I'm on my morning walk. It's 6 AM. I've already been out for 30 minutes. My face is mildly frozen which makes it hard for my mouth to move so I sound quite frankly intoxicated. I'm not, but there’s something in my mind that I wanted to capture and share with you today so enjoy my slurred speech and the birds in the background and my clydesdale footsteps as we talk about the term confidence.
I hear this word come up more than anything else when talking to clients or people in the DMs on Instagram and just in general. We all seek more confidence. We want to be more confident in ourselves, more confident in our message specifically with what ideal people wanna be more confident when they step up to mic and that lack of confidence prevents many from achieving their goals whether that's getting on video, sitting at podcast pitch, or going after bigger stages.
As you see the confidence lacking plagues those who are seemingly confidently speaking. They might be of the school of thought. This was me for a long time. That they're good and they have no problem getting up in front of a group but deep down that lack of confidence in their structure of what they talk about, deep down the lack of confidence in knowing that their stories are actually resonating? Is there a message truly the best it could be? That self-doubt, that's a lack of confidence.
I want you to think about something for a moment. This little analogy here listening to a book that has a Navy Seal in it so my mind is going all these places. I think about this analogy of jumping with a parachute. Imagine this for a moment. You, for some whatever reason decide to get up in an airplane and you want to jump and you grab a parachute and go. There is a big difference between grabbing a parachute and not necessarily knowing if it was packed well or what's in it, just kinda hoping that's there and jumping and having just faith that it's going to work out versus checking your parachute, packing it yourself or just ensuring that it's all packed together. That it actually is there and it's going to work and you grab that one before you jump out of a plane. There's a big difference. I don't know about you but if my life is on the line I would definitely want to make sure the parachute was checked and well packed. Granted, I don't know how to do that so I would have to learn how to do that and or trust the instructor to double-check it and verify with me that everything's good. Anyways, let's end that analogy for a moment.
Let's go back to you and your confidence. What I see a lot of times with entrepreneurs, myself included as we operate from the space of thinking that confidence is the thing that's going to get us where we want to go. If only we were more confident we could show up more, if only we were more confident, whew, that was a hummingbird face that just sweeps in front of my face. That was fun but if only we were more confident. That's the issue, right? That's what is stopping us from creating video, that's what is stopping us from sending podcast pitches, that's what is stopping us from getting more visible, that's what is stopping us from charging more on our prices, that's what is stopping us from doing the next big thing, right? It's if only we had more confidence.
But here's the thing, confidence isn't something that you can pack in your parachute. You can't just jump out of a plane without a parachute and just go, oh, I'm gonna have confidence that everything's gonna works out great and then jump. No, you're gonna fall on your freaking face at 140 miles an hour or however fast you go when you jump out of an airplane. I don't know. Confidence is not what we need to be seeking. We have to learn how to actually pack a parachute which is skill. When we learn skills, when we learn how to do something, think about this when you started your business, did you know how to set up an email service provider? No. Did you have to go, oh, if only I were more confident in setting up my email? No, you figured it out like, oh, do I take a course? Do I have to learn a tutorial? You learned. You build the skill of email. You build the skill of figuring out how to set it up.
Everything in life you have to figure out what skills do you need for you to be able to execute something. You have to learn what to pack in the parachute. That's what breeds confidence. Confidence is knowing that you have the skills, the know-how, the ability to figure it out even though you might not be confident and you might be freaking scared. So stop chasing this idea of, I just need to go find more confidence or if only I am more confident. Talking about it in its existence isn't going to make you more confident. What will bring you confidence is developing skills and getting in the game.
Start thinking about what skills do you need to pack in your parachute and start working on. I think you'll be surprised to find that you do not have to master something to build your confidence. In fact sometimes just the act of identifying the skill, that is like a huge uptick to your confidence because you know that help is on the way. You know that you're taking action towards where you want to go and every single step comes with confidence.
So, friend, as you head into this week with me on my nature walk journey with those beautiful birds, if you see confidence in any aspect of your life or your business, start asking yourself questions around what skills you need to master to level up. I'll see you in the next episode.