Episode Summary

On this episode of A Whole Lotta Shift, host Jen Ingram kicks off a powerful new series on self-confidence. The episode delves into the importance of self-confidence and its impact on various areas of life, including business, decision making, and relationship building. Jen prompts the audience to reflect on their own barriers to self-confidence and challenges them to identify and overcome these obstacles.

Jen discusses common barriers such as fear of failure, imposter syndrome, gender stereotypes, and feeling undeserving. She stresses the significance of self-awareness in cultivating self-confidence and achieving goals. Listeners are encouraged to interact with the prompts and share their experiences in the Facebook group, creating a supportive community where they can learn from one another and grow together.

Part 1 sets the stage for an enlightening series on self-confidence, and listeners can look forward to Part 2, which will focus on overcoming imposter syndrome.

So stay tuned to "A Whole Lotta Shift" as Jen helps you navigate the journey to self-confidence, empowering you to make positive shifts in your life.

About the Host:

Jen is a Dream Catalyst and Business Mentor saving hustling female solopreneurs from the chains of corporate America. Her passion lies in helping women through their self awakening so they can finally break free, turn their side hustle into the business of their dreams, and live a life full of time, location and financial freedom.

Jen is a California girl at heart, now living out her dream in the Midwest, traveling, coaching female solopreneurs and sharing her own story of triumph and empowerment across speaking platforms. When she's not traveling, she enjoys spending time with her college aged son and her rescued Pit Bull.

After 20 years of various project manager and corporate trainer roles while juggling a wide array of side gigs, she has mastered the ability to help women see what they cannot see, believe they are meant for more and take aligned action to make it happen. With an MBA in Change Management, and a Health and Life Coach Certification from the Health Coach Institute, Jen is an expert at creating both the business process changes and the personal habit changes needed to finally Break UP with corporate and go all-in on your side hustle or long standing passion project.

Connect with Jen on Facebook or Instagram!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenelleingram/

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wholelottashift/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwestvalleygirl/

Free Gift: https://mailchi.mp/4f4ae02ebe45/beat-the-odds

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I just ended this conversation with this person who's trying to tell me that I'll

never work in this city again, and I literally can just pull out my

phone and make any number of phone calls. Right? because I knew what I

was doing. I knew what I had, I knew what I could do.

The next day, I had a new contract that actually

was better than the one that I had just lost.

But I knew what I had to offer, Right? I

absolutely believed that I could show up, and I could

help them with what they were needing.

This is why your confidence met her.

Welcome to a whole lot of shift podcast. The podcast

for multi passionate women with an entrepreneurial spirit, where we

provide inspiration, motivation, and education to help

you away from all the should and supposed to's to what's

truly possible for you in your business and your life,

all on your own terms. You ready, girl? Let's make

Shift happen. Hello, and

welcome to another episode of a whole lot of shift. I'm your

host, Jen Ingram, and I'm so excited that you're here.

Today starts the kickoff of our 4 part series on

self confidence. And if you're in the whole leadership Facebook

group, then you're getting to experience this firsthand

live as I livestream this episode. And you're

also getting to engage and interact as I share some

mindset tricks and hacks with my mon

Monday mindset live series. These are just 5 minute Monday

mindset lives. and as well as

other prompts to kind of help you out during the next 4 weeks

as we go live weekly to talk about

self So I'm so excited you're here. In this

series, the first part, where do we talking about the foundations of self

confidence kind of what it is and why it matters in your

business. In week 2, we're gonna talk about overcoming

impostor syndrome. and we're gonna get that kicked off

because it sounds like based on some

pool results that I've seen, so many of

us are struggling with impostor syndrome, so I wanna make sure that we speak

to that. In week 3, we're gonna talk about building confidence

through your skills and the process of

your achievements. And in the final week,

we're gonna talk about how you can maintain and continue to exude

an energy of confidence for yourself.

So I'm so glad you're here. I'm so excited to get this kicked off.

Alright. So let's start out. What what is self

confidence? Like, this is a word that we hear about a lot. Right? And

so what is it, and why does it matter? Here's the

thing. self confidence is not necessarily

saying that you don't experience fear

when you're trying something new. It doesn't mean

that getting outside your comfort zone just comes

easily for you, and you're fearless in all of it. It's not quite

what self confidence means. Right? Self confidence is more

about the belief and trust in

self and the belief interest in

your abilities to achieve your goals

tackle any challenges that come your way

and to continue to maintain a positive self

view through it all. That's what we're talking

about. That's what self confidence is, is that belief

and trust in yourself and what you can

do. So why the hell does this matter in your business? Well, let's talk about

it. If you think about that, your belief and trust in yourself. First of all,

you not only need to believe and trust in yourself, but you

gotta believe and trust in what it is that you're selling, what it is that

you're doing, the services that providing. Because if you don't

believe in the offers that you're giving to people, I'm gonna

tell you, they're not gonna believe in it either.

and they're not gonna wanna buy. This is

why self confidence is so important in your business.

