Episode #5: How to become more confident as a working Mum
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This episode delves into a topic that resonates with many working Mums – confidence, or the often-felt lack thereof.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
How working Mums experience a significant dip in confidence, particularly after returning from maternity leave. Loren reflects on her personal journey, where despite portraying confidence externally, Loren struggled with self-doubt and very low self-confidence.
The difference between confidence vs. self-confidence
How to build self-confidence as a skill and proven strategies to generate self-confidence
What a capacity for growth mindset is and how to create it
How to choose empowering thoughts that generate the feeling of self-confidence
If you haven’t already, grab your free ‘4 Step Formula to Create Your Amazing Working Mum Mindset’ cheat sheet, with all the prompts and guidance you need to start becoming more confident today. Grab it here!
Subscribe to this podcast here for more insights and proven strategies so you can learn exactly how to create a career that you love WHILST being an amazing and present Mum to your kids.
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TLC for Working Mums Podcast Episode 5 - Full Transcript
Hi my amazing Mums, and welcome to another episode of TLC for working Mums Podcast.
Today I want to talk to you about a topic that is probably one of the main reasons why working moms work with me in my coaching programs - to help them become more confident. It's about confidence, or rather, working moms feeling a massive lack of confidence.
And interestingly or not so interestingly, we often lose a lot of our confidence in our work and with our career, or in the career path that we've chosen, after we have children
Often we return back from maternity leave after our first child, and perhaps it's been a few months or even a year.
And we feel like we're at the start of our career again, even if we've been in the same career or worked in the same company for many years.
And truthfully, it does feel like we are starting again. Because we are starting the next chapter of our lives as this new person with this new identity. We are not only a worker, but we are a working Mum. I like to say we don't only have a me identity, we have a me plus mom identity - that’s our new identity.
And that identity is pretty young. It's about the age of your eldest child.
We believe so much has changed after we return from maternity leave and when we have two or more kids, 2 or more maternity leaves, it compounds our feelings of insecurity, self-doubt and our confidence in our work and our abilities usually plummets.
I do think though that for many of us, who worked hard to get to where we are in our careers - we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, we have perfectionist tendencies - and even though we might’ve portrayed an air of confidence externally, if you really think about it, you weren’t that confident before you had kids.
For me at least, on the outside, people would've thought I was confident - and I was confident in some areas - I was confident in my communication, I was confident in most interpersonal relationships, I was very organised. But deep down inside I wasn’t confident in myself, I wasn’t self-confident.
And I know this because anything that I got wrong or anything I thought I failed at, or anything that I did that I believed was a mark against my intelligence - was not just ‘i just got that thing wrong’ - it was ‘you’re not worthy.’
I would beat myself up, I would talk so critically to myself in my head.
I tell you all of this to explain that there is a difference between confidence and self-confidence.
Confidence is about your ability to do something in a particular area in a specific thing. You can be confident playing basketball or baking or playing a musical instrument for example.
Self Confidence, on the other hand, is about your belief in yourself as a person in your skills and abilities and not just in one area. Self confidence is defined as a feeling of self trust in one's abilities, qualities and judgement.
And I just want to make a comment here that there's a difference between confidence and arrogance. Because a lot of my clients are like, Oh, but I don't want to be arrogant. Well, arrogance is when you say I'm better and you're not so you’re elevating yourself by putting someone else down. That is what arrogance is. And pretty much all my working moms, clients, none of them are arrogant. I don't think there's any worry that they will be arrogant. I don't think arrogance is a feeling that's or a thought or feeling combination that's actually on the table for them.
So back to confidence and self confidence. Confidence is your ability to do something in a particular area. Self confidence is your ability in yourself as a person.
I would say that so many people come and tell me, I'm just not born with confidence. But it's not something that you're born with.
Or not born with or that person was born with confidence. It's not something that you're born with or not born with.
Confidence also doesn't come from mastering something. I have so many mum clients that have expert knowledge in things. They have PhDs. They've been in the legal industry or other industry for 20 plus years, and they still have very little confidence in that thing.
