Self-esteem, what is it good for, absolutely nothin’

(insert song War here, along with the guy from Rush Hour singing this song) Sing it again, SELF-ESTEEM, what is it good for, absolutely nothin’!

Confidence is everything. OWL talk about that more in a minute, but first let me explain to you why self-esteem is good for, well, almost nothing. Like war, sometimes you’ve got to go and fight a Nazi regime or two in order to restore peace. I digress. Self-esteem is your overall opinion of yourself— how you feel about your abilities and limitations. And it has very little to do with empowering you to confidently take action. You can have high self-esteem and feel good about yourself without feeling confident that you can achieve a particular goal.

Self-esteem is an opinion about yourself. And you know what they say about opinions and assholes…every Judge has one, and everyone has the Judge. Whether your self-esteem is high, low, or somewhere in between is entirely up to you, so don’t leave this one up to the Judge! Seek out your Sage and allow yourself to feel OWL of the love and awe your Sage has for you. As you soak up Sage and feel your self-esteem rise, just notice how nice it feels. I suppose war occasionally can be good for something…but confidence (and world peace) is where it’s at!

While self-esteem looks back (in judgement), confidence catapults you into the future. Self-esteem is just a running summary (and story) of how you value yourself, it’s not a prediction about how well you will perform. Despite being different, they do tend to go hand in hand, however, as your confidence grows, so does your self-esteem. The opposite is not necessarily true. In fact, the mental gymnastics it takes to protect your self esteem can yield the opposite effects by diverting people’s energies from real action in the world to shoring up their self-admiration instead (pesky Judge again).

So how do we grow our confidence? OWL give you a hint, it starts with shifting your mindset. Confidence is defined as a mental stance towards the future that defies this uncertainty by betting on success. Confidence creates the future because it is grounded in action. And, it can be learned! I’m going to let you in a on a little secret formula for success as shared with me by Ian Robertson in his book, How Confidence Works: You take 1 part can do and add 1 part can happen and voila!

I can do ________________.

______________ can happen.

Gaining confidence begins with a simple step of claiming what you can do, without getting wrapped up in all the uncertainties. When I was building my first business, each day I knew I could get up, get dressed, and go sit in the coffee shop with my computer to post content on social media, research and plan. My mantra was “I can build a CrossFit community.” In the afternoons I knew that I could sit in the park with minimal equipment and a waiver and create 2 communities of CrossFitters, one at 5pm and one at 6pm. My mantra was “I can host workouts and people will come.”

Flash forward 4 months later and over 100 people had signed the waiver and used what minimal equipment I had, there was a small following on social media, I met 3 future coaches and a co-owner in the park, and I found a property for the gym, formed an LLC and signed a lease. My mantra was, “I can get 30 members to sign up this month and I will make rent and payroll.” In case you can’t see where this is going, spoiler alert, it happened. I wasn’t “confident” on day 1 of the park workouts that this was going to happen...okay that’s technically a lie. I was very confident, the ex-husband, not so much. And there was some convincing to do, especially on the days where no one showed up! But by the time there was an opportunity to press “go,” all those smaller steps had built up enough confidence to write a fat check and make things happen!

If only it were always so simple…but unfortunately it’s not. According to Ian Robertson, there are 4 different types of confidence, each with a different thought, emotion, and brain activity pattern (see below), and each with its own 'hurdles’ to overcome. It seems like each time I wanted to lose weight and avoid the diabetes and heart disease that runs in my family, I found myself believing that I can do it (go to the gym), but it won’t work for me (losing weight). It wasn’t until I found a community that pulled me in with an expensive membership (gotta show up now) friendship, and conversation that I believed that I could go to the gym. I was confident that I would survive each workout just as much as I was confident I would hate every second of the workout (I did) AND I was confident I would have a great time seeing my friends. As for my self-esteem, welllll I was the heaviest of all the girls and super self-conscious of my body and what I ate ALL the time. That eventually changed over time as I built up confidence not in what my body looked like, but in what it could accomplish in the gym. And as a result, my self-esteem also grew.

The four types of Confidence

can’t do/can’t happen

can do/can’t happen

can’t do/can happen

can do/can happen

Do you spend a lot of energy and time protecting your self-esteem? Does you lack of confidence hold you back from moving into action? More importantly, whoo will help you (re)discover your confident, self-assured, Sage self? Is it me?