Boosting Self-Confidence

In this episode, we explore:

• The results of our own self-esteem quiz 
• The definition of self-confidence
• Common confidence challenges for women
• Ways to achieve a healthier self-esteem
• How confidence is impacted by age
• Are we born with confidence?

Real women, Real talk!

Transcript

0:03

Welcome to the Light Her Project podcast, Real Women. I'm Rachel Strella. and I'm Vixen Divine. Well, we are now on season two, episode six. How is your week going so far? Six already? Oh my goodness. I can't even believe that like it's almost what? June, right? When I saw it was Memorial Day weekend coming, I thought like, wow, already? Did it just like turn January? I don't know. I feel like I've missed something. How did it go by so fast? I feel like the older I get, the faster it goes, if that's possible. I totally agree with you, totally. The concept of time is, does it change? I feel like the concept of time is changing. So today, let me tell you what today is, okay? Today is Weed Wednesday. Okay, so let me tell you about Weed Wednesday. So I came up with Weed Wednesday two days ago. So for those of you who do not live in the Northeast like we do, okay, it has been raining and it has been hot and cold. Okay, so which makes the weeds like... jump they look like little trees because what happens is you don't have time then between the raindrops to go out there and pull the weeds so then they get watered and watered and watered so today is Wednesday so I'm calling this weed Wednesday because I have to go out there and weed before the tree weeds get taller than the trees. I had a of Weed Wednesday in my mind when you mentioned that. Oh come on my listeners come on let's hear it who all thought Weed Wednesday meant something else? That's my weed Wednesday. I mean, you know, feel free to drop it in the comments if you were thinking like that girl or you were thinking like me. Maybe like weed whack Wednesdays, because that's all they want to do is go out and whack those weeds because they are so high and they're drawing in all the bugs because it's 90 degrees. Well, aside from the weather, how are things going for you? How's your week? Aside from that, I have had a super busy week, enough to just almost tune out of work. But when you're an entrepreneur, like you can't tune out of work, no matter what's happening. You just kind of push it to the side and like leave it for the next day because no one else is going to take care of it but you. But yeah, I had I've had a different and some personal issues that are not the happiest, but you know me, it's like, what's the bright side, right? Are we half full, right? So still doing good, still healthy, every, you know, no one's dead, at least in this family. So we're good. good. That's good. I appreciate your positivity. It's very inspiring. Well, my younger brother got married this weekend and that was great. My husband was the best man and, you know, I have such a small family. It's really just the four of us, me and my brother, my parents, you know. So it's like a big deal. You know, when someone gets married and my brother is marrying into a very large family. So that's also a big difference, you know, it's like I'm still trying to keep track of all the siblings and place the order, you know, and everybody else that's in the family. But it was--we're very happy for him. So it was it was busy weekend and busy week. Yeah. Now, if your husband was the best man, that means he had to give, don't the best man always give that speech? Oh yeah, he gave a speech. He nailed it too. He's not a public speaker. In fact, he really hates speaking in front of people, but he nailed it. I thought he did a great job. It's on my YouTube channel, if anyone wants to check it out. It's on TikTok as well, but for two minutes and 20 seconds, he made every second count. So I thought he did a great job. minutes is actually a long time when you're like just watching or waiting. Two minutes is actually a good amount of time. the maid of honor speech was nine minutes herself and then a five minute skit with her siblings. So we saw like the typed up thing and a single line and multiple pages were like, wow, did we not write enough? Yeah, she did. She was very heartfelt. That family, I'll tell you, the one thing that he married into was a family that was full of love. So, they shared that love in words and everything else, like, just the way they are. So... All right, if you got that kind of time. of few words. So two minutes was not like a long time really compared, but I guess it's a long time by normal standards, I don't really know. We could Google like the standard speech, but I thought he did a good job. I mean, did he go first or last? Okay, okay. So she, all right. So she had, she had time. He just wanted to save his time for her. That's all. you go. Well, speaking of you know public speaking and things like that, that usually requires a little bit of something extra. So it's an interesting topic. Today, we're going to talk about self-esteem, self -confidence, and boosting that. So as always, we like to start with a little quiz or poll. Vixen and I took a self -esteem quiz. And well, you probably already know that Vixen probably has a lot more self-confidence than me. I don't know her answers, but I'm just going by history here that she probably did better than me. But I took this quiz, I think it was on Psychology Today, and it was one of the simplest ones. It was a self -esteem quiz. It asked you a couple of questions and you scored easily on a scale of one to 100. So I guess I'll start. I scored a 67, which says adaptive. It says I'm in a good place of healthy self -worth. Okay. And it kind of lacked a little bit because it said as a child you'd likely enjoy validation from your parents. Not really. But maybe that's something we talk about today is like how you could develop a little more self -confidence throughout life. Not saying that they were, you know, not the best, but like they, you know, I definitely didn't get that like, hey, you get an award for everything that you've ever done. Like there was a lot of like, you need to improve, you need to do better all the time. It kind of made me a perfectionist really. So I would say I was overall happy with this, with the score. I was actually a little surprised, but I think maybe self -confidence and self-esteem can develop better over time in different circumstances. It's true. It's true. And maybe, and it doesn't have to be your parents. Maybe you got validation from a best friend, from someone else. You know, because especially when you're a kid, when you're a kid, you're not necessarily telling your parents everything, you know, just saying, you know. So it could be someone else that, you know, you're close with that you were like checking in with, you know what I mean? So it didn't have to be your parents. I took that same quiz. My score was a little bit different than yours. My score was a 91 out of 100. I knew it. Well, it said, I have plenty of self-worth. It said, I do not suffer self -doubt or low confidence. You are able to bolster yourself with high confidence. You know you are just as worthy as the next person and you are likely to follow your true self. I like, and this next phrase I like, it said, you are not bothered by the need to make other people happy. They are so right. I am unbothered. I am just unbothered. I totally agree with that. Yeah, it's very true. And that's when you know you've really come to arrive at a good place. You know, you're not there to make other people happy. That's not what you're here for. I mean, there's a difference between that and like just being kind or compassionate, but it doesn't mean you're there to make everybody happy. So. Well, they did tell me though, which I was surprised about. They said I should volunteer my time because others may benefit. And I should consider charity work. Hey, maybe that's what this podcast is for. You're gonna give all these ladies out there lots of confidence, right? Yeah. It counts. We're not getting paid do this. I feel like you know, when I'm giving massage, that's therapy. You know, we're doing therapy there. We're doing cryo. We're doing therapy there. We're not just sitting there, we're talking. Right? is like therapy. It is sometimes. Yeah, so there you go. That's very true. Oh wow. So, you know, let's talk about self-confidence. You know, what do you think would you, how would you define self -confidence and well, how can we get more of it? How can we be more like you? It's everyone has their personal box of self -confidence. They just, some people don't know how to, the lid is tricky. Sometimes they can't get in it because they know it's there. It's everyone, every single person has it. But I'll tell you, this is usually, you know that reinforcement, how you get it is repetition. It is a mind, it really is a mind thing. If you tell yourself multiple times, you can't do it. Don't even try. You know you're gonna fail. Don't do it. Nope. You can't do it. You can't. If you keep saying that, guess what? One of two things is gonna happen. Either you won't be able to do it or you won't even try at all. Which again, you failed simply because you didn't try. And fear. So the first part of even opening that box is a try. So you're not going to try though if you're too scared to do it. So understand that you're scared to do it and this is where positive affirmations come in. Something to that effect doesn't actually have to be positive affirmation, but telling yourself that maybe I can. Like that's a start. Maybe. And then trying small things to get up to whatever it is that you're going for. Small things, just small wins. If you build your confidence. You might not make first place, but you'll definitely be last if you don't enter. Right. So maybe you'll get up to sixth place, you know? But you don't know until you try, but constantly saying, okay, this is not so bad. Yes, I can try this. Yes, just yes, yes, yes. Even if you don't act on that at first, it might take some time, but building that up slowly, but surely, even if you don't start, and it sounds impossible, it may sound impossible. But if you keep saying it, it will work. It'll just take some time. So you got to have some patience, but it will work. That's how you build it. I think at times it's easy to feel overwhelmed or helpless, you know, and when I feel that way, I feel like I'm just going to start that tomorrow because you just sometimes have bad days and I'm different than most. Like when some people say they'll start it tomorrow, they'll do that for 365 days out of the year. Like when I say I'm going to start that tomorrow, I'm going to be up at six and I'm going to start, you know, but sometimes you just don't have it, you know, that day and that's okay. Well, I think though, for most people, it's harder, everything's harder to learn as an adult, generally speaking. Everything is harder to learn as an adult. And self -esteem actually starts as a child. It has a lot to do, and this is something that you can really recognize if you think about, you know, take a moment to really think about your background. Did your parents tell you you were stupid? Yeah. Did your parents tell you, oh you got a D, the same thing you always get. Did someone, whoever was raising you, tell you these things, tell you that you can't do it, you're too dumb, you're too tall, you're too short, you're too fat, you're too whatever? Because that, you learn that. That becomes, even if you don't want to admit that, that is in your brain. So by the contrast, the opposite, if someone's telling you as a kid, you're so pretty. Oh you're so beautiful. Oh you're so smart. Oh you're so, you know, the pleasant little things that you get. And you hear that over and over again, again, confidence. That's how, so you get almost brainwashed the opposite way. You know, at least. Yeah, because it's almost a subliminal thing. If you keep hearing it over and over and over again, you start to believe it. So if you can sit