Building Self-Confidence by Following Through

“I want to fast until noon, eat only vegetables and get an hour of exercise in daily.”

This is the type of answer I often get when I ask people what goals they are currently working on.

I am not exaggerating either.

Last week’s blog post I told you about one of the MOST important thing I think most Christian women are lacking:

SELF-CONFIDENCE

You can find that post here.  You don’t have to read that post before reading this one, but it will help with making this post have more of an impact.

If you questioned how to start building self-confidence after reading last week’s post, I’ve got you.  That’s what we are going to start talking about today and over the next couple of weeks. I want to give you practical steps as to how to start building your self-confidence muscle so you can show up as your God given self even better.

Let’s start with the first step!

Building self-confidence is all about BUILDING TRUST.

You need to start building trust in yourself. 

Step number one boils down to FOLLOWING THROUGH on your commitments to yourself.

Let’s look at the example I gave at the beginning; fasting until noon, eating only vegetables and exercising for an hour daily.

If you normally eat breakfast at 7 am each morning for the last 10 years, make recipes with meat and doesn’t exercise at all right now….do you think you will be able to follow through?

Even if you currently fast 14 hours, eat mostly vegetarian and exercise occasionally… do you think you will be able to follow though on all of your plans at once?

The answer is NO.  You won’t.  It’s too much.

But most women tend to do this.  They make these unreasonable requests of themselves, try to follow through and then beat themselves up when they don’t meet their own unrealistic expectations!

How can you trust yourself if you are constantly creating ridiculous standards of yourself and then not following through on them?

This is best way to follow through and build trust…

Make REASONABLE requests of yourself the you KNOW you can FOLLOW THROUGH on and then do it on repeat cycle.

Now, this does not mean you just keep doing the same things you are doing now because you know you can follow through on them.  That’s NOT building trust with yourself.  That’s giving into the enemy and being complacent. 

Your spirit knows you can do better.  It wants to grow, change, become better.

What this means is that you take action on ONE reasonable step at a time.  Focus on this one step.  Do this one step over and over again. Repeat it so often that you find yourself doing it with out having to focus on it anymore.

Here are some ideas of reasonable requests I would start with related to the example above:

• Fast for 12 hours overnight. Focus first on night eating after supper and then eating when you would normally have breakfast.
• Try to get 1 cup of vegetables three meals a day for two weeks.
• Get 10 minutes of walking in 4 days a week.

These are just general examples.  You need to look at your life and come up with your own reasonable requests. 

If you need to a some help, you can use these three questions to help you decided if they are the right goals for you:

1. Is it reasonable? Would I recommend this to a friend at my current weight and abilities? If someone came up to me off the street two weeks ago and challenged me to this, would I have thought they were crazy?
2. Is it something I can follow through on? Can I make a simple plan to stick to?  Does it fit with my values and my priorities?
3. Does it stretch me from my current comfort zone? Do I feel a little uneasy or unsure if I will complete this?  Am I going for the short-term fix or am I looking at the long term with this goal?

Let me end by explaining why making reasonable requests and following through on them builds confidence. 

Think about a good friend.  You make commitments with them and follow through.  You continuously do this over and over again, your friend trusts you  when you say you will do something.  They have confidence in you as a friend.  If you break that commitment, usually they are OK with it and move on because you’ve built that trust and confidence.  It ends up not ruining the relationship.  From this place of trust you have a sense of peace, support, reliance and strength.

The same goes with self-confidence. 

It’s time for you to start treating yourself like your own best friend.

Make reasonable requests (commitments) to yourself. 

Follow-through on them. 

Then, you start to see you are someone you can trust and rely on in tough situations. 

You are someone that supports themselves. 

You are someone that has the ability to reach their God given goals.

You are worthy.

You are amazing.

P.S. Don't miss next week's post, in which we'll dive into step number two to build self-confidence.  If you need some one-on-one guidance in this process, sign up for a FREE coaching consult with me.  You can do that by clicking here.