When it comes to confidence, we can too often sit in a state of waiting – waiting for something to  magically happen or shift to finally get over our fears and anxieties. But confidence is something that has to be built, honed and practiced. And the only way to practice is to simply do the thing for the first time, no matter how scary. 

Today we’re talking about how to build the confidence to pursue your next big thing, be it a career, personal goal or relationship. Are you missing out because you’re putting off doing the uncomfortable inner work needed to feel confident enough to go out and attract it?

I can tell you this with complete certainty…

The common thread among successful people, whether in business or relationship, is that they first did it scared.

In this episode, we’re talking about:

• How to build self confidence
• Why we get sucked into waiting for things to happen at the perfect time
• Fear of failure
• How worry takes more energy than trying and failing
• How to attract better relationships
• Dating with confidence
• Common traits of successful people
• How to overcome heartbreak, pain and relationship trauma

While confidence requires a lot of inner work, it isn’t built alone.  I’d love to help support you on your self confidence journey – I’ve got 1:1 coaching openings available now. Please reach out by email info@emilygoughcoaching.com or DM me on Instagram @emilygoughcoach   

 

CONNECT WITH EMILY

Book A Private Coaching Call With Emily To Work Together

Get Your Free Guide “The Four Tools Missing From Your Relationship” here

Join Emily’s email list here

Instagram: @emilygoughcoach

Email: Info@emilygoughcoaching.com      

 

REFERENCES

Episode 348 | Stop Bullsh*Tting With Your Potential

Episode 371 | Lessons On Learning How To Receive Love In A Healthy Relationship

Episode 292 | Be So F*Cking Loyal To Your Personal Transformation You Become Unshakeable

Episode 285 | When Healthy Love Feels Scary: Some People Aren’t Ready To Be Truly Seen

 

---

TRANSCRIPT

And I know how easy it is to get sucked into believing that we’ll wake up one day and magically feel better, more confident, looking better, feeling better, whatever the thing is, or we’re waiting for the exact set of circumstances to be just right, but I want you to demand nothing less from yourself than showing the fuck up. Decide to do something differently. I’m Emily Gough, a human connection coach, writer, and speaker with an insatiable sense of curiosity and adventure, always asking more questions and using the power of stories to teach, learn, and grow. We boldly explore relationships, connection, and the nuances and complexities of the human experience with compassion, honesty, and a sense of humor. With both solo episodes and highly curated guests sharing incredible stories, experiences, and expertise, the room to grow podcast takes the entire idea of growth to the next level. All while covering the uncomfortable topics many of us would like to avoid. There’s always more room to grow. Let’s do this. Hey there, welcome back to the room for growth podcast. Emily here. And today’s episode is going to be a super quick one, but I had a quick story to share. Also, this is early in the morning and I’m just realizing now that this is kind of the first time I’m talking much today and I kind of have morning voice, so I apologize. My extra husky today. Um, but there was something that, um, two different mentors of mine. I totally separately independent of each other. And over the course of a couple of years, and I was coming to them with, you know, certain things that I was dealing with in business and all of these things, and ultimately boiled down to a confidence issue. And, but I wasn’t really thinking of it that that way necessarily, but both of these mentors of mine pointed out to me, they said, Emily, you already have a seat at the table. Like you keep waiting for a seat at the table, but you already have one. And. And that you’re already there. And it was almost as though the first time I heard it didn’t sink in. So then a different mentor had to say the exact same thing to me a second time, like months and months and months later. And these two mentors don’t even know each other. Like they were not, you know, this was completely independent of each other. They, they told me the same thing and I was like, okay, the universe definitely seems to want this message to come through for me to really get it. And that, that sentence has always stayed with me ever since. Like you keep waiting for a seat at the table, but you already have one. And ultimately when we’re thinking about confidence, we can often be in a state of waiting. We’re waiting for something to happen. We’re waiting for something to shift. We’re waiting until all the conditions are just right. We’re waiting for this. We’re waiting for that. It can just keep continuing and we, we try to reassure ourselves by letting us know it by letting ourselves know, like we look at the more external conditions. Right? We look at the more external conditions and we can also really beat ourselves up for, well, why am I not doing this thing? What is wrong with me? Why am I seeing all these other people do this thing that I want to do, but I don’t seem to be capable of doing the thing, even though I can feel all of this, you know, unlived potential within me. The thing that I’m going to tell you is that how do you, I’m going to answer the question for you about how do you become more confident you do the thing you’ve been putting off or avoiding. You do the thing, no matter how scary it might seem, no matter how overwhelming, even if it feels like you’re not equipped to do it. Even if it feels like you’re not the right person to do it. If you are getting the desire to do a particular thing, or maybe you’re looking around in the world and you see someone else doing a thing and you’re like, Oh, man, like, I wish I could do that. You’re feeling pulled to something. Somehow those whispers of your life are not by mistake. They are not by mistake, but it’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do with them. That is your choice. No one else can, can change that for you. You have to make that decision. And I promise you, I could tell you so many stories of highly, highly successful people that are at the top of their game in every sense of the word, even, and. When you ask them how they did it, every single one of them, that the common thread that I always hear is basically boils down to the fact that they did it scared. They did the thing anyway, and then they did the next thing, and then they did the next thing, and they continued to build the confidence as they moved through the process of actually doing it, as opposed to thinking about it. Have you ever had the experience of knowing that you needed to get something done, but you put it off and off and off and off, and finally when you do the thing, and you put it off because it feels overwhelming, or maybe it makes you a little bit anxious, or maybe you’re thinking about, All the other things that you’re going to have to do to get that one thing done. There can be so many reasons why this comes up. And a lot of times it comes down to coping mechanisms or avoiding feelings that we don’t want to feel truly. That’s, that’s usually what it comes down to, including things like, you know, procrastination and all of this stuff. But sometimes then when we actually do the thing, it feels like this massive energetic weight has been lifted. And sometimes it can also be like, Oh my God, it was so much easier to get that thing done than I thought that it would be. And when we actually do the thing, it takes less energy most of the time than all of the energy that we expend thinking about and worrying about doing the thing. We stress over it, or we build it up to be so much more than it actually is, or any of these things. Meanwhile, we are also suffering internally because. We are not building the confidence that we need to do the thing. And we can’t do the next thing until we do this thing. Apparently I’m more fired up about this this morning than I thought it was going to be. But how, this is how you become more confident. You do the thing that you have been avoiding doing, and then you do it again and again and again. And, and I have to ask you these questions. Like, what is it costing you to put off doing the inner work? What is it costing you to do the inner work, but not put it into action? What is it costing you to hide and avoid and shrink yourself and play small and make yourself fit into the boxes and labels that were never intended for you? What is it costing you to run from love? What is it costing you to run from the parts of yourself that would be easier to overlook or avoid rather than approaching yourself with compassion and care? Because this is part of a bigger conversation. I’m not just talking here about having the confidence to like go out and build a business or whatever. That is absolutely part of this conversation, but it is not the whole picture. A lot of times this comes down to things like relationships, the connection we have with ourselves, the inner work that we have been avoiding doing. What is that costing you? What is all of it costing you? And sometimes we have to address fears that come up with these particular things in order to maybe get over that, that hump a little bit to do the thing. So again, you know, I’ll just, business is an easy one to use, but