Betty’s Show Notes
What is confidence? How would your life improve if you were more self-confident? What can you do to boost your confidence? In Brady Ware’s latest podcast episode, learn the characteristics of a confident woman and how you can apply the self-confidence formula to your life.
In this episode I cover:
- What is confidence?
- How would your life improve if you were more self-confident?
- What can you do to boost your confidence?
The self-confidence formula for women:
- Take responsibility for yourself.
- Begin to experiment with life.
- Develop an action plan and implement it.
- Stick with it.
- Act “as if.”
- Find a mentor.
Handouts for this podcast:
“Inspiring Women” Podcast Series
“Inspiring Women” is THE podcast that advances women toward economic, social and political achievement. The show is hosted by Betty Collins, CPA, and presented by Brady Ware and Company. Brady Ware is committed to empowering women to go their distance in the workplace and at home. Past episodes of “Inspiring Women” can be found here.
Show Transcript
Betty Collins: [00:00:03] Confidence is silent. Insecurities are very loud. And arrogance is just completely ignored. And I want to talk about those things today.
Betty Collins: [00:00:18] So I’m watching this YouTube video of Aretha Franklin. And I was blown away. I watched it over and over. And of course she comes out, everyone knows the name for the most part right. And she’s singing “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman.” And not only is she just singing it, she’s singing this for the President of the United States, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama. And they’re sitting with Carole King who actually wrote the song. And she first comes out and she’s on stage. It’s a full crowd. And she starts singing. She’s playing her own music. So she’s just sitting there, playing and singing like it’s the most natural thing. Meanwhile they show her President wiping a tear from his eye. And they show Carole King totally, totally into the fact that here is this woman singing this song, the way she is, Aretha Franklin. Doesn’t seem fazed at all. She’s just doing what she does.
Betty Collins: [00:01:28] And then about halfway through the song she decides to get up. Someone takes over the piano. She’s now no longer kind of hiding behind her piano. Maybe it’s easier to sing there. I don’t know, I’m not an entertainer. And she comes out to the middle of the stage and she kicks it up. So she takes a natural talent and totally makes it completely unique for her. And not only that, about probably two thirds of the way into the song, everyone’s on their feet, including the President of the United States, and she throws off her big fur. And she pulls that microphone out, she raises her arms like there’s no tomorrow, and she belts it out as if she’s 20 years old.
Betty Collins: [00:02:16] And of course the crowd is on their feet with her. And I watched it over and over. What came to me was you would never know if she was confident or not in what she was doing. She came out like it was the most natural thing. I mean I couldn’t imagine performing for the President of the United States in the first place, let alone meet him. And she’s doing this like it’s an everyday thing. But if you really read her story and you go back through her life, that was not always there. But that night the confidence was just natural and amazing.
Betty Collins: [00:03:01] Confidence is really hard. And so today when I want to cover is what is confidence? What are the qualities of a confident person? And how can you be confident? Because I know for me, I can start a day out at 7 a.m. and I can be insecure. And by 9 arrogant, and by 2, confident, maybe. And by the end of the day and secure again. So I go to all three of those. But obviously we don’t want to hang around with insecure people. And we don’t want to hang around with arrogant people. We’d rather be with real confident type individuals in our lives. Professionally and personally. So when I talk about confidence you have to know what it is. And for me the definition is easy because it’s just the quality of being certain of your abilities. I mean you are certain of who you are. You’re certain of what you can do. And you trust and you have a firm belief in that. And then you you go with it.
Betty Collins: [00:04:01] Arrogance is the quality of being very superior. Your overbearing. Nobody wants to be around them.
Betty Collins: [00:04:11] But insecurity, to me, is just as bad as arrogance. And women tend to be more insecure. Men tend to be more arrogant. And neither is good.
Betty Collins: [00:04:23] So how do you get to that quality of being confident. And you’re not always going to be confident. You’re just going to have those times. But you have to admit your flaw and you have to say no. And sometimes you have to listen and not conform. You’ve got to be open for help and you’ve got to own your own feelings, and guilt isn’t your friend. And you’ve got to support others. And when you start putting that whole mix together, you’re probably going to become a confident person. It’s not easy and it doesn’t happen overnight. Aretha Franklin didn’t get on stage her first time and sing for the President and have people on their feet emotionally engaged with her. And I’m sure that took a lifetime to do.
