And here’s why: If you focus on spending your time doing the things that you love, you will spend more time being happier, most positive and more confident.
Maybe you just read through that last sentence and thought, “Okay, happier? Sure. More positive? Makes sense… But more confident? How does that one play into doing the things that you love?”
The answer is simple: it all has to do with fulfillment.
Let’s use an example here to explain what I mean. Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re a rocket scientist (go you!) Now, you could be the most skilled, most successful, most highly-paid rocket scientist in the world… but if you hate what you’re doing every day, you’re never going to feel fulfilled by your work. If you don’t feel fulfilled, you’ll also never feel 100% confident that you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing in this world, and you’re never going to find and live your best life.
When we do things that make us unhappy (whether intentionally or unintentionally), it becomes very hard to maintain our confidence in ourselves.
I’m going to reveal something here that really changed my life, ready? Here goes:
Happiness is the KEY to confidence.
Doing the things that make you happy will fuel you soul, and give you fulfillment, joy and confidence.
It’s that simple.
Here is your Day 8 Challenge:
Getting clear about what makes you happy and makes you feel the most like the most kickass version of yourself will advance you leaps and bounds on the path towards becoming your most confident self.
Take five minutes now and create a “things that make me happy” list. What do you enjoy doing? Seeing? Reading? Write it ALL down.
The next step is a bit harder. Take a look at your current day, whether it be your planner, your to-do list, your calendar, or just thinking ahead to what you have going on, and evaluate: Are any of the things I just wrote down on my happiness list on my to-do list today?
If not, figure out a way to fit one of them in… right now! It may sound trite, but life is too short to NOT make time for the things that make you happy.
9.
Gratitude
“Learn to be thankful for what you already have, while you pursue all that you want.”
-Jim Rohn
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In my years of study of human behavior and the attainability of self-confidence, I have found that there’s one core value that confidence always comes back to: and that’s gratitude.
Feelings of gratitude and feelings of confidence are directly related.
This is because the more grateful you are for all that you have, the more you realize ALL that you have to be grateful for… and more and more awesome things begin to become apparent in your life. It’s a self-perpetuating relationship. And once you begin to reframe your mindset for constant gratitude, you will continually gain MORE things to be grateful for.
The truth is, everyone has countless reasons to be thankful. But sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Maybe you’re having a bad day, a bad week, heck, even a bad year.
But regardless of any of that, there is always, always, always something to be grateful for.
So, start with the basics: You are alive. You are healthy. You have a roof over your head. You had enough money to buy this book (or a kind friend who lent it to you). Start general and whittle down into the more specific reasons you have to be grateful.
Develop the habit of going through this exercise first thing in the morning as you start each day. Before you get out of bed each morning, make a mental list of at least three things you are grateful for. It’s a brilliant way to start the day because it immediately frames your mind positively, and helps set you up for a great day ahead!
Being grateful is all a matter of perspective. Choose gratitude for what you have, not longing for the things you don’t (which we’ll talk more about later.)
Here is your Day 9 Challenge:
Here’s how to begin making gratitude a habit in your daily life, and how to start building your confidence as a result.
The first step to gratitude is awareness. Making an active choice to be grateful opens your eyes to all the wonderful stuff you currently have going on in your life. In fact, take a moment right now and grab a pen and a piece of paper (if your computer or some other digital device happens to be closer, then that’s fine too, but I strongly recommend pen and paper… you’ll see why in a moment). Write down everything that you are grateful for today. These things can be general (“I’m grateful for my family”), or incredibly specific (“The awesome Pilates workout I did this morning”). They can be deep reflections (“I’m grateful for a spouse who loves and supports me”), or more trivial (“I’m grateful for how kickass my butt looks in these new jeans”). It doesn’t matter! The point is to write down as many things as possible that you are grateful for right now.
Once you finish your list – I find the stopping point comes pretty naturally – it’s really hard not to sit back and go, “Wow… I have a lot to be grateful for.” And sometimes just that is enough to dial up your gratitude meter and set your course for an awesome day.
A great way to take your gratitude practice to the next level is by starting (and committing to) a Gratitude Journal. I find that, by creating a journal, gratitude takes on a physical manifestation: This is my gratitude journal. This is where I write down everything that I’m grateful for. This journal is a manifestation of all the good in my life.
Plus… it’s freaking fun. My Gratitude Journal right now is a beautiful purple hardbound book with an elephant on the front that a very thoughtful colleague brought back for me after his trip to Thailand. I was grateful (and touched) that he thought to bring me back a gift, so it seemed a fitting repository for my daily gratitude lists.
