So often confidence is out of reach.

And, of course, this keep us stuck.

We want to feel confident that we will be successful before we even get started.

It NEVER happens like this, BUT! I can tell you there are some stepping stones to focus on that will help you get there without slowing down your momentum.

I’m sharing all the juicy details inside this episode so tune in to join me.

I’ll see you inside! xo, Janeen

>> CLICK HERE to Watch on YouTube

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Janeen: Well, hey there, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am Janeen Alley, you are listening to becoming the CEO of your life, and today we are talking about the stepping stones to confidence, and I mentioned in last week’s episode that we are talking about confidence today. So here we are.

[00:00:19] I’m super excited to be delivering this one because I think this is something that people get stuck on or feeling a lack of confidence to make a difference or reach a goal is what keeps so many people from taking action . And like I mentioned last week, I think that we all have something that the world needs.

[00:00:39] We all have a special spark or a way to contribute that has never been seen before in the history of the world. And if you are feeling stuck because you don’t feel confident to take action or to move forward, then we all really miss out. But this lack of confidence conversation sounds [00:01:00] like, well, I can’t do that, or I don’t have what it takes.

[00:01:04] And the truth is, is you might not be able to do what it is that you’d like to right now, today. But you can. That is the truth. What happens for most of us is our confidence tanks when we are caught up in some kind of comparison trap where our confidence is tied to what other people will think of us, like how we look or how we sound, or even how much we weigh.

[00:01:30] All of those things. This conversation is often a double standard where we believe other people can do amazing things regardless of what they look like or regardless of what they sound like. Yet we don’t believe these things about ourselves.

[00:01:45] We have a whole separate set of rules that apply just to us. And I think it’s human nature to want to feel confident in doing something before we get started doing it right, but this lack of confidence sometimes leads us away [00:02:00] from feeling brave or being vulnerable. But confidence is generated from thoughts that we think, and sometimes no matter how many thoughts we think that we feel like should generate confidence, we just can’t quite get there.

[00:02:15] And I think sometimes this is a really hard emotion to access right away. Even with all of the coaching in the world in order to get there, I know this is something that I struggle with even as a coach, is to feel confident, whether it’s speaking from stage or sometimes recording a podcast or even teaching yoga classes.

[00:02:33] Truth be told, the reason why we don’t feel confident is because we’re thinking thoughts that are freaking us out. Right? I can never do that. I’m gonna look like an idiot. All of those things are not confidence boosting conversations that we’re having in our minds.

[00:02:48] So one of the things that helps me is that I feel like I have created stepping stones to feel confident in my life. And I have gotten these [00:03:00] ideas from other people and I’ve kind of made them my own. But what it is that we wanna do is we want to feel confident before we set out on reaching the goal that we’re gonna get a result that we like.

[00:03:14] But, we have zero proof that we can actually get a result doing something brand new. We have no evidence that we can actually do it. We see other people doing it, but we don’t have any confidence that we can do it ourselves.

[00:03:28] I had a coach say one time, the people that win are the ones that stay in the game. It doesn’t matter if someone else gets the results that you want faster than you do. If we just stick with something long enough, the rest will follow. The results will come if we consistently take action towards the thing, and we’re learning from the mistakes that we make.

[00:03:54] However, confidence doesn’t come first naturally for most of us. We [00:04:00] commit and we wanna move forward and not make mistakes and be confident as we go, right?

[00:04:06] But when reality sets in, we struggle and we feel really uncomfortable because we’re failing a lot. Right? But in order to create growth, we have to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable. One thing that I am confident at is that it will get easier as I stick with it and as I learn from things, because it always does.

[00:04:29] I remember when I first started podcasting, I was terrified to put my first podcast out there. I think I recorded the first probably 10 or 20 episodes, five or six times each. Cause I was like, this is no good. So I kept recording it until a point where I’m like, I cannot keep up with this pace. I cannot record every single episode for each week five times.

[00:04:52] I don’t have the time for that. And so I just had to put it out there as it came, and it was really scary just realizing like, Hey, my [00:05:00] podcast at episode 100 or episode 200 is going to be vastly different from episode one. And that has been true for sure. So here are some of the stepping stones. This is what I wanna teach you today in order to become more confident.

