You’ve been working for yourself for a while. You’re good at it. Client testimonials confirm it. You have a reputation. And yet you still second guess yourself. You still hesitate. Some people call it imposter syndrome, but you have a track record. So why aren’t you launching your new service or taking the next step to grow your business?

From the outside you look like someone at the top of their game. But it doesn’t feel like that to you.

what’s going on.

In my experience, it’s confidence. Confidence to act. Confidence to make a decision. You’ve started waiting to be confident despite having a track record. Despite all the evidence that says you can do it; there is a part of you that wonders if that’s true. Some days you look at what you’ve achieved and wonder how you did it. Some days it feels like someone else had the success and you are back to being the true version of yourself.

confidence doesn’t come first.

Nobody around you understands your hesitation. They think you’re amazing and tell you so. But you just don’t feel it. It’s mostly words and words aren’t evidence.

Confidence is built on evidence. Evidence that you can see and feel. It does come from other people but not just as words. Evidence comes from action. The issue you are facing is that the evidence isn’t consistent. Or you haven’t stopped to consider it for a while. You haven’t let yourself believe it.

Now you are waiting to feel confident but you know that is only going to come from doing the thing you are waiting to feel confident about.

more than words.

When I started coaching, as a student, I loved the feedback from assessments. Objective feedback from someone who had no investment in what mark they gave me. I loved the detailed testimonials I had to get from practice clients to submit. And, when I got my distinction grade, I felt validated.

Then I started to build my coaching business and all that confidence was forgotten. The validation didn’t feel as valuable now I was a ‘proper’ coach and not a student. Nothing had really changed other than I wasn’t getting consistent feedback. I was out of the study bubble.

Added to this, I was still working hard in my marketing career. I still hadn’t fully made the decision to walk away and coach full time. So, it became easier to doubt my abilities as a coach rather than commit to working on it full time.

But, my confidence grew as I worked with clients and saw them achieve the things that had been eluding them. My confidence as a business owner also grew as I took each step. Some days I experienced self-doubt, other days I felt like a fraud. And I kept going. I’d built systems and created habits to help me get things done even when I was doubting my ability to do them.

confidence building.

Breaking things down is what really works. Not as a productivity trick, as a way of generating the evidence you need to keep going. I wanted to run a workshop. I kept putting it off. So, I broke it down. My first step was to find the venue, then book a visit, then book a date. That made it real. Then I created a list to market it, then one to build the resources. The workshop existed before I had faith in it. The faith came from building the things around it, one step at a time.

start with evidence.

Start with evidence. How will you measure your progress? Your success? What objective measures can you put in place? Evidence builds belief. Belief becomes confidence. Confidence comes last, not first. Even when you’ve built a business or done something a hundred times. If you lack confidence, start again with evidence.

I work with people who know what they are doing but aren’t doing it. We build habits to move them forward. If this sounds helpful, book a call.