True Inner Confidence & How to Cultivate it

Willow Creek, Davis 05-26-2022 8:24pm

True confidence is the pillar to strength, faith, and many other admirable virtues. With unwavering confidence in yourself, you can climb any mountain and travel any distance. Even better: no external circumstances and people can take that away from you. Therefore, I want to share a few lessons I learned on my journey in cultivating inner confidence, and may this blog post serve as that gentle reminder —

You. Are. Powerful.

Speak Your Truth

Speaking your truth is the indispensable ingredient in cultivating true inner confidence. By speaking your truth, you are signaling not only to yourself that you have the ability to advocate for yourself, but also to other people that you deserve to be heard and respected. And people should (at least) respect who you truly are. On the other hand, if you don’t speak your truth, and don’t allow yourself to express freely and authentically, of course you will lose that confidence in yourself — YOU don’t even believe in yourself, let alone others. Also, Don’t agree to beliefs that you don’t believe in, and don’t adhere to ideas that you don’t agree with - honor your beliefs and your values!

(Tips: when you find yourself agreeing to the opposite of what is appropriate in the setting, and it is just really not worth the hassle, to ruin everyone’s mood by blatantly shouting out your (subjective) truth, simply don’t comment or react. Learn to respectfully disrespect others’ truths too!)

Know Yourself - Your TRUE self

Of course, speaking your truth necessitate knowing your truth — knowing who you truly are and what truly fulfills you.

People always project. Everybody does. If you don’t know who you truly are and what you truly want, you will be very susceptible to other people’s projections of their own insecurities. And you will be very easily swayed by other people’s perceptions (which are purely based on their own inner awareness), opinions, needs, and wants. On the other hand, if you know who you are — the values you subscribe to, the virtues you embody, and the shadow aspects you still need to work on — other people and their opinions will no longer have any power over you. You will now be able to know, with 100% confidence, whether others are really calling you out, or are simply projecting their own insecurities onto you.

Learning about yourself, however, might not be as easy as it may seem like, and it does not happen over night. In order to truly understand oneself, one would first need to understand their emotions, by asking questions whenever they notice a change in their internal states due to external circumstances:

“What triggers this emotion in me? Why would it trigger me?

What are my insecurities? Why am I insecure? How can I overcome this insecurity (hint: perhaps by shifting your mindset, aka manifestation)?

What strengths do I have?

And, of course, what can I further improve on?”

Being able to answer these questions honestly and accurately would require one’s (constant) mindful awareness of their internal states, and that heightened awareness can sometimes be hard to attain in the midst of our crazy lives! But, it does get easier, and will become like second-nature overtime.

CHOOSE yourself and Don’t People-please

If you tend to tell yourself that “it is just a one time thing” to please others, soon it will become an every time-thing. Because how easy it would be, to just tell ourselves every time, that it is just a one time thing? Make sure you are prioritizing your needs and wants before others. Sure, sometimes we might want to give and provide for others, but make sure you are not neglecting your needs just to make another person happy. A good way to check in with yourself is to ask: are you tagging along out of pure love and fulfillment, or are you doing so out of fear? Perhaps fear of abandonment? Fear of other people not liking the fact that you are choosing yourself?

Honor you needs! The more you do that, the more you feel confident in standing up for yourself; the more you feel that inner confidence, the easier for you to honestly express your needs in the best way possible, like a positive feedback loop.

This is not to say that we should all be selfish and should only care about our own needs. A selfish person risk harming others to obtain their goals, but choosing yourself is to recognize the underlying equality across all individuals — you’re not more important than others, and nobody is more important than you. Thus, why not respect and treat everyone equally, including ourselves and our own needs? You deserve to be treated at least as well as you treat others.

Set and Maintain Proper Boundaries

Standing up for yourself is actually not that scary. Worst case scenario - people think you are a trouble. But at the end of the day, nobody is responsible for your happiness and wellbeing — only YOU are. So learn about yourself: know what makes you happy and what does not. Speak up when others are not treating you like how you deserve to be treated. Don’t be afraid. Those who don’t respect your boundaries, needs, and wants, are probably not the right people for you, so you will definitely not be missing out.

Meanwhile, setting boundaries does not have to be aggressive and quarrelsome. Though it may take some trial and errors, we can always learn to express our needs in the most non-provoking, yet unyielding way possible. If your boundaries conflict with those of your loved ones, communicate openly and honestly. Express you boundaries from a place of love and compassion. Tell them what you truly desire, and try to find a common ground. Those who love you will honor your needs and value your happiness, so should you!

Confidence takes form more than the appreciation of our physical appearance. True confidence give you the strength and courage to take on any challenges life throws at you. By cultivating your inner confidence - confidence in knowing who you are and being unapologetically you; confidence in standing firm on your ground and unconditionally advocating for your needs and wants; and confidence in choosing yourself and protecting your boundaries, you will see how much strength you hold within you, and how much of a warrior you are at core. You will be able to courageously face any challenges and adversities - because you know you can handle it.

To my dearest readers:

If you stayed and read through this blog post, I want to say thank you.

Thank you for being patient with my publishing schedule, and thank you for your support despite of the delay in my delivery of this new content.

For the past few weeks, I have been healing some of my childhood + teenage-hood trauma (probably the most intense healing I have ever done). The heavy emotions that came with those experiences really took a toll on my emotional wellbeing. At the same time, I was learning a lot about speaking my truth and stepping into my true power myself. This is in fact very interesting, and almost seems serendipitous. As I actually decided on the topic of this blog post before encountering circumstances that ended up contributing greatly to the content of this blog post.

What can I say? I am literally growing and evolving alongside with my readers, and I feel so grateful for each one of you. I sincerely hope that my insight and words can provide you with some guidance, inspiration, and/or support during these (sometimes lonely and painful) healing journeys.

Thank you beautiful souls and divine beings 🤍

May love and light always guide you through the dark nights.

Your friend,

Christine How