Over the last few years, I've developed a framework for understanding confidence challenges and what to do about them.
Other articles will go into more detail - this one is meant to give you a quick overview.
The main idea is that confidence, or a sense of trust and safety (how I define confidence), is supported or influenced by a lot of things - but these can be sorted into themes (what I call pillars).
When you look at the seven pillars, they will help you to:
- Discover what your individual confidence challenges actually are, and
- What actions will most likely be effective in helping you overcome those challenges.
The 7 Pillars:
- Emotional Health: This is the core pillar. Confidence is not totally, but is mostly, an emotional experience. If you want to improve your confidence but aren't sure what to do, I recommend with starting here and improving your emotional health.
- Ability - Knowing: There are 2 pillars related to ability. The "Knowing" pillar is the idea that to be confident in your ability there is usually some learning required.
- Ability - Doing: Often to feel more confident in our ability, we actually have to do the thing - we have to practice.
- Physical Health: Our bodies can send us signals that we aren't safe when we need to pay attention to our physical selves.
- Self Worth: Understanding - and truly feeling - that you are worthy of love and belonging, just as you are.
- Relationships: We need to feel connected to others, and accepted by them, to feel safe. This can happen with individuals (what I call your "soul family"), or at the level of a community. Either way, it's important that you both give and receive help (or know you can).
- Meaning: This is connecting with something bigger than yourself. It's not necessarily about religion, but it can be.
I hope that this introduction has helped point you in the right direction! I'd love your feedback.
This article was revised on July 19 2022.
Here is the framework in visual form:
