Self-Confidence – Are You Growing It?

As an Executive Woman, self-confidence is important to put attention on, especially when you are working in a male dominated environment. Self-confidence is an internal strength; once you have it, you feel secure, safe, trust yourself and you harness your own power.

I want to offer a perspective for women to start paying attention to how to grow their confidence. While many of us may appear confident, there is always room internally to strengthen it to an even greater degree.

Here are four ideas to provoke your thinking on growing your self-confidence.

• First notice in what areas you hold back..An indicator of this is where you give excuses for something being different than you desire.
• Once you notice where you hold back, ask yourself, why you are holding back? Don’t launch into the details of the story or get stuck in the story – name the actual feeling you experience. This creates clarity on the fear that is holding you back.
• Create a strategy that will help you activate your courage and no longer hold you back. Your power is your strength and where your potential lives.
• Speak up when you need support; tap into the women you know and trust and don’t take on the cultural shame that is projected in our society around being abused or disrespected as a woman.

This is how we empower other women and young girls to know they have a safe place to be honest about these issues.

While I do believe we have been living in a male dominated society and we are being called as women of this planet to bring our powerful feminine presence to create more balance, it is not going to happen until women take ownership of our own power, voice our thoughts and take action on the projection of what we are seeing. We have been putting up with this shame and disrespect for a long time, and while we have made some progress, there hasn’t been much change according to the Sundance film Miss Representation. As a culture, we are brought up to be fundamentally insecure. How can we as women grow our ability to lift each other up verses cutting each other down? We can’t exhibit this behavior until we are lifting our own self up.

It is important to create a safe circle of women that you can go to in need for support, advice, and counsel of all ages both young and old. Women need to learn to hold the space for other women without judgment as judgement creates more fear. Share tools of empowerment to support both you and other women in becoming more confident.

As Executive Women, you have leverage, you have power, and you have the presence to help shift this old story that no longer serves any of us.

How will you continue to deepen and to grow your confidence so it can ripple out to the rest of us?