Inspiration showed up, and it's my favorite thing to think that you are on the other end of this, that you're receiving this information, and that it came to your curiosity or your impulse to look and listen. 

That's no coincidence! 

There's no such thing as a coincidence, right? Because everything coincides. 

We're doing it. 

All the C words seem to be coming up, but we're doing an episode today on the difference between confidence and courage. 

Confidence has 30 moving parts to it. You could do 30 separate episodes about confidence. 

But confidence comes from doing. It's just an evidence of our experience. 

At one point in our lives, we didn't know how to tie shoes. It was a little uncertain. 

We were a bit tentative as we practiced making a bunny ear, running, chasing the rabbits around the hole, and popping them in the hole. 

We were trying to figure out how to become competent, which then builds confidence. 

I like to talk about confidence in that our life is just a roller coaster of competence to incompetence. 

We were incompetent, as a little baby blob showing up in the world. 

We had no muscles, couldn't sit up, couldn't roll over, couldn't do anything for ourselves, and had to have our heads supported. 

We were incomp etent as a human. But it took a little time. 

If you think about the whole of our lives, the first couple of years that it took us to become competent in rolling over, crawling, standing up, and then walking didn't take that long.

As humans on two legs, we could feed ourselves and begin to dress ourselves. 

We always explored how to be a better version of ourselves, and that's what confidence is.

It's just evidence that we tried and tried and tried again until we reached a place where we felt pretty good about ourselves. 

There are a couple of ways to look at this, too. 

If you had a family that was just a witness to your greatness. 

There is a lot of confidence because you have emotional security. 

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out in this episode because I have no notes in front of me. 

This topic came to mind, so we're going to dive deep here as usual because my goal is to bring you back home to yourself, guiding you home surrounded by a cheerleading squad. 

You've got your helpers, healers, protectors, and leaders all around you in human form because we have those in angel form. 

But in human form, that's pretty important because, as little babies, we have eyes to see through our mortal body, and we're looking at these adults who are smiling back at us. 

We smile at them, and everybody cheers; it's exciting.

If that was consistent, the unconditional love that you may have gotten into the garbage when you weren't supposed to as a little kid, or you may have dropped a dish on the floor and broken it when you were a little kid. 

You did things that your parents were like, uh-oh, but they didn't remove their love from you. 

You had a good, healthy dose of self-worth and a pretty good self-image, which equates to confidence. 

Who am I, and what do I want? Knowing what you want is just fine. 

Knowing that who you are is perfect just the way you are. 

You're not supposed to be further ahead, and if you're a little bit behind, it doesn't matter because you're still perfect, right where you are. 

These are things that build a child's confidence. 

Now, let's go to the other extreme.

If you did not have a set of parents to help cheer you on, celebrate your wins, show up, and be present emotionally, you were just left to wonder. 

I don't know. How about now? Am I doing it right? Why did they get so mad at me when I slipped and fell down, and I didn't know? It's not you. 

That wasn't you, but as a little child, you're like, oh, it must be me because my parents are reacting in a way that makes me feel certain.

It makes me feel sad, unhappy, bewildered, overwhelmed. 

Something else happens when we feel less for having tried and tried again. 

Now, as adults, some of those wounds are still present. 

Some of us still have a little inner child who's crying. Some of us are still unsure of ourselves, doubting ourselves, and second-guessing ourselves. 

These are the people that I really want to talk to today. The ones that want confidence. 

I know you have confidence in many different areas of your life, but there are areas of your life that you don't have confidence in. 

Maybe it's keeping a relationship or choosing a healthy relationship. Maybe it's putting your work out into the world or finding a work that you really love doing because that's when your love is expressed the most through the work you do. 

The work you do might be in the walls of your own home or outside of your home. 

It might be in your community. It might be in charitable work, wherever it is.

If you love it, it's because it is your work to do, and you're expressing yourself fully in that work. 

If we lack confidence because we're working at something safe but not on something that we know would be really great for us, it would be exciting if it were no work at all. 

We could transition quickly to this work. We would do it in a heartbeat because it excites us. 

But if there is any doubt, our confidence is shaken. 

Confidence is a culmination of experiences in which we have become incompetent, and anytime you try something new, some incompetence is required. 

You will experience it, it will be present, you'll feel incompetent, and it feels unsafe because we don't want to look stupid, fail, or let other people down. 

All this I don't want to, don't want, I don't want, I don't want. 

When that happens, it can be a struggle. 

Now you're battling yourself, and that's the biggest battle to overcome. 

You are the mountain. You're trying to conquer the mountain. 

If you need to make a change in your life but don't feel confident, you will need some courage. 

Now, let's think about the word courage. 

We have encouraged. That's to give courage. 

We can't always live on borrowed courage. 

We can have people who cheer for us, encourage us, even have confidence in us. 

We know you can do it, but you won't get anywhere if you lack the courage. 

It's going to be the same struggle. 

