Killer self-confidence - how to be more assertive

0:02 A listener production. Welcome to Crappy to Happy with Tiff and Casts. Last episode we were talking about a digital detox and little tips and tools to help you find more balance with your devices. Today, we're going to talk about killer self confidence, how. To be more confident and assertive. This is so Hardcasts, because everyone wants more confidence. Everyone wants to raise children who have great self esteem and who are confident. But all these words like assertiveness, confidence, resilience, mental toughness, they're all sort of mashed together. Yeah, and I get confused myself.

0:44 I think when we talk about so when you mentioned mental toughness, mental toughness is actually has been a psychological construct that has been studied recently. You can actually do assessments in it. I recently trained in that actually how to assess that and develop that. And there are four components of mental toughness, not that I want spend a lot of time on this, but one of them is confidence. So the others have commitment and challenge and things like that. But the confidence component is split into interpersonal confidence, which is that assertiveness being able to state your needs, to speak up for yourself, to make your point, you know, to hold your own in a conversation. And the other part is the confidence in your abilities. And I think that's a. Really nice way to define confidence because they do get, you know, the difference from so helpful. Yeah, they're diferent from resilience, which is how you cope with stress and how you come back from setbacks and all of that.

1:35 This is more I think if we keep it to. That assertiveness that into personal confidence and the confidence in your abilities, it gives us something. To great talk about them because we've all met people who are overly confident and loud and almost a bit aggressive, but they do that because they're sort of insecure or they don't have that over compensating Yeah, they don't have that confidence in their ability. Yeah, And I think people say all the time, I need to develop myself confidence. I don't feel very confident, But that can mean different things to different people. So I think it's really important to be clear about because some people are actually really confident in their abilities. There's lots of things that I know that I do well and I feel confident in, but there can be other situations where that interpersonal confidence, like speaking up having a difficult conversation might be challenging where and some people might be very comfortable to have the conversations and to speak out, but they lack confidence in their ability to do something or to perform a task or so we can it helps to define what we're talking about because people use them interchangeable. People use this generic confidence thing, yes, to describe lots of different things.

2:44 So why is it so important to be assertive if we're talking about that component of confidence. Well, assertiveness is something that comes up all the time. I'm going to say particularly with women, because you know me, I always say particularly with women. Yes, but women tend to have typically traditionally been raised to value being liked more than being respected. I'm sure I've said that before because it is something that I read once which really resonated with me. And so that can tend to hold women particularly back. I'm not saying only women, but generally women more so can tend to hold them back from stating their needs or putting themselves forward, even for you know, promotions, or asking for what they need, or pushing back when people demand things of their time.

3:41 Or you know, expect things of them. I know we talked about this a little bit in our busy episode about that ability to say no no, And so oftentimes what we hear is people saying, you know, somebody talked over the top of me in a meeting, or somebody undermined me at work, or somebody said something that really offended me, and in that. Moment, I just froze. In that moment, I didn't know how to stand up for myself or how to speak up for myself. So people really feel that they're almost disrespecting themselves by not standing up for themselves and speaking up for them since that's. Come from language, Cass. The one thing I hate is when you use the word just and I don't know, I don't often hear men use it as much as women. Just, but I say I'm just a mom or I'm just a personal trainer, when the reality is being a mom's so hard and awesome, and I'm not just personal trainer, run a business. But I sometimes diminish that. Yeah, and the word just creeps in.

