[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go.
[00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back.
[00:00:26] All right, so we are going to dive into the topic of confidence and how do you rebuild it, reclaim it after trauma and abuse, especially narcissistic abuse. But before we do, I just wanted to share a funny story. So last week I was talking with my boyfriend, I think this was around Thursday, and I had mentioned something about what I was working on or procrastinating on, and it came out that I was feeling impatient and just wanting to hurry up, to bypass a certain phase and see a change or something along those lines. So it was really funny because when he brought up the podcast, he asked the topic and I was like, well, it was on overcoming impatience.
[00:01:03] And we both just bust up laughing because here I was still in a state or just noticing what was coming up for me was impatience. And I was like, ugh, Yep, I still see it. And so we can have the big vision, the big future, the long term future in mind, and be working towards that. And it's okay that sometimes some small stuff comes up, sometimes little things come up. And so I hope too that these episodes here give you permission to be human, permission to not be perfect. And also to know that I'm still gonna wrestle with impatience because I'm a human and I have a human brain. And that's just one of my own particular challenges that I'm gonna have to work through. And I know that. And so the best thing for me is just to better recognize and identify when the impatience is coming up, because that's a prime indicator to look at. Where am I putting pressure on myself, number one?
[00:01:57] And number two, can I make the journey more fun, more enjoyable? How do I enjoy the creation and the achieving of a goal even more? Just wanted to share those because it was just so relevant and so on point. And I don't want anybody listening to think that I am immune to these human experiences or that because I worked through impatience around one goal or one thing that now it's just never going to be a problem again because that's just not the way that life works. And so as we talk about confidence and I'm going to share with you some specific thoughts, things that I have been working through over the last couple of years and things that have been like recurring, repeated patterns. I want you to also know this is something that I recognize, like I have spent several years working on and I will keep working on it to deeper and deeper levels to better integrate it, to better understand and shift it so that it's no longer a problem. But it's also something where it's. I can notice that because it's been a default thought for so long and because it was really deeply rooted, it might come up for a while. So there are still going to be times when I'm going to feel not confident in life or in a particular area. And that's okay. This is your permission to see things from a different perspective, to give yourself a lot of grace, a lot of compassion and to just better check in, engage where are you on this journey?
[00:03:22] So let's talk about confidence because I think we can misunderstand what confidence takes, what it looks like, what it means, all of these things. And really so often the trap that we can fall into is we think that confidence is a prerequisite for action. I can't show up or I can't do the thing until I feel confident, or when I feel confident, then I'll take the action, then I'll put myself out there. And confidence is really the result of showing up before you feel ready is often what builds confidence. So if you want to feel confident, you need to do the thing first and that the doing and the taking of the action is what's actually going to build your confidence.
[00:04:03] And to get yourself to show up when you don't have the results or to show up when it feels easier just to sit back and wait. We have to just tell ourselves new stories. We have to identify the default thoughts, the default patterns of often self doubt that are coming up and we have to shift them. We have to intentionally choose to manage our brain rather than letting our brain just run amok. If we wait for confidence, if we wait for this like sprinkling of magic confidence, fairy dust, y', all, we would be waiting forever.
[00:04:34] So this is just the, I would say the misconception. I don't necessarily want to call it a lie, but sometimes it's a lie that we're sold of. Oh, when you feel confident, then you'll take the action. And honestly I think that's a self protective mechanism because it's also when I feel confident that I can be perfect, then I'll take the action because then in my brain it's like my perfection is going to guarantee I get the results.
[00:04:59] And there have been times I guarantee where you have been perfect in certain ways, in certain areas, and still not created the result that you wanted. And this comes up with weight loss, it comes up with emotional eating, it comes up with other areas that can come up in your career or in your education or in parenting. Right. We can think that we are being perfect, we're handling a situation perfectly. This is how we are showing up. But we're not creating the result that we want. This idea that one day we're just going to wake up and feel braver, we're going to feel ready, we're going to feel this confidence instead of readiness is a decision. It's something we choose to unlock. We choose to feel. We choose intentionally, like, I'm going to decide that I am ready now.
[00:05:42] Because it's not just this magical feeling. I think that's the other thing is like, we think it's just a feeling of, like, confidence.
[00:05:50] And often we have a hard time feeling confident when we have had such emotional and verbal abuse, especially the type that really is judgmental is critical, that has you doubting yourself, doubting your judgment, doubting your skills, the shame, the ways that we experience narcissistic abuse often have us feeling really low confidence.
[00:06:14] And so instead of thinking about it as just a feeling, I want to offer that confidence is also in part a renewed relationship with yourself. And it's built through self trust and kindly picking yourself up when you fall. And this means that we're not expecting ourselves to be perfect. That's the trap is we think, if I'm perfect, then I can have confidence, and I can't have confidence until I think I can be perfect. But really, we have to be willing to be imperfect and to keep showing up and to talk nicely, kindly, to learn from the failure, to learn from the mistakes or the missteps. I was talking with a client recently about failure and I was like, we need to look at it in a couple of different ways. Number one, we can redefine our view of failure and start to see failure as a good thing. We can also redefine what we consider a failure. And part of that comes with just a different life perspective. Some of that comes with being out of a dynamic and being able to look back on it and connect the dots and see why things happened the way that they did, things like that.
[00:07:15] But confidence doesn't come from just avoiding failure. It doesn't come from perfection. It's more about knowing that you can figure it out. It's more of this commitment that you will figure it out. No matter how many times you try and you don't create the result or you try and you fail, you try and you mess up. If the self love and the trust that you build through that picking yourself back up and lovely, kindly dusting you off and getting you back on. Just like when we learn how to ride a bike. Nobody ever just gets on a bike for the first time ever and just magically rides it. We often are gonna get on and we're gonna be wobbly and we fall over and we get on and maybe we go a little bit, but then we get wobbly and we fall over, right? There's this aspect of learning to balance and some people are a little bit better or more skilled at learning that, picking it up faster. I think of this too as roller skating or rollerblading. Like I remember rollerblading as a kid and I put on some skates, y', all, this is like a year ago. And I was like, oh, I used to skate all the time. I've totally got this. And I felt like a frickin baby deer. It must have been hysterical to watch me. And then poor Caleb, poor little guy, he was not prepared for it at all. Fell right on his butt and then was like, nope, not having it. He wanted to take those skates off immediately. And it was like all I could do to pull him around on the carpet.
[00:08:39] So we tried lessons learned, we'll try again. But I felt so wobbly, even though this is what I had done before in the past. And it's that willingness to be wobbly, the willingness to let it be messy, the willingness to challenge yourself and let yourself fall. And this was one of the things that I learned from my yoga instructor, Ann Marie. And one of the things that I've really adopted into my own philosophy in my own practice is I'm going to lean into the hard, I'm going to lean into the messy. I'm going to lean in and know that I'm not doing something perfectly. But I'm getting close and I'm getting closer every single time. When we are challenging ourself, that's when we can change our bodies. That's when we can change our mindset, is when we challenge the beliefs. When beliefs feel wobbly, that's okay. We keep moving, we keep challenging the old beliefs that keep us stuck. Just like we keep challenging ourselves in new physical ways and we let it be messy, we let ourselves fall, we let ourselves challenge and know we're not going to be perfect. Especially most often not on the first time around, this has been like a big challenge for me of doing things and committing to things, even the things that feel hard as an adult, because as a kid I was naturally good at some stuff. And then when it got hard, I quit.
[00:09:55] And then I found other stuff to go do and other things that I was good at and the things that I wasn't really good at or skilled at, like basketball, for example, I just didn't do. I was like, nope, don't want to do that. And I think in some ways that was helpful because it helped me to lean into my skillset and where I am naturally gifted. But I also really hadn't built up the resiliency to keep going time after time, failure after failure. Now, to do that as an adult, to really do that in my 20s and more so was in my 30s, that was hard. And I also know that's part of the process, that's part of the learning, and that is what's going to build my confidence.
[00:10:33] And so one of the things, and one of my other thoughts that I've looked at as well is can I let failure help me to believe in myself more rather than believing less? And this again just goes back to redefining our relationship with failure and making sure that no matter what mistake or what failure, it's not gonna stop you from achieving the goals that you want. It's learning to have your own back, no matter what obstacle or challenge you're hitting, picking yourself back up, but playing with this idea of what if failure had me believing more? And what if I could better learn from the failure? Which means that I need a lot of self love, a lot of compassion.
[00:11:12] The flip side, and often we think if I wait long enough, then I'll feel confident. If I wait long enough or I do just a little bit, I'll build up my confidence and then that will have me taking action or that'll have me creating the results that I want.
[00:11:26] However, what I have seen more often than not is that waiting actually erodes your confidence. Because every time you don't act on a desire, you teach yourself that you are not to be trusted. Your brain and your body learn that we can't trust ourselves. We can't trust our desires, we can't trust our ability to make decisions.
[00:11:45] Every maybe later or down the road quietly becomes self betrayal. And your system learns that my desires aren't safe to move towards. It's not safe to have the things that I want. And that is a huge one when it comes to narcissistic Abuse and the aftermath and healing from it is really better. Creating safety for your desires, safety to have what you want, safety in things, being good and trusting and believing that with new people, when you can look and vet people from this new lens that you have now, you can also choose people where the safety and the good things do feel safe and sustainable. And we're not afraid of the other shoe dropping. We're not afraid of. This is good for a time, but it's not going to last.
[00:12:31] That's just how we've been trained. That's how our survival brain works. But because my brain wants me to be successful, often it'll want me to wait. Wait until you're perfect, wait until you're 100% sure, wait until you're 100% confident. Wait for the right time, wait until life settles down, wait. And then, and we feel like waiting then is the responsible decision. Because when we wait to feel safe, it allows us to avoid the threat of failure. It allows us to avoid the threat of a negative emotion.
[00:13:02] And so waiting, it's often just self protection. But waiting doesn't bring you closer to the life that you want. Waiting only prolongs that. Waiting erodes your confidence, it erodes your self trust.
[00:13:13] And really it stems from our self doubt. And often the doubt that we hold in our brains and like in our own mind that was planted by somebody else.
[00:13:25] Sometimes our brain is good at planting seeds of doubt, right? Like sometimes I, I think the doubt can come from ourselves.
[00:13:31] However, I would say a lot of times that doubt actually coming from another person or it, I'll say it originally came from another person.
[00:13:41] I had a lot of hopes and dreams and goals and I have my own self doubt that comes from not hitting them or not hitting them in the time period that I set. So there's already some self doubt just from my own experience.
[00:13:53] But then it gets layered on with self doubt from my ex who even when I was succeeding I was doing really well, would say things like, you probably can't do that again.
[00:14:03] You won't be able to. People don't want this, people won't pay for this. But you can't achieve that again, you can't recreate this or it would be things like completely out of my control, the economy is bad or the economy is in a recession. So therefore you can't keep doing this, you can't keep repeating this, you can't grow a business. It was very much like all of these reasons he had all of this evidence in his brain as to why I couldn't do something.
[00:14:30] And it was really hard not to let that impact me in particular because I already had some of my own self doubt, I was already believing some of that I already had my doubts of. Could I recreate it? And then hearing that from somebody else continued to reinforce that. And so one of the things I've really been working on is self doubt and this idea of I don't think I can do this again.
[00:14:54] Because anytime it's a I don't think or I don't think I can, it's really just our brains telling ourselves that we can't. I can't do this again, I won't be able to do this again.
[00:15:07] And anytime that we have thoughts like that, it will inevitably shut us down. It can be so frustrating because it doesn't matter what or how much action you take, you won't create the results that you want. I promise. This pisses me off too sometimes because I want to believe that my actions create my results. But it's like no matter how my actions line up or stack up, if I don't have the right thought process, if I don't have the right energy, the right beliefs, not to say that I have to be perfect here, but just recognizing that I don't create the results that I want, even when I'm taking action with negative shitty thoughts and negative beliefs and self doubt, anytime there is self doubt in the mix of those emotions, I know I will not be able to create the result that I want. And this is so hard. This is hard for our human brains. It is so hard post trauma to believe in something new, to believe in something good when you don't have evidence for it. It's some of the hardest work you will ever do. And yet this is some of the most impactful work you will ever and could ever do for yourself and for your brain and for healing post trauma, for healing after abuse, for truly reclaiming your life and taking that back and taking your future into your own hands and deciding this is what I'm doing and I'm doing it a new way. I'm doing this for me, I'm doing this for my kids. I'm doing this for the life and the future vision that I want.
[00:16:29] And we hold onto that. It's hard. It's hard when we do things for the first time. It's hard to do something new. It's hard to do something that bucks the system, that goes against what other people have told you is wrong or bad, or that you just flat out can't do.
[00:16:44] We want to recognize not just our own doubt and have a lot of love and compassion for it, but notice how that can feel even heavier, even weightier, when there's been doubt placed on us by other people. Or maybe shame for going after goals over and over again. And people telling you, well, you're wasting your time, you're wasting your energy, you're wasting your money, you're wasting your resources. Like, whatever it is, they're trying to shame you into quitting. Even when we don't want to, sometimes we let that happen.
[00:17:14] We just want to be really careful and recognize, okay, this thought originally came from this person, but now it's become my thought, which means I'm going to consciously choose not to pursue it. When we look at when babies learn how to walk, some babies walk at 9 months old, right? Some walk at 8 months, some walk at 11 months, some walk when they're a year, some walk a little past a year old, right? There's this huge range. And yet we don't make anybody wrong or bad. We don't shame the baby. Every time the baby starts to pull himself up and he falls down, we have so much love and encouragement because we know that it's inevitable they will eventually learn how to walk. But it is gonna take some time. It's gonna take some effort, it's gonna take some learning, it's gonna take some trial and error. And there are gonna be times when that baby's gonna get frustrated. But eventually he's gonna learn how to stand, he's gonna learn how to balance, he's gonna learn how to take his first steps and then fall over. Then it's like sometimes it's almost out of nowhere.
[00:18:13] It's like, now he's on the move. I really noticed this with Caleb. He would pull himself up and stand and wobble and fall over. But then it was like Thanksgiving Day of 2021, I believe it was. He was walking, he was up and walking and no big issues. It was just like all of a sudden it was like it clicked. It was like his brain and his body, that connection just clicked. And he was walking. And it was really fun to see. It did take some time. Whether it's a month or a year or Maybe it's been five years, maybe it's been 10 years that you have been wrestling with the same trauma, the same aftermath of abuse, the same desire to lose weight, the same emotional eating or binge eating habit.
[00:18:54] This right now comes down to the willingness to not give up on yourself. And to stop waiting, to feel confident and to choose confidence, to choose to be ready, to choose to go after it. And to not let any failures, any mistakes, any lack of achieving goals or results cause you to believe less or to deter your confidence. Because every time we do that, we let the narcs win.
[00:19:20] And let's make a pact right now. Let's vow that we are not going to let them win. Okay?
[00:19:27] Another area that I like to look at this, though real quick, is like a fun little side tangent. Have you ever looked up a band, a singer, maybe an actor? I have done this at times where I've looked at the career of somebody, and for the first 10 or 15 years, I know none of their work. I don't know any of the movies or TV shows or roles that they've played. And it's not until they had like this breakout role that put them on the map. And now they're this highly paid actor or singer or somebody in the arts like that. But it took 10 or 15 years to get there.
[00:20:01] It takes time, but there's this willingness and this commitment, this vow of, I'm not going to give up on myself.
[00:20:08] And this is part of what builds our confidence, is that the more that we try, that doesn't work, the more we're getting closer to a solution.
[00:20:16] And so as I think of confidence too, I also think about my own experience of starting to teach yoga.
[00:20:22] So last year I really got into Anne Marie's yoga class. Absolutely love it. It's like this really challenging power yoga class, almost a hiit workout meets yoga. And I just absolutely loved it. I started thinking early summer, ooh, I would love to teach a class like this because there was no other instructor that was doing it quite like her. And at the intensity and with the movement and the consistency that I was looking for, it crossed my mind in the summer of like, maybe I'll get my certification. And. And then I thought, okay, maybe next year, maybe next year I'll do it maybe in 26, maybe in 27, but not right now. And then in August, I got an email with basically a coupon code for a yoga certification weekend. I went to the website and then I looked at what are my options available? And I saw different weekends and I saw where you could do it in person, you could do it virtual. They had some different things through the end of the year. And then I found that there's a virtual one in October. I'm going to do it then. And so I signed up. I didn't feel Ready to get certified. I did not feel ready to film and to submit my tracks and my workout and my flow to get feedback and to get graded. But I did it anyways. I did the training in October. I got officially certified in December. And then it was one or two weeks later. It was just a couple weeks later. The group fitness director at one of the gyms that I teach at for Body Pump, she was like, hey, we have this opening coming up on Mondays for a regular class, if you would like a Monday morning class.
[00:21:52] And I would probably prefer Thursday, if I'm being totally honest. But I was like, yes, sign me up. And y', all. I did not feel ready at all. My first thought was, I'll just start subbing and get into the flow of things. I'm gonna keep taking my class once a week from Annemarie and then slowly inch my way in. The best thing for me was actually just to jump into this class. And I was so nervous. Like, I was so nervous, my hands were shaking. At the beginning of this class, I did not feel ready at all. Even on class two, still nervous. Class three, very nervous. It wasn't until class, like, five or six that I've actually now felt more confident going in. I don't get that spike of nervous energy when I just look at the yoga studio. It's been really cool to see. But I knew I had to start teaching if I wanted to create the confidence, if I wanted to build that confidence in that skill. Otherwise, I would spend the entire year being certified but not teaching because I didn't feel confident to begin with. And I knew I had to teach in front of live humans. I knew I wasn't just magically gonna feel confident. There's a part of me that kind of hoped, but ultimately, I had to get out in front of live human beings and do it and teach and mess up and be like, hold on, let me check my notes. And in class two, I got kicked off of the Bluetooth. Thankfully, there was another instructor in. There was. I was like, hey, let me help you. And then class three, I forgot stuff, but I'm getting better and better. Until this last week when I taught, and I was like, oh, my gosh. I was plugged in and connected. Stayed connected the whole time. It was amazing. I taught. I didn't have my notes with me, but I still taught everything the way that I had mapped it out. I didn't forget any pieces. Like, sometimes we'll do something on the right side and I'll forget to do it on the left.
[00:23:34] Just basic stuff like that. And that's just. It's normal. It's a. It's just part of life. I don't let that be a problem. And I chose not to let that stop me because doing the class, creating the class, that is what created my confidence. That is what has built my confidence, was the doing the action, taking the commitment before I felt ready.
[00:23:56] And so when we avoid, when we wait, it keeps the fear alive.
[00:24:01] It keeps all of our worry, our hesitation, the fear of failure, the fear of embarrassment. And this is one of the things that I've also noticed. I was talking with another client, and I can't remember the full context, but it was like, I'm willing to feel anything, and I'm getting better and more and more willing to feel any emotion. And I have increased my capacity to. To feel embarrassed, to feel rejected, to feel unwanted, to feel like a nuisance, to feel annoying, to feel like people don't want to hear what I have to say. Right? Like, I have expanded and really grown the capacity to feel whatever it is that comes up, the sensations in my body, the emotions, the thoughts, and I choose to take the action anyways.
[00:24:43] And sometimes I will sit and journal and explore and evaluate. And sometimes it's a gag and go. It's like a, oh, dear God, we're doing this.
[00:24:54] But your desire requires action.
[00:24:57] At some point, you just have to decide. At some point, you have to decide to be ready. Sometimes we need to be honest with ourselves about do I really want this goal, do I really want this desired outcome or this result?
[00:25:10] And sometimes we just have to decide. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of waiting for a better time. I'm tired of waiting for life to settle down. I'm ready to do this now because here's the other thing. When we wait for life to settle down, when we wait for the vacuum so that we can lose weight in a vacuum, we can lose weight. When all of these other circumstances are being controlled, we now need to maintain that controlled environment to keep the weight off. And it's not real life, which means you will always gain it back.
[00:25:37] Instead, we decide to be ready now. Instead of waiting to feel ready, we decide we're going to move forward with even a base level of confidence and trust that we are going to keep creating confidence as we go. We are going to keep creating more and more evidence as to how what we're doing is good, it's working.
[00:25:57] And I had this experience with the podcast as well. I first got the Idea to start a podcast. In 2016, I was a guest on other people's podcast, and I had a lot of feedback around what a great voice I have, and, oh, I should start my own podcast. And I was like, yes, that sounds like a great idea.
[00:26:12] So I started buying little bits of equipment here and there. Didn't create it in 2016, didn't do it in 2017 or 2018 or 2019, and I was doing other ways of content creation and marketing. But it finally, in 2021, when I was on maternity leave, this woman that I was connected with, and she was running a mini mastermind to get your podcast launched, to start it and launch it and actually get it out the door. And I was like, it's go time. I either do it now, let me go for it, because I've already been sitting on this for, like, five years. So it's either I do it now or I completely let this go. I stopped talking about it. I stopped flirting with the idea of creating a podcast, because that was always the thing of, oh, I'm going to start a podcast soon. I would talk about it for years. I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to start a podcast soon. And I told myself, I was like, I either do it now or I stop talking about it. And I decided, okay, I want this. I'm gonna go for it. And I use that really just as an experiment to see, all right, I say that I want it, but clarity comes from taking action. And I know that either I'm gonna really enjoy it and I'm gonna wanna keep going, or I'm gonna hate it and I'm gonna stop. Either way, I now have evidence. And if I really hate it and I wanna stop, I now know, okay, podcasting is not for me. Here's the route that I wanna go instead. Here's the direction that I wanna pivot into.
[00:27:30] I've had a lot of fun with it. Not only is this where I shine, but it's what I truly love. It's what I enjoy. It's a way for me where I feel like I can get my message and my words, my thoughts, my ideas out into this big, beautiful world and ideally change people's lives.
[00:27:45] Because I've had people that have messaged me and said, I listened to these podcasts and I started losing weight. I listened to these podcasts, and I started implementing what you were teaching. And I noticed the scale dropped two pounds this week, or it's gone down five pounds in the last month, or I had Someone who said that she was on a plateau for several months and then she started listening and implementing the feedback and like the suggestions that I was giving on this podcast. And she started creating more results. She started losing weight again.
[00:28:13] And that is huge. That helps to fuel our belief. It fuels our confidence. The small wins. But we have to be willing to see them. We have to be willing to take the action, willing to try.
[00:28:25] Part of this reclaiming our confidence is also reclaiming our ability to feel any emotion and to trust that we are safe in our body, that nothing has gone wrong, that we can release and surrender to the timeline.
[00:28:40] And this is how we create a life that's so good, it doesn't make sense. A life so good it blows your mind. Especially after divorce, especially after trauma and abuse, there will always be a part of you that feels like something new is scary, something new is dangerous.
[00:29:00] That's a part of, like, how our brain is so beautifully wired. But because we've lived in survival mode for a long time, our brains are now hyper vigilant and hyper focused on creating safety. And safety often is doing more of the status quo. It's maintaining what we already have, not creating new results.
[00:29:19] And that safety is often not just the fear of failure, it's the fear of any negative emotion. But it is hard to hold onto a desire and not act on is harder to have a dream and a vision for your life. And to not pursue is harder to not act than it is to act. Even when sometimes the action can feel hard, it can feel challenging. But holding on to that desire and having that vision and not moving towards it is extremely painful.
[00:29:52] And this is where we get to decide to do things differently. We get to decide we're going to move forward.
[00:29:58] So this is your invitation to stop negotiating with fear? Yes, fear is going to come up. Fear is a normal part of life. Fear is how your brain is going to keep you safe.
[00:30:08] But we have to decide and commit that we are going to stop flirting with ideas. We're going to stop flirting with our dreams and actually go out there and create them. We're going to stop flirting and negotiating with fear. And instead we're going to choose to believe in ourselves. Even when we've had people who didn't. Even when we've had people tell us we can't trust ourselves, we can't believe in ourselves. We make terrible decisions.
[00:30:32] You have to start doing things differently. If you want to change that thought in your head, you have to start taking action and start creating new evidence for yourself. Because rebuilding your confidence, especially after toxic relationships, requires you to tell yourself a different story, a new story on purpose, but it has to be chosen. And I think this is really fascinating. Many of us want to feel chosen. We want to feel special, we want to feel wanted, especially by a partner. And this is where you get to choose yourself. You get to choose your vision, you get to choose a new story, a different story. And this is what it looks like to choose yourself. And it's a part of how we can stop relying on other people to choose us to feel good. And now you choose yourself and you choose new stories, and you choose new emotions and you choose that you can feel anything and still be safe, and still be okay. But we want to choose stories of empowerment, conviction or belief.
[00:31:35] And this is gonna feel hard at times, but this is the hard that moves you closer to your goals. It's the productive hard. Not only are we bumping up against that self doubt of our own, the self doubt of our human brain, but the doubt that was placed by somebody else, the shame and the helplessness that we experienced by being in this dynamic with other people.
[00:31:57] Okay, this is not what we're trained to do on our own. Even for myself as a coach, I still run up against my own limiting thoughts and self doubt.
[00:32:05] My brain is always trying to keep me safe. It's always trying to prevent negative situations, but a lot of times also just simply negative emotions.
[00:32:14] Working on my big thought and working on things is like feeling like I am in control. I am not at the mercy of anyone or anything around me, but I have control. And I always look at where do I create control.
[00:32:27] Not from a place of a maladaptive coping mechanism, but more from this place of life doesn't happen to me. I intentionally and strategically create it on purpose. And part of that is also I control my brain, I control my thoughts, I control that I'm not a helpless victim to my thoughts, I control those. And so the first step is recognizing the defaults or automatic thoughts that come up, or the negative thoughts, the self doubt, the shame, or the thoughts that drive the shame. This is what we want to see and recognize so that we can tell ourselves a new story.
[00:33:02] Still a story that feels true or believable, but now it becomes something like I'm working on creating, I'm working on believing, or I'm open to believing. I'm open to the possibility that. And it's like we meet ourselves where we're at.
[00:33:16] Just like I had to be open and recognize I have this thought of things can go well for a couple of months. But then there's this thought of I can't keep this up and I have to decide that that's just not a thing I have to decide. I am no longer going to tell myself this anymore. There are some things that I simply do not indulge in.
[00:33:34] And there are times when I can hold space and allow the emotions to come up, allow any frustration, anger, pity, shame, embarrassment. But I don't let myself stay there. I also recognize there are certain thoughts that I just don't allow myself to think anymore. I start from this place of I notice I'm thinking this and I know that's been a long standing pattern. I'm not trying to stuff down an emotion and often it's what is that thought there to protect me from? And usually it's an emotion, it could be a fear. And so when I have a lot of space of noticing, like oh, I notice I'm feeling a little scared right now. I'm afraid that I won't be able to keep this up and then that would lead to shame.
