Ep #8: How to Strengthen Your Self-Concept for Greater Confidence

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Hello my beautiful performers. So you may hear some papers rustling on this one because I wrote some things down that I want to share with you today about self-concept. I had a chance to speak yesterday at a beautiful women’s day retreat and it was really incredible. The amount of women that showed up for themselves, that showed up to learn new things, that really kind of showed up to game on with whatever they were having that day. I did have a spokesperson gig for three days in a row. So my voice will sound obviously deeper.

I love sharing that information with you. I share it each time, especially because my week holds different things. And that really is the foundation of why I’m doing what I’m doing and why I’m sharing that you can have a full career as a performer and do a number of different things and still show up in a way, and in a world that you want to do and pursue. For example, I wanted to have a podcast. So I’m going to do my podcast regardless of whatever else I have going on.

Now, today’s topic, I talked yesterday of confidence and a little bit of self-concept, but I really want to dig into self-concept today. And some of us know self-concept versus confidence and I’ll go into that a bit. But I really want to focus in on the self-concept. So self-concept is an idea of self-constructed beliefs that one holds on about themselves. And it’s typically based upon responses of others. So largely a reflection of the reactions that other people have toward the individual or for yourself. There’s also this kind of concept that it’s comprised of how you self-identify, your self-image, your self-esteem.

And then also that vision of your ideal self that influences your emotions, behavior in relationships. Now, self-concept is the thing that impacts your mental health and that is your overall wellbeing, how you show up in the world. So people can say, “I’m a very confident performer. I’m a very confident person.” And they really feel confident in the realm of strength or highly practiced skill that we talk about often, or where their talent is aligned and that may be true. But that is very different from self-concept.

They could, and I run into this all the time with so many different artists, is that the self-concept is not as strong as it could be in the positive realm. And that will really influence greatly how you feel and like I said, how you show up in the world. So we’re going to dive into a few things. I read this really cool article. And we’re going to dig into why self-concept matters and why it’s important in all these other foundational components for really being your best self.

So at growtherapy.com, Isbell Oliva-Garcia, she wrote an article in January kind of talking about a lot of the things that we’re going to talk about today, so why self-concept matters. When you have a positive self-concept, you can handle criticism far easier than not. So not only can you handle the criticism, but you can seek opportunities for growth. When you have a positive self-concept, you have the ability to overcome. You accept strengths and weaknesses without harsh criticism of oneself. And that harsh criticism of oneself is when you learn that you made a great error.

I remember before I had a stronger self-concept, I would put that error and make it mean something bad about me. So if someone said, “Hey, you failed to do this or hey, you forgot to call this person back and they were waiting on this and so it canceled this for somebody.” And my brain would tell me, what is wrong with you? Get your life together. Why are you so embarrassing? And obviously that self-concept was from a foundation of beliefs that I had early, early on. That’s created in my childhood, that’s created from past trauma, that’s created from a number of different things.

Now, a disclaimer on this. This is not intended to be medical advice. I will absolutely share from my angle my scientific study of one. The person who did write this article that I was talking about. She is a family therapist. But I want to share, again, my stories from my angle and really have you think about all these things and how they impact you personally. So when you think about wearing that kind of error as a badge of almost dishonor, that can really, really deplete and make that self-concept negative. And I really operated from that place for a long time.

And you can hear that in yourself and you can hear that in others when you say things like, “I just feel like no one appreciates me or I feel like I’m just so unimportant. I can sit in a room and not be seen or I feel not seen, I feel not heard.” And if you have a strong self-concept you can go in any room and you know that you matter and you know that your presence matters and you know that you matter because you are matter, and you are there mattering. It does not matter if anybody else outside of you thinks, wow, she is really important and she really matters.

You truly know that in your core, in your deepest understanding of yourself, in your contribution to the world. Now, when you have a positive concept about yourself, you don’t really give yourself that harsh criticism. You can take that information and you could absolutely own it and say, “You know what? Oh, yeah, that was a mistake of mine. I apologize.”

I actually just had a mistake, I double booked something which I do on a consistent basis. That’s why I have a full-time assistant. But I want to help everyone. I genuinely do. And so I get into this place where I’m like, “Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.” And a lot of times I say sure to things and I absolutely cannot do them. My heart wants to do them. My actual physical being and time frame cannot allow it.

But going into that, I double booked a stage for this thing. So there was something that happened on a thing that I was working on. And one of the things that I like to do because I do have a strong self-concept is I like to apologize for my error upfront and then I like to reassure that that will not happen again. And typically because I am very, very aware that that was a great inconvenience, it was a monetary inconvenience, time inconvenience. I will not allow that to happen again going forward in the future.