4:41 The word just is. One that we do tend to use a lot, which does diminish what we do. The other little turns of phrase that people use are things like, it would be really great if you wouldn't mind, just if you have time, you. Know, rather than just stating I need you to do this by this time. People love direction too. That's usually hard for people hearing oh if you have time, maybe kuja wouja. Yeah. Yeah. People like to know where they stand, and we forget that because we think that we're I think the thing with assertiveness is that we okay, here's the thing with assertiveness is that we are fearful of conflict. We've established that well, many of us are concerned about conflict and difficult conversations, for offending people or upsetting people because we want people to like us, and we want to be polite because that's how we've been raised, you know, to be nice and keep the peace and all of those things which can then end up becoming a problem because we don't assert our own needs. And at one extreme I always use this example. I learned this a long time ago. At one extreme, there's aggressiveness, which is really having your wants, opinions, needs, preferences overwriting other people's, pushing your needs onto somebody else. We've all had the aggressive boss or the aggressive We might not use the word aggressive for the domineering kind of friend or the person whose demands supersede everybody else. It's their preference is superseded, butody's.

6:14 And at the other end of the extreme there's passive, which is just allowing everybody else to completely dominate you and your needs and subjugating your own needs for the sake of other people's. And this assertiveness is in the middle. But sometimes people mix up. They think that by being assertive they're being aggressive. They feel like they're being aggressive when they're in fact just being assertive. And so the place of assertiveness in the middle is where you are able to or what you try to trying to do, is to on the one hand, value and respect and hold your needs, preferences, wants, desires, but equally hold the other person's needs preferences, wants, desires, and come up with something that is, you know, that respects both this is what I need, I understand, this is what you need, or this is what this is where you're at.

7:08 I understand, but this is where I'm at. So it's not. Diminishing your own needs, but it's also not subjugating your own needs. Yes, So it's that finding that balance in the middle. When you're doing that, how do you stop yourself from always apologizing, I'm. Sorry, I can't do this because you know you told me a long time ago. Sometimes just saying no is a full sentence, is a full sentence. But there is this apologizing thing that stops us from being assertive, isn't there. People who lack that self confidence, of that interpersonal confidence do tend to apologize a lot. In fact, people who are very lacking in confidence tend to apologize for existing.

7:48 Have you met I know people like that. They're sorry for everything. Every thing is sorry, and they're you know, and the people that I know, they're very aware of it, and it's very habitual for them. It's the way they've been raised, actually, I think, to have their needs suppressed or subjectether. They constantly have been made to feel, perhaps in the past, that they're imposing or that they're a problem, and so they're always on the front foot apologizing before they've even said what they want to say. In fact, I've known people who, you know, when I've been running late, so I'm a psychologist, and if I've been running late and I come out and say I'm sorry for keeping you waiting, and they say, no, I'm sorry.

8:31 There's literally there is nothing for them to be sorry for. But it's this so automatic, thisapologizing. So that's something that people can work on. Breaking catch yourself. You could catch yourself, but it. Does come back to a lack of self confidence and a lack of belief in your own self and your own self worth. So and that you know, that's something that needs to be cultivated if that's a problem. Talking about confidence, A little bit of a knock to my confidence was after I had Arnold and my body changed so dramatically. Yeah, and all of a sudden, my confidence was a. Little bit shot because I looked different and the body image stuff I guess I want to talk about. And a way that I did get through that was thinking, hmm, am I less of a trainer or an expert. If I'm in a different body, like, it doesn't change my ability at all. I just feel less confident. So I was having to really rely on my qualifications, what I know, how good I am, my years of experience in this field to.

9:40 Up my confidence. And then I knew slowly but surely I would get back to my strong, fit body. But it was hard at the time. And body confidence is something that a lot of people struggle with and we see many women struggle. With that in our community. Yeah, body confidence is a big one for a lot of people. For sure. A lot of people think body confidence is being in bikini at the beach, But that's not it. That's not real. How often are we at the beach or even showing our stomachs. That's not body confidence for us. We find that it manifesting our community in terms of not wanting to wear shorts. And I know it was months after I had Arnold's and it was summer until I could wear shorts and feel.

