Confidence

This is my word of the year!

I had noticed that instead of feeling confident in my decisions, I was always wondering in the back of my mind: “What if I’m wrong?” or “What if I suck?”

That doubt and fear was insidious because it wasn’t obvious, so it ate at me subconsciously all the time. My experience of life was that I was wishing things were different and feeling like I was struggling to feel good. Wishing I could teach powerfully or feel differently. Wishing that instead of my emotions ruling me, I rule while they just play out.

The work works, thank the Lord. Because even before I was fully conscious to my inner doubt, I did my work in yoga and in listening to my teachers, day in and day out. Slowly, it was revealed that I just wasn’t asserting for myself that I could be confident.

Confidence doesn’t just happen. You must decide it for yourself.

Confidence is not for people who want to stay in a place of low self-esteem. Even this year, knowing full well that I’m choosing confidence, I have moments of feeling like my self has no esteem, i.e. no power. The difference is now I know that in order to vanquish the clouds of doubt, I must make the choice freshly to know that I can and I will. Falling out of power is part of the game. Will I have confidence in myself that I will pick myself back up? I say yes! Because of logic? No! Because I say yes!

Choosing to be confident is different than feeling “confident” all the time. We have too narrow of a definition of confident, I see. It could look like bravado, a person puffing out their chest with their head held high, when you picture it. What if I choose to be confident in the decision to sit down and cry because I’ve been holding in a big emotional release all day? What if I choose to be confident in the decision to change careers? This is what confidence looks like, too.

Before I had confidence, I would have told myself needing to cry means I’m broken and quitting a job I liked means I failed.

Now, I am confident in my confidence. And it feels like such a relief.