Finding Your Inner Confidence: the Solution to Happiness After Divorce

I've been coaching for years now, and the biggest thing I've learned - both for me and for my clients - is that inner confidence is the key to success and happiness after divorce.

There are all kinds of strategies, ways of thinking, patterns of behaviour and practical tips for improving your life and feeling better about yourself, but they're all redundant if the foundation isn't there. That foundation is the real you, the you that you know deep down you are.

How do you build that foundation? Start with these two steps:

1. Get To Know Your Values

Personal values are a big passion of mine and I often get carried away with myself when I talk about them. I make no apology for that though – they’re one of the most important things you can know about yourself and are vital in getting genuine inner confidence. Your values are right at the very core of who you are, and they’re the building blocks, the foundations, and cornerstones of who YOU are.

Why is it that some people

and situations leave you feeling angry, frustrated, demotivated or deflated? It’s because one or more of your values is being triggered. Wether that value is being denied, suppressed or repressed, using your anger or frustration to do some soul searching is a key part of this journey. Ask yourself WHY you are feeling triggered, what value is being put into questions, and then you begin to learn what values truly are important to you.

Conversely, those times when you’ve felt really alive, amazing or buzzing? Those are the times when one or more of your values are being honoured, and you can get more of that by living according to them. Go towards those feelings and values!

When you get to really know your values, you can start to make choices and align your life around them, your confidence really begins to shine through because you are making decisions for the right reasons.

2. Exercise the Muscle

Confidence is a muscle, and like any muscle, you need to exercise it so that it doesn’t shrink and waste away.

Let’s say that you’re the kind of person that doesn’t take many risks, the kind of person who goes through each day doing what needs to be done and doing it well, but not really stretching yourself. You might talk yourself out of doing something because it’s too scary or because you think to yourself ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘that’s not who I am’ or ‘I don’t really want it anyway.’ That kind of person lives within what they know and what keeps them safe and comfortable. The fewer risks they take, the less confident they need to be and so the less confident they become.

To work your confidence muscle you need to be prepared to take risks – big or small. You need to be willing to stretch yourself in an unfamiliar direction, to try something new or try something in a slightly different way. You need to open yourself up to the possibilities around you and push yourself to increase what you know, what you do and who you are.

The more open you are to risk, opportunity and possibility, the more confident you need to be, and therefore, the more you risk, the more confidence you’ll develop.

That’s your confidence muscle – the question is, what are you going to do to exercise it?"