10:21 Comfy in them. Having your picture taken, having photos taken with your kids, going swimming, going to swimming lessons with your kids where you have to get involved in the water. All of this it affects us if we're not confident in our own skin. I found that I had to sit back and really accept where I'm at. I've had a baby, love him, I've done a great thing, got more jiggle, I've put on weight. I accept where I'm at right now. I'm contacted all the. Time by members who are having fantastic results and they're feeling really good about themselves. Say they're fitting into a dress that they wore years ago. Finally they're back in that dress and then they go out and one member, for example, said she went out rocking this red dress and someone said, oh, so you're going to start working on your arms next, and she was like, oh, I hadn't.

11:09 Oh I didn't think moms were a problem. So then her confidence it's shot. It's absolutely shot, and it's really hard to bounce back from that. So it can really manifest in many different ways, from body confidence to being assertive, to saying no to creating boundaries. There are a lot of ways that you have to work on. This big umbrella term confidence and. Confidence in your abilities too. That comes up. We see it in again in the community and the online community with people applying for jobs and feeling like they're not qualified speaking or public speak, or quitting jobs and being afraid that they'll not get another job again. So that confidence in your ability to do and to achieve and to progress in.

11:54 Life and even financial as well, having the confidence to put aside money that you know you're going to invest in something or taking out, you know, going into debt for something that you know you're going to be able to make those repayments. Like we see that as well in the community, financial, emotional, body, confidence. All of it. We've all had moments where we've felt less confident or a little bit vulnerable. How can a lack of confidence impact our lives? What it does is it actually limits your ability to live life. For many people, it gets to a point where that lack of confidence and that unwillingness to put yourself out there and to take risks can really hold you back, not just from, for example, opportunities to make progress in your career, but even going out and exploring the world or having experiences. We've all heard stories of people who've always wanted to do something. I had a client actually who overcome all of her fear and went and swam with the whale sharks.

12:54 It was huge for her, but. It required a lot of confidence building to that step. And you know, people who travel overseas for the first time, a lot of people who don't have the confidence, who don't have that confidence in their intrinsic ability to cope and to deal with challenges, they hold themselves back from all sorts of potentially rewarding and fulfilling experiences and in relationships. You know, we did a whole episode on the importance of positive relationships and that lack of confidence to assert yourself and to state your needs can end up destroying relationships. If you allow things to fizzle out because you're avoiding having a tough conversation, then.

13:38 You know, that's it. We've already established how big a problem that can be. So yeah, that lack of confidence, and I keep using the words, but that it holds you. Back in many, many different ways. You know when people lack confidence as well, they find it difficult. This is something we notice all the time, really tough to accept compliments. Ah yes, and not that that's. A big problem, but it just speaks to how you know that how we tend. People tend to hide themselves away, They play small there's a good saying. People tend to play a lot smaller game in life, and at some point that catches up. And I think people can can get to a point in life where they have a lot of regrets about.

14:19 The things they haven't done. And isn't that a truism? You regret the things in life that you don't do, not the things that you do do. And what holds us back from not doing things? It's that lack of self confidence. A lot of the time that unwillingness to take some risks in life and put yourself out there, or have a tough conversation, or you know, to. Do whatever is going to move you forward. Yeah. Yeah, and at the end of the day you look back and you realize, you know, opportunity is wasted and opportunities missed, and so cultivating some confidence and some willingness. To and taking a compliment. You know, you're looking great. Today, say thanks.

15:00 That's one that we really get people to work on. And that's a massive we talk about. You know, we've talked about the non scale victories that people achieve in the TVXO program, and. One big one that people says, I took a compliment like I did. I didn't diminish it. I didn't say, oh no, don't be silly, oh this old thing. Yeah, I'm just wearing something flattering today. No, I got up at five every day, I didn't work out. I'm a good girl. Confidence is so important in every area of our lives. So we're going to take a quick break and come back with some tools and tips to help you build that confidence and be more assertive. Welcome back to Crappy to happy with Tiff and Cass. We're talking about confidence.

