I looked at her as like, kind of like, what, what are you? And I kinda just, I just kind of smile. And I said, well, actually a good friend of mine and I just started a podcast a couple of weeks ago and she said, Oh, that’s awesome. And she said, I just love your stories and all of these things that you’re teaching us in class. And I think it would be a really awesome podcast. And I was like, well, thank you, thank you for that little confirmation. It just, it kind of like came out of nowhere. And first of all, I didn’t think that high school kids listened to podcasts, but apparently some of them do. And anyways, it was just, so it was just like one of those God moments where I felt like he was giving me a little bit of a, a little nudge saying, okay, let me say you’re on the right track.

And it was awesome. So here I am episode seven of our Made For Greatness podcast and I am so ready to dive in. So let’s do this today. I’m going to be talking about all things confidence. Now, in some ways, this podcast is going to be kind of like a part two to my last podcast that I did on feeling fully alive. So I just want to put that out there. If you haven’t listened to episode five, yet you might want to do so, or at least know that this is kind of a follow-up or yeah, like a part two to that. So there’s going to be some correlations between the two episodes. So in today’s episode, I really want to talk about the difference between confidence and self confidence. Now I’m sure all of you understand what confidence is. I don’t have to like dive into the definition of it, but basically confidence is the belief that we have in ourselves that we are capable of doing something or even doing something really well based on evidence that we have from our past.

So pretty much any time we do something and then we get better at it, we practice it, we develop skills in that area. Then we become competent in it. You know, especially if we’ve mastered a skill or, or whatever it happens to be. So we feel confident that we’re capable of doing something because we’ve done it before and we did it well, and we know we can do it again. And I want to just stop for a second and have us pause and kind of just be in awe of ourselves, because if you really stop and think about it, you and I like we have mastered literally thousands of skills over our lifetime, and we should be in all of that. That’s pretty incredible, pretty amazing. And honestly, like, there are so many aspects of our lives, so we feel confident in without even realizing it.

So if you think to yourself, gosh, I’m not a very confident person. I want you to stop that thought right now, because you actually are, you have mastered so many things. I mean, everything like everything that you’re capable of doing in your life right now, like girl, you’re a rockstar. And we, you know, none of us like started out. We, we weren’t born able to do all the things that we do now. Every day, we have learned how to do those things from walking and talking to reading and all the things we’ve learned in school, all the skills, you know, how to interact with people and how to drive and how to raise a family and have babies. You know, I mean, all of us, like for those of us that had, you know, our first child, we didn’t feel very confident in that pregnancy and what that delivery was going to look like and having a newborn baby, but then after four or five, six, seven kids, you’re like, okay, I feel more competent in this.

Or even the second child comes around and you’re like, okay, I kinda know what I’m doing here. I’ve got this figured out. And we feel more confident in that. So really like we’re rock stars. Let’s sell, celebrate that for a second. And there’s, you know, so, so many of us have really mastered a lot of, even more significant skills. I mean, there are some of us that have mastered speaking of second or third language or learning an instrument you know, being able to cook incredible recipes. I have not mastered that yet. I’ve got my few basics, but there are some of you that are so competent in your cooking skills that you could go on a, on a TV show and, and hold your own. Like that’s how company you are in that area. So we need to just kind of stop for a minute, be an awe of ourselves and how confident we all ready are in so many aspects of our lives.

But now I want to talk about self confidence. What’s the difference? Self-Confidence is the belief in yourself that you will, that you will be able to do something that you will be able to be really good at something when there’s not already proof for it. So if there is an area in your life where you haven’t done something before, and so you don’t have proof, you don’t already feel competent in it, but you have this belief that you know, that you can do it. And that maybe when you first do it, you’re not going to be, you know, a master at it or, you know, perfect at it. But that you know that you can do it and learn it and eventually become confident in that. You know, like if you right now, maybe don’t speak another language, but you want, you feel confident. Like, I know I could learn French or whatever. And so you go and you take a course and then, you know, work your way through it. But you have this belief in yourself, like, I know I can do this. That is self confidence. So confidence is based on your past proof.

