Climbing Your Way to Confidence

I have struggled with confidence for a large portion of my life. Especially when it came to entering new roles. I was terrified of failure. I was worried about my self-image. I was scared, scared of responsibility. I didn't want to be held accountable for the failures that inevitably come with entering new roles. Over time, through different experiences that required a vast amount of responsibility like a two-year mission for my church in Mexico, and various leadership roles throughout my education and career, I was able to find a new sense of confidence.

I recently graduated with a Masters's in Global Management. This was a very new experience being in business school. I was surrounded by very effective, efficient, and talented individuals. I began to feel lost during my degree. I felt I didn't belong in the middle of all these successful people, in this world of corporate professionals. I felt it was hard to relate at times as I was not versed in all the business vernacular, not to mention what seemed to be a never-ending amount of acronyms for everything (goodness gracious especially in the supply chain). I lost my confidence in myself. I realized I was always devaluing myself when trying to articulate my previous experience, not believing it measured up. I spoke with a boss of mine, inquiring about my interview for the position, and was told frankly it was my reputation, not my interviewing skills that got me the job. So though it was comforting to hear others valued my character, in my interviews I would fall apart unable to articulate my value. Later, as I reflected on all this, I wanted to know what it was that gave me a strong sense of confidence previously in my life. What principles were they that laid a strong foundation?

Recently I listened to an interview of Lauren Zander from Handel Group with Tom Bilyeu. She mentioned some key elements that shed light on the principles I was looking for. These elements are foundational on the climb to confidence for a person.

1) Do you make and keep your promises to yourself?

• "Integrity" derives from the Latin "integritatem" meaning "soundness, wholeness, blamelessness", and from integer, meaning "whole." Integrity is integral for the development and maintenance of confidence in one's self. When one has confidence in themselves, it is a result of integrity and that sense of wholeness. When you do what you say you are going to do, when you keep promises to yourself, you are building self-trust. Trust is the fundamental ingredient of any relationship. In this case, it is fundamental to the relationship you have with yourself. If you can trust yourself, you will have confidence in your ability to execute, or in your ability to fail, learn, and move forward. Integrity is what creates wholeness in a person, and thus confidence as well.

2) You must develop reliability

• Building upon the first element of integrity in one's self is the development of reliability. Now that you have developed trust in yourself through personal integrity, following through on your promises to yourself, you must fulfill your promises and responsibilities to others. When you accomplish and complete tasks in which others rely on you, you develop trust between yourself and others. Again creating that foundation for the relationship. You become reliable. This instills a stronger sense of confidence in your capabilities because you have established trust with other people as well as yourself. Now you know, and others know, you do what you say you will.

A Lesson from the Mountain

This year my organization Raksha Ascent took fifteen young women in Nepal on a leadership retreat in the Himalayas. Over seven days we trekked by day and held discussions around leadership and personal development in the evenings. The purpose of the trek was to instill a sense of confidence in these young women and provide different thought frameworks to employ in their personal and professional development.

The trek was not easy, and that was part of the experience design. We wanted these girls to develop confidence in themselves and their capabilities. They expressed determination at the beginning before we were on the trail. They expressed that they would be dedicated to this expedition. Once on the trail, they quickly realized the difficulty of the terrain and the fatigue that would be required throughout the duration of the trek. They maintained their motivation by having 'motivation checks' often and cheering "YES WE CAN!" up the mountain and, "YES WE DID!" down. Three moments particularly stood out to me in my observation of their experience, one on the eve of summiting, one on the summit, and another at the end.

• On the eve of summiting, we got word of harsh weather coming our way. I was informed of a 99% chance of heavy snow and zero visibility. This discouraged me as I didn't want to skip summiting by turning back, this was important to the girls. I also had to keep them safe. So was spoke with the group. They said, let's stick to the plan and wake up early, if the weather is good we would go up, if not we would turn back as safety is most important. So we stuck to the plan and as we woke up early, sure enough, we had the 1% chance of good weather after all! I was impressed by their determination to at least try. They'd come this far, they wanted to at least try.
• At the summit, the girls openly expressed how powerful they felt, that they had reached their destination. Through mild sickness, fatigue, and unpredictable weather they maintained in their mind and heart the promise they made to themselves that they would make it to the top, and they did!
• At the end of the trek, we had a meeting and let the girls share their biggest takeaways from the experience. They expressed that in Nepal not as many women go trekking, however, now they have just successfully finished a trek! This not only gave them confidence but also shattered a previous limiting paradigm. I heard from multiple girls the same words:

"I am amazed I did that, I now feel because I have done this difficult trek I can do anything!"

They had built a foundation of personal integrity within themselves, setting out to accomplish what they had promised themselves they would do. This self-belief is confidence. We also had accomplished our purpose, helping these girls build that confidence.

If you struggle with confidence, then it is time to start making some promises to yourself and keeping them. Choose a project, a goal, a habit, something that you can accomplish, and keep your word to yourself that you will do it. Maybe it is as simple as reading 15 minutes every day without fail, starting a steady blog or YouTube channel, or something as big as climbing a 14,000 ft. peak! Whatever it is, commit, and celebrate your victories.

Not unlike a mountain climb. Building confidence requires constant effort, and there will be challenges along the way. However, the view from the top is glorious, especially when you see just how far you've come. Now isn't that something to be proud of?