Not only does it impact that relationship that you're

trying to engage in with buyer and seller, it's

gonna impact all of your business relationships it

can impact your ability to make decisions,

business owners and leaders need to be able to

make decisions and make them quickly and make a

lot of decisions. people who

are able to take a step

back and quickly run through all the

decisions that they need to make and know and have the confidence

in themselves to just make those decisions and keep things

moving Those are the ones that excel in their

business. They don't have the time and not not so much that

they don't have the time. They don't create the time for themselves

to sit back and wallow in the self

doubt about whether or not they're making a good decision whether or not they're

making a right decision, whether or not it's perfect, they simply make the

decision and move on. Because they know that with each decision that

they make, it's not only going to build their confidence,

but what it's really doing is the more decisions you make,

the better you're going to get at making decisions, and the more that you're

going to be able to experience what the good decisions

were and what decisions maybe could have been better.

But you're never going to be able to experience what decisions you should be

making if you're just sitting back contemplating all the time

and not making them. So this is why self confidence

matters in your decision making. It also matters

in your risk taking, because let's be real. In building your

business, there's gonna be some risks that you're taking. Right?

And if you're joining me live and and you're hearing this, and some of this

is resonating with you, I please feel free to leave a

comment if you are one of those who has a really tough

time making a decision and deciding, oh, I know that I need to

change something in my business. And I've known this for a while, and I've been

sitting on it for weeks or months because I'm so

afraid of making the wrong decision. If that

resonates with you, put decision making in the comments. I'd love

to hear because I feel like this is something that so many of us

struggle with. And I'm gonna share some examples of

this here in a little bit. But the relationship building

that you're building with your client or your customers, as well as the

decision making and your ability to take risks, continued risks

in your business, that is all based on your self confidence.

Those who can make those decisions and who can

display that self confidence tend to

have better outcomes when they are in the process of

negotiations. This is really important.

Self confidence will allow you to show up as a

leader and actually create influence

over others, it will allow you to

bounce back when you experience some sort

of adversity or a challenge that comes

your way. Right? So these are just some of the

things that that are impacted in your business when we're talking

about self confidence. And so that's why I wanted to do this four part series

for you all because this really does

impact your business. So many of us are out

there seeking coaches who are talking about business strategy. Right?

They're talking about What what kind of social media posting

style do you need so that you get the most interaction, you get the most

views, and the most like, or what kind of long

form sales page do you need? And and what does it need to say? And

they're focusing on strategy, strategy, strategy, But

what a lot of coaches aren't talking to you about is the fact

that so much of what you're doing in your business

has to do with your confidence. Because if you're not able to

make those decisions and show up as the

leader and influence other when you're getting into those conversations with

your leads and your potential clients,

your long form sales page or how many times you're posting isn't

gonna matter. None of that's gonna matter. Your social media

strategy doesn't matter if you don't have

the confidence to get into the conversation with somebody

and show them that you believe in

what you're offering, and you believe and trust in yourself.

I wanna I wanna give some stories to this because I think

I think stories really help kind of

solidify what we're learning. Right? So one

of the things that when we're talking about belief,

we're also talking about the promises that we

keep to ourselves. And I'm gonna get into that a little bit more

in in week 3 when we're talking about how

can we build up the confidence. Right? But one of

those things is just keeping the promises to yourself.

It could be simple. It could be in your daily habit, it could be that

you're going to make your bed every day. It could be that you're gonna go

to the gym 4 days a week. It could be that you are going

to opt to eat a meal prep

from home at least 5 or 6 days a week. It it can be any

number of things. But whatever it is that you say that you're going to do,

that promise that you make to yourself,

the fact that you keep it, is part

of building that self confidence. And I'm gonna get into

that in week 3 because I really, really wanna speak to

what the real game changer was for me in building

my own self confidence. And I'm here to tell you, it wasn't

about the fact that I started just fearlessly

doing things. There was a lot of fear, but the number one

thing was that I got really freaking consistent.

and I did what I said I was going to do.