My best days tend to happen when I start the morning with just 2-3 minutes (that’s all it takes!) of writing in my Gratitude Journal. And that’s not a coincidence. Gratitude frames your mind for a positive, productive and I-can-take-on-the-world-just-watch-me day.
Start your morning with a Gratitude List… and watch how your days begin to unfold more positively and profoundly as a result!
10.
Mindfulness
“Be happy in this moment. This moment is your life!”
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In today’s day and age, it’s so easy to fill our days. Thanks to modern technology, everyone is so accessible. It’s so hard to say no, when there’s so much LIFE out there to say yes to!
Sure, it’s good to be busy.
But being busy isn’t always good for us.
And this is something that we, as women, particularly struggle with.
We’re driven to do as much as we possibly can in a given period of time. We’re natural-born multi-taskers. We are INCREDIBLY efficient!
We are high-performers.
And being a high-performer is a wonderful thing. But it can also be incredibly self-sabotaging. Because if you are a high-performer, chances are at least one of the several following statements apply to you:
• You experience extreme joy out of “getting sh*t” done and crossing tasks off your to-do list.
• You often receive praise or feedback in the realm of “I don’t know how you manage it all” (and you love it!)
• You are a doer. Perhaps your biggest pet peeve is people who are all talk and no action.
• You have big goals for yourself.
• You hold yourself to very high standards, and become upset when things don’t pan out the way you planned.
If any of the above sounds like you, then I say to you, “HELLO fellow high-performer!”
And while many of those above defining characteristics sounds like positive qualities (and they can be), they carry with them a heavy burden:
High performers often put the needs of others well-before their own.
Which manifests all too often in self-neglect at a deeper level. Maybe you’re managing to keep the house cl
ean, staying above water at work, and still getting in your regular four workouts per week, but are you fulfilled? Are you doing the things that make you happy? Do you even know what those things are? (Hopefully you do now, after our exercise on Day 8!)
I can remember so vividly when I first had this realization. I was, on paper, “crushing it,” as the kids say these days. I was getting SO much done every day—between planning my wedding, holding down a full-time job, running 2 “side hustles” (including trying to grow Poised & Professional), pursuing professional performance gigs, and you know, being a HUMAN, I had a lot on my plate. I made lists. I crossed them off.
...And I yet was so unhappy.
I was stressed all the time, and even though I was being productive and balancing the crazy workload that had become my life, at a deeper level, something was missing. And it took me longer than you would think (and than I’d like to admit) to realize why: I wasn’t spending time on the things that MATTERED. If you look at this list above, I didn’t include: spending time with my family, making time for my relationship, keeping in touch with my friends, nurturing my relationship to God, appreciating all that I had… the really important things.
The first step to mindfulness is shifting focus what you “need” to do, to what you “want” to do.
There’s a great quote from Eckhart Tolle that says, “The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.”
Translated to high-performer language: Our tasks make up our days, our days make our lives.
...So, don’t you want to make sure you’re spending your life in a way that honors the things you really care about?
Of course you do.
But, like many things, it’s easier said than done. And the best way to start is by being completely honest with yourself.
Do you like the way you’re spending your days? Are you making time for the things that are really important to you?
If not—change it.
Remember, you are responsible for your own life. You don’t have to go through the motions of a schedule that someone else created for you. You don’t!
Be mindful of your time. It’s the most precious resource you have.
Here is your Day 10 Challenge:
Depending on when you’re receiving today’s challenge, look back on your day, or look back on yesterday. What did you do? How did you spend your time? Was it mostly on things that—really—you didn’t want to do? Were you running around, crossing items off a list? Doing this thing for that person, this thing for that OTHER person… and not much for you at all? If you’re like most women, the answer to that question is probably “yes”.
Your challenge today is—the next time someone asks you to do something, take at least 30 seconds and think carefully before responding. Is this something you want to do? If not, say no. You’re ALLOWED to say no when you’d rather not do something. Sometimes we need a reminder of that!
11.
Comparison
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
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We’ve all heard that old saying about comparison: “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
Well there’s a simple solution to that.
If you spent less time looking over at your neighbors’ green grass, and more time on fertilizing, cultivating, tending to your OWN grass… you’d find your grass to become a more beautiful shade of bright green than you could have ever imagined!
Right now, you’re probably shaking your head thinking, “It’s not that easy, Alyssa!”
Comparison is tricky for that reason—in today’s digital age, we are literally FLOODED with images of what’s going on around us. And, thanks to platforms such as Instagram, many of those images are beautiful, enhanced representations… that aren’t always 100% truthful. Right? But they still make us feel as though we don’t measure up.