15:41 It really is a word that's thrown around with building our resilient, confident, assertive children and wanting to build confidence every day. But cast some of us, we just don't know where to start. You know, it comes up an awful lot, doesn't it. I think that the key thing to remember first of all with confidence is that what holds us back from taking risks in life is a fear, and often we mistakenly believe that we need to overcome the fear before we can do the thing. And the key with confidence is that you overcome the fear by doing the thing. Oh so people don't like to hear that, but that fundamentally we build confidence by building our experience, by building our evidence space that we can do something and having that very direct feedback. So that doesn't mean that you go out and you take the biggest risk in the world, but it does mean that you have to start pushing you boundaries a little bit and taking some risks and doing some things.

16:46 So we talk about, you know, if I want to have. A relationship, I might be afraid to approach somebody I want to have a relationship with, and my fear gets in the way of having that conversation because I like confidence, and so therefore I actually deny myself the opportunity of having a relationship because I let the figure it in the way. What we have to do is to learn to accept that sometimes doing the important things in life will be scary, and the more important they are, the more scary they are, and that we actually have to learn to take on board some of that fear and that anxiety, except that it's not going anywhere, and almost embrace it, almost do that thing where we see it as a challenge response, not a threat response. And then and then, you know, take some steps to reduce the anxiety, manage the anxiety, not make it disappear, and then do the thing.

17:39 That is important to us, something that I encourage our members to do. They have their eating plan on Tiffects, but some of my members who are serial dieters, always on a diet, I make them implement coffee and cake twice a week where they go out for a coffee and cake. They're like, how come I'm having coffee and cake? But it's part of that confidence in that you're having a treat. It's not a binge. It's not overeating, it's no emotional eating. It's worked in and you can sit there, have that it's worked into the plan and feel that confidence of having a treat and leaving it there. And not being completely derailed. Again. Yes, yes, so I find that really works with them in having confidence to have balanced, moderate, flexible eating that isn't diet and restricted. Yeah.

18:23 I think that's the biggest misconception about confidence. I wish I could be more confident so that I could do this thing. I wish I could have the confidence to go and do that thing, or approach that goal, or take that risk. And the thing is that the confidence comes from doing the thing. We have to tolerate the anxiety and then take the step, and then by doing it you get a little bit of positive feedback. I did that thing, I can feel got to can celebrate that success, and then I can be confident to know that I can take the next So much do something, people don't like to hear it when you say we. Go do it. It's not like cure the anxiety or take the fear. It removes the fear. It's feel the fear and do it. Anyway.

19:04 Is very much about how you build confident Okay, I think. Sometimes when it comes to kind of pumping yourself up. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about affirmations and like fist pumping and all of that. Yes, so I woke. Look, sometimes people like to do affirmations and that makes them feel good. I always say, well, if you're going to fill your head with a lot of negative self talk, which we often do all day, we fill our minds with all the things we're not doing well, then it can't hurt to replace some of that self talk with some positive and because the fact of the matter is, as we know, our little minds churning out thoughts all day anyway, so we might as well pump in some positive ones. But I think what has been proven is in terms of the research, is to validate your strengths, like the things that you know to be true. Sometimes people feel like mantras and affirmations are a bit empty, and their mind can kind of rebel against them. If I walk around saying I'm a strong confident person, there's another part of me going, you're kidding yourself.

20:04 Yeah, sometimes I can get it away. But if I affirm to myself that I you know that I've achieved things in the past, or that you know, the things that I know to be true, or that I have overcome challenges in the past, and I can remember those things and that's that is true, and I can know that to be true. Then sometimes those things are more powerful or more effective. So it's an individual thing. But you know, particularly reminding with kids like going into exams if they're fearful, not feeling very confident about their performance, then doing little exercises like that and getting them to remind themselves of their strengths and the things they've done well in the past, and you know, using that sort of positive self talk has been proven to improve their results, build their confidence to get better results and better outcomes. Interestingly, research has also shown that those results actually filter upwards to everybody in their classroom, not just the kids doing the confidence building and doing the positive self talk, but their own increased self confidence actually filters out so that everybody around them also achieves a higher level of self confidence and self wall. It's amazing that ripple effect, that social and emotional contagion. Yes, yes, so that's just interesting aside, but that affirming your values as well. So if I can tap into the things that I know are important to me and the ways that I have acted in

