5 Tips Proven to Boost Confidence and Defeat The Inner Critic

Hey Friend!

What’s up, friends! I’m giving you five quick tips proven to boost confidence and defeat your inner critic. Why do I say they’re proven? Because I’ve used them in my own life, I’ve seen my students successfully employ these tips, and even some of the people I look up to use them.

I hope these help you to bust through any of those limitations you’re feeling right now. May you’re feeling a little self-conscious in your daily walk. Maybe you’re feeling unequipped or unqualified when you’re sitting beyond the microphone. Maybe you’re scared to even get started because you just don’t feel confident enough to see it through.

Let’s dive in and beat your inner critic.

Defeat Your Inner Critic With These Tips to Boost Confidence

Definition of Confidence (Wikipedia) – having a belief and positive regard for yourself and your ability to succeed.

If you’re lacking confidence, you’re struggling to believe in yourself; you’re struggling with positive thinking, you’re listening to that inner critic, you’re leaning a little bit into negativity, and you may be questioning your ability to succeed; whether you’re scared of success, or you don’t think you can succeed.

I want to share with you five things that I personally do in my own life to boost confidence that helps me feel so super-duper confident as a business owner. I feel really great about what I offer and also feel comfortable speaking to you from the microphone. But that doesn’t mean things are always easy, it’s that I’m confident pushing through some of those limiting beliefs. I’m confident to push through the negative thinking and the inner critic to get to the other side. I want you to be able to do the exact same thing.

If you want to boost confidence, Start Small

I was at a church retreat recently and the entire sermon was about the fact that the Kingdom of God is seeds; that God operates in seeds. Itty-bitty blessings, and tiny little steps. So often, we are praying for the big audacious breakthrough and we miss the answer to our prayers which God often presents as little tiny seeds, which may manifest as an idea, thought, or invitation. 

One thing we see over and over in Scripture is that God’s tiny invitation is partnered with someone’s big yes & willingness to take big scary action resulting in this incredible multiplication of abundance over their life, breakthrough, or the Promised Land. It’s these big beautiful breakthroughs and sometimes they are far in the future, but they all began with one thing: they started super small. 

Boost confidence by letting it grow

If you want to boost confidence, you have to start somewhere and one of the best ways I’ve found to be confident is not to try to bake the whole cake but to simply grab the box of mix. We often leap in and think that we have to be the professional baker who baked the most perfect cake ever with five-star reviews. That’s the end result of what God’s going to help you get to. There’s a promise and an anointing, but we don’t have to get there tomorrow. What we have to do right now is start small with step one then your confidence will continue to grow.

Grab a piece of paper and write down whatever it is you’re listening to this episode for. You know where you’re not feeling quite confident; you know the reason or area of your life. Write down: “The next step is __________” What’s the first step? Not this big audacious outcome. If you’re not feeling confident about starting a podcast, the next step could be brainstorming what the podcast could be about; maybe it’s just praying that God will help you have the belief to start. Maybe it’s brainstorming the time you want to carve out to podcast, maybe it’s watching my workshop to see how it actually works.

What’s the next step? I know you will boost confidence every time you take a step. It will grow.

Plan and Prepare

It’s so cool to watch how God takes a tiny seed and helps you cultivate it, water it, grow the garden, and help your beautiful garden to grow & flourish over time, presenting opportunities to you. God offers another seed and you can plant it or not. God is constantly offering us these seeds and it’s our decision if we’re going to plant and take action on them.

Some of the cool things that have come my way are doing a summit or being a speaker at an event. What I’ve noticed is that I get really anxious and nervous and my confidence wanes when I show up and do a thing I’ve never done before.  One of the best hacks I have to boost confidence and silence my inner critic is that I just need to plan and prep. 

I need to sit down and spend about 30 minutes planning in advance. Where do I need to be? What am I going to be talking about? What am I going to wear? Who’s going to take care of the kids? Does my husband have what he needs to be successful?

If I can plan and prepare, I don’t have an excuse for why I’d need to panic when I get to this opportunity or this place. This can be at a micro-level or macro-level. If I’m doing a virtual summit, planning can look like going through the questions, figuring out how to show up on zoom, checking on the time, and making sure my house is going to be quiet. Just going through that plan and prep process puts my mind at ease and allows my confidence to grow.

