Unconditional Confidence Coaching 

Up, down. Praise, blame. Expansion, contraction…

You get a promotion at work… “Yea!!”

Your boss criticizes you… “Wuaaaa!!”

You make a lot of money in the stock market… “Yeaaaa!!”

You lose money in an economic downturn… “Wuaaaaa!!”

You give a killer presentation at a conference that attracts many potential investors… “Yeaaaa!”

You bomb a business deal with a big investor… “Wuaaaaa!”

Such is life… constantly changing from excitement to disappointment – from things we like to things we don’t like.

Have you noticed that when things are going well we feel good about ourselves? We feel confident, strong, capable, motivated, and so on:

“I am on top of the world!”
“I made it!”
“I am such a badass!”

But when things are down we feel bad about ourselves; we self-blame. We doubt ourselves, our confidence goes down, and our inner critic gets a field day:

“I always have to fuck it up.”
“I should not have done that.”
“I am such a loser!”

“Yo-yo confidence” is unreliable, and it’s needy.

It’s always wanting praise and validation. And even though it sometimes feels solid and substantial (when shit is going right), the moment something goes wrong, as it always does, yo-yo confidence collapses. So, if we are honest with ourselves…

Yo-yo confidence is no confidence at all. It is an imitation. A cheap one.

It’s like one of those knockoff Rolex watches that some relentlessly abrasive dude is trying to sell you on a city street corner.

Now… here is the good news:

If there is an imitation, that means there is the real thing. So… what is this real thing? And how do we find it??

The real thing is subtle. It’s unpretentious and open…

It’s fluid and does not require external validation. It’s independent of the ups and downs of life. It’s something inside ourselves that is untouched by external circumstances.

It’s an intrinsic confidence. It’s a confidence about being ourselves.

It’s not a confidence about making this or that happen. Instead of focusing on controlling or changing the externals, we focus on our ability to navigate life – trusting that, no matter what is happening outside ourselves, it’s all good.

This kind of confidence isn’t developed. It’s uncovered.

To do this, you turn your attention inward, and you move toward your vulnerability. You see, this confidence is not about being tough. It’s about being you. It’s about being so comfortable inside yourself that it is okay if you feel weak or vulnerable.

It’s important to say here that this is not an all-or-nothing kind of scenario. It’s more like an ideal toward which we keep moving.

There will be times when we are more grounded in ourselves and will feel this unconditional confidence more, and there will be times when we are caught up in our old patterns and don’t experience it. And, yes, there will be times that we revert to yo-yo confidence.

We need to embrace our vulnerability. Here’s how we do that…

We turn our attention to all those parts of ourselves that we reject. And before you say you don’t have parts of yourself that you reject, let me assure you: We all have parts of ourselves that we reject.

Those parts of ourselves that we feel shame about…

Those parts of ourselves that don’t match with our ideas of ourselves…

Those parts of ourselves that are loaded with difficult emotions….

We might not even be consciously aware of them; but, believe me, those parts are there, hidden deep in our minds.

To connect to “unconditional confidence,” we must turn inward…

… and embark on the courageous journey toward our “shadow” (if you don’t know what this is, just Google “Jung and shadow”).

This is no walk in the park, my friends. It’s hard work, and it requires a lot of self-honesty and a willingness to go where you have not dared to go before.

So we need support to do this. It is difficult, if not impossible, to do it alone.