[00:05:15] So the first step to becoming more confident is you have to commit. You have to say, I’m in. I’m all in. A real commitment requires that you keep showing up and you keep doing the dang thing even if it’s no good, or even if you think it’s no good. So if you get knocked down 10 times, you need to get up 11.

[00:05:40] That’s what it means to fully commit to something. So for me, I don’t really have a problem doing physical work. I actually really enjoy working. I love getting up in the morning and having things going on. I really, really like that.

[00:05:55] The work that is actually really hard is the emotional work. [00:06:00] Emotional work dredges up the discomfort, right? It’s all the stuff that we are avoiding and potentially feeling things like humiliation or being embarrassed or feeling insecure or not feeling good enough. It’s uncomfortable and we wanna hide, and we think we’re doing it wrong when we feel these emotions and our brains will tell us to stop.

[00:06:21] So you have to be committed to feeling and doing the work to move through the emotions. I am doing a live event in Parker at the end of July. By the way, if you wanna come and join me, I would love for you to join me at this event. It’s free, it’s on the 26th of July, on Wednesday the 26th at seven o’clock .

[00:06:39] So if you are local and you wanna join me, I would love to have you come. Just go to my website and you will see the link right there to RSVP and let me know that you’re coming just because the room capacity is limited and if we need to, we need to switch locations. So I wanna make sure I have a seat for everybody who’s gonna be there.

[00:06:55] So if you wanna join me, go to my website, janeenalley.com and RSV P [00:07:00] over there. But I have had a lot of waves of emotion when I’m thinking about this event. Like, what if I’m talking about something and people leave?

[00:07:10] Or what if nobody comes or what if the event isn’t fancy enough for people? I have somebody that I invited to come and they’re like, well, is there gonna be champagne there? I’m like, no, I don’t do champagne. I don’t know anything about champagne. And so we’re not gonna be having champagne, but I still want you to come.

[00:07:29] It is going to be really, really amazing. It’ll be a really fun way for us to interact, and I’m gonna be going deep on some of the things that I’m talking about on the podcast, but what I had to wrap my mind around was, it’s okay if people leave. It’s okay if they don’t wanna hear my message.

[00:07:45] It’s okay if there’s no champagne. All of that is okay. It really is. Because I will find my people and I will fine tune my message as I move forward, and all of that is part of the process. [00:08:00] So I do have confidence that I can do that. And that is what I need to focus on. Okay. The second step beyond being fully committed is courage.

[00:08:10] So to stick with our commitments over the long run, we have to be courageous. We have to be brave and face our fears and all of these emotions that come up. Like I just mentioned: our demons, our obstacles, all of our stories, all of it. We have to have courage to work through it. And it’s surprising sometimes how much courage this takes because we wanna shove it down or walk around it, or over it, but not through it.

[00:08:39] And that is what it takes. We have to slow ourselves down to explore our thoughts and to explore our emotions. What are our thoughts telling us? When we shine a light on them, they lose their power. Now, one of the ways that I love to do this is I tell myself, or I give myself permission to be practicing [00:09:00] something.

[00:09:00] When I started my podcast and I was recording it five or six times each, I had to just tell myself, you’re practicing podcasting. People who are gonna find you at episode 100 are not gonna be in your audience right now. So you have to be practicing your podcast. And there have been times where I’m like, okay, we’re just practicing going to the gym, we’re just gonna practice going to the gym, and we’re gonna practice doing the workout.

[00:09:21] Even at this point, I’ve been a personal trainer for over 20 years and I still sometimes have to tell myself, we’re just gonna practice. This morning practice doing that because I wanna do it perfectly, or I wanna have all this energy, or I want it to be fun like it is on some days and it just doesn’t feel like that.

[00:09:39] And so we’re just gonna practice it today. Or sometimes I just practice meditation when my brain is like a pinball machine. We’re just like, we’re just practicing today. We’re not gonna, we’re not gonna knock it out of the park. And although I do have to say any day I meditate it’s a great day to be meditating, even if my brain is like a pinball machine.

