ANSWER
Hello!
This is a great question.
I’m going to try and answer each of your questions and give some exercise to help assimilate the teaching.
Being confident is a skill taught to us most often by our family, parent or caregivers. Unfortunately for many of us, the opposite of confidence is taught to us: for example
-often, kids are shamed for their body looks and size. They are taught via shaming that they shouldn’t be confident unless they look a certain way.
-Often, girls are told that grades in school are very important. They are taught that to be worthy and confident, they need to perform in school.
-Girls are also taught to do as they are told, to not go against the rules. This leave girls insecure about doing what’s right for them that to be confident, they must obey society rules.
A good place to explore more examples of this is by listening to podcast #249 of The Beyond The Food Show titled, “The Good Girl Syndrome” and also podcast #250-The Black Outfit… these two podcast episodes will likely spark more memories for you in your life.
To your question “What am I supposed to get out of understanding how I was taught to not be confident?”…. What you will gain is the understanding and awareness of the beliefs you were taught growing up that still play in your mind today leading you to not feel confident now.
In your workbook “Your confidence Storyline” you have a graphic that teaches you how your “perspective” – what you were taught creates the thoughts you are having today which create the emotions you feel or don’t feel leading to the actions and results you have in your life.
For example, if someone taught you that thinner is better or that being fat is terrible, then it creates your present desire to make your body smaller.
Circumstances are events in our life that we respond to. When we think of where we must require confidence, we could think of the circumstance of a work assignment or perhaps the circumstance of walking into a room filled up with strangers. Both are neutral events that for many us would require confidence to either perform well or have a good time.
The opposite of confidence is often insecurity and/or anxiety. So you can reflect on event / circumstance in your life where you felt anxious or insecure and ask yourself how the event / circumstance could have been different if you would have felt confident instead of insecure? This exercise of reflection will likely provide you with lots of circumstances to work with.
For many women in our community, their body image is a very frequent circumstance where they feel “insecure”… body image often play in various circumstance for example: sexual relationship with a partner, buying new clothes, words from a loved one about our body…
Lastly, I love the fact that you say, “I would like to be more confident…”. Let’s work on this!
As you progress in CONFIDENT, you will be taught the self-coaching model to help you create confidence in various circumstances of your life. Pick one circumstance and work through all the booklet to help you create this confidence.
Come back here for each step, and we will coach you!
Great work, sister!