Most of us do.

It makes sense. Our brains are wired to want to feel good and we use self-confidence as a gauge for what does and does not feel good.

We believe that having self-confidence will feel good.

We don’t like to feel discomfort or self-doubt.

But what is self-confidence really? Isn’t it just the absence of self-doubt? Self-doubt is simply the lack of confidence in oneself and one’s abilities.

We want more self-confidence when we feel nsecure and we judge whether we feel confident by the absence of self-doubt.

Some of us spend a lot of time and energy wanting to find more self-confidence.

Many of us feel like imposters in our work and want to feel better about ourselves and in our abilities. We try everything we can think of to avoid feeling the discomfort of self-doubt.

But self-doubt is like any other emotion, it is created by our thoughts.

And feeling like an imposter isn’t really an emotion, it’s a thought.

When we desire to have more self-confidence, we assume that something is wrong with us, that other people feel more confident then we do, or that other people or situations make us feel insecure.

But they don’t.

And the best news ever is this:

Nothing is wrong with you.

Confidence is created by your thoughts.

Do you want to learn how to feel more self-confident? I can show you how. Schedule a 15-minute mini-session with me to discuss how we can work together.

Your lack of self-confidence is about how you envision the future, whether you think you have the ability to succeed or fail in the future.

Lacking confidence is about how we anticipate we’ll feel if something doesnâ€t go as we planned.

When we try to avoid feeling discomfort, we have to limit and constrain ourselves. We have to avoid trying new things, we avoid anyone or anything we think might make us feel bad about ourselves.

The more you tell yourself “I lack self-confidence” the more you find in the world to avoid.

But you don’t have to feel this way

It’s your thoughts that create your feelings. And you need to recognize that your brain is often wrong. Sometimes your brain has thoughts about problems when there are none.

And sometimes it tells you to be afraid of something that will benefit you.

In order to have the life you want, you have to be willing to trust yourself and take risks.

You have to be willing to feel discomfort.

The secret to self-confidence is not feeling comfortable all the time.

Self-confidence comes from feeling discomfort and doing it anyway.

We think we need to have self-confidence in order to succeed at something but itâ€s the other way around.

We need to take action and be okay with experiencing any emotion (sometimes it will feel like a success, sometimes failure) in order to build more self-confidence.

Do you want to learn how to find more self-confidence?

I can help you with this.

“He makes me so mad.”
“My boss is difficult.”
“She doesn’t understand me, she doesn’t listen.”
“He’s such a narcissist.”

Maybe your boss is always telling you what to do and doesn’t know how to give constructive feedback.

He makes you so mad that you go home frustrated every night.

There’s the narcissist coworker who you can’t stand to be around.

Do you have a loved one who frustrates you?

Maybe she doesn’t understand you, and says judgmental things and doesn’t give you the support you need.

You feel like you’re surrounded by difficult people who make it hard on you, who zap your energy and affect your mood.

But it doesn’t have to be this way!

There’s another way to look at these situations that you probably haven’t considered.

You don’t have to feel this way about your work, your colleagues, and the other important people in your life.

What are your thoughts?

What are you thinking?

You may be thinking “I’m thinking my boss is a jerk.”

If only your boss would change, your problem would be solved.

But that requires a lot of hope and wishes.

It’s simply not possible to change people.

And, it’s not in your best interest (or very empowering) to think that the only way you can feel better is if someone else changes.

What’s a more empowering approach?

You can shift your perspective, and feel better, by experimenting with different thoughts about your experience.

You can choose to shift your thoughts for simply this reason — for your own benefit.

This may sound like you’re letting people off the hook for bad behavior, but when you think “my boss is a jerk” this produces feelings like resentment, anger, and frustration for no one else but you!

You’re giving your boss power over you and how you feel. You probably think s/he already has it, and you’ve just given your boss even more!

You’re the first to benefit from any shift in your thoughts.

But this takes practice.

We’ve been taught by society to think that our feelings are caused by other people. How many times have you thought “he hurt my feelings.”

But this just simply isn’t the case.

Take a closer look at the thoughts you have about the people in your life.

You can make minor shifts that produce great rewards, shifts that benefit you and will make an impact on your life.

I want to tell you more about it.

What do you think about you?

