How to Gain Self Confidence and Boost Self Esteem – The Choice is Yours

To learn how to gain self confidence, we must first honor the mindset that keeps us, parents, feeling really small. This mindset we carry holds us back in life and keeps us suffering through parenting. 

Today I want to unveil this mindset and find an alternative way of looking at every situation.  As a parent, I find this to be incredibly empowering for me. 

How To Gain Self Confidence

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[04:20] We often CAN do the things we say we can’t do…we’ve really just chosen NOT to do them.

[09:29] Saying “I can’t” breeds desperation, anxiety, and depression. 

[11:05] We have nearly endless choices over the majority of things in our lives (80%). 

[12:58] Why do we choose not to? Sometimes we just don’t want to. 

[14:10] Sometimes we aren’t willing to pay the price.

[16:40] Sometimes it’s just not a priority for us.

[17:08] We need to take ownership of our choices.

[19:04] Reframing our choices is empowering and can help us through difficult circumstances.

I’m Avital. I’m the mother of four, a performance coach for parents and I’m completely imperfect. I mess up every single day. It’s very important for me to hold space for the imperfections and the major challenges, struggle, loss, grief, and difficulty that we are all going through at any given time, but particularly at this moment. 

*Privilege Disclaimer*

Whenever I talk about choice, radical responsibility, and unvictimizing ourselves, I receive messages that my point of view is one of privilege.

Yes, it is a privileged point of view.

When we live in a world of opportunity and of choice, that is a privilege.

But I want to point out that mindset shifts aren’t only available to “externally privileged” people.

This is a privilege that almost everyone can exercise. 

Now let’s talk about what we do with this privilege, with this ability of ours to unvictimize ourselves. 

Boost Self Esteem by First Hearing your Inner Critic

In order to boost self esteem, we must first listen to the tyrant in our minds.

“You’re messing this up.”

“You can’t homeschool because you’ll lose it on your child.”

“You’re just not good enough.”

“You always yell!”

These are the types of things we hear all the time in our own heads. 

And that is not cool. And that totally affects the quality of our lives. 

And the quality of our parenting. 

If you’re ready to boost your self esteem and put an end to living under the tyranny of the inner critic, read on.

Ever Feel Helpless, or like You “Just Can’t?”

Often when people hear that I homeschool, they will say, “Wow! That’s so cool! I could never. I couldn’t handle it.” You would think that would boost my confidence but instead I can’t help but focus on the limiting beliefs that were just said. 

Over time, I’ve also noticed a lot of other common “I can’t’s” such as:

• I can’t get a job because I have to be home with my children
• I can’t stop working because I have to support my children
• I can’t sleep train because that would be cruel
• I’m a yeller
• I can’t do it because my husband’s not supportive
• I can’t because I don’t have enough money

Learn The 20% Rule

Comment: “I currently live in Germany and I can’t homeschool because it’s against the law.”

Response:  Yes, That’s something external to you that you currently don’t have control over.

When a health situation, the body/skin color/gender you were born into,  or your child’s needs come into play, for example, sometimes we can’t do the things we want to do.  Some things are just not changeable.

Say, 20% of the time.

(I think we’re being generous there because if we really want to unvictimize ourselves, we’re going to realize that even the country we live in may be a choice that we’re making.)

Now Boost Your Confidence with The 80% Rule

The 80% is an area where we have endless choice, and realizing this will totally boost your confidence as a parent. We choose how we interpret the situations, what narratives we put on them, what we choose to listen to and believe, and what we amplify and what we minimize. Those are our internal choices.

But we also have a lot of choices around the external factors of our life!

Saying “I can’t homeschool” is less accurate in most cases and in 80% of the cases what we should be saying is, “I choose not to homeschool.” 

The Big Mindset Switch to Improve Self Confidence

The big switch that will improve self confidence is this:

Switch off your thinking from “I can’t…”  to “I choose not to”

As parents, we often feel that we can’t do something because of nap time, because we’re a parent,  because our kids are like this, and so on. 

And the truth is you can.  In most cases,  you choose not to.

Boost Self Confidence by Understanding the Facts

To boost your self confidence, we must understand the real reasons why we aren’t accomplishing what we want to accomplish in life.

There are 3 main reasons that we choose not to do the things we want to do:

• I Don’t Want To / I Choose Not To

So why do we choose not to do the things we want to do? Well, sometimes we choose not to because we simply don’t want to. 

In other words, it’s not that I “can’t homeschool” or that I “can’t sleep train” or that I “can’t feed my baby organic food”, it’s that “I don’t actually want to.”

• I am Not Willing to Pay the Price

Another reason we choose not to do the things we want to do is because we are not willing to pay the price.

For example, perhaps we could homeschool if one parent stopped working and we downsized our home, but we’re not willing to pay that price.

• I Am Prioritizing Other Things

A third reason we choose not to do the things we want to do is because we are prioritizing other things. 

Say, a couple who is working and also has a parent doing their degree. They can feel guilty for not being home or being with the kids. They can choose the helplessness story or they can choose the story of, “We are prioritizing other things right now” because it’s better for their family in the long-run.

So listening to what your inner critic says is one of the ways to boost your confidence. Recognition is key. But one of the most important ways to boost self confidence is to replace those “I can’t’s” with the above phrases.

Instant Confidence Boost – Realizing We Have Choice!

Here’s an instant confidence boost for you! Our choices are a unique, individual, personal choice that we make. And each of those choices is legitimate. Your choices are legitimate.

Instead of having a helpless mindset,  or feeling like we didn’t have a choice, it is much more empowering to us when we take responsibility for our choices and we own where they are really coming from.

And THAT is How to Gain Self Confidence

Those are legitimate reasons not to do something, and choosing to use these phrases are one of the most important ways to boost your confidence in parenting. They put us in a mindset that takes control, takes responsibility, takes ownership, authorship, and agency.

And that, my friends, is how you gain self confidence. 

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