Welcome to the graceful confidence podcast. I'm your host Lauren de Beck, the founder of Life coaching with Lauren, a female empowerment coach, an entrepreneur m path and a lover of the ego friendly lifestyle. My mission is to help women take control of their lives by teaching them how to increase their confidence in an authentic and genuine way so they can achieve both personal and professional goals. Each week on the graceful confidence podcast I will share ways to increase your confidence tips on how to integrate grace into your life as well as stories and advice from other experts on how as women we can better empower ourselves and those around us. I will show you exactly how to use the power of confidence and Grace to create an empowering and invigorating life that you are excited about waking up to every single day. Now let's dive in, I would like to thank you for tuning in to the graceful confidence podcast. Whether you are just starting this journey with me or whether you have been a longtime listener and you're going back to the beginning, thank you again for being here.

This podcast is the product of a lot of conversations I've had with clients, so after working with so many different clients, a common theme really began to thread its way through the conversations and that theme was the lack of confidence that the women I work with had in themselves and that lack of confidence was preventing them from moving forward with either particular dreams goals, desires that they wanted. So that's why I decided to start this podcast. I wanted to help women boost their confidence in a way that will better position them to live an empowering and invigorating life and throughout building our confidence. We're going to learn why confidence is so important, the benefits having confidence can bring and truly ways to boost your confidence and I do want to caution you and I will dive into this and an entire episode and dedicate an entire episode to this, but there is a very fine line between being confident and being arrogant.

But in the middle of those two there is this beautiful sweet spot that I call being gracefully confident and it's in this sweet spot that the magic really happens. This is where the benefits of confidence are met with the benefits of living with Grace. So here you're able to move confidently in the direction of your dreams with the intention of the greatest good of everyone in mind. So what does that mean? You know sometimes you see people who think that nice guys finish last or in this case nice girls finish last and the only way to get ahead is to step on those who are in front of you. I am a firm believer that you can have everything you want, you can achieve everything you want and you can do it in a kind, humble and graceful way while you're building up those around you. So that is the entire notion of what it means to be gracefully confident and how we can use it to really create the life that we are excited about waking up to every single day.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I noticed people started commenting on how they, they noticed how confident I was because I never considered myself a confident person or worked on becoming more confident. In fact, when I was younger, I was confidence was the furthest thing from my mind. I was very, very tall in fifth grade, so I towered over all of my friends over all of the boys, I was big, I was gawky, I was awkward. I have one memory that's a deep seated memory of when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I had started ice skating and I was doing an ice show and my parents had videotaped it, it was my first one and someone in the background of the video had commented with, oh, is that the instructor? She's not very good because I was so much taller than the rest of the kids.

I looked like an adult, but clearly did not act like it or have the grace that an adult ice skater would have. But those memories just really seated deep within me and for a long time I felt not confident and I tried to look smaller. I tried to hide myself and then eventually a switch happened and it was in high school that this switch really occurred that I realized I don't need to hide who I am and I have qualities and skills and abilities that were unique to me and the more I focused on those, the better I felt because I was doing the things that I wanted to do and I was doing it well and really that is what confidence is, being confident, is being aware of your skills and abilities and believing in yourself. I'm also a firm believer that as humans, as individuals, we should focus on our strengths, we should be aware of our weaknesses but make sure we spend time and energy on building up our strength and doing what we can to, to move those forward instead of wasting the time, energy and money on our weaknesses when that might be somebody else's strength and we might be able to partner with them and both of our strengths are being utilized.

So in high school I started to realize I had these strengths that other people didn't and some of those strengths included um an ability to look forward to plan and to really create the life that I wanted to live. So while a lot of people were just living from the day to day, I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted my life to look like and I don't mean that as in, I knew what job I wanted to have or I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up it was, it was much deeper and broader. So I knew that I wanted to live somewhere warm. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, it's very cold in Cleveland, there's lots of snow, but I went to California with a family member when I was going into high school and that trip changed my life because for the first time I saw what a big world there was out there and I saw little cafe seating on the sidewalk with pretty lights over it and it was just green and the ocean and the mountains.

It was just beautiful. I remember coming home and telling my mom that I was not going to stay in Cleveland when I was in a position where I could move and my parents were fantastic. They truly supported me in whatever idea or vision I had, as long as it was something that was obviously good for me and not going to hurt myself or other people. So from a very young age, I had this belief that there was a big world out there and I was going to see it. So when I was in high school, I, I did very well in school, school came very, very naturally to me. So that helped boost my confidence also. And then in college, I think that is where I really started to flourish. So I met other like minded people, I got to work on my studies that I was excited about. I studied communications. Um I was involved in the on campus radio, I had some part time jobs throughout the city and it was just all really exciting.

But I knew again that that wasn't where I was going to stay. So while I continued to build up my strength and my confidence, it was all for that next step, which was what do you do after college and for me it was get a job at a newspaper in central florida and a retirement community and people thought I was crazy, they thought I was crazy when I told them that that is what I was going to do. But I knew that I wanted a job in communications right out of college and I wanted to live somewhere warm. I had enough belief in those skills and abilities to make it happen and I did make it happen. So I worked at the newspaper for about four years and at that time I decided to go back to get my masters degree online. And I also helped my significant other at the time start a company. So I left my job at the newspaper and we started our own monthly publishing company for H.

O. S throughout the central florida area. And this is where things really started to shift for me because for a long time I was so confident in my own skills and abilities, I knew what it was that I wanted to do. But I was also kind of running a solo show. The only person I really had to think about was myself. Well when I got to florida and started meeting people and especially once we started this business, I realized that there were other people I needed to take into account and it was at that time that the pendulum shifted for me. So instead of trying to find a balance between the two of us, everything went into trying to make everyone else happy at the time. And that was extremely detrimental to me. The relationship did not end up lasting, the business did not end up lasting and I went through some pretty serious relationship and professional things during that time that totally shook my confidence.

So for a while I I knew who I was, I knew what I wanted to do and this experience just destroyed me and it really made me reevaluate who it was that I am and what it was that I wanted to do, luckily, during that time I had my fantastic support system with my friends, my family, I still was doing my Master's program, which was a really nice distraction if you will, but also it was an opportunity for me to concentrate on something that I was good at, something that I did have control over. So I really credit school and my Master's program during that time to keeping me grounded and keeping me focused on something that I knew that I was good at. So my confidence wasn't completely shaken and completely destroyed. It's not an easy journey for anyone. You know, life is hard and sometimes we see people who we deem quote unquote successful or confident and we think that they just woke up like that every single day and that's just how they are.

The truth of the matter is it's not that easy and it's not always like that. A lot of times people have to go through a lot of struggles and challenges to get where they are in life. And it's not pretty, it's messy sometimes we don't want to talk about those things, but I do think it's important for people to realize that becoming confident or becoming successful does not come without its fair share of challenges or setbacks. And I think especially for women, we have been told or there is this stigma that we need to be perfect. We need to look like the women in the magazines or on instagram. We need to have the perfect instagram worthy home and family and food and work out and do all these things and keep everything organized when sunday's it's just it's a win if we get out of bed and take a shower, we now have this ability in a way that we can make our lives look however we wanted to before, it was up to the publishing companies and magazines to create that falsehood of reality.

But now we have the ability to do that ourselves on a daily basis and and people do it. And I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I do think that we need to recognize it's happening. So that filter that someone may have put on their picture, they make them look beautiful and glowy and that their skin is perfect, but in reality, that may not be what they were looking like that day. These are important things to keep in mind, because if we are holding ourselves up to a standard of unattainable confidence or beauty or even living, we're never going to reach it. So I think it's important that as we move forward on this journey together, we look and see what it is that we want out of life, what it is that we want to achieve and what are ways that we can go about doing it in a graceful and confident way. I think that we need to decide or ask ourselves the questions of what is it that I want out of this life?

How can I move forward with doing these things or achieving these things and how can I do it in a way that is good and full of love and full of grace, not just for myself, but for others as well. And it really starts with identifying what those goals are. So what is it that you want to accomplish out of your life? So if you haven't done an exercise like this in a while, I would encourage you to take the time to do some journaling, do some self reflection and ask yourself that question number one, what is it that I want my life to look like? There's no right or wrong answers here. It's truly up to you and you get to decide what it is that you want to create in your life. So maybe you want to make six figures a year in the corporate setting, Maybe you want to lose 30 lb, maybe you want to raise a family, the opportunities are endless. It's really up to you and what you want to do in this lifetime to again be excited about waking up every single morning and looking forward to the life that you're living.

