I just read my daughter’s Teenage Tuesday blog titled “Just Let Things Go.” She talked about gaining confidence through the years from being an insecure 13 year old to her more confident 17 year old self. I find all her blogs empowering, inspiring and uplifting. Sometimes I like to extend it to my blog and continue talking about the same topic. I feel compelled to talk about building confidence in us the parents and in our children. You can find all my blogs and Ella’s blogs at whinypaluza.com.
I have interviewed hundreds of experts on my Whinypaluza parenting podcast. One of the compelling things that one of the experts said to me was, “If parents are okay, then their kids are okay.” I don’t know if you realize that? I have told you this many times, but I want to make sure that you know that our children are always watching us. I will be on the phone and my 13 year old daughter will appear commenting on my conversation. I don’t even realize sometimes when they are listening and observing me. They watch everything. The most perfect way to have children with confidence is to be a confident role model. How do we help to build our confidence and our children’s confidence?
Just go for it.
When you or your child is contemplating something, I am going to tell you to push yourself and them to take the action. When we hesitate and think too much, that is when our confidence goes down. When I find myself jumping into it, I feel my confidence goes up. I am going to tell you to think, “Just jump.” You know the slogan, “Just do it.” There’s a very good reason for that slogan! I couldn’t agree with it more. Always tell yourself and your child to just go for it. Which leads me to:
Do the hard thing.
When we think something is going to be too hard for us, we should do it anyway. Pulling ourselves and our children back from something that we think is going to be too hard does the opposite of building confidence. There have been many times when I wanted to hold my kids back from something. Every time they do the hard thing they rise to the occasion. I find I underestimate them. I need to encourage them to do the hard things, and I need to do this for myself too.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
When new and hard things come up, we are going to be scared. That is normal. Let’s normalize this fear. My absolute favorite and most helpful line to myself is, “Feel the fear and then go do it anyway.” I want to take my family to Hawaii and Europe to name a couple places. I also want to go to Disneyland (less of a flight). I don’t love the idea of flying for hours. It totally creeps me out. However, I will do it anyway. I don’t want to be on a plane for that many hours. That is how I will get to these destinations. So, let yourself be scared, and then do it anyway. You will see how doing hard things and things that we fear builds our confidence.
Relabel it as Excited!
One of my recent tricks is that when I’m nervous and not feeling confident, I relabel my nerves as excitement. Feeling excited is a similar inside body feeling of feeling nervous and scared. My daughter labeled it nervexcited but I relabeled it excited. I tell myself I am excited and my confidence boosts up. It is something that I am teaching to my children too!
Practice / role play.
Sometimes we don’t know how to handle something. Sometimes our kids don’t know how to handle it. Sometimes I don’t have words for what I want to say. This is the perfect opportunity to role play with someone or ask someone you trust what they would say. My husband tends to be more assertive than I am but I love his advice. He has made me more assertive and sometimes he gives me words when I don’t have them and vice versa when he needs help. Putting other eyes and ears onto a situation always helps.
Learn from Mistakes.
Instead of beating ourselves up for mistakes let’s just simply learn from them. Going over our mistakes over and over again and perseverating on it makes us feel worse and pulls us down. Normalize that everyone makes mistakes. Allow yourself to make mistakes. It means that you tried. Take some time to go over what you did and what you will do differently next time. Learning from mistakes and normalizing mistakes will build everyone’s confidence.
Notice things that you and your child do all day.
We find what we are looking for. I want you to start noticing things that you and your child do all day. The other day I said to my husband, “I amaze myself.” When do I ever say that? It’s because I noticed everything that I accomplished. Our worth is not tied to what we get done. But wow do I get a lot done. I also praise myself for the days that I rest. I don’t expect myself to go full throttle every day. I just want you to sit back and notice yourself and your awesome kids. Look for the strengths. Look for the accomplishments. Point them out to yourself and point them out to your children. If we point out our mistakes all day. If we point out our kids’ mistakes all day (I am guilty of both), then we bring all of us down. This applies to spouses too. Notice what your spouse does well. My husband and children impress me regularly. If we don’t tell them then they don’t know.
Decide to be happy with whatever you do.
Whether it’s deciding on a trip, a color to paint, a car, a dining room table, or a class to take….decide to be happy with your decision. The second I drove away with my new car I decided I was going to praise myself for picking a car, liking the car, and looking for good things about the car. I spent a lot of time beating myself up for compromising on my pool. This summer I decided to love it and it’s working. I am really enjoying my pool this summer. I am looking at the pros. When we focus on the cons, we become unhappy. When we focus on making a bad decision, we lose confidence in ourselves. I want you to get used to focusing on why your decision was a good decision. Just decide to be happy. I also want everyone to know that “messing” up on a decision is okay and again very normal. Sometimes I let things like decisions bring my confidence down. We want to do the opposite of that. Focus on the good in your decision. If you aren’t happy with your decision, I want us to get good at bouncing back.
Brush it off.
One of the expressions that my mom likes to say is, “blow it to the wind.” One of the expressions that my daughter likes to say is, “don’t drag it.” Both of these expressions have helped me learn to brush it off and bounce back. I can be known to obsess over things. I have gotten better with this with age. One of the greatest lessons in life is to dust yourself up and get back up. This will build your confidence instead of spending hours and days going over what you did wrong. Remember that every single human being makes mistakes. No one is perfect. If someone looks all put together it is a mirage. Don’t ever think that someone is better than you.
Avoid the comparison game.
I can promise you from talking to hundreds and hundreds of people that everyone has stuff. No one has it all together. No one has zero baggage. You may look at your neighbor, friend or family member and feel envy. You may feel that they are better than you or doing better than you. People are people. Taylor Swift is just a person. Everyone is carrying different baggage. Embrace your own baggage because your neighbor’s baggage may be worse than yours. Avoid comparing yourself to others and avoid comparing your children to others. Compare yourself to yourself. Make goals with yourself. You can use other people for motivation and inspiration. I want you to avoid using other people to bring you down.
Stop taking everything personally.
Taking things others do personally brings our confidence level down. I want us all to remember that people are carrying stuff around. They have had a bad day. Something is weighing them down. We aren’t as important as we think we are. I am not saying that to make you feel bad about yourself. I am saying that to make us all realize that people are not thinking about us as much as we think they are.
Ella, thank you for the inspiration. I hope that she enjoys all of these tips on confidence. I hope she already knows a lot of them. I hope this either inspired, uplifted, educated or reinforced things that you already knew. I would love to hear from you. Let me know your favorite tip or a tip you have for us to build our confidence. Never give up on yourself. It is a lifelong learning journey. Keep –
Laughing, Learning, Loving,
Rebecca Greene, LCSW-R
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