There are three huge emotions that are confidence killers, but the good news is that you can change your emotions by taking your thoughts captive. You have the power to turn your fear, comparison, and inaction into bold confidence. Here’s how.

Resources Mentioned:

Free Confidence Affirmations: https://ashleyvarner.com/affirmations
The Mindset Reset: https://ashleyvarner.com/mindset
Renew180 (formerly 180Confidence): https://ashleyvarner.com/mastermind
What to Do When You Lack Motivation: https://youtu.be/QxWsa4i-3Lo
What Confidence Helps You Avoid: https://youtu.be/XO16Qboj-c0

Highlights From the Episode

CONFIDENCE SERIES: 3 Confidence Killers

There are three huge emotions that are confidence killers, but the good news is that you can change these emotions by taking your thoughts captive. You have the power to turn fear, comparison, and inaction into bold confidence. Here’s how. 

Hey there, and welcome back to The Renewed Mind. We are continuing our confidence series, and I am so excited to share with you today three confidence killers, and how you can turn these around to build your confidence. 

Now, if you want to check out the previous videos on how to build a confidence mindset and three things that confidence helps you to avoid, I will leave links in the description for you, and you can check out the entire series.

What Confidence Helps You Avoid: https://youtu.be/XO16Qboj-c0

Fear

So today we’re talking about three confidence killers that really impact women especially. The biggest confidence killer that I see in my own life, in the lives of my friends, and my clients is fear. And I can really narrow down fear to three, the fear of three different things. 

So, it’s so funny, I was watching some reruns of the old TV show Monk, and he is basically afraid of everything. He’s afraid of germs, afraid of people, and afraid of everything. 

I have noticed three big fears that end up really killing our confidence. The first is fear of failure. So if you are human, you have probably struggled with a fear of failure. And so what I want to remind you is, in order to take hold of something, you are going to have to let go of being comfortable. People usually want to avoid failure, but they still want success, right? And if you talk to any successful person out there, whatever field that their success is in, what you’re going to discover is they failed their way to success. 

So imagine that woman at your church that is just super strong in their Bible study, they have no problem reading through the Bible in a year, they have great Bible study time. It looks like they’re just really involved in their Bible. Their Bible is just used, you can tell it’s loved and used. If you ask them, what they’re going to tell you is that there were many, many years before that that they struggled with their Bible study, where they struggled being consistent in their prayer time. They failed their way to success. 

The same is true in any area of your life. If you are losing weight, or having success in the business arena, if you study successful people, what you’re going to find is that they failed so many times before they succeeded. 

If you realize that you’re gonna have to let go of being comfortable, you’re gonna have to let go of this fear of failure in order to see confidence, and in order to see success, you are gonna be on your way to having a more confident mindset. 

The second area of fear that I see so often is the fear of criticism. And this can be a hard one, because most of us are people pleasers. We want to please other people. We want other people to like us, or to approve of what we’re doing. And this is definitely a hurdle that you have to jump. But honestly, I think it’s a hurdle that once you change your mindset about criticism, it becomes much easier to jump over this fear. 

So the fear of failure is a harder one to get over, and some of the other confidence killers that we’re gonna talk about are difficult to get over. But the fear of criticism, once you switch your thinking, it becomes way easier to let go of this fear. 

So I have found this true in my own life. Whenever I was having children, my first child, I was really trying to listen to all the advice, and the techniques, and all of the parenting tips that were coming my way.  I finally realized that no matter what I did, there would always be criticism. I decided to go to God’s word, to go to a few trusted advisors, and really make my parenting decisions based on that small limited amount of information and advice. 

Now, whenever you realize that no matter what you do, no matter how great of a project that you do, or what kind of a volunteer project that you run, or a retreat that you handle, or a presentation that you give, there is always going to be criticism. I heard a quote, and I don’t have the records of who said it originally. And the quote says, “You will never be criticized by someone who is doing more than you. You will only be criticized by someone doing less.” 

So often, we forget that whenever we are being criticized, it’s usually by people who have the time to criticize other people, right? 

My husband has a YouTube channel, and it’s all about his, our business, our brick and mortar business, and we sometimes get critiques on the videos that maybe the audio isn’t that great, or something like that. And we always work to do the best that we can, but we also realize that the comments that are created are by people who don’t have YouTube channels, or who don’t have videos that are out there, that are being filmed outside, or things like that. 