Self-Confidence is based on your future version of yourself, like the future you that, you know, you can become after you’ve learned a skill. Now this my sisters, this is what I want to like focus on today. This is what gets me fired up this whole concept of self-confidence and how we generate the emotion of self-confidence within ourselves. As we know, it always starts with a thought, and this is kind of where I’m following up from my last podcast, the difference between saying I can’t do something and I can now let’s like really start thinking, having forward thinking into what we can do, because this is the premise that like having self belief, self confidence in ourselves, even when we don’t have proof yet is kind of the launching pad to stepping into doing the things that we want to be able to do. But maybe, you know, aren’t great at yet.

Or we haven’t perfected it. We haven’t even maybe tried it yet, but we have a belief that says, you know what? I know I can do it. I know I can figure it out. And then that launches us towards doing it because as we know, like, if we feel the thought I’d like to do this, but I’m too scared. If that’s the thought your brain is having, you won’t do it. I promise you, you will, you will not do it. You will find every reason not to do it. If your brain thinks it’s scary or that, you know, there’s danger or some sort of block there, your brain won’t go there. So the belief of like, I can do this, I can be successful in this area, even though I’m not successful in it right now. I know I can be. That is the launching pad to, for us to take action, you know, to generate those emotions of self-confidence, then we take action and then we get results and the result becomes actually being really good at it.

And then we’re at the point of feeling confident in it. It is glorious. So let’s dive into some examples this, first of all, as you know, like this podcasts, getting this podcast up and going, it’s been a dream of mine. It’s been a dream of Sterling’s for years. And to be honest with you, like, I knew that I wanted to do it. And yet I’ve never done a podcast before. So, you know, but the thing is, is that I had a belief. I had a self belief that I could do it. And there was this confidence, like, I know I can do it, even though I’ve never done it before. And even though I don’t exactly know how to do it, I know that I can figure it out. I know I can ask Sterling. I know I can watch YouTube videos. I know that I can figure it out.

And I also knew that the beginning of the first few episodes, the first 20 episodes, like I knew that I would be learning as I went. And so hopefully like a hundred episodes from now. I’ll, I’ll be really confident that I can do this. Like even right now, as I’m doing this, I am not totally confident. I am self confident that I can figure this out. And for example, the very first episode that I recorded by myself, it took me five and a half hours to do it. I was trying to figure out the software, I’m using garage band. I’m like, okay, how do I do this? All of the settings and all of that. And then recording and editing and trying to do all of those things. In fact, the very first episode I did, I recorded the first half. And then I paused, I needed to take a little bit of a break and kind of get my thoughts together.

And I came back and I recorded the second half and totally something happened. I thought it was recording. It, it didn’t record had to go back and rerecord it and then figure it out. And then I got done with all of it and I did this prayer at the end and I thought, Oh, it’d be really cool to add some music to it. I had no idea how to do that. So I’d go watch YouTube videos. Anyways, long story short, five and a half hours to record a 30 minute podcast. It was an incredible learning experience for me, but it was also something that I definitely did not feel competent in. Thankfully I had generated enough self-confidence that it propelled me to do it, to put myself out there, to step out of my comfort zone. Oh my gosh, totally step out of my comfort zone to do this thing.

And the only way I would have been able to do it was because I had enough self-confidence that I could do it. That’s what propelled me, pushed me into the emotion of knowing I could do it, feeling that I could do it and then taking the actions to get it done, even though I messed up. Totally. And even though I still am trying to figure out how to use all of the settings and the microphone and all the stuff, but the cool thing is I know that 50 episodes from now a hundred episodes from now, I’ll be like, boom, yes, I am totally confident in this. I can knock out a podcast in under an hour, including the editing and all of that. And I can’t wait for that place. I can’t wait to feel that confident. But the cool thing is what I love about this is that every single time I record a podcast

And getting better at it, I’m building a new skill set that excites me more than I can imagine. Now I have another story for you. A couple of years ago, my son Caleb was in the seventh grade and it was time for him there. It was a second school dance, little junior high school dance of the year. And he went to the first dance with his buddies. They all had a good time. And then it came time for the second school dance. And the night before he came to me and he said, mom, I don’t want to go to the dance. And I said, why? And he said, well, because my best friend is out of town this weekend and he’s not going to go. And I just don’t want to go, mom. I just don’t want to go. And he was pretty adamant that he didn’t want to go and pardon me at first, my first reaction was like, okay, well, if he doesn’t want to go, that’s fine.