21:36 line with my values. It's almost like remembering I'm a quality human being. That can be something that builds up a sense of confidence. Knowing what your strengths are, knowing what your values are, and just reminding yourself of those things can give you that little bit of a boost to take a risk that you might not otherwise take. Something I struggle with is saying no, Cass, And you've been You've been coaching me on this yes for the longest time on how to say no. But I know you see emails going back and forth, and I'm always like, yes, yes, I can do that. And I love helping people. So anywhere I go, a stranger will come up on the street and ask me weight loss advice, and I will give all them fifteen minutes, even though I've got baby in the prem I've got somewhere else to be.

22:23 Or I will get emailed by relatives and cousins for advice or a training program, or I say yes to every single opportunity that comes my way, or I'll do appearances and talks for free, and I'm just always giving, giving, giving, and I can't say no, and I always feel so bad if I say no, even if it's completely justified in that I can't logistically be there because I have a baby and a business. But I always feel bad. So I know I need to up my assertive muscle. Yeah, I have. I've had clients like that in the past, and when a lot if people have trouble saying no, and I always say, you know what, tolerate the guilt. Learn to tolerate the guilt and say no. Anyway, I think that the important thing is you have to have your absolute yes list. And I read a really great book called Essentialism, which I talk about all the time, which was a guy by called Greg McEwan wrote this book and it was about work stuff, and he was saying, decide what you are really naturally good at, what makes you really happy?

23:33 What is like where should your energy be invested for your best use of you know, your time and your resources and your skills, and for you and for any of us with a business, you've got to include in there what makes money, like what brings in some income, because there's a lot of non revenue generating things that you and I both do. Because training people on the street for free that I don't know is probably not going to move me forward. It's not valuing it's not valuing you on your skills, and at the end of the day, they're not really what are they going to get out of that? Yeah, are they going to do it? I know then, of course. But when you know what is absolutely on your yes list, it makes it much easier to know what to say no to you, and we all need to practice saying no without apology, or saying no without guilt. I should say, you know, just being able to say I'm sorry. I don't have time for that. The other thing I think is really important, especially if youre a person who feels put on the spot and automatically says, oh, you know, sure, yes, I.

24:27 Can do that. I think you're one of those yes I am then by time, okay, by time, always say oh, that sounds great, Just I'll need to check my diary or I'll need to check with my husband. I always do that if people ask me, even if it's a social thing and I'm not entirely sure at the time I'm going to want to do that thing, I'll say, just let me talk to mail my husband because you know he travels a lot, or you know, I'll just need to check my diary. I always buy time and then I can go away and really think about how I feel about doing that thing. And I think that's what you need to do, too, is to not automatically be a yes, yes, yes person. So then when you say no, cast you have to say why are you saying no?

25:08 I can't I'm sorry, I can't take that on right now. I'm sorry. I don't have the time for that. I'm sorry, I won't be able to do that. Okay, I'm sorry that's not going to work. Thank you for thinking of me. That's not going to work. Thanks for the opportunity. I can't fit that in right now. I just can't take that on at the moment. And so you know, you don't have to go into long convoluted explanations about why I've got this and I've got that and I've got this appointment. I would do it except I've got that thing. You don't have to do that. And I think that's the other thing. We tend to want to justify no, and. You can't handle that guilt. It's the guilt, yes, tolerate the guilt, take the breath and just say I'm sorry. That's not going to work. And I think that's an important skill to practice. And all of these things are behaviors that actually need to be practiced. They don't come naturally and automatically, especially if you've habitually done something different.