What you have to remember is that people are always going to have critiques, and criticism of you, whether it’s in your parenting, or your YouTube videos out on the farm. Whenever you just switch that thinking to say, there’s always going to be criticism, it’s something I’m always going to have to deal with. At the end of the day, I wanna create something that is true to what God is calling me to do, and my purpose in him. 

Whether that is parenting a child, or creating videos out on the farm, you have to decide at the end of the day that yes, you’re gonna have criticism, but it’s going to be there no matter what. You could have the best video ever, and you’re still gonna get criticism for it. 

Once we realized that it doesn’t matter what we create, that there’s always going to be criticism, once you can shift your thinking to accept that, then you can jump over this fear super quickly, and you build your confidence in the process because you can take criticism, and take it for what it is, and maybe make changes. 

For instance, in that video that someone was complaining about our audio, we took that to heart. We decided that we could get a new microphone for our outdoor videos. And now our audio in our outdoor videos is a lot better. 

So you can take that criticism, and decide, is this something that I want to use to better myself? Or is this something I just need to let go of? And once you do that, you are going to see more confidence in your life. 

The last area of fear that I wanted to share in this first point is the fear of rejection. So this really kind of piggybacks on the fear of criticism, but we have to let go of the need to be accepted by everyone. Every leader has people that they repel, but that doesn’t negate their success or their confidence. And if you think about it, even Jesus repelled people. 

When Jesus came giving this message of hope, truth, and change, there were people that it repelled, the religious leaders, the people that had been following the law for a long time, he was repelling those kinds of people. And Jesus was okay with that. He was okay with rejection from people. 

What that does is it just solidifies where your message is supposed to go. So your message isn’t for everybody. Your message your product, your teaching, whatever it is that you’re doing in the marketplace, it’s not for everyone. If you are repelling certain people, see that as a badge of honor almost to say now I know who really needs what I’m teaching. There are gonna be people who watch videos of mine, and they don’t really like the biblical side of things, and they’re gonna go find another mindset coach to learn from. Whenever I repel, not on purpose, but those people are repelled by my message, I have to learn to say, okay, they’re not the person that I need to speak to. They’re not the person that I’m called to reach. And the people who I am called to reach are people like you that are watching, listening, and really gaining truth and knowledge from what I’m teaching from God’s word. 

Fear is a huge confidence killer. And those are three kinds of subcategories of fear that I see most often.

Comparison

The second emotion that I find that kills confidence is comparison. And there are also three levels of comparison that I wanna share pretty quickly, so this video doesn’t go too long, but the first is a comparison with others. 

Obviously, this is the kind of comparison that we all think about, and it is comparing ourselves to the people around us. Maybe people who we think are better than us, or even people who we think aren’t as far along in their journey as we are. When you compare yourself with other people, it kills your confidence, because what you’re doing is basing your confidence on something that is shakeable, something that is really topsy-turvy. 

Whenever you want to build a strong confident mindset, and if you watch the video from last week about building a confidence mindset, then you’ll remember that I shared that you have to build your confidence on something that is immovable. 

So if you based your confidence on the number on the scale, or the number in your bank account, or the person that you saw in the line at the grocery store, that means that your confidence is gonna ebb and flow with the circumstances around you. And nobody wants that, right? Nobody wants confidence that is not really very sturdy, right? We wanna have unshakeable confidence. We wanna have confidence that is always there, and immovable, and the only way that we can do that is by getting our worth and our confidence from Christ. 

Whenever you compare yourself with other people, that is when you’re going to kill any kind of confidence that you may have built up. Another person that we might compare ourselves to is influencers. So I wanted to make this separate from just other people because so often we can compare ourselves with others, people that we know personally. And then we can also compare ourselves with people that we are comparing our reality to their Instagram-worthy photos. 

Whenever you are comparing yourself with influencers, whether or not that is their green way of living, or how what they look like, or even how they are showing up online if you’re comparing yourself to an influencer, realize that you’re not seeing the reality of who they are. Now, there are even a lot of influencers that try to look very authentic, and there’s actually a term out there called curated authenticity. So that means that there are people out there who are wanting to look relatable and make mistakes on purpose to try to look relatable to you. 

That is the world that we’re living in right now, ladies. So realize that whenever Instagram is fine, and social media is fine, but realize that we can’t compare ourselves to that. It is one thing to be inspired and encouraged by someone, maybe even a Bible teacher, or someone that you follow online. It is a completely different animal altogether to compare yourself to them and say unless I am like them, or unless I do what they do, then I can’t be effective in the kingdom, or I’m not satisfied with the way I look if I don’t match up to this ideal that we see with influencers online. 

The last area of comparison that I really wanna talk about today is comparison with your past self. So often there are quotes that say, I just wanna be better than I was yesterday. And I understand the idea behind these quotes. They’re trying to say, don’t compare yourself with other people, just compare yourself with yourself. And I can, I mean, I wanna, I don’t want to just be negative about that kind of quote, because I know where they’re coming from, but there is a danger in comparing yourself with the person you were yesterday. 

The reason I say that is because often women think that whenever they’re working on their goals or their success, that it’s a linear line from point A to point B. They think that it’s just gonna be a straight line from one place to the next. And that’s just not true, it’s not factual at all. So when you study success, growth, and progress, what you’re going to find is instead of it being a linear line from point A to point B, it looks more like a staircase. So there’s growth, and then there’s kind of a plateau, and then there’s growth, and a plateau. And often, it can even look like a mountain range, where it goes up and down, and up and down. And eventually, you get to the goal that you have, but if you are comparing yourself with who you were yesterday, and you had a great day yesterday, and today you’re not doing so great, that can be a confidence killer. 

What we have to do is just let go of comparison completely, and say, I am where I am today. I’m gonna be present in today, and do the things that God has called me to do today in this time for this season. And let that be okay. 

Really be accepting of the process of growth, and really the process of building your confidence as well.

Inaction

The last confidence killer that I wanna touch on is inaction. If you haven’t watched my entire video on what to do when you lack motivation, I will leave a link in the description for you. But that is definitely a great resource for you if you feel unmotivated, or you’re not taking action on the goals or the purpose that God has for you. 

What to Do When You Lack Motivation: https://youtu.be/QxWsa4i-3Lo

So really what it boils down to is whenever we are feeling confident, we’re willing to step out in faith to accomplish what God is calling us to do. If you are hesitant in your actions, if you are really allowing inaction to be part of your life, what you’re doing is kind of pulling back that confidence, because you’re allowing yourself time to think about all the negative things that could come up in regards to taking action. 

Let me just break it down in an example for you.

If you grab a banana as part of your lunch, and there’s no hesitation about that, your brain automatically thinks, oh, there’s no, there’s no worry here, there’s no danger here. 

But if you are stepping up to speak in a presentation, and you’re hesitating, your brain automatically goes into overdrive, and says, why is she hesitating? Is there danger somewhere? And then your brain goes into overdrive to try and keep you safe, to try and keep you comfortable. 

That small point of hesitation ends up causing you to have less confidence because you’re letting your brain kind of go crazy. Instead of taking your thoughts captive, you’re allowing your brain to go into this fight or flight mode, where you start having thoughts that are not conducive to your confidence. 

So make sure that you check out that video to get more in-depth on inaction, but inaction is definitely a confidence killer. 

If you want to continue your growth in a confidence mindset, make sure that you’re willing to take action, to step out in faith, to believe that what God has called you to do, he will also equip you to do. So for all of my subscribers this month, during this confidence series, I have a free downloadable workbook all about confidence and letting go of insecurity, and having really affirmations that are built from God’s word to build your confidence. If you are interested in grabbing that, make sure that you get the link in the description. It is free for any of my subscribers, so make sure to download that today. 

If you want to check out some of the other programs that I offer, there is one in particular that I think would be perfect if you are struggling with comparison, or fear, or inaction. That is The Mindset Reset. It is a six-week groundbreaking course that is all about mindset but from a biblical perspective. So if you need a reset on your thinking, if you want to really have more balance in your emotions, and experience actions that really line up with the success that you wanna have, but come from a very natural and organic place, then make sure to check that out today. I’ll leave a link in the description for you for that as well. 

I will see you next time, thanks for watching.

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