Do you tell yourself you’re not good? Do you tell yourself other designers are better than you?

Do you believe you’re not enough?

Maybe you compare yourself to other designers at work, or to other designers who have a distinct style.

Your thought is that you don’t have a style, and therefore you’re not a great designer.

You feel unworthy.

“I don’t have the right skills, Im not very good.”
“I have to work harder than everyone just to be an okay designer.”
“I don’t have a design style that’s my own.”

So you stay late at work and work harder than everyone in order to prove yourself.

You hustle.

But here’s the truth: you can’t hustle your way into being worthy or to feeling better.

What do you believe about yourself?

Believing is deciding and accepting that something is true.

But it doesn’t make it true, it just makes you believe it is true.

Why do you believe the thoughts you have about yourself are true?

What we believe and focus our mind on is a choice.

What are you choosing to believe about yourself?

What you believe is based on your past

What you currently believe is based on your past. And your beliefs and thoughts create your results. So, if you do nothing, your past beliefs will create your future results.

Are you seeking evidence from your past to “prove” your thoughts about yourself?

How do your beliefs about yourself affect your work and the rest of your life?

Can you see how your thoughts about yourself, based on your past, have created the life you have today?

Do you have beliefs that are not serving you well?

By building awareness of what’s going on for you now, you can choose what you want to believe about yourself.

The first step is awareness. You must become aware of what you believe. You must become aware of what you are thinking.

What you want to believe is based on your future

Here’s the good news — you don’t have to be stuck with old beliefs from your past. What you want to believe about yourself is based on your future.

What do you want to believe about yourself as a designer?

How do you want to think about yourself?

What do you want for your future?

You have to learn how to imagine the future you want. You have to learn how to visualize possibility.

Is it possible?

Here’s the challenge: you’ll actually need to visualize impossibility. Because you won’t believe it’s possible for you yet.

The first step is allowing yourself to imagine that you believe something, and then visualize yourself being, doing and having it, and then practice believing it.

What do you visualize for yourself that doesn’t yet seem possible?

What do you want for yourself and your future?

Why do you think you can’t have it?

It all starts with a belief.

A belief is a sentence.

You create a sentence, and then you create the result of that sentence.

Dreams are literally sentences realized.

Do you want help and guidance to work on this? How can you build awareness and move beyond your past thoughts to what you want for your future?

We often don’t take action despite wanting to.

Do these sound familiar?

“Why can’t I find time to work on my passion project?”
“I need to update my portfolio but don’t know where to start.”
“I want to find a new job but I’m confused about how to find one.”

What is The Self Coaching Model?

The Self Coaching Model is the key to uncovering why you aren’t taking action, it’s a tool you can use to help understand yourself better. Read more about it here.

Our thoughts about a circumstance produce our feelings, our feelings cause our actions, and our actions ultimately produce the results in our lives.

The power of your feelings

Everything is in your control when it comes to your thoughts and feelings. Your thoughts are what create your feelings. That’s why it’s so important to understand your thoughts.

So if your thoughts create your feelings then your feelings are very important because they drive all of your actions.

Feelings are the fuel for your actions.

So what are you feeling on any given day? Are these feelings fueling your work?

When you ask yourself “why aren’t I taking action?” it’s because of the way you feel.

Your feelings drive your actions and it’s your actions that produce the results in your life.

The power of your thoughts

So what are you thinking?

Practice both awareness and compassion when observing yourself and your thoughts. It’s important to understand yourself first, how do you think?

Let’s look at an example using The Self Coaching Model:

The Self Coaching Model

Circumstance – Updating your portfolio
Thought – “I don’t know where to start”
Feeling – Confusion
Action – No action, you don’t do anything
Result – No progress is made on your portfolio

Note that confusion is an emotion that will keep you stuck. Have compassion for yourself, we all feel confusion at times. Don’t beat yourself up. Practice curiosity and fascination when it comes to understanding yourself better.

Pay attention to your thought.

The mind likes to repeat patterns. There may be other underlying thoughts and feelings of fear of failure, not doing it right, self-criticism of your work. All of these play a part in why you’re not getting things done. These are thoughts and feelings that aren’t serving you well.

How do you want to feel?

The byproduct of taking action is building more confidence, but it starts with developing the self-confidence and courage of honoring your commitments to yourself and having your own back. Do you believe in yourself?