Practice (and maybe practice again) to boost confidence

This piggybacks off point #2. 

If there’s something you’re not feeling confident about or feeling self-conscious, ill-equipped, nervous, or anxious about, practice. This can depend on what you’re struggling with, but I honestly think this can work for anything in your life. We’re never confident in doing a thing until we’ve done the thing multiple times. You’re never going to say, “Man, the first time I went to teach a class, I was confident in it.” No. Absolutely not!

You won’t be confident until you do it. One of the coolest things you can do is just do it as a practice round even if no one’s watching. If this is the very first time you’re sitting down to record a podcast episode, just run through it as if. Practice. Do it the whole way through. Get through it once. The second time you do it, it’s going to be better. The third or fourth time when it’s actually the real thing, it’s going to be so great!
Now, I don’t want you to get stuck here in perfectionism. Our inner critic loves to jump on this and tell us we’re not good enough. Personally, I just practice something once. I’m giving you a permission slip to do it twice, but no more than that is necessary. Because then you’ll start getting into the nit-picking which you do not want to do. You want to give yourself permission by saying and showing yourself that you did it once. You completed the task. Now you can go do it for real.

Focus on What You CAN Control

Not feeling confident comes from fears. It comes from the inner critic and negative beliefs which are completely unfounded. I’ve actually been repeating this saying to my 6-year old who is a little more worry-prone. He is me to a T when I was young; always anxious. 

“Worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet, is a waste of time.”

Take that. Be blessed. We see so many Scriptures that support this:

Philippians 4:6-7: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

What a beautiful promise! And clear direction from the Lord: Do not be anxious about anything! 

1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.”

Proverbs 12:25: “Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.”
Focus on what you can control. All we can control is

1. Start small
2. Plan and prepare
3. Practice

Boost confidence by taking one step at a time

That’s all we can control! Can we control if we mess up? Not really. Can we control if people show up or not? Not really. Can we control an outlying circumstance that may happen? Nope. 

Let’s just focus on what we can control and do our best to feel adequate in our preparation and practice; taking tiny baby steps, one at a time. Then blessing and releasing the rest. This may take some journaling. Back to your sheet of paper, write down, “How are you going to plan? When are you going to practice? What are you worried over that you can’t control?”

We need to focus on what we can control right now. The rest of it we need to write down and surrender it to the Lord, Jesus Christ. “By the blood of Jesus, take this away from me, Lord. I don’t need it.”

Know that you’ll fail (and that everything will be okay)

I have failed 100,000 times in business! I’ve messed up lots of times in life. But one of the things I can just testify to you right now is that every single time I failed, my resistance went up. Every time I pushed through a hard thing, my belief grew. Every time I said yes and it didn’t work out, I was able to problem-solve and come up with a better strategy.  Failure is gold because it’s a lesson. It’s a faith-builder. It teaches you; refines you. It’s okay to fail. I want you to have a big, fat, huge permission slip to welcome failure. Put it on a sticky note, on your phone, or on your computer! It’s such a way for us to catapult forward. There is no fruit without failure. Period.

Silence your inner critic

That’s it, friend. Make sure you finish your journaling. Consuming information is cute, but until you actually do something with everything I’m teaching you, it’s useless.

Write down the one thing you’re going to implement. Go through those five steps:

1. Start small
2. Plan and prep
3. Practice
4. Focus on what you can control
5. Know that you will fail and it’s okay

Write it down. Put it somewhere in your planner, your operating system, or your task management system so you can actually begin to move the needle. I believe in you. Continue to take the small steps to boost confidence and silence your inner critic. 

The Lord has a plan for you, an anointing over your life, and a call and a purpose that you can’t possibly understand. It’s too big and it’s too dang scary.  That’s why we’re not really going to look at that right now. We’re going to look at the next right step and remember that God starts small. God starts with seeds. God starts with an invitation. He’s already extended that invitation to you and He’s ready and willing to take your hand and lead you forward. He is whispering to you right now.

This is the way. Walk in it. (Isaiah 30:21). All we have to do is give Him our big, audacious – a little bit nervous – yes. He will take care of the rest.

I love you so much. I’ll see you soon.

I pray this blesses you!

Xo,

Stef

P.S. Also, listen to podcast episode 573 for the full training on 5 Tips Proven to Boost Confidence and Defeat The Inner Critic.

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