Betty Collins: [00:05:15] Without confidence you’re going to be really mired down in unfulfilled desire in your life. You’re going to be full of excuses more than you are why you are who you are. And you’re going to be paralyzed by fear. It’s something I deal with all the time. And that takes away from being confident. What’s really funny about women today is we’re turning the corner in so many ways. And so we need to start acting like that and start taking more risk and stop the grumbling and apologizing because the results are starting to really happen. And there is now research and statistical evidence that confidence is more important than your ability. I’m in an industry as a CPA where technical ability is really valued. Has to be. The confidence is now showing is just as important if not more.
Betty Collins: [00:06:16] And here are the things that are happening for women. So more of us are getting college and graduate degrees. We’re running some of the largest countries in the world, not just the United States. There are now 17 female Heads Of States in the world. 105 seats in Congress are held by women which, is nineteen point six percent. Twenty five percent of board members are now women. And those companies tend to be more profitable when the when women are on their boards. This is the best one. We control 80 percent of U.S. consumer spending. 26 percent of women in the U.S. do not work. They can have the lifestyle of raising their children and being home and it’s ok. Mothers are now the primary or sole earners for 40 percent of households. We comprise over 50 percent of the workforce. And now 30 percent of businesses owned by women are being started by women. And three out of ten women serve their country or government in some capacity. Those are major, major statistics and they’re happening because of confidence and hard work and drive. But it’s a huge factor in the development of things that are happening for women in the things I’m talking about. But it’s also confidence that affects your relationships, your family life, where you volunteer, maybe where you go to church. How you are confident in those roles.
Betty Collins: [00:07:54] There are a lot of myths about confidence. We think we can be more confident. Women believe that if we work harder our talent will shine through. So we just don’t ask questions, we just accept our circumstances. And we just work harder. And then we assume that we’re better at having conversations in our head than with people. And what that does, again, it takes from the confidence factor. On top of all that, we focus on perfection. And perfection is not confidence, it’s just paralyzing to you. And I hate to tell you, but we kind of overthink a lot of things. So all of that leads up to we care too much about then what others think. And we believe it’s easier for everyone else around us, it’s easier for them. Those are myths that take away from confidence.
Betty Collins: [00:08:49] And so what I want to ask you is this. Are you a perfectionist? Are you hesitant? Do you micromanage every aspect of your life? Do you disengage because doing work and leveraging your skills is harder? Are you afraid to fail? And are you blessed with very uncooperative people in your life? You’ve got to answer those things because when you answer those, those are the things that drain your confidence. So you have to look at what risk are you willing to take to change those. And you can’t change them all overnight. But those are really, really important questions. In fact I have handouts for you today that tell you are you confident or are you not. And so start looking at those and be honest.
Betty Collins: [00:09:41] Why the confidence issue for women? I just went through, pretty hard stuff, all the myths. I just talked about which we have a great hand out for you on that. But let me give you examples of women who are confident and women who are not.
Betty Collins: [00:09:58] Women who are confident talk about dreams. Your plans, your aspirations. What you want to be. Where you want to go. Visions. And women who are not confident, they just talk about other women. It’s evidence and it’s statistically proven. You need to think about that.
Betty Collins: [00:10:17] Here’s another one. Confident people. They are the trendsetters. Confident people follow the trendsetters. Not everyone needs to be a trendsetter. But I mean those are those are characteristics of that you’re pretty confident if you can you can set the trend instead of follow it.
Betty Collins: [00:10:37] Confident women don’t try to please everyone. In fact their motto is “Confidence is not that they will like me, Confidence is I’ll be fine if they don’t.” So when you’re consumed in “I got to please everyone around me,” or “Hey, I’m not going to try to please you because I’m trying to do the right thing.” So those are things that show you that you’re confident and that’s how you know you’re not.
Betty Collins: [00:11:10] So what is the self confidence formula for women? As a CPA, we do everything with formulas, so here we go. Step 1. Take responsibility for yourself. The path towards your confidence is the one that you travel, not everyone else. It’s your journey.