It’s less places for me to have to drive him around to on a Friday night. But I wanted to dig a little bit deeper because I was like, what if, what if there’s something else going on? And I said, well, let’s talk about this for a second. And I really wanted to try to get what was the emotion that he was feeling and really what was the thought behind it. And so basically what it came down to was, I said, why don’t, why don’t you want to go? I said, you’re going to have your other friends are going to be there. And he said, yeah, but I just, I don’t want to go. I just, you know, and I kind of like dug deeper and it basically came out that he had built up this total fear that he was going to go into the dance and be by himself, his best friend, wasn’t going to be there.

And his thought behind it was, I’m just going to be standing alone in the corner, awkward in this room and it’s going to be, I’m going to be embarrassed and alone. So I totally understand that. And honestly, this is what’s crazy because I could go, I can go back to my junior high self. And I know that I would have had those exact same fears. And I know like knowing myself, I would have never wanted to go to a dance if my best friend hadn’t been there. So I could totally relate to how he was feeling. But I wanted to challenge him a little bit about this because this was an area where he was completely not feeling confident and in no way was he feeling self-confident. And so we just kind of talked about it a little bit. And I said, what’s causing you all this worry or fear is this thought that you’re having.

And I said, but let’s talk about the reality of it. Your other friends are going to be there. So you’re going to go there. And I said, what do you go there? And you see your other friends are there, you start hanging out. You’re kind of all hanging out together, talking, laughing, having a fun time. And then you dance with a one or two girls. And you know, you ha ended up having a great time. And I sent him, if you don’t go, you’re going to miss out on that. And I said, I want you to feel like you are self confident enough in yourself that you can walk into activities or events without your best friend, or maybe without your brother. And you can feel confident enough in yourself that you can walk up to people that you can hang out with people and have a good time.

And I said, this might be a really great opportunity to practice that. And I said, listen, I’m not going to make you go to the dance. If you really don’t want to go, we’re not going to force you. And I said, but I really want you to think about the, like I said to him, I said, what if you go to the dance and you walk in, cause his, his best friend is really confident. And he’s kind of the leader in their group where Caleb tends to be pretty quiet and shy. And I said, what if you went to that dance and you were the competent one self-confident and you walked in and people were like, Oh, I’m so glad Caleb’s here because he’s kind of a leader too. And we can hang with him. And I said, what if you go and, and exhibit that kind of self-confidence and generate, you know, other people feeling more comfortable because you’re there.

And then you guys all end up having a great time. And I said, if you did that, how would you feel at the end of the dance? And he looked at me and he said, I would feel great if I could feel like that. If I could have an evening like that I’d feel great. And I said, okay, well, that’s, that is possible. That is an option for you. And I said, how you present yourself? How you walk into the gym, how you act and like how you exhibit yourself, like all of that I said, that can come from a place of self-confidence. Even if you don’t have proof of it from the past, because he hasn’t really exhibited strong self-confidence in himself before. So we just talk through that. And then I said, think about it. I said, pray about it. And then, you know, if you decide, you want to go, we’ll take you.

And so he came to me the next day. And you said, Hey mom, I thought about what you said, and I want to go to the dance. And I was like, awesome, great. We’ll take you. So I took him and dropped him off at the dance, kind of coached him on the drive there. And then he went and I went back and picked him up at nine o’clock and he got in the car, he was beaming. And I was like, how was it? And he goes, it was fun. He said, it, it went exactly how you said it would. And he said, I was there. I hung out with my other buddies. I danced with a couple of girls. We had a really good time. I felt self confident the whole time. And I talked to some people that I wouldn’t normally talk to.

