Growing In Confidence

Everyone has dreams, some go on to achieve them, while for the vast majority some will simply not believe they can.

As I have confessed in many posts, I lacked self confidence growing up and was unsure of myself and although inside I wanted to achieve my dreams, I was simply too terrified to even begin.  

I stayed at church youth club hidden away.  I was good at tennis before I started golf but prior to all of this I used to go to Karate, because I lacked so much self confidence my achievements in Karate were very limited, I won a couple of medals but my ability to make any real impact was cut short as I lacked self confidence and was therefore too shy, painfully shy infact.  

Unfortunately this continued and I will for the first time openly admit this is the reason I did not go to America to try for my LPGA card, like my friends did.  

In mid 2009, I knew I had this one opportunity to overcome every fear.  I decided I wanted to be Lady Captain at the golf club I had been at since a painfully shy, self concious teenager.   

I knew overcoming all of this was not going to be easy but I was only to aware of the things I had let slip through my fingers up until this point in early September 2009.  I knew I had to reach deep down inside me and challenge every limited belief that had been formed inside me as a young child.  Work on my self confidence began immediately.  

I knew deep down I had to just reawaken this confidence, the confidence I had at Primary School to captain the rounders team and to be the goalie in the girls football team.  Back then, I had never been knocked and was not even aware that life outside my primary school and my road existed.  I had never faced judgement of any kind.  

Over the period of three months, I sort of became oblivious to other people around me.  I knew that it would have me to remember that confidence was my original nature before time started chiseling away at it.

I knew that around the second year of secondary school, I had developed a sense of self-awareness, like most teens, especially girls, I started forming doubts and insecurities about how other people saw me. I didn't crave praise and could not seem to avoid criticism, and I slowly started getting down on myself when I got more of the latter than the former.

The soul searching over those three months taught me that we were all born with confidence, and we can all get it back if we learn to silence the thoughts that threaten it.

Learning who I was did not happen overnight.  I am still learning even at 38.  The hardest part for me is trying to work out which parts of me are me and which parts are who I think I should be.  

I am shit at doing lists of pros and cons and things I do well and not so well.  So approaching my captaincy I made a very crucial decision.  I sought help from a sports psychologist and it was one of the best things I have ever done, I started to develop both confidence and fulfillment simultaneously.  That morning, playing off of a handicap of 2, I learnt more about my golf and myself as a person than any book or therapist could of taught me.  

My confidence during 2010 came from success, I was playing off of +2 by the late spring.  I was at that point the youngest lady captain in the country (aged 29 when I started on January 1st 2010).  

Although my confidence was coming from my successful year, confidence also combines another quality because although I was successful, I was still actually lacking self confidence.  I had to focus and change my mental attitude towards an expectation of success which would help reinforce my confidence.   

Although conventional wisdom suggests that it is smart to expect the worst because then I wouldn't be disappointed if I failed but pride wouldn't let me fail.  I worked for hours on my short game and putting, hours and hours a week beyond all the time I had to spend organising matches, teams and trophies, on top of this I also spent time sitting on committees.  

Pride was my driving force.  

Everyone is good at some things and not so good at others, this is life and what makes it so interesting, I can skateboard and do tricks (when I was 10-13) but could never skate, I could ski and do jumps but not snowboard.  

At my Catholic primary school, Sister Anne always told us "Never weigh your security against what you know or can do; weigh it against your willingness and capacity to learn".

People often think confidence means knowing you can create the outcome you desire. To some extent it does, but this idea isn’t universally true for anyone. No matter how talented, smart, or capable you are, you cannot predict or control everything that happens in your life.  Even confident people lose jobs, relationships, and sometimes, their health.

Confidence comes from knowing your competence but acknowledging it’s not solely responsible for creating your world. It has taken me, my life to date to realize that sometimes the twists and turns have nothing to do with what you did or should have done.  

Many of my posts in 2017, touched on the fact that I always found it incredibly easy to believe all the negative things people say to me and yet discredit the positive.  I have always struggled with this hence my eating issues as a teenager.  If only back then that I would of had the ability to turn praise into confidence.  

I was worthy, we all are. 

I am capable and worthy, just like you.  Regardless of what I have achieved, regardless of the mistakes that I have made, knowing this intellectually is the first step to believing it in my heart. Believing it is my key to living it, living it is my key to reaching my potential.