Betty Collins: [00:11:29] Step 2. You’ve got to start experimenting with some things in your life. I did this when I was 38 years old. There were just things I wanted to do that I talked about doing but didn’t. One of them was I wanted to read the New York Times from cover to cover. Why? I don’t know. But it was one of those things that was so refreshing because I found my little place where nobody could be. And I read The New York Times. And once I finally got over “I don’t need to probably read the New York Times,” but it was kind of one of those things where I said “I’m going to do this. I want to try. I want to see what it was about.” It was very interesting. When I got bored with that, I went on to something else. Try new things.
Betty Collins: [00:12:13] You got to develop an action plan and then you implement it. I know for myself I read a book, Start With Why by Simon Sinek. And I always did the “How” and the “What.” We all do. Or the when the “How” and the “What” is easier, but you got to know the why. And for the longest time my “Why” was “I’m going to help you with your business. I’m going to do your accounting. I’m going to get your taxes done.”
Betty Collins: [00:12:43] Then I said no. I’m going to have a completely different action plan for my clients. In fact, I’m going to make sure that you’re successful so that as the employer, your employees are successful. And those employees are households that are the infrastructure of a community. So it took a whole new turn how I advised, and energized, my client, versus just doing your taxes. Because that’s just a given everyone has to do them. So I developed a whole new action plan on my “Why” and started doing that “Why” in thinking about that “Why” for everything. It was excellent.
Betty Collins: [00:13:21] You’ve got to stick with something. Self-confidence. It doesn’t come because you tried one thing. You took one pill. That’s what we generally like to do. Or we read one book. It’s a continual evolvement in development.
Betty Collins: [00:13:35] You always act “As if.” “As if” I’m putting in quotes. So “If” you put off action until you have confidence, you’ll never do it. “If” you take action, do it within a semblance of outward confidence. Sometimes, the inward true confidence will follow. My mother always told us “False cheer is better than real crabbiness.” And I always used that. Sometimes you just have to get out there and you just have to act like it’s all okay. Even though it isn’t. I wouldn’t hide from all those things but there are times that confidence will get you there. And once you’re out there going “OK everything’s good. Get your smiles on.” That was our Sunday morning. Every week. It’s church time kids. All six of us got in the van. Put your smiles on we’re, going to church. We did all getting ready with one bathroom.
Betty Collins: [00:14:22] And then you have to find a mentor if you want confidence. Because you need somebody’s outside perspective telling you when you went to the arrogant side or now you’re back at the insecure side. You’ve got to have that person in your life that comes in and says here’s what you do. So those are kind of the formulas and again we’ll give you these handouts on our website that will refer to at the end of this podcast. These are things that are just easy reading, easy simple stuff. Take away one or two of them and start it.
Betty Collins: [00:14:50] But there are things you can do to boost your confidence. As women, it’s very important. One is dress nicely, groom yourself. That sounds really simple but I will tell you the last time I spoke at the Brady Ware’s Women’s Conference, I decided to engage [00:15:04] Sue Kantor. Sophisticated Styling is her company. [00:15:08] I thought I just want to look great that day. And she just was fabulous. I showed up to the store and in there she has all of these outfits for me to try on. And it came down to three of them and she says well what do you think. And I mean people were just awesome. I had the shoes, the jewelry ,the clothes, the makeup. Here’s what you need to do. And I just felt great. She goes “Which one do you want?” I said, “Oh no, I’m taking it all. Pack it up.” And I bought every bit of it. And you know I went to the conference that day and, this is kind of embarrassing even to say, but I ended up wearing all three outfits throughout the day. It was just fun and it was a fun thing for the day. And I felt confident just doing it and it was just fun. So those things can really get you.
Betty Collins: [00:15:58] I have a whole list of things that can boost your confidence. Stand taller. Speak slower. Be prepared. Sometimes just decide you’re going to be kind and generous all day. You’ll be amazed at what that can do because you’ll forget the “stuff” in your life. Focus on solutions. Smiling is easier than frowning. Sometimes you got to just clear your desk and clean it. There are all kinds of ways to do it. But I can tell you people who are confident will get on the stage, perform for a President, not hide behind a piano, and sing like she’s 20. And you can do that. It just takes time. It takes development. But it’s rewarding at the end of the day.