[00:09:59] And that’s why [00:10:00] so many people call it their meditation practice is because we all have a brain. And sometimes it’s really active and sometimes it’s a little bit more settled. Okay. One of the ways that I get myself into this space. To have courage is two things. The first one is reminding myself to be humble.

[00:10:20] I’ve mentioned before that while I was in college, I was a river raft guide on the Snake River. Now, in order to get that job, you actually had to go through a week of guide school

[00:10:30] first. You were just learning how to read the water and become a raft guide and to safely get people down the river. But this was a grueling week. The water was running really high. Guide school was at the end of May, and I do remember that the water levels that year were crazy high.

[00:10:49] The water was running at 22,000 cubic feet per second, if that means anything to any of you, that is a lot of water moving downstream in a short [00:11:00] period of time, and it’s all snow melt in May. And so the water was like 35 degrees, and I remember the guides that week were like, you guys are burning so many calories working.

[00:11:12] And I mean, it’s physically draining to be rafting all day long. Not only that, but you’re cold. And so I remember one of the guides was like, you basically need to stick a stick of butter between two pieces of bread and eat that for lunch. That’s how many calories that you need in order to stay warm and have any energy.

[00:11:31] So at the time that I did guide school, I think there were probably about 35 or 36 people applying for the job, and they hired like six or seven of us. And I have a small to medium size frame. I’m five six and I weigh about 125 pounds, and I, to be honest, was shocked when I got the job. I was the only woman that was hired that year to guide, and I didn’t get the job because I was the strongest.

[00:11:54] I got the job because I was humble and because I was teachable, and that was the feedback that I got[00:12:00] from my guides at the time. So I think this has actually served me super well throughout my life.

[00:12:05] One of the things to keep in mind is you wanna show up knowing that you’re gonna learn something new. Sometimes I just honestly feel like a kind of a bull in a China shop, but if I’m humble, I can learn from my mistakes. I also don’t take life super seriously. I’m sure that you’ve kind of gathered that from listening to a few episodes of the podcast.

[00:12:25] I love to bring humor into the things that I am learning, into the things that I’m doing, and even in my own self-coaching practice, I also do this with my clients as well. Mistakes used to mean the end of the world for me. I was a perfectionist. I was a people pleaser, and so making any kind of mistake was really devastating for me, and I’d make it mean pretty much that I was a loser.

[00:12:50] I was really hard on myself. But I think with kids, I’ve developed a sense of humor about a lot of things, and I’d see my kids doing this exact same thing. [00:13:00] And they were so focused and they were wanting to get something right, quote unquote, right, right? Whatever it was they were trying to do. And they’d flop, of course, just like all the rest of us, and they’d get really frustrated.

[00:13:11] And so in helping them, I realized it’s a lot more fun to laugh about things and I’m not talking about laughing at someone else or at someone else’s expense. I think that’s just plain mean. But at yourself in a way that’s lighthearted, in a way that is encouraging you to do something again and to try again.

[00:13:32] I think that that is actually one of my superpowers as I do that all the time. Honestly, if I was at event and I tripped going up the stairs on a stage or something, It would be hilarious to me. I can totally see myself doing that and it would be okay. It wouldn’t be the end of the world for sure. Okay, so the third stepping stone to building confidence is building your capable muscles.

[00:13:58] Okay, when I am [00:14:00] approaching something brand new for the very first time this is actually one of the things that I tell myself. I’m totally capable of figuring this out. This is something that I’ve talked about a lot on the podcast, but that is the truth for you too. You are a hundred percent capable of figuring new things out. I also know when I’m not feeling confident, I’m focused on me. And that is not a good feeling. So when I’m focusing on other people and I’m creating something brand new for them, it kind of gives me that little boost to keep going and to figure it out. It helps me to lose focus on how I’m sounding or that I’m tripping on stage or any of those other things. I’m sharing things that I am passionate about, and I feel so much more confident when I’m in that head space. I’m confident in my message.

[00:14:50] I’m confident that I can help other people, and that’s what I stay focused on instead of who are you to think that you can do this? Or, why are you talking about this? Or [00:15:00] all those things that come up when we are trying to do something new? Okay. The last step is after we build our capable muscles, then we start to feel confident because we’re like, okay, yeah, I’m gaining some traction on this.

