Somehow we’ve come to the end of season two! It’s gone very quickly but I’ve loved diving a little deeper into certain topics this season. For the finale I wanted to share the six steps I believe are necessary to discover your sense of worth, build self-belief and grow confidence.
The six steps came about after doing work on my coaching packages at the start of this year. Hopefully hearing the steps will help you understand where you’re at in the journey and which steps you need to take next.
I plan to take a slightly longer break than normal before season three starts because I’m working on a new project and want to give it the space it needs to come to life! I’ve realised over the years of having a side-hustle that I can’t do all the things at once, so I need to prioritise.
To hear more about the new project and to find out when the podcast will be back, sign up to my monthly newsletter.
You can listen to this last episode of season two wherever you get your podcasts or here:
LINKS AND FURTHER READING:
- The Playbook course by Kayte Ferris
- Building self-awareness
- Do affirmations really work?
- How to build a self-belief evidence bank
- Finding your motivation for self-care
- Small steps to build confidence
- Mental wellness - how to take care of your mental health
- Building emotional resilience
- How to avoid burnout
- Coaching services
Transcript
Introduction:
This week I’m gonna take you through some of the key steps I believe are necessary to help you discover your sense of worth and use this as a foundation to build self-belief and confidence on. This is really a whistle stop tour and will hopefully help you understand where you’re at and maybe what steps you need to take next.
Episode:
Hello everyone! Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re all doing well. So here we are at the end of season two. I’ve really enjoyed going deeper into the different topics this season and I hope you have as well. As always, please do let me know if there are any topics you’d love to see covered here. You can reach me over on Instagram @katbluejay - always keen to hear from you guys.
And for this finale episode, I wanted to take you through the six steps I believe are necessary to really connect you with your sense of worth and start building self-belief and confidence. And the reason I want to do this is because the self-help industry is loud. There’s a lot of information out there and I think if you’re looking to do work in this area, it can be quite overwhelming.
When I was looking at my coaching packages at the start of this year, I was working through Kayte Ferris’ brilliant course, the Playbook. I’ll pop a link in the show notes for this episode, if you want to learn more about that. But all of the work really led me to strip everything back and consider the journey we go on to truly build our sense of worth.
And this is what led me to the six steps I’ve created here, which is what I’ve worked into my Discover Self Worth coaching package. And these are the steps that we would take together if we were to work one-on-one in the coaching relationship. But I wanted to share them here as well to hopefully give you a bit of guidance and to help you figure out maybe where you are in this journey and perhaps which steps you need to take next.
And while, of course, I’m a big champion of coaching as a support for this, I know that it isn’t feasible for everyone. And of course there are lots of other ways you can get support as well, including reading books on the topic, taking courses, and even joining really supportive online communities.
So, let’s get started with step number one. And this is identifying limiting beliefs. So, knowing what is potentially holding you back is a really, really important first step. Identifying potential beliefs that are stopping you from feeling worthy and any stories you’re telling yourself isn’t the easiest thing to do. But I believe it all starts with self awareness.
Now I talk more about this in episode 3, which is all about building self awareness, so do go back and listen to that if you want to know more. But things like meditation, journaling, mood tracking, and starting to question your thoughts are all really great first steps.
Understanding how your current perception of your worth is affecting you right now too is important. What is it stopping you from doing? Where is it holding you back? Is it holding you back in your work, in relationships, creatively? Ask yourself how you want this to change. What could be possible if these beliefs weren’t stopping you?
Step number two is to create a new narrative. So, you need to give your brain some new beliefs and stories to focus on. Our brains typically find it quite difficult to break existing connections, so it’s much easier to help it create new ones. And this is where, for a lot of people, affirmations come in. And I will pop a link in the show notes to a great article that I did on Happiful where I interviewed Nicola Rae Wickham from A Life More Inspired all about the science behind affirmations, why they work, how they work, and there’s also some instructions of how to create affirmations. So definitely check that out if you wanna learn more.
But aside from affirmations, gathering evidence at this point is key. So noting down when you feel proud of yourself, starting to tune yourself in to the positives, and maybe starting a self belief evidence bank at this point is really helpful as well. And if you’ve not heard me talk about self belief evidence banks before, this is basically where you screenshot or note down when people give you positive feedback. And our aim here is to feel secure enough in ourselves to not need this external validation. However, in these early stages, I believe it can really help and even down the line, when you have wobbles, it can be really nice to look back on. I looked back at my own last weekend, I think it was, after a particularly tough week at work. I just needed a little boost, and flicking through that just really reminded myself that I know what I’m doing and that I’m on the right path.
So step number three is to really discover your worth and understand how it’s going to change everything. And what I mean here is that you really need to dig in and see what your skills are, what your passion is, and what value you can bring to the table, whether that’s in work or in life. And this doesn’t have to be anything grand. It can be as big or as small as you want, but it’s just about figuring out what you really want.