You're going to battle yourself and argue for your limitations. It's going to be a struggle. 

That's not a satisfying life. 

It's not what you're here to do. You're not here to do that. 

You are here to muster up that courage and get out of your own way. 

Leave the excuses behind. Forget about what you don't know how to do. 

Remember, going back to that baby experience, you didn't know how to tie your shoe. 

Did you like to flop on the floor and say, I'm going to go barefoot forever? No, you did not. 

You're like, hmm, Mom tied my shoe. Apparently, it's possible. Let me try. See if I can coordinate my fingers enough to do it myself. 

There was an effort, failure. The knot didn't hold; it was a struggle. But it wasn't one that ever entered your mind not to try. 

As adults, we can become a little too smart for our own good and think of all the reasons why we shouldn't try. 

Now, I have actually had this experience more recently than not. That experience is that I had a story going on. 

This might be information for another episode because I'm kind of getting a dead end on it. 

Let me tell you this: I identified that I had other stories about not being supported. 

This was going to be hard. 

Who would I be if I didn't have a struggle like that, giving up the struggle? It took a lot of courage for me to do this because I've always had to struggle. 

My entire life has been a struggle. 

My marriage has been a struggle. I was like, what if I didn't have to struggle? What would my life be like without the struggle? 

It took a lot of courage to imagine my life without struggle. 

Can I live a life that I love without struggle? because the struggle was just normal. 

Having immature parents, my mother was the equivalency of a three-year-old, and my dad was somewhere around 12, never really fully grown, just annoying to my mother, who was three and needed to be loved. 

All I had to witness was a struggle. 

Except for my friends' parents, who were amazingly helpful in helping me understand that not everybody struggled like my parents did. 

I accepted that struggle for myself, and it wasn't mine. It wasn't mine to embrace. 

But I didn't realize I was struggling because I thought I was pursuing my dreams. 

I opened up a fitness studio, and I started with no clients. That can be a struggle. 

It's like, oh, I have agreed, I've signed a rent contract. I have agreed to pay rent for this brick-and-mortar. I have purchased equipment and furnishings. 

We had the place painted, carpeted, and decal. I was like, oh, now I'm on the hook. 

Now, like I had the courage to get going and do this project, but now it's push time, like the go time. 

I've got to figure out a way to let people know I'm open for business and that I'm a good fit for them. 

That was a struggle because I was prepared to put the energy and the work in, but I was not prepared to delegate that work. 

I did not imagine all the hats that I would have to wear in order to make that business go, that I couldn't clone or duplicate myself, and that I couldn't find, or I should say I didn't have the resources to pay the big bucks to get the good people in the door who would help me build my business. 

I'm talking about the marketers and the people who would be good representatives of my company. 

I want them to go out in the community and represent my company, attending all the meetings, networking events, and other such events. 

I struggled to put together events that we could host together. 

I couldn't find those people, and I didn't have those resources. 

Even though I was doing something I absolutely loved every minute with my trainers and my clients, I loved it—all of it. 

It's just that I was struggling and didn't know it. Does that make sense? 

Courage is an interesting animal because it can launch you; you can let go of this idea or the story you've been telling yourself. 

This backstory of life is a struggle, and you're going to have to fight to be loved, valued, heard, seen, significant, and accepted. 

You'll have to work hard at all these things, sending energy towards them just to survive. 

When I had to have the courage to give up that struggle, let's just say It was hard to pry my fingers apart. 

It was hard to give myself the gift that I was asking for. It's like, can we just make this easy? Can we just have fun? Can we just live, be creative, and do all the fun things we're here to do? 

Do it because we're built to do it, because we're born to do it, and because it's our purpose, mission, and life path. Can we just like do that? 

The resistance that I got, I was like, what is that? Where's that coming from? Well, it was coming from old wounds, unhealed wounds. 

That inner child that was hanging on for dear life to keep things the same as they always have been and what was familiar, which was the struggle. Oh, but the courage, the courage, because courage is what it takes to become confident. 

Courage is, I'm going to go and do this anyway because it's in me to do—the courage to give up the old story and start a new one. 

Life is easy for me.

I am built to see people's potential, to help them rise to the occasion, to meet their potential at where they need to be, with where they were built to be. 

I'm built to climb a mountain, reach the peak, and see the view from a new vantage point. 

But my old story of staying in the struggle was not meant for me. 

It may have been taught to me, may have been shown to me, but it wasn't meant for me, just like you were. 

The story of your struggle is not meant for you. 

It takes courage to let it go. Say, thank you next. Sit with that for a second. 

See if you can do a little homework to identify the story that's held you back. 

Where does the fear lie? Because wherever that fear is, it's just a perception of what happened when you were too immature to handle that situation. That's all. 

We have to rewrite it in our heads and change it around in our minds. 

What's the real story? 

If you know who you are here, what is the real story that can be told in place of the old story?

This will bring more confidence into your life and support the courage that it takes to do the thing you're here to do. 

