Help for a Common Obstacle to Confidence: How to Translate
Inspiration Into Reality
This article is designed specifically to support you in tackling
one of the biggest obstacles that may come in your way as you
work on developing your confidence and changing how you live and
interact with others.
Learning how to enjoy being you and how to enjoy being with
others can feel great!
Gaining even small degrees of freedom in our actions and
expressions can allow us to do things that we never thought were
possible.
When we read an article or a book, it can change our life. We
may feel so empowered by our new insights that we decide to go
out and be who we are without fear - to boldly show our true
self to the world. And make no apologies!
But what happens when we go out and begin sharing who we really
are?
It's scary! We feel anxiety!
So what happened? I thought we had become so empowered by our
insights?
"Argh!" We think to ourselves, "I have failed again! I'll never
become confident! This self-help stuff doesn't work anyway!"
So what caused this misalignment between our desires and our
reality?
There is a difference between opening up to new possibilities
through insight and inspiration and actually being able to
translate them into action and experience.
Why is there such a gap?
One reason is that we live in physical bodies. We are not just
mental beings. We don't just think and it is so. We must use our
thinking to create physical results.
Our physical experience in the body can take time to catch up
with our new beliefs and convictions.
Anxiety has established habitual pathways in the body and brain.
And they can be activated automatically. Even if we have
embraced new beliefs, captured inspiring dreams and convinced
ourselves that we can indeed be confident.
Success, then, requires us to step back from our very real
experience of anxiety, to realize that it is a manifestation of
our old beliefs - habitual reactions engrained in the body and
mind. And then to seek ways in which we can continue to pursue
the realization our new beliefs until our bodily habits begin to
catch up.
To solidify our understanding of this gap between inspiration
and reality, let's use the example of weight loss.
~Losing weight takes time~
Let's say that a person decides they want to lose 30 pounds.
To begin with, this person probably had a set of beliefs and
behaviors that led to the accumulation of the extra 30 pounds on
their body. And let's say that the most influential belief was
that eating healthy was not important to them in their life and
to their goals.
But now the person believes that they need to eat healthy
because losing weight is important to them.
They feel inspired by this new insight and have already chosen a
new diet to follow and even gone to the grocery store to stock
the kitchen with healthy food.
But have they lost any weight yet? Has their body dropped the 30
pounds? No.
If you have been inspired to bring your full self into the
world, but continue to feel nervous doing it, remind yourself
that your experience may take time to catch up and know that
success and confidence are still yours - even if it doesn't feel
that way right now.
So from this discussion, we could say that physical results are
not a good indicator of success - at the beginning.
~Vision, self-love and inner calm~
In order to make it through the pain of this transition period -
how can we strengthen our commitment to the future despite what
we may be currently experiencing?
Vision, self-love and inner calm - these are tools we can use to
bolster our resolve and strength when our experience hasn't yet
caught up with our desires.
What is the vision you have for your life? What can you do to
experience more love for yourself? How can you make inner calm
and relaxation more of a habit for you?