And it was great. I’m so glad I went. And I you know, I couldn’t have been more thrilled now. You don’t always know how it’s going to go. I was really praying for him that evening, that everything would, would go really well. But I believe that he learned so much in that experience. He learned how to show up how to walk into a place where he didn’t feel totally comfortable. And he was able to walk in there, exhibiting a self-confidence in himself. And that lesson is huge. It, that lesson stays with a person longer than just the night of an event. And I told him, as we were driving home that evening, I said, you do you realize that what you did today, going into that dance? I said, you can do anytime you go anywhere new, anytime you walk into a new place.

I said like, when you go to high school, you’re going to have these moments where you’re not going to know people. You’re going to be in a class. You can walk into that class with that same level of self-confidence, and you can walk into a sporting event or anything that you want to do. And so this is why I believe it is so important for us to understand this concept and for us to be able to help our kids with it. Now, an understanding this whole concept of self-confidence. I want us to talk about infants for a minute.

Babies, toddlers, all of that, because to be honest with you, they are the ones we, when we were babies, like they actually have an incredible amount of self-confidence because pretty much everything they do, whether they realize it or not comes from a place of having this belief that they’ll be able to do it because everything they’re doing is new.

Everything is new. There is no proof that they can do it. So let’s talk for a moment about maybe a 10, 11 month old baby, who is learning how to walk. They see all these other people walking in. They’re like, I want to walk and they believe that there’ll be able to walk, but they’re not able to walk yet. Maybe they’re crawling around. And then they pull themselves up, you know, with some, you know, against some furniture. And they stand there for a couple seconds. This whole process is about them building up muscles in their legs to be able to hold them. So then they practice standing with the furniture and then every few seconds they fall down and then they pull themselves back up and then they fall down and pull themselves up. And then eventually they get to a point where they’re standing there for a couple seconds without touching anything.

And that’s, we know that’s like the beginning of them taking their first step. And then we, as parents, we’re there, we’re helping them. They, you know, we stand them up, they stand there for a couple seconds. And then what do they do? They fall down their little legs, give out from underneath them because they’re just not strong enough yet, but they’re building up those muscles and it’s fascinating. And this is the deal, what we do with them as parents, like when they stand up and they stand up for a couple seconds, one, two, three, fall down, what do we do? We cheer them on. And we’re like you said for five seconds. Oh my gosh. And then we help them to get back up. And every time they fall down there and they get back up, they’re building up those muscles, they’re building their coordination.

They’re getting that sense of balance and stability. It’s all so great, but they have to be able to fall down. So then they can get back up because it’s all that learning process. So their little brains are learning everything, their spatial awareness development in their brains, all sorts of crazy things are happening within their whole body physiological system. It’s so cool. And then there we are. We kind of hold them up and then they take that first step and we’re cheering them on. As you take your first step, getting it on video, doing all the things. And then they fall down and then they get back up. And eventually, you know, they’re walking a couple steps. Then they fall down and we’re cheering them on the whole way. And we go through this process and within like a week or two, after that, then they’re really cruising around the house and running.

And then they’re climbing and doing all the things and jumping off, you know, couches. It’s amazing. Now, what do we do with them the whole time where you are cheering them on? They are getting so much affirmation with every fall, with every standing back up. They’re constantly being affirmed as it should be. And I want to bring this to our attention because I feel like this is so incredibly important. Now, could you imagine if we, if we had our, our baby and they were trying to learn how to walk and they got up, you know, they stood up and then they fell down. Could you imagine if every time they fell down, we as parents were like, you horrible kid. I can’t believe how I can’t believe you just fell down. You’re so, you know, you’re so bad at this. Like if we just, I mean, I can’t even like bring myself to say it, but like, imagine if we like told them all these horrible things and said, you can’t do this, you should have been able to be running, you know, weeks ago.

And how, how could you fall down? It would be horrible. We would be like the meanest people ever. And we would never do that. Even the thought of it, I’m sure is sending all of us into like this cringe mode of like, Oh, I can’t even imagine speaking to a baby. Who’s learning how to walk and speaking to them like that. We, that that would be like literally a form of verbal abuse. It would be so horrible that we can’t even imagine doing that. The only thing we can imagine doing with, with a little baby, that’s learning how to walk is cheering them on every step of the way, every fall of the way I’m going to come back to this because it’s really crucial. But I want to say this, the way we become confident in something is literally by falling down and getting back up, falling down, making mistakes, learning.

