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How did you feel the last time you felt confident?
posted: February 1, 2023
Although coaching is primarily future focused there are sometimes benefits to thinking about and remembering your past.
So often we are afraid to take that next step, walking in to the unknown, a road we have never travelled down, a door we havenever opened and often the one thing holding us back and preventing us to take that leap is ‘confidence’. We may not no why or how, but at some point our confidence was lost and we are not sure how to get it back. We do though have somewhere a memory of how it felt and the energy and motivation it gave us when we could feel it.
So please can I ask you to spare a few minutes to take part in this simple exercise.
I want you to find a quiet space where you can sit down and where you feel comfortable. And when ready I would like you to close your eyes and take in some deep breaths. Breathing in on the count of five and then breathing out on the count of five. At least five times, repeat this or keep breathing like this until you feel calm and you are giving yourself the attention you require.
Now I want you to open your eyes again and I want you to think about the last time you felt confident. Think about that emotion ‘confidence’, what does it mean to you and how does it feel? Now take yourself back to that moment in time when you felt really confident. Perhaps it was a work assignment that had gone well, or you had to plan a surprise for a friend or you had to present an idea to your boss. Whatever the experience try and think back as much as you can about that feeling of confidence.
What were you saying? How were people responding to you? How did that make you feel? What were you wearing? What time of day was it? Was it a weekday or was it the weekend? Were you wearing a particular perfume or can you remember a specific fragrance from that experience? Who else was there to witness what was happening? What sounds could you hear around you? What colours do you remember seeing? Were you indoors or were you outside?
Now thinking back to that feeling you had of ‘confidence’, what was it exactly that made you feel confident about that experience? Where do you think that confidence came from? Where is that confidence now? And how can you get it back? Take some time now to really think about this confidence you had and in particular the memory you just visited and how it made you feel.
Now I want you to write down 5 things you can do to take back this confidence and use it again. They can be small or big, just 5 things that will help you live and breath that confidence again. Once you have your 5 things I want you to write them down again, this time I want you to write the 5 things down on individual pieces of paper and I want you to put them in a cup and place it next to your bedside table. Now every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to sleep I wasn’t you to take those pieces of paper out of the cup and I want you to read them. Once you have read them I want you to put them back in the cup and I want you to continue doing this for at least 21 days. After those 21 days I want you to think about how you feel about being confident and how that makes you feel and what it means to you?
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