SGM March 2012 Question of the Month: “What To Do When Your Confidence is Challenged?”

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Welcome to our SGM March 2012 “Question of the Month.” I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s good to be with you again.

Did you take the opportunity to try some of those confidence-boosting behaviors from our last Weekly Message? If so, how’d it go?

Perhaps, you felt a little shift inside. Maybe you felt some of the good vibrations that characterize self-confidence. Maybe those around you noticed a shift and made some positive comments. Growing self-confidence may be easier than you had previously thought.

Maybe along with some positive thoughts and feelings, you had some not so good ones. For instance, you might have felt “I can’t do this,” or “This is stupid,” or “What’s the use?” Maybe others didn’t respond to your confident actions real well. They might have laughed or asked “What’s up with you?” Your actions may have triggered your “stuff” or other’s “stuff.” You know those old wounds and issues that keep us locked in our comfort zone—even if it’s not all that comfortable a place to be.

In this Week’s Message, we’ll explore some of the challenges to self-confidence and how we can grow through them to live more full and empowered lives.

On our way to that, let’s review where we’ve been so far this month. In our first Weekly Message, we discovered three secrets to self-confidence. The first is based on the fact that our life reflects our current state of awareness. To live more fully and confidently, it’s important to make it a goal to expand your self-awareness, so you understand where you are coming from and where you want to go. Second, it’s key to your self-confidence to acknowledge your unique attributes, skills, and gifts. And third, the deeper ground of confidence is to trust in the Source of your life that provides everything you need including your special place and purpose in the world.

In last week’s message, we explored a script of 10 confidence-boosting behaviors. They were, in order: sitting and standing tall, taking deep breaths, smiling inside, dressing for success, being on time, making eye contact and smiling at others, addressing others by name, initiating conversation, being a great listener, and following up and replying promptly. Sounds like a simple script for success. If you haven’t taken the opportunity to try these out, I highly recommend them. Though simple, the effects might surprise you.

If you tried these actions every day, you’d have a variety of experiences. As we said last week, self-confidence is not a permanent trait (though we can make it more so). It’s a positive feeling that arises when we authentically express ourselves, respect others, and honor the Source of our life. Who wouldn’t want that?

Yet, why can self-confidence seem so elusive? Why might it haunt you as something others seem to have, but you just can’t seem to find? What keeps you from being self-confident?

Remember from our first Weekly Message, that I asked you to write down a time when your self-confidence was low? Maybe you failed at a task, or were criticized for something you said or did. Maybe you were made to feel unworthy, afraid, or doubtful about who you are or what you are worth. Maybe you were made to feel like an outsider—like you were strange, different, or just didn’t fit in. Maybe you just felt overwhelmed by life and incapable of keeping it together. Maybe you look out at life and can only see pain, struggle, and tragedy. Maybe when you were young, you were instructed that that’s the way things are and that others are to blame.

It’s alright. We’ve all had some of those experiences—and bad training. If those perceptions are dominating your consciousness, you have some strong challenges working against your self-confidence. It’s true, that doubt, fear, anxiety, worry, shame, pessimism, self-criticism, and blame all work against any feelings of self-confidence that you might try to muster.

If these experiences are deeply etched in your mental-emotional circuits by trauma or repeated conditioning by your family, teachers, peers, or the culture you live in, count yourself as a member of the human family. We’ve all got our “stuff” to work through. Yes, true, some of us more than others, but none of us are completely immune.

The good news is, that no matter how strongly programmed these negative patterns are in you, you can re-program yourself. You can recognize and release them. You can anchor into a deeper truth underneath it all and re-program yourself from the ground up. You can create a new more self-confident future beginning right now—today.

Last week, we talked about 10 simple actions you can take. By all means do those. Try them out. Experiment with what works best for you. Repeat them over and over until they are your new habit. This will work on your consciousness from the outside in.

At the same time, we’re going to explore an inner process that can clear out the old and usher in the new. I call it the 4Rs. If you’ve been at SGM for awhile, or if you’ve gone through one of my programs, you’ve heard me talk about the 3Rs in meditation or in clearing limiting patterns. I’ve since expanded and modified them, adding a fourth step.

Here are the 4Rs in relation to self-confidence:

1. Recognize and accept where you are coming from at the moment—your current perspective. In this case, identify your low-confidence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

2. Release your current perspective by clearly seeing that it is only one possibility amongst many and it isn’t getting you where you want to go.

3. Return to your Core, to a felt sense of connection with who you are, where you come from, and where you want to go.

4. Replace your low-confidence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with confident ones.

Okay, sounds like a nifty formula. So, how might that work in real life?

You can use this formula whenever challenges to your self-confidence arise. In other words, when you start to feel doubt, worry, anxiety, or fear, or when you start to blame or self-criticize, take yourself through these four steps:

1. Recognize and accept where you are coming from at the moment. Identify your current perspective or point of view. Identify the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are part of the pattern of low self-confidence.

You can identify the thoughts by noticing the words and images that are running through your head. Then identify how you feel when you are thinking that way. When you think and feel that way, what do you do? This first step is all about becoming clearly conscious of and accepting the thought-feeling-behavior pattern that you are caught up in at the moment.

2. Release your current perspective by understanding that this low confidence pattern is just one possibility amongst many—and low self-confidence isn’t getting you where you want to go. The more clearly you understand what you are doing and the negative effects of it, the more easily you’ll let it go. At a minimum, step back from your low confidence perspective and insert a mental pause to interrupt it.

3. Return to your Core, to a primary felt sense of who you are, where you come from, and where you want to go. In this step you reconnect with your authentic self and what is most important to you.

A simple way to do this is to go through the first three confidence-boosting behaviors from our last Weekly Message:

1. Sit or stand tall
2. Take a few deep breaths.
3. Smile inside.

You may be amazed at how these simple actions shift you out of low confidence and into a felt sense of Core connection and relaxed confidence. Go ahead and try them now.

Sit or stand up tall by imagining a string attached to the top of your head drawing you gently upright.

Take several deep breaths imagining that your breath first fills your lower abdomen and then expands upward to fill your upper abdomen and chest. As you exhale, relax, let go, and allow that same space to empty out. Settle into an easy rhythm of deep conscious breathing. Go ahead and try that now.

Put a smile on your lips and allow the feeling of smiling to fill up your body. To help you do that, you could imagine something cute and lovable like a puppy or kitten, or you could bring to mind someone or something that you are grateful for. Go ahead and smile inside now.

4. Replace your low confidence pattern with consciously chosen, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reflect your inspired authentic self and that honor your Source.

Once you have shifted into an upright, relaxed, positive state, imagine what your best possible course of action is in the given situation. What would your highest self do? What greater opportunity is available to you right now? Choose to engage in that.

I’d love to hear your results with this process in the Discussion below this Week’s Message.

In next week’s “Meditation of the Month,” we’ll rehearse being self-confident in a situation that challenges that feeling.

Until next time,

Use the 4Rs to shift into confident Core connection and realize your greater possibilities,

Kevin