How can you change your thinking to produce a new result?

Ultimately you want to find other thoughts that you can believe. Ask yourself: what thought can I also believe that is more empowering than “I don’t know where to start.”

Circumstance – Updating your portfolio
Thought – “I know exactly where to start”
Feeling – Self-confidence
Action – Spend two hours on Sunday working on portfolio
Result – Starting to work on your portfolio

Start by observing yourself, doing thoughts downloads and writing the thoughts and feelings inside your head. Build a self coaching model of what is happening using the C, T, F, A, R structure.

This is the first step to understanding your thoughts and feelings and how they’re currently producing your results.

A few spots are open for those of you interested in coaching with me in the next few weeks. I can help you gain an understanding of your thoughts and feelings and produce the intended results in your life.

I watched myself make up untrue stories in my head and became impatient because of my thoughts about “all the things that aren’t done.”

I felt overwhelmed.

I tried to change the situation and to control someone else.

I felt the urge to reduce my discomfort. It was an attempt to feel better.

Urges

We’re familiar with urges when it comes to things like weight management; trying to resist the urge to eat chocolate or to snack at night.

But we also have urges when it comes to other emotions and managing ourselves.

My actions were caused by my feelings of discomfort, with the intention to temporarily relieve my discomfort by changing the situation, or to control the other person.

Instead of taking responsibility for our thoughts and feelings, we often blame others when we’re not able to manage our own minds.

Intentions

When we experience an urge caused by our thoughts and feelings we’re missing the opportunity to act with real intention and integrity.

Will this behavior produce the intended result?

Unlikely.

Do you like how you showed up if it does?

Is this who you want to be?

How can we best act from integrity? — By watching our thoughts and feelings.

What are your emotional urges?

Instead of understanding what’s going on for us, we often seek fast, temporary relief from our feelings.

My “go-to” emotional urges are to feel disappointment ahead of time, to people please, to take on a victim mentality. (To name just a few )

Watch and be aware of your urges. What are their negative or unintended consequences?

What to do

Be sure you are always in a place of compassion, understanding, and love, when learning about yourself. You cannot beat yourself up in an attempt to change.

Your mind likes to be efficient, so once it has thought the same patterns over and over again, it requires practice and skill to change.

If you’re trying to change your thought patterns, you’ll need to practice patience. You’re in a battle with your own mind, and when it’s you against your old patterns, you’re always going to lose unless you’re patient with yourself.

In order to understand ourselves better, we can take responsibility for our thoughts and practice new ways of thinking.

“If you’re not enjoying it, you’re probably doing it too fast.”

I love this thought.

I’ve been thinking about how it can apply to our big goals.

Give yourself plenty of time to execute when you set a big goal. The enjoyment is in the journey, in the reaching of the goal.

What’s the hurry?

When we set big goals we often set very ambitious time frames.

“I want to find a new job in two months.”
“I want to lose 20 pounds over the summer.”
“I want to earn $100,000 my first year as a freelancer.”

What’s the problem with setting ambitious goals?

Well, sometimes they’re simply unrealistic. For example, losing twenty pounds over the summer requires a weekly weight loss that’s probably not very healthy for your body.

Yet the real reason we often set ambitious goals (a seemingly positive thing!) is that we think our life will be better when we reach our goal.

We believe we’ll be happier when we find a new job, we’ll feel better about ourselves when we lose the 20 pounds, or our life will be so much better when our business generates $100,000.

But is it true?

The 50/50

We can’t escape the fact that our life is 50/50.

Half of the time we’ll be on the other side of happy. We need to be willing to experience negative emotions half of the time. We can’t run away from our feelings.

We experience 50/50 no matter the job, weight loss, or income.

So why set goals?

Here’s why:

You’re not escaping or running from your current job, body weight, or income, you’re choosing the goal simply because you want to. When you set a weight loss goal to make yourself feel happy you’ll reach the goal and then find your life is just the same as before — no better no worse.

Have you ever wondered why so many people regain weight after they lose it? Because after you lose the weight, your life is no better than it was before the weight loss.

The simple truth is: our goals are not responsible for making us happy!