down and acknowledge and think about it, and I mean, you don't have to tell anybody, but think about to yourself, what really happened to you? Do you think there's a level where that becomes unhealthy, the positive validation? So yes, depends on the reason that it's being done. The positive validation can become a false thing. Whereas here's a perfect example. American Idol. Oh have you ever heard some of those people try to sing? The reason, the reason is not because they can't sing and some of them are really bad at singing, but they think they can sing because somebody keeps telling them they can sing. But in reality, they, they just embarrassed themselves. It's awful. It is, I mean, not the good ones because everybody knows who the good ones are. But you've heard that you must, I know that you've seen it. The person who, they say, yes, I'm gonna be the next idol. I'm gonna be, wait till you hear this, I'm gonna do this. And they start to sing and the judges are like, or they just laugh or they go like they're laughing. And they really think, like the person on stage really believes, like, why are you doing that? I sing great. That's where it, that line between confidence and reality starts to blur. Yeah. And while we're talking about it, do you think that women have that or don't have that more than men? That false sense of confidence. No, actually I think the opposite because men don't have a lot of, in comparison to one another, men don't have a lot of standards to live up to. Whereas women have an unbelievable amount of standards to live up to. So there's so much more scrutiny for her to... jump over those hurdles to jump over. Whereas him, it's a matter of shaving, clean shaving, beard, you know, a couple choices there. You know, plaid shirt, plain shirt, which looks better, you know. It's pretty much all acceptable, just a matter of does it look right on my face, you know. And then he goes to get the haircut and you know, the girl or guy is gonna tell him, you know, look at the face shape, this looks good, face shape, fine. Either way, it's not going to look terrible. They don't put on makeup most, don't put on makeup. And so your skin, unless your skin is super tragic for a man, like you're looking at, you can see obvious, terrible skin, it's fine. This is very true. I mean even hair, like well my husband doesn't have much left but you know having hair you know here down here you know you still got to do something with it every day as a woman like you know and men could just you know comb their three hairs or whatever they have and they're happy and they look good. I get that. So, when I took the quiz, it wasn't this one, there was another one, I took like 10 of them, because I just wanted to like compare different types of quizzes. I will say this one from Psychology Today was actually the simplest quiz so far. But I saw one, I think it was with the Mindful Tools or whatever we've used before. It said, doubt causes men to act, doubt causes women to pause. Because I mean, if you think about it, okay, so let's say, I don't know, our hair doesn't look good. We tried it 20 minutes, we've been working on this, getting the flip of the bang just right. It is not working. What you are visualizing in your mind is not coming out on your hair. This bang is not flipping the way you want it to flip. So. You doubt now that you're looking good. So you are probably not just going to say, OK, screw it and walk out the door. You're going to stand back and you're going to be like, OK. You know, that's what you're gonna do. You're not just going to just disregard it, figure out, okay, this is not gonna work right and walk out the door. But as a man, okay, let's take the beard, okay? So his beard is not as soft as he, the oil is not doing the thing that he wants. He'll mess with it for a little while, but you know what? He's gonna walk out the door. I mean, I believe it, but what you said actually took the words out of my mouth. It's kind of like, screw it, let's just go. You know, a woman's like, well, now I'm going to just have to fix this. Like, I'm not leaving until it's fixed. Or if she leaves with it and unfixed, she's going to be thinking about it all day. Like, this piece of hair isn't working for me right now. And that's all I can think about. I understand. And as a perfectionist too, I also, like, it's a double trouble for me. It's true. I mean, it's just the standards that you try to live up to are usually not realistic or they're I like to call them generic standards, because they're not the standards made from your body type, your hair color, your hair type, you know, it's the standard one standard. So everyone's trying to, so you try to get, you have straight hair, you're trying to get curly hair like so and so. If you have curly hair, you're trying to get straight hair like so and so. You can meet that standard. Yeah, right. I totally agree with that. Well let's talk about, we're talking about women. Men. Do you think that confidence is impacted by age? Yes. you get, the more or less confident you get. How does that work? Yes, I think so. The reason I think is because as you get older, you get more diverse. Unless, okay, unless you're the person who never left their hometown. Okay, that's not the person I'm talking about. Generally, people travel at least a little bit here and there. So they get more experience. They get into more situations. You know, that's so. After you figure out what reality is because reality is usually less for you as a kid, as a younger person. You think the world revolves around you and you're invincible and you can do whatever and nothing's going to happen to you. You're not going to get a hot flash. You're not going to. None of nothing's going to happen to you. You're going to be perfect. You're going to remain that perfect way for the rest of your life. So. As you age though and you've had boyfriends, you've had probably marriages, you've had maybe divorce, you know, you've had situations, then what that self-esteem, self -confidence in the box usually becomes less important. Hmm. It's not that it's not there. It's not that you don't want to look good. It's not that you don't want to take the time. You just don't have the time. So are you thinking that women neglect themselves a little bit in taking care of others or things that have occurred in their lives? Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, there's the career woman, the career woman who never left that mindset. They have been about themselves when they were a teenager. They're still about themselves. They're about their image. They're about, you know, all of that because it has to do with their job. If they're in a man world, they have to appear a certain way. So their self -confidence, they have to project, even if they don't have it, they have to project it. They have to project being strong. If they don't, they'll be eaten alive. So that person, you might not be able to tell whether they're actually confident or not. I think it depends on what role they're at in their career. If you're like maybe an administrative assistant, I'm thinking of specific people in my mind that I've worked with over the years, where they're not necessarily a career woman, but they're working 35, 40 hours a week. But their family's their most important priority. Then there's kind of a fine line where the job is just a job. If now if you're somebody who is a business owner or you're an executive, I feel like that's a little bit different because that almost becomes your top priority on a lot of aspects of your life. And that's exactly who I was speaking of, that career woman. The career woman that you speak of who's like the administrative assistant, you're right. She is, even if she's a one who the person who gets the laundry and stuff goes to the dry cleaners and picks up things, still, they're still making time for their families and others. But they are not making time for themselves. I can see that totally. That's a conscious effort. So that's the difference between those two. The executive girl, the powerhouse, she is making time for herself because she has to because she can't falter on what this is looking like, how that strength is coming through, she can't. But the other one, she can falter. It's fine. She's like, well, she does her job and she looks decent. She's good. Totally see that. So one more question. Now we talked about how you were raised and how that affects your confidence level. Do you think we're born with a certain confidence level? And I'm asking this because, so I think about this little baby, my now sister -in-law, there's this little baby in the family, his name's Hunter. Happiest, most carefree, like joyous, open-eyed baby on the planet. Like everything is his oyster, you know? And I've seen babies that are opposite, you know, where they're just very to themselves, they cry about all kinds of things. Do you think we're born with a certain type of confidence level? Is that just personality or what do you think there? No, I actually don't. I think it all has to do with your environment. All of it. The things that you're born with are things like knowing how to pee, knowing how to poop, knowing how to cry. But even how you communicate the different types of cries that you have, it's how whoever you're crying to responds. Yeah. The child that has the tantrum more than once, they have it the first time they're testing. The second time they're having it because you responded the way they wanted you to the first time. So it's all about their environment and that's how, because kids are very smart. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. So they will do what they need to do to get what they want. Mm -hmm. Yeah, and then it you know, the ones who cry have temper tantrums and well, they got the response they wanted they end up being adult babies. I think we all know a few of them. someone, you know, said, Oh Johnny, you're crying. You're crying. OK. Here you go. Here. You take it. You take it. Johnny figured out if he cries, you're going to give it to him. So he's going to keep doing that. It's horrible. Horrible. But, you know, it's it's it is what it is. I mean, I still struggle with this because this baby I swear it came out of the womb just like the happiest like I just never seen a baby more lax in my life. But if you buy that same token, if you're telling the baby, you're like, Johnny, you're so happy. And he's happy. And you're giggling with him. And he's giggling back. You're giggling with him. He's giggling back. He knows that this is a happy thing. He's going to keep trying to do that. He's going to keep trying to do that. true. You're emulating that for him and he's responding to that with more. Yeah. So in reality, you teach people how to treat you. And the same token, and that comes from self -confidence to everything. What you accept is how people will treat you also. I 100 % agree with that. That's probably one of the biggest lessons I've ever learned in my life. Yes. I'm somebody who's very trusting. And I'll let people in my life and when I do and I bring them close, like sometimes it can be almost too close. And then I find out later that like they're kind of walking all over me. And that's when I'm like, wait a minute. Hold the phone. So I totally believe that. And it's taught me to be a little bit more reserved, maybe not entirely, but it's made me aware of the kind of people that I need to be careful who I associate with. If I sense that flag right away from history. I know like it's probably not going to be good. Yeah, yeah, and instincts are usually correct. That sixth sense, that tingling, that, hmm, I'm not sure about her. Like, that is usually actually correct. I agree. I agree. Well, I can't believe 30 minutes have went by already. Well, thanks for everybody who's been tuning in to the Light Her Project podcast. As always, you can follow the conversation online with our hashtag. In the meantime, keep it real. Real women. Be sure to let us know about Weed Wednesday. Bye now.