The Confidence Coach - making friends

0:02 A listener production. This podcast aims to provide general information only and is not intended to be a substitute for psychological therapy. If any of the topics discussed raise issues for you, please seek advice from a trained psychologist, and if you're struggling, you can always call Lifeline on one three one one one four. Hi, and welcome to the Confidence Coach, the podcast for people who struggle with self confidence, question their self worth, or have a persistent nagging voice in their head that tells them they're not good enough.

0:46 I'm your Hostcast done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, and in each episode, we'll start with a real person sharing their confidence struggle with me in their own words via a voice memo. I'll share with you ideas and tools that you can apply to help boost your self esteem and live a more confident life. Today we're going to hear from Abby. Hey, Cas, my name is Abby. I've moved to Melbourne from the Gold Coast and obviously I became very complacent with my little life there, and then COVID happened and I have no choice but to live here. And I do want to because I'm with family, but I've just become quite a homebody, and I don't really want to get out and about and meet new people. I don't know if now I'm just anxious about if people are going to like me or not, and I just find it hard as a twenty eight year old to make friends.

1:44 I even go to the same cafes and restaurants because I have become so routined to just go into the same place. And it's like I'm just scared to step out of my comfort zone. I think my survival settling and just goes, oh, I'm all right on my own, but I don't know how to put myself out there, and I'm starting to feel really lonely. But yeah, if you can help me out and give me any advice, I'd really appreciate it. I feel like this is a situation that so many people can relate to. I just want to start by saying Abby sent this voice memo when Melbourne was kind of in the middle of lockdowns, and while most of the country is no longer in lockdown, I do feel like there's many people who have been affected by the in and out of lockdown that went on for so many months, and there is still so much uncertainty around that This is not an uncommon problem for a lot of people. Abby's talking about being really hesitant to move outside her comfort zone and put herself into situations where she can meet new people and make new friends. There is a quote by psychologists call Richard Petty who says confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into actions. When you lack confidence, like you are less likely to take action, You hesitate, you procrastinate. And this is obviously what's happening with Abby. And it's very easy to rationalize and to

3:19 justify that in action with the stories that you tell yourself. In Abby's case, she can come up with the rationalization. That's the point, because we're just going to go into lockdown again. And I want to make it clear that confidence does create action. That also action creates confidence. And I think sometimes that if we go with this idea that we need to wait to feel confident, we need to wait until we feel ready to do something that feels a little bit out of our comfort zone, then we could end up waiting a really long time. When can we allow ourselves to kind of be derailed or have our choices and our decisions influenced by these unchecked thoughts.

4:07 In the short term, it might not make much difference, but in the longer term, we end up living a really small life. In Abby's case, she's talking about that she never gets out of her suburb. We end up living very much within the boundaries of our comfort zone, and over time that comfort zone can actually get smaller and smaller and smaller. So what we need to try to do instead is to come up with a really good reason why you want to do something that is outside your comfort zone. If you are doing something that feels uncomfortable for you, that feels a bit scary, it's a whole lot easier to do that if you are able to connect it to something that is deeply important to you in your life yourself. Why does it matter for you to do this thing? Besides the obvious, I'd really like to have some more friends. What does it mean to you to have a supportive social network around you?

5:17 What does it mean to be a person who is able to do things that feel a bit challenging. Why does it matter to you? How does this relate to your sense of self and the kind of person that you want to be and the kind of life that you want to live. Anytime we are asking ourselves to do something that feels uncomfortable, it really helps to make sure that we've got a really compelling reason to do that, and often that reason can come from our values, and it just takes for us to spend some time to think about why this actually matters. I feel like a really key message here is that life is not about trying to avoid things that feel uncomfortable. The important thing is to live a life that feels fulfilling and meaningful and in line with your values doing the things that really matter to you. And what we need to do is we need to understand and appreciate that sometimes that means we put ourselves outside our comfort zone, but it's worth it because that is how we get to live a really full and rich and meaningful life. So I want to introduce you to a technique that I think can be really helpful for helping you to get outside your comfort zone. And I'm going to call it the confidence ladder. So, if you imagine a ladder, the very top might be the thing that you would do if

6:49 you were the most confident person in the world, and maybe that would be going to a party on your own with a group of people that you don't know, talking to everybody in the room. What would be a one on that ladder? Though maybe a one would just be smiling at somebody that you see at the gym all the time, somebody that you might later want to strike up a conversation with or ask out for a coffee. What would be the easiest thing to do the first most basic step that you could take. And if you can put these things on your ladder and maybe rate them from one to ten in terms of least scary to most scary, then what you can do is you can start kind of systematically taking steps up the ladder, doing the things that put you just that little bit outside of your comfort zone, that cause you to just stretch in a really healthy way, to start giving yourself the opportunity to do the things that feel uncomfortable and give yourself the experience and the evidence to show that it's fine, that you can do it. And in that way, that action starts to produce that confidence, and you have the confidence then to take the next step and the next step, and by doing that, you start to give yourself the experience of feeling a little bit nervous, of feeling a little bit out of your depth, but it's not overwhelming, it's not all consuming, and that things turn out often a whole lot better than what you're anticipating.

8:23 So my challenge to you this week is to look at what you might have been avoiding and to resolve to take action for you. Maybe it is striking up a conversation with somebody that you'd like to have a friendship with. It could be speaking up in a meeting at work when you normally stay quiet. Could be signing up for a class or something that you're interested in, going to a new class at the gym when you've never been before, just something small that you know that you've been avoiding. Remind yourself of why this matters to you, What is important about this thing? How can you relate this back to the kind of person that you want to be or the kind of life that you want to live. And then if you notice that you feel uneasy or anxious about putting yourself out of your comfort zone, make that why the reason this is important bigger in your mind than that temporary feeling of discomfort. And if you still feel like it's too much, maybe try using the confidence ladder to decide where you think it sits like, how would you rate this thing on a scale of one to ten, and see if you can maybe work out what might be a couple of steps below it on the ladder, something that just feels more manageable to you that will help you to take that first step towards doing the thing that you really want to do.

10:00 Thank you so much for listening to the Confidence Coach podcast. If you have a confidence challenge that you'd like my help with, send me a voice memo. You can do that on my Instagram account at cast done underscore XO, or you can just use the voice recorder on your phone and email it to the Confidence Coach at casdone dot com and I look forward to helping you with another confidence challenge on our next episode. Listener