Episode 1229: Gaining Confidence

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,229 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:06] Grant Botma: I'm Grant

[00:00:07] Botma. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find work life harmony is key and one way to be inspired to. Is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:33] Scott Maderer: Similar to having a judgment free zone, you also need to. That it's okay to be wrong. It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to even fail that. That by itself is not the failure. Not trying again and not continuing. That's the failure.

[00:00:51] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who [00:01:00] God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can.

[00:01:17] The world

[00:01:18] in today's episode about developing your influence through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about what confidence is. I share some of the effects of both over and under confidence, and I also share eight ways you can begin to build your confidence. You've heard me talk about developing your talent, and one of the best ways to do that is through books.

[00:01:39] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read, and that's why today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from, [00:02:00] and you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via.

[00:02:06] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. Confidence is defined as a belief in one's self or a conviction that one has the ability to meets life's challenges and to succeed, and you having the willingness to act accordingly.

[00:02:29] It's about having a realistic sense of. What one can do and what one can't do, and feeling secure in that knowledge, Having some confidence in your level of ability. We kind of use that word a lot about confidence. as if it's something that people are born with. But the truth is, confidence is not an innate or fixed characteristic.

[00:02:54] Rather it's an ability, it's a skill. It's something that can be practiced and [00:03:00] acquired and developed and improved over time. If you wanna have more confidence in social settings than you can practice becoming. More confident in social settings, observing how conversations happen, what is the structure and the flow of a conversation, and preparing ahead of time and coming up with ideas to, to speak about.

[00:03:23] If you have anxiety or self doubt about being in a social situation, there are ways that you can practice this and skills that you can develop to get better at it over out of time. And of course, social confidence. One type of confidence. You can have confidence in your career, Confidence around your ability to do certain tasks or have certain mental or physical abilities.

[00:03:49] Confidence spreads into a lot of things. And it's not even one unified thing. You could have confidence in one area of your life and yet lack [00:04:00] confidence in another. Perhaps you have confidence around your work abilities, but lack confidence when it comes to your relationships or your social abilities or vice versa.

[00:04:08] What's more, There's actually a problem with sometimes having overconfidence. Under confidence as well and they're both bad in their own way. Overconfidence is also kind of part of the Dunning Kruger effect. This idea that we overestimate our ability to do things. Sometimes we have way more confidence in our ability to get something done, Do it well.

[00:04:35] You ask someone to do something that they've never done before, and if they have a tendency to think that they're going to be better at it, then they really are. That can be overconfidence. That's also happened sometimes when you have a great deal of confidence in one area of your life and therefore, Because of that skill and that ability and the thing that you're good at, you then think that spreads into all areas of your life.

[00:04:59] And that can come [00:05:00] across as arrogance or cockiness or even narcissism in, in its extreme ability where you're actually overcoming insecurities and in feelings of inadequacy by projecting this sort of false bravado. But, Confidence is equally bad. This is the idea of looking at things that you're doing and assuming that there's no possible way that you can do well, that there's no possible way that you could.

[00:05:33] Manage this you tend to shy away from new opportunities. You tend to not take any sort of risk at all. A lot of times this is left over from past trauma or past ways that you are raised or cultural backgrounds or relationship experiences and other past experiences that come across and begin to cause you to have a feeling [00:06:00] of there's just nothing that I'm good.

[00:06:02] Both of these are equally bad and equally harmful just in different ways. Overconfidence lends you to take risks that you shouldn't, and under confidence leaves you to not taking risks that you should. So both can be damaging to your ability to grow and succeed in life. So how do we work on our confidence?

[00:06:23] Some of these are things that you will have heard on the podcast before because they're things that help you in other areas of your life as. One is having pride in the small things. And what I mean by that is managing to celebrate every little victory, no matter how small they might seem, no matter how tiny the step is.

[00:06:47] Still celebrating that success, celebrating every accomplishment and goal on the route towards a bigger one instead of focusing on the things that are still before. Similar to that, learning [00:07:00] to have a judgment free mentality, both for yourself and for others. Not looking at people as a way that you know is good or bad, but instead looking to find the things that you can encourage and celebrate in each person that's out there.

[00:07:19] The third, learning to have good boundaries and have the ability to. No to things. Learning to understand that you can't do everything, and being able to say, No, not, I'll think about it, not I'll get back to it, not I'll talk to you later, but just, No, I can't do that. It also leads us to have confidence by speaking up, by actually letting o other people know what our boundaries, our opinions, our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams are having the bravery to speak.

[00:07:53] Similarly, listening to others, learning their journey, their life experience, learning what's [00:08:00] going on for them as well, and then believing in yourself and in the things that you believe in, the things that you feel are important. Having an understanding that what I believe in is okay. . Similar to having a judgment free zone, you also need to learn that it's okay to be wrong.

[00:08:22] It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to even fail that. That by itself is not the failure. Not trying again and not continuing. That's the failure. And then the last one is an aside, but getting plenty of exercise, eating well, getting plenty of sleep. These sorts of self care things are actually good ways to help increase and build and grow your confidence as well.

[00:08:50] Thanks for listening.

[00:08:51] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to [00:09:00] not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the Stewardship of Talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent.

[00:09:22] Or if you're in the us, you can text 4, 4, 2 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, and get those tips. Until next time, invest your. Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.