[00:15:12] In order to have the confidence, we need to create and focus on these little wins along the way. This is so key. We have to pay attention to these little wins and celebrate them. One of my favorite books of all time is The Gap in the Gain by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, and the, the premise of the book is to focus on how far you’ve come

[00:15:40] when you’re trying to reach a big goal, instead of how far you have to go. Like for example, I’m just gonna put this in really simple terms, and I’m just gonna use this for the sake of my analogy. Let’s say that your goal is to make it to 30, like whatever that means.

[00:15:57] Okay, and let’s say [00:16:00] you’re out, let’s just say 30 steps. Okay? Just so that you have some context. So your goal is to get to 30 steps, okay? Now, let’s say that you get to 22 steps. Instead of thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, I’ve made 22 steps, what we do is we think I have eight more steps to go. And so in your mind, you’re creating a negative eight number with the goal instead of a positive 22.

[00:16:26] I hope you can see this. This is, you can apply this to anything that you’re doing, whether it’s building a business or losing weight or creating something that has never been seen before in the world. I mean, there’s so many things that this applies to. So when we’re in the mindset of having a gain, we’re focusing in on the 22 steps.

[00:16:47] When we are in the gap, we’re at negative eight towards the goal. And there is a huge difference in the momentum that we feel and the motivation and the inspiration that we’re feeling in our lives when we’re in the gain. And that is what [00:17:00] I want you to focus on. Focus on these little wins. It is so key.

[00:17:04] The results that we’re going for in our lives and that goal, the accomplishment that we wanna have sometimes feels so out of reach. It feels so monumental and so big. And how we get there is by taking these little, tiny steps towards the goal. These little wins they’re going to add up over time.

[00:17:24] This is where the magic happens, my friends, is when we are focusing on those little steps that we’ve taken that have gotten us a little bit closer. Now, you might have a day, I mentioned this the other day to my clients. There have been days when I’ve been working on my business and I had a result that I wanted by the end of the day.

[00:17:40] And all day long I had to deal with tech issues. Like things broke. I had to restart my computer 10 times. I mean, there’s so many things that didn’t happen the way that I had hoped that they would for the day. It’s not a fail because I needed to overcome those obstacles in order to get what it is that I want.

[00:17:59] So that was the [00:18:00] day. That was the day that I was overcoming those obstacles, and I look at it as a win. It’s not looking at it like, I’m never gonna be able to get this. It’s like, oh, this was supposed to happen. This is happening for me and I’m able to move forward and get answers for this. Confidence comes, of course, a lot more easily to us after doing the work, after showing up and taking these steps, after being committed, after having courage, after building our capable muscles, then we start to feel more confident.

[00:18:29] But we’ve got to be in the arena. We’ve got to be the ones that are down on the ground with the blood, sweat, and tears and all the frustration and getting back up again and again and again. We learn what works and we learn what doesn’t. And the way to make this sustainable is we’re learning patience and we’re learning love for ourselves and others who are also in the arena doing the work. All right, my friends, this is how we do it. This is one of the steps in becoming the c e o of your life, because that [00:19:00] big thing, that big thing that you wanna do is going to require that you do things that make you uncomfortable.

[00:19:08] So if you wanna learn more about how to do this, if you wanna make a difference in the world , in a way that is gonna light you up and give your life purpose and meaning right now, I want to invite you to come with me

[00:19:21] into this mastermind of becoming the c e O of your life. It really is going to be a game-changing experience when we put ourselves in proximity with people who are doing similar things and putting themselves out there in a way that feels really big and scary you feel like you’re not alone. And we learn things from one another in this process.

[00:19:41] And so I would love for you to be a part of this group if this feels like it resonates with you. So if that is true for you, I want you to go to janeenalley.com/breakthrough to join me. So again, that’s janeenalley.com/breakthrough. All right, my friends, have a beautiful rest of your [00:20:00] week and we will talk to you guys next week.

[00:20:03] We’ll see ya. Bye.