Your Story May Hold You Back
Updated: Sep 15, 2019
Do you struggle with confidence in your leadership abilities?
Let's jump right into today's topic which is about really having confidence in yourself as a leader. Now, confidence is something that I struggled with a lot when I was first starting in leadership. I thought I was confident, but I wasn't.
How did I overcome that? Well, one of the things that I did was I developed a mantra that I said to myself for months. I'd repeat it several times a day. I had it on a sticky note, on my bathroom mirror, in my car, and what I told myself was I was a professional. I know what I'm talking about. I paid my dues. I am good-enough. I just said that over and over and over again until I started believing it.
Each of us has a story that gets trapped in our head that we've told ourselves about ourselves as leaders. My story was that I was too young. That I was not experienced enough, but it's really about the stories we tell ourselves that hold us back. We can get stuck in those stories of past failures and never allow ourselves to get past that and move on into our full potential as leaders.
My quick tip for you, today is, create a mantra. Create a mantra that tells yourself how wonderful you are and practice that mantra until you start believing it and until you can start catching the old story that's going on in your head and correcting it. What I had to do with mine is, eventually, I would catch myself in my head telling myself that I was too young or that I wasn't good enough.
When I caught myself telling that old story, I would say, "You know, one time that might have been true but that's no longer my truth. My truth is, that I am a professional. I know what I'm talking about, I paid my dues, I am good enough."
If you take the time to just invest in creating that simple mantra for yourself, you would be surprised at what a difference it can make in your confidence as a leader.