I wanted to make a video on how to improve self confidence, as a follower had sent me a question about it. Confidence has to come from within as external compliments and achievements are only temporary as I mention in the video.
I’m starting a new series in which I’m going to answer your guys’s questions, so if you have any please let me know! I’m also thinking about opening a business coaching service as I get a lot of inbound messages.
4 Tips on How to Increase Your Self Confidence – Ask Sharon #1
Below is a transcription of the podcast. This transcription was taken from Otter.ai so it might not be completely accurate:
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives.0:15
Hey guys, it’s Sharon from digital nomad quest. And today I want to do something a little different. I want to start answering your guys’s questions. So I do receive a good amount of questions either through messages, email, you know, direct messages from Instagram or even in person. And I want to answer all these questions in these videos to hopefully help all of you guys out. Normally they’re around self help self improvement or business or digital nomad life and things like that. So this is what I care about to cover, because those topics are ones I gravitate towards, and I love talking about it on this channel. So you know what, let’s get right to it to today’s question. So let me just read it real quick. Do you have any advice for people who have very low confidence yesterday, I was trying to film a YouTube video in front1:00
My fiance and a friend, and I couldn’t do it. Why am I scared to do things in front of people that I know strangers make more sense? I went and filmed it alone eventually, but it’s really hard. And that’s just one thing is pretty bad. Alright, that’s actually a great question, but also a tough question to answer. So let me backtrack and talk about where people think self confidence comes from. A lot of people think that self confidence is derived from, you know, external achievements, like maybe, oh, I won this competition. So I’m going to be really confident in this one thing, or, you know, some people get praised a lot, get a lot of compliments. Maybe they’re told they’re really attractive or something and then the people think that those people would be the most confident but actually, oftentimes, people who get the most compliments actually have lower self confidence. You know, you see it that you know, some people may derive their confidence in their attractiveness, but then they see other people who they think are more beautiful or things like that their self confidence just crumbles or maybe the experiences such as2:00
Where they derive all their confidence in their piano playing skills. And one day something happens, God forbid, right and you know, they can’t play anymore, then they feel worthless, they don’t know what to do with their lives. So I think it’s dangerous to put your confidence into these external achievements or external validation, because those are temporary sort of solutions towards self esteem and they’re not long term. You know, you see those people walking the room with very secure and not really worrying about what people think and not anxious at all. Those are the people who have the true self confidence and might not be that they’re the most attractive person or the smartest person in the room, but they’ve actually accepted themselves and they love themselves, right. All right. first tip is to be kind to yourself and accept yourself because a lot of people have the tendency to beat themselves up about not being at a certain place in their lives, like, Oh, I need to hit five mil net worth by age, whatever, and then they start beating themselves up because they’re not there yet. Or, you know, I should3:00
I’ve said this and then I start, you start beating yourself up about saying the wrong things. They just feel like they need to be in a different place. But when you actually love yourself and accept yourself for who you are, and stop saying the words should, that’s when you have that internal confidence where you don’t really care what other people think. Or you don’t really care that you know, you’re at this place while other people are at a different place in their lives. And maybe you think they’re ahead of you. But you know, we’re all on different journeys, right? So there’s no point in really worrying about what other people think or worrying that other people are judging you because we’re all on different paths. And we should just love our own paths and our own self. Number two, I think is very important to be true to yourself and be very honest. So I think a great thing is really to stop trying to hide who you are or trying to change yourself to fit in with society, right? A great way to love yourself is really to embrace who you are and if you have anxiety, it’s okay to like for me right? I have anxiety, I am not going to be totally ashamed.4:00
debate and hide that right? I will openly talk about it. And I feel like I am not very good at public speaking and things like that. So I will talk about it, I’m not going to hide who I am, or I’m not going to change my music tastes for someone else’s music tastes. And I’m just not going to change the things I do just to please other people being open and true to yourself has many different components, as you can see from those examples, right, but one of the hardest parts about it is being vulnerable. So so when you tell someone you love them, that’s a vulnerable practice. When you tell people about your insecurities, that’s a vulnerable practice. But that’s when you actually are real with yourself and you’re true to yourself. And when you’re true to yourself, you will love that version of yourself more. And when you’re true to yourself. You’re not attaching shame to your own self because you’re not trying to hide it by being someone else embracing all of you. That’s a very important factor for self confidence. And number three, I think you should challenge yourself and always grow as a person. In my case, I’ve started doing stuff that really challenges me and put5:00
me uncomfortable situation. So for example, I started taking improv classes which scares the hell out of me, right. But I know that I have a fear of public speaking and speaking on stage even like talking to this camera right now is kind of scary. I also fear one on one conversations. I feel like I’m not that witty. So by taking these improv classes, I’m really able to challenge those aspects about myself. And then I realized that I’m not that bad. And then I realized that it doesn’t really matter what people think. And after taking almost four months of improv, I realized that like the more I do it, the more comfortable I am with speaking as well as I start beating myself up a lot less now I just don’t really care as much what people think, you know, it’s not like I’m totally over these fears. But it’s like, the more I challenged myself in these uncomfortable situations, the more I can feel myself growing and being more confident as well as caring less about what other people think by doing these challenges. I’ve started changing my framework to be more6:00
excited about being uncomfortable. And being in these situations where I’m challenging myself and actually feel good about myself. When I do these things, I find my biggest achievements are really when I challenged myself to grow as a person like this. And number four, I think a big piece of actionable advice is first of all, figuring out where you’re deriving your self confidence. And then find a person or a few role models that you have that really inspire you figure out what it is about these people that really inspire you and then emulate that. So for me, my role models are like JK Rowling and different music artists that have been true to their craft and a lot of it is about authenticity and creating and being vulnerable. So and a lot of the people that I really respect are the ones that are very true to themselves. They have persisted through times of hardships, and they’re creating things in the world. So I find that those are the things that I really
7:00
Love about people that I really respect. So then I started doing those types of things. So then once you’ve identified what those things are, that you respect about people to start doing those things yourself. So I do really respect when people challenge themselves in ways open themselves up where they know that they’re not very good at something and they decide to challenge themselves to get better at those things or feel more comfortable. And when I reflect on my progress with improv class, and I feel really proud of myself, right. So I think when you identify those things that you love about bold that you respect, and then put that in yourself, you’re going to start loving yourself a lot more as well and respecting yourself a lot more. So I hope that answers the question about self confidence. But specifically in her question, she also talked about video and I wanted to address that. So she talks about how she was scared to do it in front of close friends and family and I totally get that because those are the people that you care the most about their opinions. You love them, right so I’m going to do an improv performance soon.
8:00
And I’m still debating whether or not to invite my loved ones because I am scared about, you know, messing up in front of them, right. But I also feel like the more you do stuff that scary like that, the better you are, the more confident you are going to be. Because the more you cared less about what others think. And you just do, you know, challenges you and makes you grow as a person. And she talked about not being very good at video. But ultimately, it takes a long time to get good at these things. So if you will say that it takes 10,000 hours to master your craft. And this is kind of the case here where it just takes a while to do and you You just have to keep doing it over and over again. And again with the example of improv. That’s what I’m doing right. That’s what I’m doing over and over again, I took the beginner class and now I’m taking the intermediate class. I’m not even trying to be good at improv. I just want to feel more comfortable in those scenarios when it comes to speaking with people and doing public speaking on stage. So just keep challenging yourself and keep growing in that way. But also don’t beat yourself up like in that message. I could tell she’s really been
9:00
yourself about why can’t I do it in front of my friends and family, but it’s really important to just be like, hey, look, it’s fine. It’s okay. Just accept yourself and love yourself. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