This is the whole concept of learning is making mistakes and figuring it out in our coaching world. We talk about this whole concept of, of learning as failing forward that we have to be willing to fail and get back up, fail, and get back up and what like in doing. So that’s how we become successful. That’s how we become competent because we’ve learned we’ve made mistakes. We’ve figured things out we’ve had. We’ve learned things about ourselves, all of it. And it’s all about taking a step falling down, falling, failing forward. And when I first learned about this concept of going after really big dreams and doing things that I had never done before, and this whole concept of stepping into a place of failing forward, it felt like it opened up a whole new world for me, because I used to have the mindset that I wouldn’t ever try something new, unless I knew immediately that I’d be good at it.

And that is so sad. I don’t know how we got to that point as adults where we feel like we won’t really do stuff, something if, if we’re, if we’re not going to be great at it at first, because honestly who’s really great at anything at first. And so this fear of failure holds us back in so many ways, but what if we think to ourselves, okay, I believe I can do something. I have this self confidence that I can do something. And then I know that I’m going to step into it. And I’m going to experience, especially at the beginning that I’m going to fail forward. It creates freedom. It creates permission. It creates this reality like of this is what it’s gonna look like to become really good at something. And if that’s the case, if it takes me failing forward five times, 15 times, 50 times to get to that goal or to get to that achievement, then I’m willing to take that step. And it makes it so less terrifying. If I go into something, knowing that this is what it’s going to look like, it gives me permission to know that I can make mistakes and I can figure things out and I can get up and dust myself off and keep going. This is why I believe like God in his great mercy has given us the sacrament of reconciliation because he knows how we are.

He knows that in our quest to, to strive for holiness and to strive to be saints the work in a mess up that we’re going to see fail forward in our spiritual lives and in our daily lives. And so he has given us a sacrament, which is basically kind of like this fail forward sacrament. It’s like him saying, come to me and I will give you a chance to, you know, you’ve fallen down now, dust yourself off, let’s clean your soul and start again. And that, it’s my quest. My journey of being a Saint is going to be so many fail forward moments. And I’m just going to keep coming back to the sacrament and I’m going to keep going and keep trying. Like, I like that gives me such great hope. It means that I don’t like that. I have a God that doesn’t expect me to be perfect yet, but he knows that I’m going to make a ton of mistakes. And that he’s given me this sacrament. And I think it’s all of this is so horrid lated in, in what we’re trying to talk about.

Now, one area of my life right now that I’m working on. And I can honestly say, like, I don’t feel confident in, but I’m really actually feeling self-confident in his weight loss. Ever since I started having babies, I’ve really struggled with my, with my weight. I had five babies and under five years, so I just, you know, one pregnancy after another, I kept putting on weight and I didn’t really have a chance in between to, to lose that weight. So I have struggled so much in this area. So I don’t have proof from my past that I can be a rock star in losing weight. And in fact, if I were to look at the proof from my past, I would just, I would be defeated without even starting. I’d be like, I can’t do this. I’ve tried it so many times. I failed pretty much.

I’m a failure at weight loss, but I am at a new place in all of this, really what these life coaching tools I am at a completely new and exciting place in my weight loss journey. I’ve restarted up. And I’m using our tools to really manage my mind and have a completely new mindset around weight loss. And I actually am really, self-confident about it. I am self confident in the fact that I, I believe that I can get to my healthy weight goal that I wanted to get to. I believe without a doubt that I can get there. I also believe that this journey is going to be exciting and powerful. It’s going to be incredibly transformational and it’s going to affect all aspects of my life as I learn how to process my emotions and how to not turn to food, to buffer, but to really address my emotions and figure out the underlying causes of some of the problems of why I overeat and all of those things.