Maybe that's love more. Maybe that's to develop this platform of unconditional love inside of yourself. 

I will do another episode on this because unconditional love is an amazing stepping stone to progressing and learning more about who you are. 

It takes courage to get there, to let go of what's wrong, and let go of what you think is going on; that's a problem. 

When you can let go of those things and step into the story of the true you, confidence comes back. It is there whether you had a support system as a child or not. 

Confidence shows up because you have the courage to let go of the old stuff. 

The old stuff is just holding you back—it's mud up to your hips. 

We need to dig out of the mud and step into the life that was meant for us to live, a life full of peace, ease, love, and validation not from other people but because we're doing what we were supposed to do, that we're in our lane, and we're rocking it. 

That's the most important thing. 

That's what brings you home; you use courage and confidence to your advantage. 

Now, confidence also implies that you've had experience. 

Anytime you try something new, you have no experience. 

There's no handbook, no playbook, no, you're just troubleshooting all the problems and trying to stay out of your own way the whole time. 

It can make you feel incompetent, like a failure, embarrassed, or ashamed that you tried something and had high hopes for it, and then it didn't turn out. 

You just have to remember that confidence is built on learning about what doesn't work in a relationship or in these shadow types when trying to become your best self and transcend it into a gift. That's the deep concept. 

It takes practice. It takes this resiliency and tenacity not to see how much crap you can take but literally to learn from the lessons quickly so you can move on. 

That brings confidence, and all of it takes courage. 

Courage is the state of being that you're in when you're trying something new and feel incompetent. 

As you exert effort and discover what does and doesn't work, you gain confidence. 

Now, you can speak confidently. 

You don't need the backstory from somebody. 

You can actually tell them what the struggle is. 

They're like, have you been listening in my house to, how do you know this? It's like asking me how I know. Because it's true, it's true. 

When you have those experiences behind you, you feel very confident in what you're doing, but it will never end. 

I'm just saying that your expansion requires more. More expansion, more expansion, more expansion. 

When you're a kid, you learn to tie your shoes, and then you know how to get dressed.

Then you learn your math and spelling, and you learn all these things that open your eyes to who you are, where your gifts lie, what your talents are, where your values are, what your core needs are, and what your commitments are. 

You've just been discovering who you are and what you want this whole time, and it's all of it. 

From the beginning to now, it has taken confidence and courage. 

As soon as you become confident in something, life hands you a new opportunity to become incompetent, meaning you have to pull courage out of your back pocket again and put it to use. 

Do the work! 

Show yourself what doesn't work so you can get down to what does work, and then you find your flow; it becomes easier, you drop your old stories, and courage serves you so well to become competent again.

You have all the confidence that comes from doing the work, but it always starts with the need for courage.

Step forward, step into who you are.

Become the person you were meant to be. Get on the path. Don't ever get off. 

Well, I always say you're on the path, and you can't get off, but you can sure spend a lot of time standing in the mud on your path instead of quickly getting out of the mud bog on the other side. 

When I say get on the path, I mean get on down the path. 

Keep going down the path. Don't get stuck in the mud bog; stay there for a while. 

I'm not saying you can't. You can. You can do anything you want. 

But sitting in the mud, wallowing in the mud, crying because you're in the mud, is not actually doing the work. 

You have to climb out of the mud pit and head down the path, and the mud dries; it falls off you. 

You'll hardly remember that it happened to you. 

You are on your way with your courage, on your way to confidence again—just always. 

I know some people who are just so magical. You aspire to be like them because they seem to have it all going on. 

But they can tell you stories of when they felt incompetent and lacked confidence. 

It took a lot of courage to step forward because life is like that. 

Nobody's life is perfect. 

We will all have opportunities to get out of the struggle, to experience the struggle, and get out of the struggle. 

To believe something, have it questioned, and then go back to finding the truth for you. 

The truth means nothing is missing and finding the truth. 

Apart from what we think happened, apart from the people we've talked to, what they think of us, or all the factors we factor into every ounce of our thinking. 

We stop being, what's the word?

Involved in everybody else's thoughts about us or opinions or agreement or disagreement. 

Instead, we get into the path that feels good because our intuition is leading us forward. 

We're working through the problems because we're uncovering the stories. We're going into a place where we've never gone before. 

It feels a little bit scary and uncertain, but that's okay because with courage on your side, 

Confidence comes, competence comes, and the next thing you know, you're faced with another opportunity to grow, contribute, and expand. The cycle starts over. 

Take confidence with you. Take all of the experiences that have built up your confidence and add them to courage. 

Then, take that courage and move forward into the unknown. 

Do the things that inspire you, motivate you, help you find that creative genius inside, that help you express yourself fully, and put your love out into the world. 

It will require confidence and courage, and I hope it serves you well. 

Note: You can access the full blog content in audio versions on Spotify and YouTube. Happy listening! 🎧 

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