25:59 And so that's the thing. It's not going to feel comfortable. This is the confidence thing. It's not going to feel. Comfortable until you actually practice it a few times and you start to build that evidence that oh, they weren't actually completely insulted and offended and there was no really bad negative repercussions to that, and I feel so much better. And then that gives you that. People moved around it or they just people will all or were just like oh yeah. And people appreciate knowing your boundaries. They people actually appreciate you doing people a favor. I say that all the time, you're doing people a favor by stating your boundaries. So how do you come across as not being like difficult or aggressive. Or well, that's that assertiveness thing where you can I think fundamentally it's about our fear of conflict is about we're other being too pushy or somebody where we feel upset because somebody.

26:50 Is railroading us. So if you can come. Back to I'm not out to you know, hurt anybody or make anybody else's life difficult, but if I can also remember that other people aren't apt to make my life difficult either, Like generally people act with a positive intention. They'll ask you for something or you know, but if you can remember that, Okay, I understand what your need is, and I understand what my need is, and I can appreciate that is there a. Way I could do this, but I'm not going to be able to do that. If you can't come up with a comp compromising then just it's well, this isn't going to work. And that's not rude and it's not difficult. It's just that I get where you're at, but this is where I'm at, and your needs aren't greater than mine, and equally, mine aren't greater than yours.

27:32 I think if you can come back to. That as often as possible, that you're not diminishing somebody else's needs, but equally you don't want to be diminishing your own. That's really helpful. Cas and I really love when talking about essentialism. I'm still doing your not to do list. Good. Yeah, good. That is so helpful. And you can go back to the series one of Crappy to're happy to listen in to the. Busy Sea, the busy episode. I think sometimes too, it helps people to have a bit of a script, to practice certain phrases. If you know that you are you have difficulty saying no, for example, or you have difficulty if there's a conversation you want to have with your boss or your husband or anybody and you feel not very confident, sometimes sitting down and writing down and practicing just saying that phrase and having these phrases that you can trot out when you know that otherwise, because when we're anxious, we don't think very clearly.

28:25 The front, the thinking rational part of our brain kind of goes off lines yes, the fight, when the fight orf flight thing goes off, we lose capacity to think clearly. So that's where practiced phrases yes can help because we just go to our practiced phrase. Have a script. That's really helpful. Yeah, And when asking for things, you know there's a certain I actually there's a little technique where you can say, Okay, well, here's the situation. This is how I feel about it, This is what I need, and this is what I think the positive outcome will be for all of us. So if you can touch off those points, it's a really nice way. You a little formula. Oh so this is the situation. So this is what's happening at the moment, this is how I'm.

29:05 Feeling about that. What I would really like is this, and this is how I see that will be of benefit. It's nice, that's lovely. Yeah, neat, I'm going to use that. So there's lots of little things that you can do like that, and then with practice it becomes easier. But it doesn't become easier until you actually practice. Put it into practice. So confidence is a practice. It is takes the doing. It's not you can't think your way out of into confidence. You have to do your way. Yeah, And we often think of confidence as something as you're just born with or something that you have to because a lot of people are shocked when I tell them that I was a very shy child. And when we would go to a restaurant or we will go out, I would always get my sister to order for me.

29:50 If we're with mum, and dad or she would go and get me a straw, or I. Would never ask. And and also at school. I got the Beacon Award because I would always blush. I was so shy I couldn't ask a question. So it is something that I've had to work on being confident using my voice. And the last bit of the puzzle is to nail this assertiveness and to learn how to say no yeah, because it is having a negative effect on my health. I get run down, I get sick, I have no time. Self care goes out the window. You'll get resentful of people and that's not in your nature. So yeah, you've got to start to protect your energy and protect your boundaries self care, isn't it.

30:30 Definitely? So many fantastic tips and tools there to build your confidence. Next episode on Crappy to Happy, we're going to be talking about aging gracefully. We'll speak to you then. Crappy to Happy is presented by Cast Done produced by Davids Velenski, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener