4 Everyday Things That Are Responsible For Killing Your Confidence

One of the most annoying things in the world to me is that everyone giving advice seems to say that you need to be confident or “fake it til you make it.” I don’t know about you, but fake confidence never came off as real confidence from me (maybe I’m just a bad actress?).

For me to tap into real confidence, I had to learn the things that were killing my confidence & how to handle them. Here I’ll tell you 4 things that are completely killing your confidence & a quick step to do better.

Your impossible expectations.

Girl, you expect to be the rising star at work (& never accidentally replying to all when you only want to reply to one), in a perfect relationship with Prince Charming (where is he, anyway?), face on point every day (we all wish our #nomakeup snaps were glowy like Bey and Kim’s), with a fat bank account and rockin bod. These are all of our dreams, tbh, but you and I both know that achieving perfection (or even near perfection) in every single area is not possible. Expecting otherwise is setting yourself up for massive disappointment, failure, and is a trigger for both depression and procrastination. Just don’t.

Your quick step to escaping perfectionism is to give yourself permission to have a C+ day, week, face, at home manicure… whatever you’re doing and stressing over, let yourself say “this is good enough.”

Along those same lines, beating yourself up for every little thing is a huge confidence killer.

You know how the point of cheerleaders is to pump up the team to win the big game? Imagine the opposite of that – how would the team feel and perform? Letting negative self talk run wild all through your brain is like carrying around a squad of jeerleaders. Of course you feel like a total loser when you’re constantly telling yourself you’re a total loser. Let’s stop.

Your quick step to self cheerleading is to notice when the jeerleader comes out & say, “no, thank you” or “not today.”

Not having any freaking clue what you want to do with your life.

Ugh. I know. I’ve been here and the more you sit here, the more you tell yourself “I’m confused!” “I don’t know!” and those things become printed on the billboards of your brain. You start to end every conversation with them (because they’re conversation killers too) and people get really frustrated with your indecision: about your future & about where we’re going to lunch today. When your brain has been replaced by a giant question mark, of course you have no confidence – there isn’t room up in there. You need some #goals.

Your quick step to getting a clue is to get crafty and make a vision board. Grab a few (non-celeb-gossip) magazines, girl power playlist, and posterboard and collage your way to clarity.

You’re on a lonely island.

Do you ever feel like you’re totally surrounded by people every day but no one really sees you? Yeah.. you are isolating yourself. Having no support system – or having a system you don’t utilize at all – is like trying to drive a car around with no gas. Humans are built for connecting with other humans. We’re social creatures and we need to belong and feel accepted by others, including all of our faults and secrets. You need a #squad.

Your quick step to connection is to reach out to a friend you know you can trust and share something that is bothering you. If you need to, you can start the convo with: “I don’t need any advice, I just need to be heard.”