Compelling reasons

You can find other compelling reasons to reach your goal with the most compelling to experience the excitement of finding the right job, of losing extra weight, of earning $100,000. Or maybe you want to make yourself proud!

It’s all about the journey. The journey is the goal.

You’re not running from a job to another job to make yourself feel better. Your new job can’t make you happy. Your thoughts about your new job produce happy feelings for you. You can choose to change jobs because you want to, to challenge yourself to be the best you can be in a new position. Or you can practice creating happiness by changing how you think about your work and your current job.

The journey of weight loss is about becoming aware of your thoughts and feelings and the cause of your emotional eating. The experience is about getting to the cause of your overeating, not to lose twenty pounds fast only to regain it again. Therefore, why rush it?  The goal is to learn more about yourself, it’s not really about the weight loss.

The experience of earning $100,000 in your business is a big milestone and the compelling reason to do it is to simply make yourself proud. You can say you did it. The moment when you achieve this goal is simply a moment, the joy and excitement (and yes, discomfort) will come every step of the way.

Don’t rush it

If you’re not enjoying the process, it’s because you’re doing it too fast.

Here’s a new perspective to try-on: why not give yourself a year to lose twenty pounds, a year to find a new job, two years to earn $100,000?

We set ambitious goals because we want it to happen fast. We may have reached a point of crisis with our work, the scale may have hit a certain number we’re uncomfortable with, or we may need a certain dollar amount to support ourselves with our new freelancing business. So our brain tells us it has to happen fast, like now!

Plan ahead so you don’t wait too long and put yourself in a situation that creates thoughts of desperation. For example, the thought “I have to get a new job”, produces feelings of desperation and anxiety.

Here’s an example of how our brain works:

Self Coaching Models

Circumstance – Finding a new job
Thought –  “I need to find a job immediately”
Feeling – Desperate, anxiety
Action – Apply everywhere, unfocused effort
Result – Take the first job offered

Circumstance -Finding a new job
Thought – “I want to find a challenging new position”
Feeling – Confidence
Action – Apply to companies that align with my vision
Result – Take the job that’s the right fit

Choose to give yourself the time to take your time, be present, and remember the journey is the goal.

Do you want to achieve your big goal but unclear of how to get started? I can help!

I hear many designers talk about passion projects that never get done and about believing things need to be done right or not at all. Designers focus on producing excellent work for clients and feel frustrated when they do not complete their own passion projects that are meaningful and important to their heart and soul.

I held onto the expectation that all my projects (both work and personal) be executed with precise detail— perfectionism at all costs! In my mind, things were never really done perfectly and I often felt disappointed or upset.

Does this sound familiar?

As designers, we often carry around perfectionist tendencies.

“I need to do everything perfectly, or not at all.”

The trouble is, there’s no such thing as “perfect.” Perfection is an illusion because perfect doesn’t exist.

Perfectionism is a dislike for anything less than perfection.

A perfectionist is “a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.”

The mindset of perfectionism

Expecting perfection produces feelings of anxiety, stress, judgment, low-self-confidence and loads of self-criticism.

In the Psychology Today article “How to Overcome Your Perfectionist Tendencies”:

“Perfectionist tendencies lead us to engage in a comparing mindset, where we rate or grade ourselves in comparison to others in almost everything we do. And you know what happens then: we almost always come up short in our estimation.”

These feelings led to a lack of joy in most any project but also to avoidance and procrastination. You’d rather not do it than to do it poorly.

The result is that perfectionism often results in things not getting done, like the passion projects that are most important to you.

Here’s an example of how the mind works:

Circumstance – Your passion projects
Thought – “I need to do everything perfectly, or not at all.”
Feeling – Anxiety
Action – You procrastinate and don’t work on side projects
Result  – You donâ€t get things done.

The fix?

Overcoming perfectionism

Basically, the idea is to produce a new thought. “I need to do everything perfectly, or not at all,” is a thought that does not serve you well and produces the result of not getting things done.

Since this is not your intention, working towards a thought that will produce the intended result of getting things done. “I’m going to work on my side project and see what happens.”

Other strategies are to produce B- work. Rather than striving for A+ work at all times, allow yourself to do the work with an above average result rather than outstanding. (For those designers who prototype, see it as the first iteration of the project!)