So I want to talk a little bit real quick, I want to I want

to share a story and and why this this is such a

big thing. Back several years ago, I wanna say

2013, I was doing freelancing work. I was doing bookkeeping. and some

other kinda side gigs, some v VA work, what have

you. And I had gotten into a

contract with a business owner who You know, unfortunately,

for this business owner, they had had some really bad experiences

with some prior bookkeepers, and they unfortunately had

even experienced theft. Right?

So when they went to sign the contract with me,

There was a lot of stories with this business

owner that he had, and a lot of mindset around

scarcity, he was really, really afraid that he was gonna get screwed over

again. And I get it. Right? So

He was pretty insistent that even though obviously we had

a contract, I was not an employee, he asked that I

work out of the office, He asked that I use his version

of QuickBooks on a computer that he owned in his office,

etcetera. I didn't love it, but I agreed to

it because in some aspects, it did save me some money. It was one less

account on my QuickBooks, and it was fine.

So anyways, I had I was there. I had

been there for several months. Things were were going okay. they

were great. They were asking me to take on some additional tasks, which,

again, I didn't mind. I was serving as somewhat of

a manager for all of the project managers, which if

if you don't know, I in my day job, I am a

project manager And so this was one of

my very early experiences, I

guess, you could say, with project management. But this was with marketing project

management very different than than what I do today and very

different from my first introduction to project

management back in 5 when I was

helping with remodeling and building new

government offices for the local government. Anyways

so I you know, I didn't mind taking on those additional tasks

that weren't just bookkeeping tasks. I mean, I'll charge you for whatever hours

I need to charge you. Right? I will gladly invoice you at the end of

the month for whatever additional work I may be doing. And

so the problem was, again,

they wanted me in the office and, you know, past a time in

which I felt comfortable, I part of the reason why I was doing freelancing was

because I needed to be available for my son, and I needed to be there

for school pickup. And, you know and I I had other

responsibilities. And that was one of the things that I

enjoyed about freelancing.

And so long story short, I had, like,

frankly any good business owner should do even if you are

in a really good contract, you should

always still be prospecting. You don't ever wanna stop

marketing yourself. k? I had

been in talks with some other opportunities with some

other business owners. And in that journey,

I came across a business owner in which there was definitely a conflict of

of interest. I did not realize that this was somebody who was providing

services to the business owner that I

was showing up at at his office. And so

very long story short, You know, she approached me and said, hey, are you aware

that there's kind of a conflict of interest here, and when she brought it up,

but I said, oh, you know, okay. Well, 1st

and foremost, loyalty is one

of the values that I hold very strongly. So

This is something that I will need to discuss with said

business owner because even if

we are able to to kind of go

outside of this potential conflict of interest, obviously, I'm

not fixing to leave anybody high and dry. That's just not the person that I

am. Loyalty is very important to me.

Loyalty and honesty, So I

I knew that he was traveling for the next week,

so I did go ahead and have a conversation

with his vice president because I was like, hey, I want it to be

made clear. I had I made a connection. We started talking about a

contract and services. and come to find out there is some

conflict of interest here in the work that they're doing for you and the work

that I'm doing for you. And so very long story short, what I didn't

know was that the that networking connection I had

just made went ahead, even though she knew he was traveling, she

reached out to him directly on his cell phone. and let him

know that we had been in talks, etcetera. And, unfortunately,

for me, due to the fear of what he had

experienced previously with somebody stealing from him,

and he was very upset. And so

when upon his return from travel, you know, he pulled me into the office,

let me know that my contract was ending. how upset he

was. He no longer believed the invoices that

I was providing and wanted to see details, which, of course,

I said Great. I'm logging in to your

computer in your office that I need a key to, I have to

use your QuickBooks login for and your Windows

login, your network login, you can see when I log in to your

network, your IT guy can look at computer and

see exactly what I did for every hour.

You know, I know me. I know that I'm

honest. I know that I'm loyal. I know who I am. I know

what I've done, and I know what I've not done.

If you feel you need to challenge the invoices, you

have everything that you need to find to

validate those right here in your own office. Right?

Very long story short. He did not like that response and

made it clear to me that he would let all of

his other connections in town, all the

other business owner connections that he had no to

Never go into a contract with me, to not hire me for any services,

and he would make darn sure that I did not work again in this

city. And, obviously,

that was I mean, it was upsetting. And I have to say as

this this wasn't just being said, this was being, like,

yelled very angrily. His face was bright red.