So I am excited. I also know that this journey can be one of it can be fun. I can, it’s going to be about great self-awareness and as I’m figuring it out and failing forward in this, the thing that separates this journey from all my other times of trying to attempt weight loss, is that I am approaching it with that same aspect of truly failing forward, get, you know, doing my best, trying, falling down, maybe making a mistake, figuring it out and learning from that and getting back up and continuing forward. I know that the way to get to my goal weight is going to be so many steps of failing forward. And as I do every time I fail forward, I’m learning so much about myself in the process. And I’m really not only learning about myself, but actually discovering things areas in my life that need healing areas in my life that maybe I need to stop for a little bit and really focus and work on a work through.

And it is incredibly powerful, you know, I’ve lost. So I may have been doing this for a couple of weeks. Now I’ve lost seven or eight pounds, and I’ve had some fail forward moments already that I’ve learned from. And it’s been, so eye-opening for me this, like, I know that I’m going to be successful. I know I have no doubt. And I have no doubt that, you know, in this journey that I am going to grow so much as a person so much so that I like if somebody were to offer me right now, a magic pill, like which I’ve, which I’ve wanted for like the last 20 years, like, can somebody just please give me a magic pill where I could just lose 50 pounds immediately? Like what I wouldn’t give for that. But if somebody were to present me with that, I wouldn’t take it because what I really want to do is I don’t want to just lose weight.

I want to figure this out. I want to figure myself out. I want to figure out why I struggle with certain things. Why I buffer with food, why I turned to food in different emotional settings. I want to be able to figure this out and be in control. And I want to get to this place where I’ve gone through this extraordinary journey. And I can’t wait. Like, I, I love it. I love this aspect of learning and growing and starting with self confidence and then becoming confident through the journey. I also want to go back to this part where we talk to ourselves, kind of like what I said with, with the verbal abuse, with the little baby learning, how to walk and how we can’t imagine ourselves ever talking to a little baby like that. Well, I want to say this as adults and maybe I can, maybe I’m just going to speak for myself here.

There have been so many times, particularly in my weight loss journey in the past where I felt like I had to power through, I had to use willpower. I had to deprive myself and then I would fall into temptation and I would eat the foods that I shouldn’t eat. And it was instantly a barrage of verbal self, like self verbal abuse from me. I would say the most horrible things to myself. And I would put myself down and then all the shame and the guilt and all those horrible, horrible things would come pouring at me. Like for myself, things I would never ever say to another human being are things that I would say to myself on a daily basis, especially around my weight loss struggles. And now I can look back at that and go, no wonder trying to lose weight was so hard because imagine like we would never do that to a toddler, a child, like if they were learning how to walk, but if we do that to ourselves, then every time we try, we’re going to just like, who wants to do that?

Like, who wants to try anything? If we’re going to just speak to ourselves in such a horrible way, if we’re just going to dig up shame every single time we give into a temptation or every time we have a mistake or fail, even, even if we’re failing forward. So I want to just bring this to our attention, to our self-awareness then voice in which we speak to ourselves. For me, I’ve done a ton of work really in the last two years of being aware of that voice of that negative self criticism that has plagued me for years. And I’m going to do a whole nother episode on, on just that, because I think it’s so important. But right now, as I enter into this new approach to weight loss and a whole new approach to self growth and transformation from the inside out, I am speaking to myself with total kindness and total compassion.

And when I make a mistake, I just use it as an opportunity to stop and go, okay, what can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? What is this showing me? And then that takes me to a place of deep self awareness and self discovery. And then I can bring God into some of those moments where I know it, that I need healing, or I need help. And, and he’s there. He’s right there. So there is so much of a difference with all of it. Now for you, maybe, maybe the struggle isn’t weight loss, but maybe it’s something else that you don’t feel super confident in. This is this opportunity for us to really look at our and say, okay, where, what are those areas that I don’t feel confident in, but that I want to generate this belief in myself of self-confidence a belief in our future self, a belief that we can get from point a to our goal, knowing that we can do it by failing forward, making mistakes and learning from them.