Excellence and perfectionism are two different things

Excellence is doing the best you can do. The operative word here is doing. Perfectionism so often leads to inaction or to no progress.

As designers, our client projects are not done perfectly. With client work, constraints and compromises (plenty of them!) play a role in the completion of a project. We do excellent work in the timeframe allotted for the project.

At work, obsessing over perfection will block you from getting anything done. And let’s face it, project deadlines are what keep perfectionism from getting out of control.

Setting time constraints

Client work gets done because it has a timeline with a specified deadline. Rather than allowing the tasks for your passion project all the time you need, give yourself a time constraint.

“I have three hours on Sunday to work on completing “x” and I will complete it in that amount of time.” Sticking to a schedule can really help you get things done. And watch your thoughts because your mind will want to tell you that you need more time!

Is perfectionism preventing you from reaching your goals?

I know what it’s like when perfectionism gets in the way. We can work through it!  Schedule a mini session with me to talk over how we can start working together.

Moving towards the life you want involves mind management.

The first step is observing yourself by writing down your thoughts and feelings. Knowing what’s going on inside of your head provides information about your experiences in the external world.

I know this firsthand.

A couple of years ago, when I first started actively observing myself, I noticed I was blaming others for the way I was feeling. I played the victim.

I held self-imposed beliefs that centered around my responsibilities to others. I felt I HAD to do certain things. I thought I didn’t have any other options.

I wanted people to think the best of me and if I didn’t receive acknowledgement from others, I made it mean I wasn’t good enough.

These thoughts can lead to feelings of self-doubt, resentment, overwhelm, anxiety, and fear.

The first step to any long-term change is to know yourself better

Observe and notice what you’re thinking and feeling. Learn to understand how your mind works so you can manage it to serve yourself better.

It sounds very simple, but sometimes it can be challenging. But you can do it!

What’s on your mind?

What are your thoughts?

What are you feeling?

Come work with me and we can find out!

Right now, I find myself justifying my right to be unhappy. Whaaat?

In one of his podcasts, the late, great Dr. Wayne Dyer said something like, (and I’m paraphrasing):

“Don’t fight for your suffering.”

What he meant by this is you have the choice to be happy, so don’t argue for your right to suffer and be miserable. It seems we do this much of the time!

I can choose to feel happy (or at the very least, neutral. Neither happy or unhappy, just neutral.)

When I don’t feel great on any particular day, it doesn’t mean anything. In fact, we all feel unhappy, uncomfortable, or anxious half of the time.

If life is uncomfortable and unhappy 50% of the time, how do we choose to live our lives?

Two choices. Which will you choose?

1. We can feel the discomfort of staying in “status quo,” by numbing ourselves, being miserable, and avoiding life in order to manage our unhappy and anxious thoughts.
2. Or, we can feel the discomfort and stay engaged, move forward, take action, put ourselves out there, and live our lives fully.

In the long run, there’s a big difference between these two choices.

Where we end up depends on the choices we make.

The first one will keep us disengaged, lonely, anxious, overwhelmed, and the worst of it create a habit that leads to feeling bad about the world and ourselves.

The second choice is an investment in ourselves and our future and will lead us to move forward and to grow. And to accept the fact we don’t need to feel happy all the time to live our lives!

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.“ Dr. Wayne Dyer

We’re letting ourselves down when we linger in the discomfort of numbing and avoiding our life.

But we have the choice of taking responsibility for our life and making a better choice that serves us.

Choose well.

Think about it.

I bet you feel most confident when you’ve familiar with something. When you’ve done it many times.

The things you feel confident doing, you’ve been doing for years.

Confidence takes practice.

Your confidence grows when you do something over and over.

Finding confidence

You may believe you need to find confidence before doing challenging things. Things like:

• Starting a new job
• Changing careers
• Speaking in public
• Ending a relationship
• Becoming an artist

But here’s the secret.

Don’t wait to find confidence.

Courage comes before confidence.

The simple truth is you won’t feel confident when starting something new.

You need to find the courage deep inside of you to do epic things.

What is courage?

Courage is:

• Trusting yourself
• Overcoming your fears
• Expecting failure

Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

You gain confidence by overcoming your fears.

The more challenges you face, the more confident you become.

But first, be courageous ”go for it!” feel the fear and do it anyway.