[00:34:15] Irony is that when I tell myself I don't think I can keep this up or I can't keep this up, I don't keep it up. And I end up proving that fear. True, I just end up creating more evidence as to how I can't do something versus choosing intentionally to believe on purpose and to keep taking action consistently 1% at a time. Not needing to make these big massive changes, but really falling into that line of small, small simple compounding action.
[00:34:43] That's how we win. But it's normal for there to be self doubt. It's normal for these things to come up. It's normal that you may not feel confident, but you've got to choose to bet on yourself. You choose to go anyways. You choose to get started now and that you will build the confidence along the way.
[00:34:59] I don't let my doubt be a problem. I don't let my limiting beliefs be a problem. In fact, I want to look for them, I want to find them so that I'm not just running on autopilot or letting my subconscious patterns run amok so that I can truly feel empowered, so that now I can feel in control because I can better see the negative thoughts, the negative loops, cycles, spirals, the negative emotions, right? And I get better and better at allowing myself to feel any emotion.
[00:35:27] That's where we start. We start with small simple steps and confidence will build, confidence will compound. But you have to claim it.
[00:35:36] So you get to reclaim your confidence now. You get to learn how to love your body now. And all the way down the scale, you get to learn to love yourself now. Even as you learn to stop overeating or emotionally eating or binge eating.
[00:35:52] So some final thoughts. Confidence comes and it grows through repetition.
[00:35:57] Not just epiphanies, not just these grand ideas or these like aha moments.
[00:36:03] Confidence is built through small uncomfortable reps.
[00:36:07] Saying yes before you feel ready, letting yourself be seen while being imperfect, staying instead of disappearing, being willing to feel instead of running away, talking nice to yourself even when you're failing. Those will all grow your confidence and they will all likely feel uncomfortable. But this is possible for you too.
[00:36:30] You can stop overthinking decisions. You can recover faster from mistakes. You can trust yourself even when it's messy, even when it takes longer than we think it should and feel more solid. To feel steadier, to feel grounded and to feel that deep conviction that you are not giving up on yourself.
[00:36:49] That's what will truly build your confidence.
[00:36:52] And that's where we gotta start of I'm not giving up on myself. I'm not giving up on this dream. I'm not giving up on this goal.
[00:36:58] And I promise you will create it.
[00:37:01] If you would like some help and you'd like to learn more about working with me and how I can help you to lose weight, end emotional eating or binge eating habits, to truly heal after toxic relationships and to do it in a way where you create a life where you truly feel like you can thrive, then I would love to chat more. You can schedule a free
[email protected] schedule find a day and time on my calendar and let's talk more about where you're at right now and where you want to be a year from now. And I'm going to help you to build the roadmap, to build a bridge of what are the key steps and components to get you there. And I promise it's easier than we think. We're just really good at overcomplicating things and making things harder on ourselves than they need to be. But a big piece of this comes down to self trust, self love and the willingness to start building your self confidence now, not waiting for the confidence to come.
[00:37:59] But that's what we get to work on. And as you work on building and reclaiming your confidence, you can borrow my confidence that I have in you. You can borrow my confidence that I have in coaching and in this process and knowing what will truly help you to break free from these habits.
[00:38:18] All right. Last week's episode I had shared an upcoming workshop and I've decided rather than doing it as a live event, I've decided to make that more of a podcast episode that you can listen to on your own time. So that is one of the decisions that I made and just knowing that works best for me. I really like the in person events and workshops so I will do more of those, but the first one will likely not be until April, so I will keep everybody posted on that as it comes. But be on the lookout for the next podcast to drop. I've got a couple of fun ideas and just concepts things that I've been mulling over and I can't wait to share those with you. And this is all here to simply help you to enjoy the journey, to enjoy the process, to make it easier, and to help you better see what are the real steps that we need to take? Where do we truly put our time, effort and energy so that we can make sure we're putting it on the things that move the needle most?
[00:39:13] Hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:39:22] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step Book your free Break the Cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:39:43] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love. Grab your spot now at www.bodyucrave.com BTC.
[00:39:57] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you.