Once you have your goals identified or have an idea of what it is that you want your life to look like. The next thing to do would really be, take inventory of your skills and abilities in each of those areas. If you're not good in one of those areas, that's okay, that doesn't mean you can't get better or you can't learn another piece of the confidence puzzle is being a lifelong learner, you're not going to have everything done perfectly all of the time or know everything right off the bat. But what you will need to have is the desire and ability to continue to learn. So as you learn new things, you may find ways to integrate those into the current skills and abilities that you already have. Once you have that inventory of what your skills and abilities are, you can start to see how they interject and can interact with some of the things that you want to achieve, let's say you happen to be very good at organization and your goal is to lose £30.

1 of the things you can do is start to create a plan or organize your day so that you can making time to exercise, create healthy eating plans and so on and so forth. A piece of confidence that I think is so simple but often overlooked is that it really is those things that give you belief in yourself that you can keep moving forward with it. Now, if it is a brand new thing then it is going to be a little bit harder. That's not to say that you can't overcome it because another piece of building confidence is not being afraid to fail. So there's a fine balance between focusing on strengths and abilities for each of your goals, but also having an unwavering notion that if you fail, it will not be the end of things, but having an unwavering notion that if you happen to fail or not hit the mark, it's okay and you can try again and again and again until you get there.

It's very fine balance between the two of them focusing on your skills and abilities, having self belief in yourself, but also not being afraid? And we're going to talk about fear in an entire episode because that is a big piece that prevents especially women from taking that step forward, whether it is asking for a promotion, asking for a raise, whether it is doing something for themselves, we seem to be afraid of a lot of different things, so we'll talk through that mindset and really how to just blast through it. So it's not even a thing anymore, but it can be beneficial. I want to talk through the benefits of being confident or having confidence because I do think it's important for us to talk about why someone would even want to have confidence. The first thing is it can offer more opportunities, whether those are personal opportunities or professional opportunities as you become more confident, more opportunities are going to appear in your life, You also have a higher self esteem that goes back to the skills and abilities and your strength as you start to do things that you are good at and especially as people start to recognize you are doing things that you are good at, that is definitely going to raise your self esteem.

You can inspire and motivate others. People like people who seem to be enjoying their life and doing it in a way full of love and light as you start to live a more confident and graceful life. People will ask you, what are you doing differently, How can I do that? And you'll be able to inspire and motivate others to hopefully take advantage of these opportunities in their own life and shift their mindset and the way they think about things and the way they do things so they can create more confidence. Also obviously a piece of confidence is it makes it easier to accomplish goals that you've set for yourself and you're more resilient when things don't go according to plan. I think especially this year we've all had to learn a lot about what the word resilience means. Never before have I learned how resilient I can be mostly this year in the professional setting. Um a lot of people have gone through a lot of challenges, both personally and professionally and I think now we are learning how to be more resilient as it relates back to how we respond when things don't go according to plan.

I think of myself as a rubber band as it relates to this situation because when everything first started back in March, I felt like I was a rubber band that was stretched so tight but then some more stuff happened and some more stuff happened and we had to stretch a little bit further a little bit further and then I was a little more flexible and we stayed there for a second and then some more things happened and that rubber band just continue to stretch so I certainly learned how to be flexible and how to be resilient as time has gone on in future episodes. We're going to move a lot deeper into each of these ideas about how to increase confidence and how to increase our grace and the power of grace combined with confidence and truly what that can do for you in your life. And then I also have some awesome confident women that I will be interviewing to get their expert advice and thoughts on ways as women, we can live more confidently and more gracefully.

Thank you so much for listening today. I appreciate your time and attention and if you would, if this resonated with you, please go ahead and leave a five star review on Itunes. Not only will it help this show, but it could also help other people who need to hear this message. Feel free to share this with your friends. And you can reach out to me on instagram facebook or you can visit my website at Lauren de Boeck dot com