Many women suffer from lack of self confidence and low self esteem and it frustrates them to no end. They want to do more, speak up more often, and feel better about their presence in the world. Basically, they want to audition for, and land, the lead role in their own lives!
Often the root cause of lack of self confidence is the messages we received in early childhood, somehow given the message that we are never worthy or good enough. Since these are things that happened in the past, we can’t change those events. But, with support for self acceptance, we can heal the wounds from those events.
What needs healing is the emotions that we feel whenever we want to take confident action, but something stops us. Suddenly, we’re triggered into a place of fear, doubt, or even shame at the idea of stepping up and taking action. What is often not realized is that it’s the physical sensations in the body that are aroused from childhood wounds that have never been healed. The event requiring confident action is the the trigger of the same body sensations you felt as a child when you were somehow made to feel unworthy. So perhaps when you want to take self confident action, you notice your chest tensing up, or your stomach feeling sickly, or your heart racing. The body is where we want to focus our attention for healing.
Rather than try to resolve the lack of self confidence on the mental plane – with explanations, justifications, better self talk, understanding, different stories, or new mental imagery – I am suggesting that we face the deeper issue, the physical sensations that come with the sense of unworthiness, low self esteem, or poor self confidence.
The physical sensations that go with the concept of unworthiness are so deep and so unpleasant, we’ll do just about anything not to experience them. We might avoid any event that would trigger it (don’t even audition for a role in your own life) or distract ourselves from it (I’m really too busy to try out.) or fight it (I’ll just push through this so other people think I’m brave, while telling myself I’m really a coward). Fighting the sensation can look like courage sometimes, but sometimes just disguises the fear of feeling the awful feelings of shame and fear.
As a life coach for women I suggest a mindfulness practice I call Awareness of Emotions, which takes you into experiencing the body sensations, pure and void of all the mental judgments and evaluations. When we can simply observe and experience the body sensations, allowing the body to feel whatever it feels without judgment or trying to chase it away, no matter how yucky it feels, we will begin to grow into true self acceptance. And self acceptance completely undoes the notion and feelings of unworthiness. The realization of “I accept myself just as I am,” means you can have whatever body sensations you have without labeling them right or wrong. We can begin to learn from the body. It really is just an energy source that wants our attention. When we no longer fear our own sensations, we will not need to run or avoid or fight to cover them up. Instead we can enter into the flow of sensations and accept them just as they are. And as we do that, we discover the reality of an openness, a calm, a Presence that is very loving and peaceful – just waiting to be discovered through our awakening.
We are meant to be free to act, speak, and flow with life without judgment of right or wrong, unworthy or worthy. We begin to see that all of the judgments are unreal. What IS real is you, your aliveness, all your body sensations, and your free expression.
Blessings for your awakening to experience true self confidence for women through self acceptance!