And then there's people that I'm sure you've seen in the workplace that are definitely not masters in something right, but they have a lot of confidence. So it just proves that confidence doesn't come from mastering something either.
Building a lot of confidence in one area can actually stifle your growth, because it means that sometimes you're not willing to try new things. You're too scared that you might fail. I see this so much with my clients. They're afraid to make a career change, even though they are really unhappy or unsatisfied in their current career. They know they can do the work that they're currently doing and that makes them think that they may not be able to do the work in a new field. So literally having confidence in one area sometimes prevents us or makes it a lot harder for us to move to another area even if you know inside that you could be doing something you love.
So only doing things that you've done before can actually stunt your growth, it can limit you.
If you want to be confident in an area you've already been successful in it’s a lot easier, build confidence based on thoughts of what you've already done based on evidence of your previous experience.
But If you want confidence in something you've never done before, you have to build it before you have the evidence. How do you do this? Well, you do this through developing and building your own self confidence.
The first thing to know about self confidence is that it is a skill that can be learned. Like what I've said in previous episodes, managing your mindset, it's a skill. It's learned and it is a skill that must be practice.
We are not great at self confidence naturally - no human is really because our brain has that negativity bias that I spoke about in episode 2 - i’ll link that episode in the show notes. And our brain is going to naturally develop default to negative thoughts. It loves sitting in self doubt. Why? Because self doubt stops you in your tracks. You don’t have to do anything. Your brain thinks this is protecting you, but really it’s preventing you from evolving, from growing.
Instead, we need to consciously generate our own self confidence. And the amazing thing is we can do that. We can develop that skill, and to get good at that skill, like with anything in life, you need to practice.
I used to play violin. So I think of it this way. I really had to practise to become skilled at it because at first let me tell you, it sounds like a dying cat play. I started when I was four and it definitely sounded like a dying cat. But I developed the skill of playing violin through deliberate, conscious practice, and the neural pathways in my brain became deeper as I became better at playing violin. I did music, violin performance as one of my subjects for my final year of school and then life happened, I studied law, I moved overseas and I rarely play it now. But occasionally I pick up the violin and I play a nursery rhyme or two for my kids. But man I'm not as good as I was, not even close. I sound a bit like a dying cat now..
Because like any skill, it requires constant practice, there’s that quote, use it or lose it. And a lot of us have lost our self confidence but it's time for us to develop the skill of self-confidence. Because as you start working on developing your self confidence, it's like a muscle. It will get stronger and then you'll be able to use it more. You'll get stronger.
So here are a few practical tips to help you build your self-confidence muscle.
The first one is this - even if you don't have confidence in something because you haven't done it before, you can have self confidence in your ability to get that ability - so for example, I wanted to create this podcast.
Did I know how to do this? No, not in the slightest. But I had self confidence because I had confidence in my ability to get that ability. I had confidence in my abilities to figure out how to create a podcast, how to figure out the tech, and how to create the show notes. How to record a podcast.
So start building self-confidence by having faith in your ability to learn it to try to not give up. Because - have you learned something in your life that you didn't know before? Of course you can. And if you're a working mum, you are a problem solver. You're a chaos resolver, you have the ability to get any ability that you want.
Another mindset shift that has really helped me and I know it's helped a lot of my clients is that, rather than thinking about your current ability in something, I want you to think about your capacity for growth.
So it's kind of like not comparing your chapter one to someone else's chapter 10, which is often what we do when we're considering a career change or when we're looking out in the workforce or when we're in a job after we've returned from maternity leave.
We look out to the world to others to see who's in the space that we're interested in to see what they're doing in their role. And instead of being inspired by that person who is showing us what's possible. We actually compare and despair because we are thinking about our current ability rather than our capacity for growth. So when you're trying to generate self confidence, and you're doing something you've never done before, don’t think about your current ability in that area, rather think about your capacity for growth in that area.
Ultimately, self confidence comes from what you think about yourself. This is what we've talked about in previous episodes - how important it is for you to choose thoughts that serve you.
Self confidence is a feeling and it's generated by the thoughts we choose to think about ourselves and our abilities.
We want to start generating and creating as many thoughts that help us feel self confident because when we feel self confident, that feeling will fuel our actions and we will be able to achieve the results that we want in our life.
So based on what I spoke about in episode 1 you can control your thoughts - you can choose your thoughts - Even if a negative thought is initially offered up to you by your brain, as a lot of the time it will be, especially when you are getting started, you can still redirect and offer up a thought that serves you better. I like to say - don't take all the thoughts that are offered up to you by your brain as truths. Take them as information and get curious as to why they're there.
So, because you can choose your thoughts, you can choose what to think about yourself and your abilities.
So if you have a choice between believing in yourself or not believing in yourself, why would you choose not to believe in yourself?
You don't need permission to be self confident and if you think you do here, I'll give you permission. Be self confident.
And you don't need evidence to be self confident either.
Remember, you just need to choose to think thoughts about yourself that create that feeling of self confidence.
So, to start generating more self-confidence for yourself today, ask yourself - what could you think about yourself and your abilities that could help you generate a feeling of self-confidence?
If you feel a little stumped what I like to do is I often like to ask my clients: who do you know that has self confidence? And what do you think they are thinking about themself and their own ability?
And then borrow those thoughts - try some of them on, like a piece of clothing and see if they fit and I'll give you a few tips in a moment on how to help them fit a bit better.
Another another hack that I use is - I want you to think about how you would speak to a friend or even your child or your own inner child, and I want you to tell them something about you and your abilities that will help you feel self-confident - treat yourself with the same kindness and compassion that you would to a friend or your child, instead of being so critical of yourself.
And then I want you to ask yourself, what are some thoughts that you can start practising that will help you feel more self confident. So here's a few thoughts that I practise a lot and feel free to borrow them or create some of your own. “I can do hard things. I was made for this. I am strong and capable. I have my own back. I am worthy. I have enough. I do enough. I am enough.”
And remember, you need to believe the thought that you want to start practising because as I said in episode 3, if you don't believe the new thought, it’ll just reinforce the original default thought.
So if you have an aspirational thought like “I’m more than enough” that you don’t quite believe yet, you can create a bridge thought, a thought that is more neutral and serves you better than ‘i’m not good enough’ - so perhaps ‘maybe i’m good enough’ or ‘all humans are good enough’.
So find the truth in the thought you choose to believe. Of course your initial default thought like “I'm not good enough” is going to be a much easier thought for your brain to go default back to because the neural pathways for that thought are deep, and that’s OK.
You are just starting to give some more air time to a thought that will better serve you and the person you want to be.
Or instead of thinking I can do hard things. You might think ‘I'm learning how to do hard things.’ So just taking the edge off of it and start believing and practising that new thought.
And as I've said previously, these need to be practised to start feeling comfortable for you. It feels uneasy at first to start thinking and believing a new thought because you've been thinking that old thought that's not serving you for so long.
But we have the rest of our lives ahead of us. It is time to learn, or indeed unlearn, that a thought such as ‘I'm not good enough’ is probably not serving you anymore. Because if you're constantly thinking that thought, you are going to be feeling insecure and unworthy, and from that place you’re not going to be showing as your best self - you’re not going to go for that promotion, make that career change, explore what lights you up.
For many of you, you have so much of your life ahead of you - it’s time to let go of those thoughts that are not serving you, that are not helping you generate self-confidence, and start choosing to think and believe thoughts that will help create a feeling of self-confidence. Because when you feel self-confident - what would you do? You’d go for that promotion at work, you’d ask for that pay rise, you’d start exploring what your next career move could be from a place of excitement and possibility.
I promise you that this stuff works - choosing to think and believe thoughts that generate a feeling of self-confidence has changed my life - it’s allowed me to create a successful business that I love, raise the most incredible kids, and exponentially improve my relationships with my husband, my family, my friends, my clients - and most importantly, with myself.
I know this work will change your life as well - remember - generating self-confidence is just a skill that can be learned, and all it takes is some practice.
So, thank you for tuning in to this. And I hope you really got a lot out of this episode. And I can't wait to talk to you next time.
