Confidence is something everyone wants but few are willing to do the work to achieve. Being willing to feel your feelings and face your demons are the two of the risks you must be willing to take in order gain confidence. The good news: anyone can have more confidence. It is a function of consistent effort, compassion and a willingness to tell the truth.

Who would think confidence has anything to do with compassion but it does. Most of us are so hard on ourselves we won’t make the effort that is necessary to achieve long lasting results if it includes feeling stupid, silly or inadequate. Any risk may make you feel any or all of those things. In order to gain confidence, you must be willing to feel every feeling and take actions regardless of those same feelings.

“Rhonda, if I only had more confidence I would have the courage to be true to myself and get my dream job (marry the girl, lose weight, fall in love, let go of guilt, learn to say ‘no,’ find my purpose, etc).”

I can’t tell you how many times people tell me ‘if only I had confidence THEN I could change my life.” But confidence doesn’t come first. Risk does.

In order to gain confidence you must take the risk you do not want to take. Confidence does not happen once in your life and you have it for good. Confidence must be practiced just like any other muscle on your body. Confidence must be nurtured in order for it to grow.

That is the secret to building your confidence. You must take risks to learn how to count on yourself which in turn creates confidence. Simple but scary. Fear tells us that no risk is worth it. The feelings you experience can be extremely uncomfortable. Yet, learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable while feelings your feelings and taking risks is an important ingredient in being true to yourself.

You can’t wait for confidence to happen, first you must go for it and then confidence will happen. Therefore, the only way you will build confidence is to do the thing you fear.

I understand  that taking risks and feeling uncomfortable is not the most pleasant experience yet nothing will give you so much personal satisfaction. You will have numerous opportunities to stretch your view of who you are and what you are capable of. You are more valuable than you know. This will help you claim it.

R*I*S*K Formula

Release your attachment to the outcome.
Invest fully in your intention.
Stand for the truth.
Keep kindness a priority.

Release your attachment to the outcome.

Taking a risk is not about winning or losing but rather about having the courage to try something new. However, that doesn’t mean being foolhardy. Fearless people have the wisdom to consider all the possible outcomes of taking any given risk, especially a big one such as starting a new business. They learn all they can about the venture. They know there’s a difference between hesitating out of fear of failure and taking the time to do research and get advice. But ultimately, they let go of the goal. They focus on the process. In that moment, they are living with intention. If they don’t reach the goal, they are not devastated. They have the emotional stamina to pick themselves up and take a new risk. If they do reach the goal that gives them the fortitude to stretch themselves even further because they know intuitively that they are being true to themselves.

Invest fully in your Intention

Go for it with all you’ve got. Find the time. Scrape up the money. Learn everything you can. Ignore your detractors. Enlist your Support Team and your Wise Council. And on the days when some bureaucrat sits on the paperwork or an ice storm makes you miss a crucial meeting or illness saps your energy or a loved one needs your full attention, don’t give up. Postpone maybe, but don’t give up. You are not at the mercy of fate. Accomplishments happen when you invest fully and purposefully in yourself.

Stand for truth 

Speak and act true to who you are. Many times we get off track because we forget what we are committed to. When someone does something that affects us negatively, we tend to lose sight of our intentions. Remember, the only person left to face at the end of the day is you. Without clear commitments, you can easily be blown off course and rendered powerless. Instead, decide a course of action based on what you value and the type of person you would be proud to be.

Keep kindness a priority

Being kind to yourself keeps you on the path towards joy and peace of mind, and eases the pressure to be better or more perfect than you are. Kindness to others puts compassion to work and overrides your need to be “right.” Being kind gives you the space to breathe while integrating the changes you would like to make, and allows you time to process these new ways of being. Learning to love yourself through any situation rather than just the ones you or others approve of is absolutely necessary. This is a vital component of the internal permission you need in order to follow your own fearless path.

Each of us take risks that go unnoticed.
We don’t think they are good enough to call a risk
or hard enough or big enough.

Yet, every time we acknowledge the risks we take, no matter how small, we are creating a foundation that will sustain us through our fears.

We will know we can count on ourselves to follow through and we will believe that no matter what we are doing, we are contributing to the world just by being willing to be ourselves. That is the biggest risk of all. As the poet e.e.cummings says, “To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

That fight is always within ourselves. To risk is to fight for you, the you that dares to dream.

You have the formula…

RELEASE. . .INVEST. . .STAND. . .KIND. . .R*I*S*K.

Watch Rhonda’s latest video at FearSucksVideo.com! In an upcoming video, Rhonda will be giving the solution to procrastination!

Fear comes in all shapes and sizes, it likes to hide in costumes to make you confused about what it actually is. That is why sometimes it can be hard to name the exact fear that has taken up residence in your heart, fooling you into believing all of its lies.

And while there are many ways that fear shows up, we’ve found that there are some really basic and common fears that are the root fears. When you identify these, you can really start to make some headway towards opening up your love channels and taking back control of your choices and feelings from fear.

Here are a few of the most common brands of fear.

Read them and notice which ones resonate most for you – meaning you probably can feel something twinge inside, or your head nods, you remember some past event.

You may have more than one that resonates, most of us do. That’s okay, we can handle them all here. Go ahead and note all the ones that resonate and for purposes of this fear cleanse, notice which ONE is really in your way now in your life.

Fear of

1. Rejection / Vulnerability
2. Failing / Disappointing another
3. Being Disappointed
4. Abandonment / Being Alone
5. Not having enough – financial insecurity, lack, scarcity
6. Not being good enough
7. Fear of not living your purpose / fear of living you to your potential
8. Fear of being seen / fear of being unseen, unnoticed

What’s your brand of fear, share below.

Stage one: Awareness

You become aware of a non-self loving pattern, belief, or habit

Stage two: Reflection

You still make choices and decisions and act from the non-self loving pattern, belief and habit but at some point after the act, you are able to look back at the event and observe the pattern, belief or habit, and see how you might have responded or chosen differently

Stage three: Change in the Moment

When you find yourself at a choice or decision point, or about to move into action, you viscerally notice that you have the option of making a choice from love or from fear, from a non-self loving pattern or belief or a self-loving pattern or belief, and you make a conscious choice to choose the path of love. It’s like you flip a switch, and the channel you choose is love, and a new pattern, habit, belief is formed –
a self loving and self empowering one!

Stage four: Integration

The old pattern, habit, belief is replaced by the new pattern, habit and belief and from this point forward you respond and make choices from the new self-loving, self-empowering pathway.