There’s a huge difference between confidence and self confidence that can change the way you approach life and motherhood in the most amazing way.

Confidence is simply feeling certain about something. Most often, we’re confident about something we know based on the past. If you’re a nurse, you would say you’re confident and it would be because of your past education and work experience. If you know how to drive a car, it’s based on your past experience driving.

Self confidence is different. It’s a feeling of certainty created by your mindset that you 1) believe in yourself, 2) love yourself, 3) are willing to feel any emotion, and 4) know you can count on you to figure things out, no matter what.

This type of self confidence can be a complete game changer for motherhood. Instead of always looking outside of you for validation or approval, you can learn to have your own back, make confident decisions, avoid mom guilt, and show up as the mom you want to be.

If it sounds too good to be true, it’s not. Here’s how to get started building more confidence as a mom.

Rethink failure and mistakes.

Because our babies are so precious to us, we think the stakes are so high in motherhood. That, combined with the idea that we’ll be publicly (or privately) ridiculed for anything we get wrong.

This unobtainable standard leaves no room for the human-ness of every single person who is a mom. We’re all humans. There’s no escaping that. And humans aren’t perfect. Not a single one. So that means you’re going to make mistakes and fail.

I think we know this intellectually, but it still doesn’t stop the shame we feel when we actually make a mistake or fail, particularly with things around our kids.

Self confidence is the solution. It’s deciding on purpose that you won’t beat yourself up. That you’ll have your back. That if you make a mistake, you’ll fail forward.

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Allow motherhood to be messy.

There are so many messy parts to motherhood. Kids are messy. Your house gets messy. The dogs are messy. Coordinating schedules is messy. Getting out the door is messy.

Instead of always trying to clean up and make it perfect, shift your thinking to allowing it to be messy.

“Motherhood is supposed to be messy” can be an incredibly empowering thought to practice. This way you’re not trying to keep things perfect and remove the mess. Sure, you can clean up at the right time, but don’t let the mess affect your mood. Don’t shift into thinking the mess isn’t a problem. The mess is there because you have a family living with you. And that’s how you want it to be.

Embrace the mess.

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Drop perfectionism and people pleasing.

Two incredible ways for you to shift into having more self confidence is by 1) stopping perfectionist tendencies, and 2) stopping the people pleasing.

Perfectionism is when you think that there’s a perfect way of being. You should mother a certain way. Your house should look a certain way. Your kids should behave a certain way. And anything short is unacceptable.

People pleasing is when you care more about the opinions of others than you do about your own opinion. You need external validation to approve of yourself.

Self confidence is the opposite of both. Self confidence says, it doesn’t have to be perfect as long as I try my best. That is good enough.

Self confidence takes other people’s opinions into consideration but ultimately decides what’s best for you.

I have two podcasts on these topics that I highly recommend listening to next:

  1. Perfectionism In Motherhood Podcast
  2. How To Stop People Pleasing Podcast

Be willing to feel any emotion.

When you’re willing to feel any emotion, there’s nothing you won’t do.

This is because the worst thing that can happen to you is a negative emotion. For example, if you’re afraid of speaking in front of 10,000 people, it’s because of how you’ll feel afterwards—embarrassed or humiliated. But if you’re willing to feel those feelings without beating yourself up, then there’s nothing you won’t do.

So practicing feeling your feelings and separating yourself from your feelings (as the watcher) will help you learn this skill of feeling any feeling.

Inside Grow You (my mindfulness community for moms), I teach you how to process your feelings in a course you get right when you join.

Focus on what you can control.

You can only control what you think, feel, and do. You can’t control anyone else, nor can you control what’s happening in the world.

In motherhood, it can feel protective and responsible to try to predict the future to make sure you keep your kids safe, but we often take this too far, trying to come up with every possible worst-case scenario that paralyzes us instead of empowers us.

Yes, do your due diligence. Make educated, wise decisions. But don’t let your brain run wild with the terrible “what-ifs” that it will do unmanaged.

Instead, use self confidence as a practice to focus on what you can control, which is you.

For example, if you’re making a decision about what school to send your kids to, you can’t control all the outcomes, but you can use self confidence to say that no matter what happens in the future, you’ll be able to handle it. This is self confidence. It’s “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I’ll show up and make the decisions I need to as a mom. I got this.”

CLICK HERE to download the podcast directory (and get the best mindset podcast episodes to listen to.)

Believe in yourself and in your kids.

Practice believing in yourself and your kids at the highest level. If they see you model this for yourself, they’ll be more likely to believe it for themselves.

This isn’t using your past to determine what you feel confident about, but instead is using your mind to cultivate a supportive, certain mindset in your future.

For example, let’s say your child is struggling with making friends at school. Having confidence in your child is “I know my daughter is going to figure this out, and I’m here for her to support her along the way.” It’s not worrying or being needy or weird or creepy or any of that. It’s just loving her and believing in her to navigate the challenge.

The same is true for you. If you’re transitioning back to work, you have a daughter in kindergarten, and a son started daycare, self confidence says, “I don’t know exactly how this transition is going to go, but I know I’ll figure it out. I got this.”

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A Final Note

Confidence is a feeling you create by your mindset. If you think thoughts that produce self confidence, you don’t need to control the world. Instead, you become someone who is in control of themselves. And that is true confidence. You’ll show up as a better woman, partner, and mom with self confidence.