As someone who works in the performance industry, I personally struggle with comparison almost every day. As an actor or performer, approximately 99.99% of your life is comparison. Auditions are, in essence, a panel of auditors who you may or may not know, comparing you to every other person they see that day. Comparison happens externally, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
But comparison also happens internally. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in an audition or callback room, silently sizing up the people around me… It’s just the nature of the game!
We must realize that comparison leads to self-destruction, self-doubt, and most of all, unhappiness. And as we’ve established that to be confident, you must also be happy. I’ve tried it without it, and it just doesn’t work.
So how the heck do we fight comparison? How can we even start reducing it in our lives?
We can start by appreciating what makes us unique.
You can’t ignore the things that make you different from everyone else—whether it’s your heritage, your looks, your hobbies, or anything else—so you might as well embrace them.
Furthermore, embracing what makes you unique is a surefire way to stop comparison in its tracks. When you embrace your differences, you take yourself OUT of the plane of comparison—because the things that make you different, make you incomparable.
Another one of the most time-tested ways to combat comparison and coexist peacefully with yourself is by living in the present—something we talked a little bit about yesterday, on Day 10.
Another way is to make the active choice to focus on yourself—your strengths, your successes, your blessings… until you realize that no one else even COMPARES to all the awesomeness that you have going on.
But still that can be tough. Which is why we have today’s challenge….
Here is your Day 11 Challenge:
This is a tough one—today I’m challenging you to take a total social media break. Specifically, from Facebook and Instagram—if you have those channels, make the choice to NOT check them today.
Start your day with your Gratitude List and your affirmations. Set your daily goals. And then don’t let social media distract you from them. Just for 24 hours. You can do it!
And, most importantly, at the end of the day, be mindful of how you feel. Spend 5-10 minutes journaling about the day—what you achieved, things that made you happy, big successes… how do you feel?
12.
Attraction
“We receive exactly what we expect to receive.”
-John Holland
* * *
Today’s #35DaysofConfidence focus is attraction.
No, not THAT kind of attraction... (although I guess it could be!) Let me explain…
If you’ve heard of the international phenomenon “The Secret,” you’re well aware of the Law of Attraction. For those of who were apparently been living under a rock and didn’t buy into “The Secret” craze of 2006 (like me…), here’s a one-sentence overview of the Law of Attraction:
Focus on what you want and you will attract it into your life.
If you focus on the things you like – the things you enjoy, the things that make you happy – you will attract more and more of them into your life.
It sounds simple. If you’re like me, it sounds TOO simple.
But it works.
Because if you think about it, it makes a LOT of sense.
Here’s an example: say you just bought a new car, and it’s a white Toyota Camry. A fairly unsuspecting car, right? But after you buy that new car… you ALWAYS notice white Toyota Camrys! They’re everywhere! How did you not see them all before?
This is because what is familiar to us, is recognizable. And concepts become familiar to us through active awareness.
What we choose to think about matters.
What we actively invite into our life will grow (whether it’s positive or negative).
Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles and well-known personal development guru, is a huge prop
onent of the Law of Attraction. According to Jack, “The Law of Attraction states that whatever you focus on, think about, read about, and talk about intensely, you’re going to attract more of into your life.”
This is what makes the Law of Attraction so powerful. By activating it in your own life, you will become a positive person who expects positive outcomes in your own life. Your expectations essentially become your own self-fulfilling prophecies!
So, what can we do with this concept? What can we do to make the Law of Attraction work for us?
We can make sure that the things that we think about, read about, talk about, DREAM about—are all things that we truly desire!
Resolve to replace hope with expectation.
Expect to achieve your goals.
Expect to be successful.
Expect to receive the things you want.
Expect to live the life you were meant to live!
We can actively control and manipulate our thoughts to be positive—to be constantly thinking about the things that we want. The most successful people in the world think and talk about what they want ALL the time.
And so should you!
There’s no better way to end this chapter on the Law of Attraction than with a badass quote from a badass woman, Ms. Maya Angelou:
“Ask for what you want and be prepared to receive it.”
AMEN!
Here is your Day 12 Challenge:
The Law of Attraction challenge is a great natural follow up to our Day 3 lesson on Realization.
On Day 3, we talked about the power of naming and claiming exactly what it is that you want in this world.
On Day 12, we’re going to develop a habit to think and talk about those things… all of the time!
So, pull out your Aspiration Statement. Today your challenge is to verbalize your Aspiration Statement out loud, before every meal or snack that you have. As we’ve mentioned before, the key to lasting change is habit-formation, and the key to habit-formation is finding a recurring time or pattern that you can rely on. You have to eat (and you do it multiple times a day...), so creating a pre-meal ritual is a great way to enact positive, lasting change.
35 Days of Confidence Page 3