Love, Courtney

Confidence is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more it grows. Sometimes it takes the failure to increase the strength through repair and rebuilding. It is these moments of repair that make the confidence you have in yourself more easily accessible the next time you experience adversity or resistance.

Confidence is often spoken about as if it is a character trait that a person either has or does not have. But that isn’t how confidence works in real life.

Confidence is a skill, and as with all skills, it must be taught, practiced, talked through, practiced, retaught, practiced, modeled, practiced…(you get the picture).

As a child the idea of confidence is often communicated and thus translated as a character trait. You either have it, or you have someone telling you that they wish you had it. There isn’t anyone telling you how to get it, just that you should have it. It feels like a character flaw when you don’t have a belief in yourself.

Dear daughter(s) anyone can have confidence at anytime. It is not all or nothing. It is experience, expertise, knowledge and failure in an area that creates confidence within you.

Ultimately, we want confidence to be trending up over time, it is the struggle against resistance that builds the confidence muscle. This means that in the day to day, your confidence will hit new highs and many lows. This is where the growth happens. This is where you learn to trust that while there are difficult times, you have the ability to overcome. It is in the struggle that you learn the skills necessary to meet adversity with a growth mindset. It is in the overcoming and the skill building that confidence begins to grow.

Do not start to question yourself because you notice a lack of confidence in a situation. Instead, when you notice your confidence wavering access past situations that you pushed through and overcome.

The word confidence comes from a Latin word that means “to trust”. To trust that you are capable. The only way to know that you have the ability and skills to do something is to experience situations in which you practice these things.

Confidence in one area can carry over to another, but it won’t always. We all have things that we are more confident in doing. A lack of confidence in one area does not make you unconfident. It does mean you have room for growth and an understanding that confidence doesn’t have to mean you are good at everything. It means that while your worth as a person is not tied to being good at things, you can trust that you have the ability to be good at something.

Don’t limit yourself to sports, music, academics…while these are wonderful activities that I encourage, there are so many things out there that can bring you fulfillment, align with your values, and serve the world.

Find ways to use your gifts to give back: volunteer, reach out to others, encourage others people, bring beauty to the world.

Recognize your gifts, use them to serve others and watch your confidence soar.

Side note for parents: Recognize your child’s gifts. Speak them out loud. Talk to them about ways they can use those gifts, help them find opportunities to use those gifts.

Your child likes acting and singing, find a theater or a voice coach. Your child loves animals, find an animal shelter that will let them volunteer. You child has a high level of empathy, find volunteer opportunities. We can and have to expand our view of “confidence building activities”. Instead of wishing they had more confidence, let’s create experiences where their confidence can organically grow.