Episode 45: Rebuilding Your Self Confidence

s Sara 00:04

empowered people make informed decisions that lead to living a life without regret. This is Sarah kaki and Shana woods from Atlanta divorce law group. And this is the happily ever after divorce podcast. Welcome to the happily ever after divorce podcast This is Attorney Sarah khaki and I’m joined by our very own managing partner from Atlanta divorce law group, Shawna woods, Shawna, today, we’re going to talk about rebuilding your self confidence, post divorce. really, we can talk about rebuilding your self confidence or how to gain self confidence, regardless of what you’re going through. Here’s a hard one to conceptualize that I’m just gonna
throw it at you. Do you think you’re born with self confidence? Or do you think it’s something you develop?

s Shawna 00:50

I think your personality definitely plays into it. But I do think that your self confidence initially comes from the people who are caring for you, right? Your parents, whoever that may be. They’re the ones who are supposed to be instilling in you, right? Confidence. You can look at this as just a one year olds birthday party this past weekend. And she’s just starting to walk, right? And you can see where they’re about to let go of something and go toward someone.

And they do gain that confidence by turning around and kind of looking at the parent, right? Going, am I okay? Am I safe? am I doing well, is this good? And I think that’s the beginning of the building the Self confidence is the people who are surrounding yourself, you know, that are surrounding you, building that within you. Now, I do think that sometimes self confidence does come from self reliance and having to do things on your own and going Okay, I did that and there was no one there to catch me. So now you have a little bit more self confidence. But to your question that initially, I think it is, when you’re doing the nature versus nurture. I on this one go a little bit more towards nurture.

s Sara 02:02

I agree with you, I think that there is adults that you see who have what I call like a balloon-like self confidence. It’s just sort of like a blown up thing that doesn’t seem to have a lot of self confidence. It’s just sort of like a blown up thing that doesn’t seem to have a lot of substance to it, and it could easily crack and pop. And then there’s the ones that you can feel the depth of a self confidence, and it’s very energetic. You can feel it when he walks into the room, right? It’s like that famous Supreme Court case. Like I know that when I see it exactly.

And I always wonder about the balloon-like self confidence, does that come from almost too much fake cheerleading. As for the child, right, where every little thing was just like, oh, my god, that’s amazing. That’s the best, you’re the best. Everything is so great versus Hey, I love how hard you work on that I love, you know, the amount of thought you put into that, more complimenting the child’s effort versus its results, I think it makes a huge difference because that self reliance is a big part of self confidence, I believe. And I think a lot of self reliance comes from little actions that lead to small wins that then build up and build up and build up.

One of the things that I have read from I saw in child psychology books, is giving the children small opportunities to do things on their own, like obviously, a one year old, giving them the chance to walk and fall is great versus not putting them inside of a bubble. And then everything
they do is wonderful, you’re you know, you’re putting them in a false reality, putting them in a bubble and then just complimenting them over and over again, I think you’re going to create that balloon confidence effect. But if you give them a little bit of rope, a little bit of opportunity to do little things for themselves, even if it’s as small as letting an eight year old make their own breakfast, letting an eight year old make scrambled eggs, and maybe they’re gonna burn the eggs, but given them the chance to have that small win, that I can rely on myself that self reliance, and complementing effort versus the results, and they can go a long, long way.

s Shawna 04:14

You know I love the example of the balloon-like it makes me think that very realistically, people with that kind of self confidence, right? If that’s even what we’re going to call it, what happens when you tap that balloon a little bit? It pops, it’s no longer there. And when we’re talking about self reliance, what you talked about with your eight year old or an eight year old cooking breakfast for themselves, it’s not going to pop that easy because they burned the eggs right? They know not to do it again.

s Sara 04:42

That’s such a that’s such a great way to put it just giving them the chance to fail. Yeah, and recover. That’s a huge thing. And so tying it into divorce, or not even necessarily divorce just massive life changes that could be masked as unfailing, yeah, right. This is really where divorce can be a struggle for some people because it goes to the identity crisis of did I fail? And for some people could be divorced, some people could be losing a job it could be having to leave their home behind just many different forms is contained. But for our purposes, divorce is that identity piece of am I a failure? And I think a lot of people that go through this process come on the other end, and that balloon might be a little cracked. And we’re talking about how do you rebuild that? Can you rebuild it? Where do you start?

s Shawna 05:42

You know, and I think the very essence of starting is first to say, but just because I went through a divorce does not mean I’m a failure. It does not mean I didn’t leave it all on the table. I didn’t give it my all, you’re not a failure because you went through a divorce, you chose to have something different that you were no longer willing to put up with in your life. And so that’s that first thing. That’s the Self Reliance part, right? I chose this. And even if it’s the other person who decided to have the divorce person, you didn’t want it, right, that self reliance to say, I can rebuild me because I’ve already built me.

s Sara 06:21

I think the biggest part is that choice piece. This isn’t happening to me, but I am, I am choosing this next thing. I had spoken to potential clients and consultations before where they say I’m left with no choice. We’re like, no, no, no, you always have a choice. Your next step is your choice. How you respond to this is your choice. And accepting that choice. And the responsibility that comes with choice is part of the Self Reliance, self confidence piece. So to me, ultimately, self confidence comes from trusting oneself, trusting myself and the decisions I make trusting myself in the choices I make. And it doesn’t mean that it’s going to everything’s going to turn out exactly how I thought it’s going to turn out. But it means I trust myself that once I make the choice, once I make the decision, I can respond to what happens next. I won’t crack.

s Shawna 07:16

I agree. I think it really does come down to the choice, right. And I also think it’s really, really important to realize that it doesn’t mean you made the bad choice and the first time, right, that was your choice for them. And they’re given the circumstances and the information that you had, you decided to get married, right. And for to build self confidence Again, I think it’s really important to look back and say, I breathe what I thought I was going to have in my life, and really experienced that and really kind of let it but there’s one thing you really hit on there that I want to circle back to is one of the things that we talked to our clients about. And sometimes I just talked to people who are going through other things about is you need to take that power and make those decisions. When we work with our clients here, we give them their options, right. And I’m not going to come in ever and tell anybody, this is how your divorce case is gonna go, right? I’m going to give you options of different strategies, and it is your responsibility and your honor to make those choices for yourself in your life.

s Sara 08:24

And that’s how Self confidence is rebuilt. it’s a muscle and it builds one muscle at a timeyou exercise it. so small ways to exercise it is building small goals. And trusting yourself to meet those goals. Again, I think posed any hard life event you’re going through or something that’s shattered your self confidence. First, we feel a little out of control. And might think you might say everything feels out of control. But I think what you’re really saying is I feel out of control. I feel like I can’t control myself. Because reality is you never have any control over anybody or anything. You only have control over yourself. So when a person says everything’s out of control, I think what they’re really saying, I don’t trust that myself that I’m in control right now. I don’t trust the choices I’m making right now and trust the decisions I’m making myself. I don’t trust myself. And the way to regain that is just set small goals, small commitments, build that muscle back one bit, by one bit. It might be Hey, you know what, tomorrow morning, I’m gonna wake go for a run. Tomorrow morning. I’m gonna go get some fresh air. Tomorrow, I am going to accomplish this task of opening up a new bank account. Right? Just small things that you can just start seeing that I say and then I do; I say and then I complete the task.

s Shawna 09:50

You said and a lot things that are 12 Step programs that actually teach and is that you’re dealing with a lot of people who have lost control over whatever kind of addiction that they may be suffering from. And one of the tenants is if you can do one thing every day, do that one thing and that one thing maybe you get up and you made your bed. Yeah. Okay, so you sat in your pajamas, and that’s all that you could courage, but you made your bed. Yeah. And then you made your bed the second day. And the third day you made your bed and you made breakfast, right? And it’s that small building back up, and you take the smallest piece, and you make that part of your win. Right.

s Sara 10:30

And I think just understanding the idea that you never really had control over anything else other than yourself. Yeah, because there was probably this false sense of reality that you have more control than you thought. And that’s, again, that bubble effect, that there isn’t that that’s not true self confidence. Right? Right. And that’s the bubble of self confidence that easily gets cracked thinking you have control over other people thinking you have control over things outside of yourself. And the first real hit, the bubble gets cracked, versus understanding that I can only control myself and my commitments. You know, I also think it’s important to recognize that self confidence is a spectrum. We don’t always all of us walk in with this uber self confidence, right? I consider myself, you know, healthy self confidence. But even for me, there’s days where it’s high, and there’s days it’s lower, every day, I try to push it for the best I can for that day. But in its ultimate stage, when I’m in that Uber self confidence mode, I can tell you that the phrase I say to myself, in my head, share your publicly is whatever decision I make I trust myself to fully see through that decision to for it to become the best decision. So what does that mean? That means I may have moments where I make a decision. And instead of sitting there and having anxiety over is this right decision, wrong decision, right? This can I forecast the future, I made the commitment to myself that I am going to see this decision through to the point where in the future, I can look back and say I made the right, the best decision possible. And that means seeing it through and recognizing that at times, I’m gonna have to pivot at times I’m going to have to adjust at times I’m going to have to alter the course, that’s necessary to see the decision through but when I’m in an Uber state of self confidence, that’s the commitment making myself is not going to have anxiety over what does the future hold for this decision? I’m not going to have anxiety over Is this the right or wrong? Let go of that sort of chug like right or wrong thinking, and just trust in myself that I am going to use all the information I have at hand, the best knowledge I have currently, and see this decision through all the way till I’m satisfied with its result. And I can look back to past Sara and say, Hey, good job.that’s for me the height of my self confidence.

s Shawna 13:09

I think it was a wonderful way to look at it. I similarly, I kind of asked myself is tomorrow’s Shawna gonna appreciate what today’s Shawn is doing? Yeah. And that’s kind of the check. Shawna gonna appreciate what today’s Shawn is doing? Yeah. And that’s kind of the check.

Yeah, you’re right. It’s really important to mention this again. Even the most self confident people, even the most, you know, healthy individuals, wake up some days and go, Yeah, I’m not feeling this today. Yeah, I’m feeling self confident. I’m feeling like I’m putting it on. How do I get through this? And it’s a normal and natural feeling, especially when you’re going through such a traumatic, right, life changing event. And just take that breath and say, That’s normal, right? Yeah. You don’t have to beat yourself Just because you felt that way. Take that breath and take it take ownership and, and take back control.

s Sara 14:04

And that’s all you can do. say today, hey the self confidence muscle just like any other muscle that goes sore on a scale of one to 10 It’s at a 7. And that’s okay. Tomorrow, we’ll come back hopefully with the 10. Right.

s Shawna 14:16

We’re not going down to the 3 we’re gonna head for the ten.

s Sara 14:23

Thanks for listening to the happily ever after divorce podcast. If you’d like to learn more, go to Atlantadivorcelawgroup.com forward slash resources