Sarah Richardson shares her life’s journey

REGAINING

SELF-CONFIDENCE

Roisin Ni Chleirigh offers some ideas on coping with your anxieties and building your self-confidence…

OVER the past year, many of us have to reposition our businesses and reconnect back to our start-up phase. This is going to take a lot of selfdetermination and strength of character to pivot our business in these extraordinary times. We can do it. We just need to believe in ourselves and our product or service. We do this by connecting to our self-confidence, confidence in our skills and abilities and letting go of the negative ego.

How does a lack of selfconfidence hold us back in both business and life?

Self-confidence is the foundation stone of accomplishment. It underpins who we are as human beings. How we interpret the world we live in. Why we do what we do. I have never met a successful person who lacks self-belief. If we don’t believe in ourselves and have confidence in our own abilities, how can the general public trust us and invest in our holistic businesses?

Lack of self-confidence holds us back from valuing our skills and services, under-pricing ourselves within the market, and undervaluing our time and specific expertise. It affects our ability to promote and sell our products or services to our target clientele and to bringing in the cash flow and revenue we need to be a financially viable.

First, we need to have clarity in understanding the difference between self -confidence, confidence and the Ego.

Self- confidence is knowing and understanding who you are, how you will react under any circumstances or situations which may appear in your life and responding with poise, showing your best self in your reactions.

Confidence is the ability to perform specific skills, especially learned skills. The more often we perform a Swedish massage for example, the more we become confident in our ability to perform the task.

Self-confidence can also be a learned skill. We’re all born with self-confidence. Babies are confident. As therapists, we need to be both self-confident and confident within our abilities to perform our work well.

So how do we become a confident person? We connect our self-confident mind-set to be confident in all what we do. When we do this, the physiology of our body changes, we walk taller, with purpose and with the spring in our steps. Self-confident people are gracious, helpful and above all well-mannered.

Ego is arrogance and pretending to know everything about everything and being a fireside expert on the world, I am right you are wrong, masks a lack of self-confidence. The ego can be a defence mechanism too.

Why do we choose to follow limiting patterns of thought and behaviour?

Our mind-set consists of how and why we think the way we do, driving us forward or holding us back. How we interpret who we are can be limited by our upbringing or the way we feel those around us perceive us. Sometimes we choose to follow limiting patterns of thoughts and behaviours because that is all we know. Maybe we allow other people’s opinions of us tell us who we are, and what we should think, feel and how to behave to achieve outcomes in life. Negative limiting patterns are self-sabotaging and hold us back from achieving our goals and dreams.

How can we build self-confidence?

The most wonderful thing in life is that anyone can change their lives, and live a fulfilled life of success no matter what success means to you as a person or small local business owner.

Our mind-set is our thoughts, through the way we speak to ourselves from the language of the words we use, the tone of our voice and speed of our self -talk, all of these have an impact on our spoken words, our emotions, which impact our behaviours and therefore our actions and outcomes in life.

Let’s look at the quality and power of language you use. If we use the word trying for example, this seems to me to show a lack of belief and an assumption of failure. I use the phrase, I’ll give it a go. When I say this, it changes my physiology, my perception and my emotional response and behaviour to the outcome. Become aware of your thought behaviours and know that you can change your thoughts and use the power of the language of your thoughts to empower your selfconfidence.

Negative limiting patterns are self-sabotaging and hold us back from achieving our goals and dreams.

Self-confidence takes practice. I grew up as a confident young woman in Derry, in Africa and the Middle East. After my divorce, I found myself raising two young children alone, with all of the physical, emotional and financial challenges this entails. I became like a shadow of the person I once was. Rebuilding my self-confidence and my self-esteem, began with small steps and tiny achievements. I took short courses to re-educate myself, so I could provide for my children. I enrolled in a Swedish massage and Anatomy and Physiology course and then other holistic modalities.

I studied life and business and NLP Coaching. For me NLP was key, understanding the way the language of my thoughts impacted my self-talk had on my emotions, behaviours, actions and therefore my outcomes in life. Although I’m an undiagnosed dyslexic and can’t spell to save my life, I returned to education to study Media and Public Relations. I joined a local creative writing group to help give me the confidence to even want to write assignments for my Honours Degree exams.

I have a speech impediment and went to speech therapy for nearly 25 years, I overcame this issue and learned to speak slower, listening to my initiation. Since 2017, I’ve present two local radio shows. To begin with I sounded like a scared mouse.

Many women find they lose their confidence and identity during the midlife years. The pandemic has closed us off from many of our usual sources of support. Hormones play havoc within our self-esteem, many midlife women suffer moments of self-doubt for no apparent reason. Insomnia, memory loss and brain fog that comes with hormonal changes to our bodies can cause exhaustion and become overwhelming emotional for no apparent purpose.

This can be a time of personal healing and empowerment. Many women find their voices and return to education, entrepreneurship, or change their careers.

Sometimes, in life we just have to give ourselves permission to be self-confident and believe in ourselves and in our ability to overcome life’s challenges and know, that no matter what, we have all the resources we need within ourselves. We need to accept and believe in ourselves, in who we are, even when no one else does. We need to live our lives for ourselves. With the understanding of what self-confidence is and how to improve our self- confidence we can concentrate on confidently reopening our businesses to our clients. n

i

ROISIN NI CHLEIRIGH is a professional executive and life coach, broadcaster and advocate for small businesses, start-up enterprises and women’s issues. Find out more at https://confidentwomenireland.ie