Write | Inspire | Dream
In the near future, I plan to expand on the topic of success and how we as a collective define the term. The La.Rue mission statement states that the content here is meant to empower you to redefine success to fit your vision of achievement. Over time, and with more content, we will redefine your definition of success to fit your individual life and goals. Based on what you choose to take away and learn from the content published and created through the La.Rue brand, you will accomplish this. Today, we’re going to align success with confidence and how the two correlate. How we can successfully build confidence through action, and not base it on the precise moment we wait for “success.”
Someone once told me that confidence is built upon accomplishment. In the same way a positive mindset is the result of hard work and dedication, confidence is the result of positive action and success. Let me be clear here on what I mean by “success.” Success is not an end result we’re looking to achieve, and only then can we obtain a confidence in ourselves. Success, in this context, is the action of moving forward towards your dreams. On the blog, we’ve talked about making forward progress and its impacts on our abilities to process things like failure or even overwhelming success. So, today on La.Rue, I want to talk about how to build confidence through the action of actively achieving your dreams. Thus, positively redesigning our approach to success and the confidence we have in ourselves.
Confidence as it Relates to Success
Success does not define our confidence in ourselves. It is not the deciding factor or the single contribution to our confidence in ourselves. Our past success and achievements enhance our confidence to succeed further, and it is one of the many ways we grow confidence in ourselves. As we grow up and mature, our confidence changes. When we’re young children, adults not only tell us we “can” but enhance our dreams of becoming a princess, president, and astronaut. Then, as we mature, more and more of these adults decide to help us reimagine an acceptable reality more aligned with their views of what a “realistic” job can be. These lessons subconsciously teach us to have less confidence in our “big dreams.” Although I don’t think most people intend to teach us this lesson, our confidence in ourselves dwindles as we grow, and it is up to us to rebuild.
I’ve recently been reading The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. He talks about our Upper Limit Problem and the adverse effects our ego has on our ability to reach success. Hendricks talks about the Upper Limit Problem as the limiting beliefs we have that keep us from moving forward to success; we’re scared of the things we desire most. Similarly, he talks about ego as a blockage from our success. If we desire to achieve something for the sole purpose of vanity or to prove to the person who told you “you can’t,” that you, in fact, can, then we will never reach our true success. From this, we learn that our confidence in our ability to succeed must come from a place of pure desire to achieve success for the sole purpose of making progress in our lives.
How to Build Confidence in Your Forward Progress
In a word, commitment. Every day that you wake up, take action and commit to following your dreams, you’re building confidence in yourself that you can achieve those big dreams. I’ve recently been binge-listening (again) to all of the Big Conversations Podcasts by Haley Hoffman Smith, and I’ve been reflecting on some of the more poignant points she makes on confidence and success. We build confidence in ourselves and in our decisions by practicing and building on our love. One of her most recent podcast episodes published (as I’m writing this blog in early April) is on forgiveness. Haley discusses the intentions behind forgiveness and how forgiving someone and their actions in your past will open up your future to success. By holding onto negative thoughts and emotions, you’re distancing yourself from your success because, too often, we’re rooted in a past that cannot be reshaped.
I’ve written about how my intentional living journey has brought me through intense self-reflections that have allowed me to move beyond my past. But, I had never thought of those reflections as a way to forgive people in my past. I have, however, built a great confidence in myself over that time. And I find myself wondering; by forgiving the actions of people in my past and continuing to take action on my future, will my confidence in myself grow so exponentially that my Upper Limit Problem will become the solution to my success? In the blog, Why it’s OKAY to not have it all figured out; I define forward progress as the momentum of action taken now that moves you forward towards success. By taking action both to benefit our future and address our pasts, we can align ourselves with our greatest potential for success.
What Do We Think?
I know this blog has a lot of outside dialogue (Big Conversations Podcast & The Big Leap) as a part of the conversation, which I haven’t really done before. I think this blog turned out more like a stream of consciousness or outline for a paper rather than a normal blog. But I’ve been consuming some fascinating information recently that I felt I needed to share. So definitely let me know what you think and if you’d like more content like this by using the comment section below. If you have any direct questions about the podcast or book mentioned or about the content discussed, you can reach out to me via the contact page.
