Why You Won’t “Think” Your Way to Confidence
Are you trying to think yourself into being more confident? Women talk to me often about how they’re trying to increase their confidence. They’re mainly trying to do it from a mental perspective. While that has merit, I don’t believe that’s the true way to do it. In this episode, I talk a little about confidence and a tip you can use in the moments you don’t feel it.
4:46 - What do all these have in common?
6:11 - How to counteract your nerves and help you reclaim your power in sales situations
7:11 - Some suggestions you can use automatically (and not look weird in public)
8:16 - A suggestion that (literally) gives you forward momentum
10:52 - If you need some help with leaning into unshakeable confidence
As mentioned In Why You Won’t “Think” Your Way to Confidence
Unshakeable Confidence program
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
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Transcript for Why You Won’t “Think” Your Way to Confidence
Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.
Hey, party people. It's Leslie, your embodied sales and leadership coach. How are you doing out there? Hope you're doing well. I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for asking. Now, this week, I want to talk a little bit about confidence. What else is new? This is what I do. This is what I talk about. I know, that's why you're here.
But one of the things that I find interesting is how many times I hear women talk to me about how they're trying to increase their confidence, or even I'm in coaching situations where I hear women trying to increase their sales confidence, and it's mainly approached through the mental facet, meaning how you can think yourself confident.
While I do believe there is merit there, I believe that the true way to unlock confidence is through your body. It's one thing for us to say trust your body, and you to say that I'm going to trust my body. It's another for you to experience trusting your body.
One of the things I think is interesting, and I've mentioned Sheryl Sandberg's book before, Lean In, when I hear conversations about just taking up space, how women should just take up space, how we need to lean in, and how we need to use our voice, but I think a lot of times we forget that that's not just so easy to do for most of us.
Just leaning in, just taking up space when you've been marginalized, when you've purposely been kept small by society, by what I call light dimmers—I just talked about them in a previous episode—these people have been working overtime to keep you afraid, to keep you small, to keep you in your proverbial place.
Me just coming along as a coach and saying, “Hey, just lean in, take up more space,” you're looking at me like, “How the f*ck do I do that? How does that even work?” Today, I want to give you a practical tool that you can use at the moment. One of the things is yes, we do need to be concerned about our thoughts. Yes, we do need to rewrite stories and narratives, and that's a part of the work that I do in my Unshakeable Confidence Program, we do address the mental facet.
But oftentimes in working with women, when they feel stuck, or frozen is a better term, when they're thinking about approaching a selling situation and they know they're going to have to ask for money, some have said, “Oh my goodness, I get this lump in my throat,” or “I feel this tightness in my chest,” or “I feel these butterflies in my stomach.” What do we notice about all three of those things? Lump in your throat, tightness in your chest, butterflies in your stomach? All of those things, what do they have in common? Those are all bodily reactions.
I think we need to address bodily reactions with bodily responses. When you feel like you can't move, you're immobilized—the lump in your throat, the tightness in your chest, the butterflies in your stomach—I'm getting ready to give you something you can do to counteract that immediately.
Tip number one, you need to come up with a way to touch your body. ♫ When I think about you, I touch myself, ooh. ♫ I started laughing so hard I started choking, I had to pause this. Because me in these break-out singing sessions in the middle of a podcast, what am I going to do with myself? I cracked myself up. But seriously, there has been research done that you have the ability to calm your nerves so that you can reclaim your power in a selling situation. When you feel those bodily reactions, I would encourage you to come up with a touch that you can do in public that will calm you down.
Here are some suggestions. One could be literally just grabbing your forearm and squeezing. This is telling your parasympathetic nervous system that things are okay. It's telling your sympathetic nervous system that it is okay for you to speak, it's okay for you to show up so that your parasympathetic nervous system can kick in. It's basically telling you to calm down. You're not in danger, you're just getting ready to ask somebody for some money. It's a reminder, you're safe, you're in your body, you're okay.
Other people I know like to touch their face just for a moment just to be like, “I'm a real person talking to a real person. Again, I'm safe. I'm okay. I can speak up.” That's one way that you could do it just automatically. Another way that you could do it is—I'm literally getting ready to do it as I'm talking to you—you can stand up, you can take your right arm, make a fist with your hand, and vigorously swing your arm back and forth a few times like “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.”
What you will notice, hopefully, seriously, stop what you're doing right now unless you're driving, stop what you're doing right now, stand up, take your right hand, make a fist, swing your right arm back and forth vigorously and say, “I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.” When you do that, what you're going to notice is that your body starts to lean forward. When your body starts to lean forward, it gives you forward movement. It gives you the ability to move, it gets you from being stuck, because it's like we're moving forward. You need to move forward when it comes time to ask him for sales.
The next time you're getting ready to make a prospecting call, the next time you're getting ready to go into someone's DM, I want you to try the swinging of the arm thing. It's going to feel ridiculous at first but I'm not talking to your mind, I'm talking to your body. We do enough talking to our mind. You don't need any more books, you don't need any more coaching conversations about what to think. You need assistance as I do as well. We are in this together. I'm not speaking to you from atop of the confidence mountain.
There are things where I get unconfident as well. I'm going to share one of those stories in maybe another podcast episode. But I have to remind myself that if I'm planning to eat, if I want to have a quality of life for myself, my family, I'm going to have to sell something. Because of that, not only do I have to sell something, I get the privilege of selling something. We need a whole reframe around what we think about selling, but that's another podcast episode.
I want you to try this. The next time you're getting ready to make a sales call, the next time you're getting ready to shoot off an email, the next time you're getting ready to meet with a client, swing that arm. Notice how you move forward, take that energy and go into that sales call confidently.
All right, my loves, hopefully this was a practical tip. I know you're going to feel silly doing it, but like I said, I ain't speaking to your mind, I'm speaking to your body. Your body knows the way. Your body keeps the score. Your body knows what to do. Let's lean into that today.
All right, my loves. If you need some help, my program Unshakeable Sales Confidence is open. I take on new clients every month at the first of the month. Guess what? This will probably come out in September. October 1st would be the next round of people that I take into the program. The basic training is what I call it. It's five weeks. That's where we start to work on some of these tools to master your self confidence so that you can sell more. If you want more info for that, head over to my website. My DMs are always open at @lesliedlyons over on IG, baby, or you can email me at hello@lesliedlyons. Until next time, grace and peace.