So taking that on and taking ownership of it was not the same as me being like, “Wow, I am a total trash man girl, garbage pail kid. I am not smart.” All of these just self-deprecating things that just wouldn’t be true. How could I do that? No, none of that. All that stuff happens because we’re human people doing human things in this life. So I want you to think about any of those things that come in and kind of interrupt or deplete that positive self-concept. When you have a positive self-concept, you have a good understanding of your emotions. You feel adequate. You feel like you are capable. You feel like there’s really nothing that you can’t handle.

I talk about this kind of bandwidth for just being able to handle things emotionally. I have worked with so many different individuals. And you can see people’s emotional bandwidth very, very early on in your working relationship. You can see it in meetings, you can see if they feel insecure, if they feel inadequate. And sometimes you do have to end up kind of pussyfooting around, well, I don’t want to hurt their feelings. And that oftentimes makes it hard to do work, especially if your goals are to succeed. There’s a means to an end. There’s human discrepancy. All those things are going to happen.

So I want to give some examples of what a negative self-concept is and then I’m going to talk about changing these. So what we’re going to do to change them and then what we’re going to do to advance and make it better in the future and stronger and just a more solid way of living. So for example, you may have a negative concept if you feel inadequate, if you feel unworthy, unimportant. If you again are undermining your ability or your accomplishments, if you avoid or dread social interaction, you fear judgment. You fear that you are truly just not even deserving to be in the room or feel like enough.

Or oftentimes a daily one or something I run into often is when people just brush off compliments, they’re highly sensitive to criticism, they take things personal and having hurt feelings, easy. So if you find that that may be you. I really, really implore you to listen to and focus on these episodes and what you can do to continue to grow that self-concept. Because every single one of The Confident Performer episodes will help you grow that. I had to fully invest in that. I invest in that and have since I started being coached when I was 24 years old and I’m double that now, deliciously double that.

I do not feel embarrassed about aging. I do not feel embarrassed about sharing my age. I love it. I love every day. I’m gifted and I really, truly encourage everyone to kind of live from that angle, growing old gracefully. I’m not saying I’m against Botox or anything like that because I absolutely am not. I’m into it, babe. So I want you to think about how we can change that negative concept going forward. If you do have a positive or a healthy self-concept now, good for you.

And I want you to share information on how you got that way. A lot of times it is that foundational component, your belief system, your structures. So how to change and kind of recalibrate your self-perception. The greatest thing I think is self-exploration, challenging your negative beliefs. And that’s what I had to do for myself. I had to say, “Why do I feel unimportant? Why do I feel underappreciated?” And I always like to think in my relationships especially, if I feel I’m being taken advantage of. And someone taking advantage of you is not really a thing that you can’t control. You control all of it. You control what you give. You control what you don’t.

You just decide, you know what? I’m only giving this or I have this certain amount of time, I’m giving this time. I’m very firm in my boundaries. So my boundaries, if I have a time boundary, then I say, “I have 10 minutes.” If someone says, “I want to have a coffee with you, I want to pick your brain.” That’s all great, but I don’t do that anymore because this is what I do as a business. I coach and people pick my brain often and we do it usually in large scale settings. And people have paid for a ticket and I’m being paid to be there. There’s a number of things that that’s my job, that’s my work, that’s what I do.

So getting back to changing, how do you change the beliefs of a negative or even just kind of a challenging, poorly formed self-concept? And like I said, a lot of that will be about challenging those negative beliefs. Where do they come from? Why am I thinking that? One of the things I had to do in the past couple of years, especially after I really realized, oh my gosh, I’m measuring my worth in achievements is, I stopped doing that and I built and rebuilt my self-compassion. And I started loving myself in a way that was, what one of my favorite phrases, Kara Loewentheil says is, radical love, just radical self-love.

I started loving and falling in love with myself in a way that I just, I love myself the most. And I am so glad that I do because I can walk in any room and feel comfortable, feel confident. I have a strong self-concept. And I’m not comparing myself to anyone because I know I’m not in comparison with anyone. And that radical self-love allowed me to get to that place, that self-compassion that I give myself, grace for growth that I give myself, grace and growth for the space of all of the human error that I will absolutely live and resonate in.

And I just want each and every single one of my beautiful performers to do that for yourself. Part of your life is auditioning. Part of your life is not getting the job. Part of your life is not even getting feedback as to why you didn’t get the job. And so if you have a strong self-concept you just know that job’s not for me. That is totally fine. I’m moving on, moving on to jobs that are for me and I feel really excited to take on. Identify and celebrate your strengths. Take the time to identify, I do this really, really well. I’m a really great communicator. I’m a really great listener.

Whatever it is that you know you do very, very well, I’m a very good, active listener. And it’s funny because I actively listen in large rooms. And sometimes if I’m in a conversation with a person, we literally feel like we are the only people in that room because of how diligent and actively I choose to listen. I don’t do small talk. I don’t talk about the weather obviously, unless it’s taking my breath away and in a good way or a bad way. But I really, really encourage you to celebrate those strengths.

When I celebrate that I am an active listener, I get great connections wherever I go and whatever I do because I really, really know that that is a strength of mine. So when you think about your past as well, this is a great, great influencer. So I have experienced and I think truly in this world that we live in, we have all experienced past trauma, some from childhood, some from former relationships.

You could have had the best parents in the whole wide world, but then all of a sudden you get in this relationship and it’s your first romantic relationship and you have no idea that it’s actually unhealthy, borderline abusive, or even actively abusive. And it changes again the way you look at yourself, your self-concept. So I want you to really think about how those influences in your life have shaped or molded your self-concept. You have to detach from some of those foundations and beliefs that made them mean something negative about you. That is how you actively change that perspective.

When you’re going forward, your self-concept determines how you treat yourself and how you influence the type of environment that you’re in. So it is, when I referenced it’s that foundation of how you feel and how you show up in a room, because of that, it influences the foundation of your interpersonal relationships as well. Now, when you are going into a room and you feel solid, you just relax because there’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s no one that’s standing there that can easily offend you because you have a strong, strong self-concept.

You know that majority of life is merely a projection of how someone else feels. I have said this often, I do not care what unhappy people think of me, I don’t. I’m not interested. I could truly care less. And it’s because that foundation of self-concept that I truly buy into of myself now. I am worthy. I am valuable. I matter because I am matter and I go into any room. I don’t have to share or make my voice be heard or anything like that just because I’m in a room.

I am still, if I’m not in the room, I’m typically not represented regardless of the fact that I’m a woman, the fact that I’m multi-raced, the fact that I am all of these different things. That I’m a professional entrepreneur. That I’m a performer, that if I’m not in the room I’m not represented and that, I feel fine and I feel strong in saying that. I love to be an advocate and just promoter of really buying into you and your personal growth, you and your personal stance on life, not a generalized foundation, but in life, of course, that’s what beliefs are.

So in closing, I want to say that final, final of your self-concept. When you feel good and you know it’s positive, it’s life changing, it’s life enriching, it’s life giving and in a way that you didn’t even count on. I work with my coach Kym Showers and why I selected her to be my coach and why she’s been my coach for four years now. And I keep on signing up, just session after session, she is the person. She’s all the things that I’m not.

And so when I looked at aspirational things, I thought, she knows a whole wide world that I don’t know and I wanted to learn the information from her. I wanted to glean that information from her because I don’t know a lot of her world. And she ends up sharing a perspective and an enlightenment on a certain part of a certain world that I don’t know. And I love that. And I love learning from different angles and different perspectives.

Now, I could limit my growth by going into pools of people who are just like me. And that’s hard to do for one, because of how I was raised, what my career trajectory has been and what I currently do now, which seemingly feels like everything. But I love learning from people who have this passion for life, who have this true focus on the positivity. We choose how we show up in the world. We are the only thing we can control. That to me, is always the best news ever.

If I’m the only thing I can control, I know I can control my focus, my positivity, how I am in the room and how I really choose to have relationships with individuals going forward. That for me is the best. And previously, again to actively being coached, I was not in that same mindset. And I can still say I continue to grow and up-level and really, really gain this strong self-concept, add to it, strong confidence. And that is why I’m so deeply passionate about each one of my performers, feeling you belong, feeling you matter.

I’m going to give a series of pep talks in this upcoming thing that I’m doing. So we’re going to do a confidence workshop and then I’m going to start just releasing some pep talks and they’re performer pep talks. And they’re things I tell my clients before they go into a big audition or before they go into auditions at unifieds and doing all the things that are really kind of big next level things for them. I always love pep talking. And it’s about three to five minutes of me telling them and seeing in them what I know to be true for me and my belief in them and of them, and of their abilities. So definitely tune in for that.

But I also want to share too, any questions or any feedback you have, any things you want answered, I want to answer them. So we’re going to give that as an option. But please go over to amyadamscoaching.com and put that in the inquiry. Definitely say anything you want to say. Share anything you want to share. I want to cover topics that you want to hear and we’re going to build upon some things in a performer series. We’re going to build upon some things with some casting directors and casting agents and creative directors.

So I do really want you to keep listening, share with your friends, share with your performers and continue to love yourself and love the journey that you’re on. Thank you so much and be well.

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Thank you for listening to today’s episode of The Confident Performer. If you want to learn more about living your truth and showing up as your most authentic, beautiful self, visit www.amyadamscoaching.com. See you next week!