And this is the exciting part of the journey! Because you get to leave those limiting beliefs behind you, embrace your new narrative, and consider what’s now possible. And then you can start thinking about how you can bring this more into your life. So how can you bring this idea of the value you’re bringing - how can you do more of that? How do you wanna express, share, and live your life? What changes do you want this knowledge of your worth to bring, day-to-day? Identifying this is how you can start making a map for yourself and take those first steps to getting there.
Step number four is all about nurturing your self-worth. So hopefully by this point you should have a really clear sense of your self-worth, and now’s the time to strengthen it. And this is where I believe self-care really comes into play. Self-care, setting boundaries, even unlearning old behaviours like people-pleasing, is how we nurture our self-worth. Taking that time for self-care just really reinforces that we’re worthy of the care and time. And if you’re struggling with the self-care piece, you’re definitely not alone! Episode four of Seedling is all about finding your self-care motivators and I think that’s a really helpful place to start. Because once you know what your motivations are for self-care, you can remind yourself and you can start prioritising it.
In step number number five, we move onto building self belief and confidence on top of your self-worth foundation. So here is where you need to start edging out of your comfort zone to prove to yourself that you can do the things that scare you. And I personally feel like I’ve had a real crash course in this through the last couple of years, including a couple of weeks ago when I was interviewed live on BBC News. Which, trust me, was terrifying. But having that sense of self-worth made it less scary to do it.
And yeah, this is a scary part of the process, which is why I believe all of the work leading up to this point building that self-worth is key. Because when you have that, you have something to fall back on. Even if the thing that you’re trying when you’re pushing yourself out of your comfort zone doesn’t work out as you hoped, your self-worth makes it less devastating. It cushions the fall almost and ensures that you get up and try again.
Small steps are really what it’s all about at this point. And I do have a blog all about small steps to have you build confidence, so I’ll be sure to link that in the show notes. But, in a nutshell, it’s about leaning into what makes you different, nudging those edges of your comfort zone, challenging yourself, taking breaks in between those challenges, gathering more evidence, and reflecting regularly on your successes.
And finally, step number six is about coping with our fallible nature. And the reason I’ve added this step in is because, I think for some people, they may have this expectation when it comes to self development work that maybe once they’ve done it, it’s done. And they don’t need to think about it again. And sadly, I just don’t believe this is true. Because we’re human - we’re not robots. And we are fallible by nature. There are things that can come in and totally turn our worlds upside down. Sometimes our mental health might take a dip and everything we’ve learned completely unravels, albeit hopefully only briefly.
Accepting that it is okay to not feel powerful, confident, and amazing every day is so, so important. And just knowing how to cope with disappointment, low moments, all of these things, is an important part of the process. And that’s why I talk quite a lot about emotional resilience and mental health here on this podcast. And I’ll be sure to link any relevant episodes in the show notes, but I do believe that this is a really important part of everything: figuring out how to navigate the dips when they come. Essentially, though, this step is all about learning to give yourself the space and time it takes to grow.
So, as I said in the intro, this really is a whistle stop tour of developing self-worth and this is why I’ve made my coaching package six months long. I believe that this stuff takes time and we need that time to nurture it and to grow it. And I hope by hearing all of these various stages, maybe you now have a better understanding of where you are on this journey and maybe which steps you need to take next.
And of course, if that is something you want to explore with a coach, do get in touch! I’m currently taking on one more client, so I’d love to hear from you. You could either DM me on Instagram or send me an email: [email protected] and yeah, I would love to hear from you. I would also definitely recommend taking a look at the show notes of this episode because there’s gonna be loads of links that relate to the steps I’ve shared here and yeah. You’ll find the show notes at bluejayofhappiness.com/podcast.
And there we have it! Just like that, we got to the end of season two! So I’m planning to take a longer break than normal between now and the start of season three, just because I’ve got a new project that I’m working on and I really want to give it the space it needs to get done. Something I’ve learned after years of growing a business as a side hustle to a day job is that I cannot do all of the things at once. And that’s totally okay. I’m really excited about this new project and have a lot of hopes for it, and yeah, so if you wanna keep up to date with that, and when the podcast is gonna be returning, I would definitely recommend signing up to my monthly newsletter, which you can find at bluejayofhappiness.com/newsletter.
And of course, I will always be over on Instagram, so do say hello there too, and yeah. I just wanted to say as well thank you so much for listening and for being here the last couple of seasons. It really means the world and I can’t wait to come back with season three. I’m sure the world is gonna be in a very different place by then and I’m looking forward to seeing where we’re all at. Until then, though, please do take care and keep in touch.
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