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life{in}grace

live with more presence, passion, & purpose

Edie Wadsworth

9. 3 ways to boost your confidence

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show notes

Welcome to this week’s podcast about all things self-confidence. You may think you are just born with it or you’re not, but nothing is further from the truth! Your relationship with yourself makes ALL the difference in how you show up in the world. We need your gifts Mama, so grab your bullet journal so you can write down all the wisdom!
Today Dr. Edie is sharing 3 ways to boost your confidence:
>>Know your Value. >>Own your Frailties >>Practice managing your thoughts and emotions

And so much more!

>>How to tell if someone has self-confidence by how you feel when you’re around them

>>We have to give people tools to build their self-confidence before they can do all the amazing things they want to do in the world.

>> Recognizing your value is the gift you give to yourself.

>> Positive thought fuels action. Not the other way around.

>>We were given our value by God when we were born. What does He say about us

>>We find what we are looking for, in ourselves and in others. How can you tell what you’re looking for

>>Confidence is not arrogance so what is it

>>Own your frailties and learn how to handle yourself in any situation

>>How you can have your own back

>>How to practice to build confidence

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3 ways to give yourself the gift of self-confidence

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Tom Tom and I were gone for a week together to Salt Lake City for the Young Living convention.

It was a whirlwind of learning and connecting and pouring into as many people as I could. We met hundreds of new people and I’m so thankful for every one of them for finding us and saying hi and for all the encouragement we were given.

I also noticed that so many women lack confidence. They felt insecure and were unsure of themselves.  They were timid and had a hard time making eye contact.

I think no matter your confidence level, we all have days where we’re not feeling quite ourselves and we can go into an insecurity tail spin.

But being in the presence of someone who is confident and kind and loving is such a gift.

They’re easy to be around. They put everyone around them at ease. They are so comfortable in their own skin that they can focus their time and energy on everyone else. They radiate. They have this vibe and energy that is contagious.

I think that is possible for all us if we are willing to increase our awareness and notice our own thinking about ourselves.

The secret messages that you tell yourself are so important.

In fact, the way you talk to yourself becomes the way you talk to others.

If you are positive and patient and compassionate with yourself, it will bleed into all your relationships.

Conversely, if you are critical and negative and unkind to yourself, it will also bleed into all your relationships.

Your relationship with yourself is important and taking the time to be curious about and to be willing to change it signifies that you are willing to grow.

Self-confidence is cultivated.  Self-confidence is just the thoughts you choose to think about yourself.  Notice, I said CHOOSE.

My question is—are you deciding what those thoughts should be or are you letting your brain run wild?

Self-confidence is a gift that ONLY YOU can give yourself and when you decide to make it a priority, it’s a gift that you give the world too.

It’s doesn’t mean you know everything or are good at everything and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re arrogant and self-serving.

Self-confidence is basically your ability to handle your own self (your thoughts and feelings and emotions) in any circumstance and you get better at doing it by practicing.

We will talk about recognizing the value of YOU—seeing yourself the way God sees you, practicing your confidence (learning that you are in charge of your thoughts and feelings), and owning your frailties.

[1] Acknowledging your value

You are a child of God. You are inherently as valuable when you are born as you will ever be. You do not need to earn your place, you cannot make yourself more valuable by what you do or contribute. You are loved by the God of the universe and His love makes you forever and always precious and enough and beautiful and perfect. You don’t need to wait until you get married or have a baby or write that book or get that job before you “qualify” as someone who can have confidence. You already have EVERYTHING you need within you and YOU are the one who needs to practice believing it to your core.

You also have a your ego, your sin nature—the you that wants to constantly prove yourself and compare yourself, the you that’s afraid and doubtful and full of insecurity. This is the sneaky part of you that in the name of protecting you from being hurt, tells you that you are less than and not as good as the next girl. When you are letting this voice rule you, you are not living from your truest self—your deepest essence. You are listening to the wrong voice.

Your highest self knows that you are made in God’s image and that you have always been just right. Listen to the still, small voice that reassures and comforts and encourages. Listen to the voice of love and humility. THAT is the voice of God’s spirit in you and when you learn to show up for YOURSELF and for others with that voice in your head, you are one contagious and attractive person to be around. Self-confidence becomes a gift, not only to you, but to everyone blessed to be around you. Since you are comfortable in your own skin and know who you are, you make everyone else comfortable around you. What a gift!

Practical: Make a list of 25 things you like about yourself. Be curious and not so critical. This might seem hard at first but it’s totally worth it if you are someone who is always putting yourself down.

[2] Owning your frailties

Last week when we were out of town, I was feeling particularly vulnerable. I was traveling alone with Tom Tom and I was very hormonal. Every person who approached me to meet us and show us love and kindness brought me to tears. I must have cried ten times the first day. At first, I was mad at myself. Why am I so emotional? Why does every interaction feel so raw? Why am I feeling so vulnerable? And then I remembered that I’ve had a rough few months and I let myself off the hook. I’m emotional. So what? It’s kind of endearing, at least to some people. I’m flawed and sinful but I’m also the perfect version of me. I’m forgiven and I am learning to walk in grace and humility, even when I feel like I’m too much or not enough.

Being confident doesn’t mean being good at everything. And it certainly doesn’t mean being arrogant. Hardly. It actually means having the humility to know that there’s still so much to learn and so many ways to continue growing. It’s good for us to own where we are and how much farther we have to go. But we can’t let our brains use that as evidence that we are unworthy.

Our brains have been wired to look for the negative things in our world to try to keep us from danger. Unfortunately, that has often led us to these loops of negativity that we’ve let run wild. And even more unfortunate, the target of these negative thought loops are often our own selves. To reprogram that, we have to tell our brains what to think about us. And when we do this and begin to tell ourselves the beautiful truths about who we are and what we are created to do in the world, that positivity spills over into everything. We begin to see everyone else in that same, positive light and we begin to radiate the light that is within us, making it easier for others to do the same.

So, instead of beating myself up for being too emotional, I reminded myself that I’m tender and compassionate and easily moved to tears. Just as true and a much better story to tell about myself. Now, it’s your turn. What is negative, perhaps awful story you tell about yourself. That you’re not motivated? That you’re too heavy? That you never get anything done?

Listen, those negative messages are poisoning you against you and they’re also making it almost impossible to generate the positive emotions that you need in order to take ACTION in your life. Tell a better story and just see the magic unfold.

Practical: Name the most painful thought you have about yourself—something that causes you to feel shame or causes you pain in some way. Right it down. How does thinking that about yourself make you feel? And how do you show up in the world when you feel that way? That is probably a thought worth examining and changing. How can you change that thought to something that serves you better, that fuels more motivation and passion and less shame and paralysis.

[3] Practicing confidence

Now, this newfound way of talking to yourself will seem weird and wonky. Jordan Peterson said in his book 12 Rules for Life to treat yourself like someone you’re responsible for helping. And I know you would never treat your friend or family member like you often treat yourself. So, you’re going to need to practice.

The old, nagging voice will keep trying to have its say. You decide now that you are going to have your own back—that you are going to remind your brain that yes, you struggle with many things, but you are God’s child and you are loved and you are willing to keep practicing this skill of showing up with your whole self, faults and shortcomings and gifts and all.

Self-confidence is more about knowing that you can handle yourself in any situation—that you can manage your mind and emotions and have your own back. And the better you get at that, the better you get at taking care of others around you too, because you’ve gotten good at taking care of yourself first.

The skill of feeling confident won’t come overnight. But EVERY LAST THING in your life will get better when you learn to live from a place of confidence, humility, and love—first for yourself and then for everyone who is blessed to have you in their life.

Give yourself this gift.  You’re the only one who can.

To watch the video on this topic, click here!

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5 Reasons You’re Not Fulfilled in Your Marriage

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Okay mama, grab some coffee and let’s chat about the elephant in the room.

You’re unhappy, unfulfilled, or just in general not satisfied with the current state of your marriage. You’ve been married a good while and though there’s nothing catastrophically wrong, you’re just not happy with where things are. And you’re 98% sure that he needs to change. Make that 100%. He’s not really there for you. He doesn’t listen. He’s emotionally detached. And a bunch of other things. But since this is the most important relationship of your life, maybe it’s worth it to step back and see if there’s something we’re missing. Maybe it’s time to self-examine and self-reflect and see what’s lingering just under the surface. I did this about ten years ago and it has made all the difference.

-1-Unfulfilled in your own life

I think the first reason I was feeling unfulfilled in my marriage is because I was unfulfilled in myself. At the time, I had just quit my job as a family physician and I was lost. So, I took up some bad habits to temporarily make myself feel better. But those temporary dopamine hits that make us forget about the pain or doubt or insecurity or resentment that we’re feeling don’t last. And so, we need another and another. I found myself in debt and though my kids had EVERY cute swimsuit there was to be had, I was still miserable inside. When I began to take responsibility for myself and decide that I wanted more, I began to see that my unfulfillment in life was making me secretly blame my husband.

-2-Unrealistic Expectations

Stevie surprised me for our ten year anniversary with a trip to Atlantis. Everything from how he told me about the surprise to how he treated me while we were gone was magical. But all fairy tales end and a few days later we were back home and I was getting my feelings hurt over something insignificant and the anniversary was over. On that trip, I read The Notebook. (And also UGLY CRIED in the Nassau airport to the degree I have never ugly cried in my life. Stevie was probably mortified.)

As much as I love the book and movie version of The Notebook, life long love doesn’t look like that for very long, if ever. If we’re getting our cues from pop culture, we’re going to be sorely disappointed in marriage.

And then there’s the expectation we get from seeing our friends and family who are married and we begin to wonder why our marriage doesn’t look like that. Then we hear some sermon or podcast about how we should be holding hands and having devotions every day together.

And the list of expectations doesn’t end.

I finally found peace in my marriage when I quit expecting it to be EVERYTHING and just let it be what it was—normal, amazing, exhausting, beautiful, stressful, demanding, life-giving, and everything in between. If we decide to live our lives awake to what’s there and stop buffering the bad away with food and shopping, etc, we usually find that it’s a mix of good and bad. That’s what makes it life and that’s what makes us human. When we expect it to always be blissful, and when it’s not, make that mean that something’s wrong, we make it way harder than it should be. Marriage is hard and amazing. Let it be both.

(When Stevie and I have a fight or misunderstanding, I audibly remind myself that this is the part where it’s hard. It helps me allow the negative feelings, instead of pushing them away.)

-3-Unwritten rules

We all have them, but we don’t often speak about them. If he does this and says this and acts this way, then all is well. My coach calls it the manual. We have a secret manual for the people in our lives and we expect them to follow it, even when we haven’t actually written it all out and given them a printed copy.

What’s your manual for your spouse? What are all those unwritten rules and standards that you are holding him to? And what would it be like to just drop the manual, to stop wanting and wishing and expecting him to be different and just accept him for exactly who he is?

We carry so much resentment towards our husbands because they are not obeying our secret rules and we fail to realize that the resentment we carry poisons US, not them. I feel the resentment and anger in MY OWN BODY, so it is worth it to question the resentment and consciously decide if I want to be holding onto it.

AND? We don’t like it when people have secret rules for us.

We want to be accepted for who we are. But that is the very thing we have trouble giving other people. What if we dropped ALL THE DRAMA and just decided to love? I’ve tried it over and over and over again as I practice being the kind of spouse I want to be and here’s what I can tell you—love is always the best option and YOU GET TO FEEL IT IN YOUR OWN BODY. When you decide to love without condition, you get to experience unconditional love and that, my friends, is what makes the world go ’round.

-4-Unmet Emotional Needs

This one is probably the most important because we’ve been taught that we have emotional needs and that something or someone else is in charge of meeting those needs. If we continue to believe that, we will always be at the mercy of someone else—held hostage emotionally until they give us what we think we need.

What if we met our own emotional needs? What if we began to function as emotional rock stars and paid attention to what we need and gave that to ourselves. We want him to show us love, but are we showing love to ourselves in the way we care for ourselves and talk to ourselves. We want him to BE THERE for us and have our back, but do we have our own back? Are we showing up for ourselves in a meaningful way? We want him to love us just as we are, but WE don’t love ourselves just as we are.

I promise that when I started taking responsibility for my own feelings and emotions, my life changed. No one can hurt my feelings. I hurt my own feelings by letting someone else hijack my thoughts and emotions. And sometimes I want to feel hurt, but at least I acknowledge that I’m choosing it.

Imagine going into a relationship with someone who was confident in themselves, who was not emotionally dependent on others, who took good care of themselves AND good care of those around them? That is what we all want, and the quickest way to get it is to BE IT.

Stop waiting for someone else to change. YOU ARE IT, mama. And who else, but you? You’re amazing and you are fully capable of meeting your own needs. Then, you can head into your relationship fully whole, fully well, without depending on someone else for what you can only give yourself.

-5-Unexamined Story

I think we forget that we are part of a grandest story ever told.

God is writing a story to the world of love and sacrifice and he is using YOUR MARRIAGE to do it. This is so much bigger than you, so much more than your bills and your stress and your squabbles. This is life and death. This is Christ sacrificing for his bride and this is his bride loving him with her whole heart.

There’s also the story that you tell others and yourself about your marriage. Does your story sound something like, “He’s so selfish and he never does anything for me or the kids,” or “I wish for once he appreciated all I do around here.” That used to be my marriage story.

Then I decided that I’m in charge of the story and there’s JUST AS MUCH good to tell as bad. So, I rewrote the story. If you give me half a chance, I’ll tell you all the things I admire about Stevie. I’ll tell you I’ve never met anyone else quite like him. I’ll tell you how he has sacrificed everything for us. Is it true? Yes. And it’s a much better story than the one I have told in the past. And how do you think I show up in my marriage when I’ve been telling that story all day? Powerful, isn’t it, how we can change everything by deciding what story we want to tell about our marriage?

Now, I know some of you are going to get defensive and you’re going to tell me all kinds of things about your spouse or your situation that make it different. And I’m not saying that you should even stay married. Maybe you should have left a long time ago. Maybe there’s abuse and infidelity and all kinds of stuff. But what I’m saying is that if this marriage is here to stay, you might as well be its biggest fan. You might as well give it the intention and prayer and work it deserves.

And you can do that without your spouse ever changing one thing. Want to be more fulfilled in your marriage? That has ALWAYS been your job alone. You being fulfilled is a result of YOUR thoughts and YOUR emotions and only you can think and feel those. It’s always been you. I can’t think of anyone better.

Being unfulfilled is a story you’ve been telling yourself.

Maybe it’s time you told a better story.

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