I believe we have to nurture and develop our confidence just like anything else that’s important to us. We don’t just wake up one day feeling confident, we have to invest energy and effort in building self-belief. How do we do this? Especially tough to navigate, when coupled with the desire to challenge ourselves and live courageously, we have to face fear and failure which can have an adverse affect on confidence.
Last month Estee Lauder approached me and asked to film my story for their #ConfidenceUncovered campaign. They chose three women to feature, an up and coming British singer, a journalist and broadcaster, and me. See all the videos here
You can imagine I was thrilled to bits. It’s pretty mega to be associated with Estee Lauder but I also knew they would be investing a lot into the production of the film and I was excited to create something we are all proud of.
At the start of the film you’ll hear me talking about my Mum. She was actually on the shoot all day with me, was amazing to have her there. Here are my three fave points about what confidence means to me that I shared with Estee.
1. When life throws you a curve ball, you want to be able to have the “you’ve got this” chat with yourself and know that you can do it
2. The only way to overcome your fear is to do the things you are scared of
3. Beauty is seeing someone being true to themselves. Nothing more beautiful than looking in their eyes and seeing the fire that lights them up
You may know this about me, but in August 2014 I became the only person in history to climb the highest mountains in the eight Alpine countries and cycle between them. An expedition I called ‘The Alpine Coast to Coast’, powered by this simple quote "she believed she could and so she did."
Confidence Training
Whilst training for it, I wrote a blog on ‘Confidence Training’. My strategy is all about doing what makes you feel strong, confident and positive so you feel stronger each day (mentally and physically) and ready for progress to flow, rather than feel disheartened because you didn’t reach a certain target.
I often see people set targets for training or events and then beat themselves up when things don’t go to plan and they don’t achieve it. The reality is, if you trained, raced, competed, got out of the house and did anything… you still achieved something awesome and it makes me sad to see people discredit these achievements.
“Focus on building your confidence by doing the things that make you feel good about yourself and surround yourself with people who do the same.”