it takes to make it right with yourself and that other person right that you've wronged. If you've wronged someone in some way, shape or form, like you are amazing. I believe in you and I want you to have that belief in yourself. And so I have one more quote that I want to share with you and it is this, it's Vincent van Gogh. And he said, if you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. So if you hear yourself saying to yourself that you cannot do something, go and do it because then that voice will stop talking to you, right? And so I am going to end with this quote it is from Ralph Waldo Emerson and he says. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. And y'all you've heard me say it before, you'll hear me say it again. This world that we live in is always trying to put their agenda on us, right? Whether it's from a marketing perspective, whether it's from a media perspective, whether it's from a political perspective, other people are always going to even, you know, the way that we're taught in their school system, like government, everything, everything has an agenda, so to speak. And everyone is trying to make you in alignment with the way that they think, the way that they believe things should be. you know, is just feeding into this like herd mentality of how you should, you know you like you go to school and then you graduate and then you get a college degree and then you go into the workforce and you work for someone else. And you know, that is great for a lot of people, and that might work for a lot of people. But there are a lot of people who that is not the way they want to live. That is not who they are.

And I want to help empower you to know that whatever it is that you want, whatever it is that you want to set your mind to, whatever that is that you believe about yourself, you can do that. You can be that. You can have that, whatever it is.
If you just start changing your mindset, start changing your actions and start doing the work towards whatever that is, you will get there. I know you will. I believe in you. I want you to believe in you and I hope this was helpful.

​Please, please, I would love for you to share how this is helping you, if this is helping you. If you have any questions, look in the comments in the notes section I guess and reach out to me. I would love to encourage you 

So I hope you have an amazing week and I'll see you next week.