as an example, but when it comes to something like business success, uh, we can have the fear of, you know, what if it takes away my, my freedom, what if it’s a level of responsibility I can’t handle? What if people depend on me to show up and, and I don’t show up the way I want to, and that I know I’m capable of when it comes to relationships? What if I get hurt? What if I end up heartbroken again? What if I go through the same pain that I have endured before or potentially even worse? What if I let this person see into me and they don’t like what they see and they reject me? Am I going to be able to recover from that? There’s so many angles that this comes through, but all we can do is to address these head on and lean Go seek the business opportunities. Go on the date, open your heart in the relationship. See what happens. Because if you get to the end of your life and you look back on everything that you missed out on along the way, because you were too scared, how is that going to feel? Really sit with that. There’s a, a stoic practice around, um, memento mori it’s called memento mori and it’s about remember you must die. That’s that’s what that means. Remember you must die. And what that ultimately boils down to when we think about death, I actually think it’s a really useful exercise because we, we can then start to put into perspective what’s really going to matter to us. On, on our deathbeds. I know this has taken a morbid turn, but I need to go there. What is really going to matter? How is that going to shift the way that you show up today? How would you measure how successful you are in life? If it depended on your moral code and the standards to which you hold yourself, the way you treat others, the compassion you demonstrate and share, how would you measure that kind of success? How can you make you proud? What would that look like when you get into bed tonight? What would that look like exponentially over the longer term, like next week, next month, next year, please don’t settle for a life that isn’t fully lived. And, and I know how easy it is to get sucked into believing that we’ll wake up one day and magically feel better, more confident, looking better, feeling better, whatever the thing is, or, or we’re waiting for the exact set of circumstances to be just right before we can do whatever it is that we have been wanting to do. But I want you to demand nothing less from yourself than showing the fuck up, decide to do something differently. And, and listen, words alone, can’t change any of this for you. I can’t change this for you. This podcast can’t do it for you. It is up to you to decide how you are going to take your next, your next step forward. And I want to assure you that you can build resilience and build confidence and do the thing and, and all of those things and do it scared while still showing yourself compassion along the way. It doesn’t have to be an either or it’s a both and I am learning more every single day that I get to live my life in the form of a both and, and I apply that now to every, every different area of my life with when I’m looking at a particular situation, like, okay, what’s the both and, and the other reason why I was super fired up to share this episode today, I wasn’t sure what I was going to record this morning. And. I had bad dreams last night about all of these, all these opportunities that I, it felt, it felt like I had no options in my dreams and whatever, whatever dream I was having last night, it felt like I was really backed into a corner. And there were so many areas of my life where I was struggling and I couldn’t move forward. And I woke up feeling a little bit distressed. You know, when that happens and you’re, you almost had to clear the cobwebs away because it can, it can really like physically, it can really like mentally and almost physically change. The course of your day, if we don’t kind of like clear that out. So I was sort of looking at, okay, you know, what is, what is this trying to tell me? Is there any message here? Um, is there anything I need to listen to? And there are a few things that come up, it came up, but overall. I thought to myself, no, this dream just isn’t true for me. This, this isn’t, this isn’t my reality. This, this isn’t even close to being my reality. Feeling like I have no options in, in particular areas. No, like every possibility is open and it’s a both end. And I know that on a logical level, it almost felt like my subconscious was trying to give me, you know, one last raw. And I’m not saying it’s going to be the last time because, you know, life is a journey, never, never ending destination, but it was almost as though my subconscious was, was trying to push me to be like, Oh, you think you have no options? Okay. Let’s see how you feel. If I give you a dream where you don’t feel like you have options, how does it change anything for you? And I woke up and honestly, probably a year, a couple, a couple of years ago. That dream probably would have really impacted me. I would have been like, Ooh, you know, maybe, maybe my subconscious is right. And now I’m like, no, fuck no. This is just, this is just, you know, old shit coming up to just be cleared, healed and moved past and to prove myself wrong on multiple, you know, to prove myself, my subconscious wrong on multiple fronts and to show myself just exactly what I am capable of. In every sense of the word, there’s another episode that I did, uh, episode three 48 about, uh, stop bullshitting with your potential. I highly recommend checking that one out as well. A lot of people commented, uh, back to me about that one that, that it really impacted them. So if you need a kick in the ass today, that’s another great one to go listen to, and then obviously there’s, you know, so many others on this podcast, especially around relationships and, and showing up and really allowing yourself to be seen as well. So I’ll list several different episodes in the show notes for you to check out, but This was just really on my heart this morning and I want to share this with you. So please. Go out and do the thing, stop waiting for a particular exact set of magical imaginary circumstances to happen, because if you keep waiting for that, I promise you, even if those circumstances come to be, you won’t have the confidence in that moment. It doesn’t magically appear one day. You still won’t have the confidence in that moment to go do the thing that you, that you want to do. Confidence is built. It is honed, it is practiced, it is, it is what is forged through the fire of continuously doing the thing over and over again and half the time failing along the way, but that is still where the confidence is built. It is built. It is created. It is not magic, magically handed to you. So go build some confidence today. Go create that for yourself and see what happens. Thank you so much for listening. If you want more, one of the most common questions I get is where do I even start doing this work? To create deeper connections and better relationships, I’ve got a free 15 page guide for you called where do we begin? This is the very foundation that you need to start building healthy relationships with others and with yourself. This is my gift to you and multiple people have referred to it as life changing. You can find it over at roomtogrowupodcast. com or check the show notes to go download it and have it sent straight to your inbox. Thanks so much and stay tuned for more episodes weekly.