Now in wrapping this up, I want to give you three key tips, particularly in how we can help our kids build self-confidence. So here they are really fast. Number one, the very first thing we can do in teaching our kids to practice and practice having self-confidence is for us to demonstrate it. And this is really the key work that we can do on ourselves. So for example, my husband, he’s never really been a fix-it guy that hasn’t been an area where he’s very, like, felt very confident, but lately I’ve been so proud of them. He’s been on this kick of trying to figure it out. He like wants to be the fix-it guy, and there’s always little projects around our house and he’s figuring it out. He is watching YouTube videos and he’s going to Lowe’s you know, 10 times a week and talking to people and asking questions and figuring out how to do all these projects from fixing our dishwasher, to fixing our dressers.

That’s broken and screens on our, on our windows that I’ve broken all of these things and he’s modeling this and he’s getting the kids involved and he’s teaching them and they’re seeing it. They’ve kind of known that he hasn’t always been great at fixing things, but they see him taking that initiative. He’s learning things. He’s making mistakes as he goes, he’s ha you know, there’s times that he’ll buy certain parts. They don’t work out. He learns, he watches more videos, and then he goes back and he figures it out. And so this whole time they’re watching him do this and they’re participating in it with him. And it is awesome. He’s demonstrating self-confidence. And as he keeps doing this, he’s been doing this now for a couple months. If he keeps doing this for the next year, he will like next year, he’ll be our fix it guy.

He’ll be like, I can fix anything. I know I can do it. He’ll have proof. Then right now he’s just acting from a place of self-confidence. And he keeps saying like, well, I’ve never done this before, but I know I can figure it out. And I love that my kids have this, you know, their dad who is modeling this. And hopefully they see that in me as well, modeling it for them in all these new endeavors that I am going after that they’re seeing it in both of us. And they’re, they’re watching us do that. So that’s number one, modeling for our kids.

Number two is talking to our kids, talk to your kids about this episode. Talk to them about the difference between confidence and self-confidence. And when you get the chance throughout the day, doesn’t have to be major things, little things like you can coach them on practicing.

Self-Confidence even when they don’t feel competent, you can help coach them on it. Just like I did with Caleb in his dance, you can do it with kids, with their schools. I coached my kids on self-confidence right before finals this quarter. And it was amazing to see their results when they shifted their mindset on being able to do something that they hadn’t done before. And it’s exciting. So take those opportunities to talk to your kids whenever you get a chance. And then third, my third tip is to look for opportunities to give your kids practice at practicing self-confidence. So what are areas in their lives that maybe they’re not confident in, and then create these moments where you can have them practice in a safe place, in a safe way, with your help and your guidance, and then watch them grow in their experience of practicing self confidence, and then stepping into that greater sense of confidence, because they have proof of it.

A couple of ways you can do this, are giving your kids tasks, either chores around the house, maybe things they haven’t done before and, or, you know, like fun things, like giving them a cooking challenge where maybe they’ve never made scrambled eggs, but say, you’re in charge of scrambled eggs this week and watch them make mistakes, watch them get shells in the egg, and that they have to dig out the shells. And eventually after a week or two of making scrambled eggs every morning, they’ve mastered it like my kids. Oh my gosh, they are so good at making scrambled eggs and making a lot of things because we’ve kind of coached them along the way on how to do something that they’re not really great at and then get better at it. So those are my tips for that for all of us as mamas, what is my challenge for us this week?

It really is to look at an area of our lives where we don’t feel confident in and let’s practice exhibiting that feeling of self-confidence. Also, I want to just say this. I talked to my husband a lot about confidence and self-confidence, and he always is telling me he’s like, when you talk to women, you should tell them like, when it comes to their husbands, like when they’re confident or self confident, it is so attractive, he is, it’s just such a crazy attractive thing. And to be honest with you, self-confidence when you meet someone who is self-confident, it is like really an, a, an attractive trait to meet people that are self-confident or, you know, exhibit strong levels of confidence. And I’m not saying in like a cocky or arrogant way, but people that just know who they are, and they know, you know, that they’re capable of doing things it’s so attractive.

And my husband’s always telling me Lorissa, the times that you come across as being really confident with yourself, with your body, with, you know, how you show up, he’s like, that is incredibly attractive to me, even though he knows that, like, I’m not at my weight goal, or maybe, you know, it maybe sometimes I don’t feel like super confident in how I look. He’s like, when you, when you take care of yourself and when you show up feeling and acting confident, he goes, that is the greatest. He’s like, it is so attractive. It is like, it’s such a, it’s such a, it’s such a turnoff, it’s a turn on when we exhibit that. And so I just kind of want to share that. And I know like in a really personal way, and again, I’m a believer. I didn’t had no plans of sharing this, but when it comes to our marriage, one of the areas in that I struggle with confidence in is particularly in intimacy with my husband.

I, I don’t struggle with intimacy, but I struggle with confidence in initiating intimacy. And this has been a conversation that we’ve had many times because my husband has told me, you know, like that I don’t ever really, it’s very rare basically that I initiate intimacy and that it would be nice if I did that at times. And I used to believe, like I used to be a belief in my mind that I’m like, Oh, I just don’t like initiating it. I felt awkward. It’s like, I feel uncomfortable. I don’t know why, you know, you have this kind of like, idea that it was what it’s supposed to look like from the movies or, you know, TV shows. And I’m just like, I’m so awkward. And it just doesn’t feel like I’m not confident in that area, but even as I’m doing this podcast and thinking about it right now, like that isn’t, that I could probably work on a little bit.

Like, what if I could be more like self confident in that, even though like right now, I’m not, I don’t have proof that I’m like really good in that area, but what have I could be. And so now, like, as I’m like offering this challenge to all of you, to like, be thinking about the ways in which you can find something that you can be more self confident in, like, this is definitely an area that I need to work on. And what, so I’m like, I’m just talking through this right now. Like, what if I could be w you know, self-confidence and think to myself, okay. Instead of this, just being a part of my personality, like, Oh, I’m just not, I’m just not good at initiating intimacy. What if I thought to myself, yeah, I’m not right now, but what if I could be?

And what if I could be in it? What if it just took me like failing forward a bunch of times to get to a place where I actually felt confident in that aspect of our lives. Now, I don’t think my husband would have any problems with me working on this area and failing forward in it. And if I can get more confident in this area, if I can practice this and get better at it, then I can only imagine how it might improve my marriage. I mean, we all want to have extraordinary marriages. And I think that these areas of working on ourselves you know, and looking and saying, okay, what, what can I work on? Like, this is for sure, something that I know would be really awesome. If I could build some self confidence and competence in this department. And if it wasn’t already awkward enough, I’m sharing this.

Like, I believe I just shared that on this podcast, but now I just had this realization that my mom is probably gonna listen to this at some point. So, hi mom, if you’re listening to this know, I love you. And I thank you for being such a self-confident woman that you have modeled for me over my lifetime. I love you now, ladies, I just want to close out by saying to you just recapping all of this ladies. We can be self confident women. There are areas in our life right now that God is calling us out of our comfort zone. And he is inviting us to trust in him, to do the hard work, to put in the effort and to, to believe in ourselves and to believe that he is with us every step of the way. So this is the challenge for us.

Number one, to be willing to say, okay, I haven’t mastered this area yet, but I know that I can, and I’m going to step into it, believing that I can do it, that I’m going to fail forward. And when you do fail forward, I want you to be really aware of how you’re speaking to yourself. Only speak to yourself from that sweet, loving, compassionate place, that voice within you, that builds yourself up and highlights all of the extraordinary things that you’re doing in this process. I think that the more you speak to yourself from that voice, from that person within you, you’re going to start loving her so much. You’re going to be like, Oh, listen to this loving voice. I really like her a lot. She’s always welcome here and form a relationship with her. She is the best version of you, and she’s already there within you.

Let her speak to you every single day. All right, ladies, as we wrap up today, I just want to encourage you to listen to episode eight of our podcast. We’re launching a special episode the day after Christmas, where we are launching our master’s program. And I cannot wait for you to hear all of the details. So check that out. And there’s still time to sign up for our podcast launch contest. If you want to go and leave us a review, we would greatly appreciate it. And with that, mom, I hope you have a great week ahead. Remember that you are made for greatness.