The best and worst of who you are exists right here, right now.
Not a damn thing you can do about it
You know what it’s like. You can be feeling good, things are flowing, you’re in your element, and then just a little bit later you’re comfort eating and beating yourself up for not being quite good enough.
Having the best and worst of you duke it out on a daily basis creates and feeds an internal struggle, and that will not only feel a bit shitty, it’ll end up damaging your self-confidence and giving you even more stuff to beat yourself up with.
I think that natural confidence requires an acceptance of both your best and your worst, and this is a wonderful place to start.
- Think of a time in your life when you felt really buzzing, alive or at the very top of your game. A time when you were in “flow”. A time when you could have taken on the world. A time when you were at your very best.
- Close your eyes, sit up straight and really step into that moment. Hear what was going on around you. See everything happening. Do what you did. Feel how you felt. Dial it up to 11. Dive into that moment and swim around in it.
- You should begin to feel some of that same buzz, that sense of “you at your best”. If you don’t, be gentle with it. Don’t force it or turn it into a struggle. Just let yourself ease into that moment, or perhaps find another moment when you were at your best and swim around in that. You’ll feel it when you’re there.
- Once you’re back in that moment, find 3 words to describe how it feels. 3 words that affirm the experience of this “being at your best”. Any words at all, even if they’re words you wouldn’t “normally” use.
- Get a sense for how your body is when you’re in that place of being at your best. Where do you feel it most in your body? Do you feel that sense of being alive in your head, your heart, your stomach, your fingertips or somewhere else?
- Practice this every day for 1 week (at least). You’ll find that over time that sense of you at your best comes to you quicker; it becomes more familiar to you and something you can draw on. You can even use the physical sensation in your body as a way to bring it out, just by focusing on where you feel it and remembering the sensation.
Natural confidence is a state of being able to choose your behaviour with implicit trust in that behaviour, and this is a state of thinking that happens automatically when you’re at your best.
So, what are your 3 words?