I was just kind of in shock

that this was the conversation that was even being had because I really

felt like I had done everything I could do. I had

been completely transparent. I immediately, when I

realized who I was talking to and where the conversation was going,

I notified them. You know, this there was no

wrongdoing here. Okay? So then they

were like, well, we need to escort you off

the premises. And I was like, seriously? Okay. Now this is

like a ten person office. Okay? I was

like, okay. Well, so let me but that's cool. I

can go out. I can get my car. In my car, I have the key

card to the parking garage. So I'll need to bring my car back

around, park on the street, and bring you the key card, and they were like,

no. We're going to escort you all the way to your car

You'll get your garage key card out of your car, you'll give

that to us. We will meet you down at the garage exit to

swipe your key card so that you can leave.

Okay. Fine. Now mind you, this parking garage is a

city block down and then across a main street,

and then on, like, the we had to park on, like, the 4th or 5th

floor. And I'm just like, oh, and it was raining. It

was wintertime, and it was raining. And I was like,

You're gonna walk me all the way to I was like, just

look. There's I'm not trying to steal anything here. I will

bring your key back in, like, 2 minutes. Nope.

Absolutely not. Okay. Cool. So he has

his vice president, a female, walk me out to my car, etcetera,

Now here's where this is important. Here's where the

confidence comes into play. Right? I

had absolute belief and trust

in what I was doing, what I had done, what I had not

done, and what I had to offer. I also

had absolute belief and trust in

the network I had already been doing at to that point

and the fact that I simply had

managed to get myself into a little bit of a

networking circle that didn't play out in my

favor. Okay?

So as I was being escorted to the garage, it

was a long freaking walk. Okay? And I thought,

I need to, you know, I this was a big contract for

me. I need to replace this and quickly.

And I already knew some conversations that I was in, and I'm but I

was holding these people off, I honestly was kind of

lacking and being very responsive because, again, I had a pretty solid

contract. Right? So As I'm in the

parking garage elevator with this VP,

I'm calling my contacts. Yeah. Hey. You know, we

talked we talked last week. Well, blah, blah. Are you still looking for a bookkeeper?

How can I help you? Are you start making phone calls?

And I sure enough get somebody who's like, oh my gosh. I'm so glad you

called me back because, actually, I thought I

had a bookkeeper, and as of this morning, I might not. Can

I call you back this afternoon? Sure. Not a problem.

Give me a callback. I'll let you know if I can help.

And I was laughing because I'm thinking to myself, I

just ended this conversation with this person who's trying to tell me that I'll never

work in this city again, and I literally can just pull out my phone and

make any number of phone calls. Right? because I knew what I was

doing. I knew what I had. I knew what I could do.

The next day, I had a new contract that actually

was better than the one that I had just lost.

But I knew what I had to offer, Right? I

absolutely believed that I could show up, and I could

help them with what they were needing.

This is why your confidence mattered. I could have sat there and

let this person completely tear me down and

let this person tear down my belief and

trust and suddenly believed that sure enough,

I was never gonna work as any kind of bookkeeper in this town again

and then end up trusting him that he's gonna follow through on his word

and and call all his connections about me, which was

frankly a little bullshit. But right?

So I wanted to I've just I wanted to share that with you. This

is about knowing who you

are, and knowing that you can

continue to persevere. k? So what

are some of the barriers that you're gonna run into? Well, You're gonna run into

some situations like what I just described. Right? Unfortunately, I thought I

was just continuing to network in my business, I ran into

a situation that got really sticky, really quick, and and I lost

I lost what I thought was a decent contract, and that

sucked and was scary. As a single mom, that was that was

scary. Some other things, though. Again and I I

honestly believe this. I know that this could be up for controversy,

but I honestly believe this.

I believe that the way

He reacted, and the way he treated me

absolutely had to do with the fact that I was a woman I don't think

that conversation would have totally gone the same way if I had been a man.

I really don't. No. I could be way wrong. I could be way wrong. This

guy could just be a super hot head, which I do think he

is. But I do wanna say one of the barriers that

we encounter in self confidence is some of our

gender stereotypes. Right? We've kind of always

been led to believe that, you know, women

Women aren't you know, women don't make as much. You know,

women don't don't have the confidence to to

show up and lead the way that met the way that men do. Women don't

take on certain roles or positions. Right? So there's

First of all, there's all those kind of stereotypes that tend to kind of

keep us small. There's fear of

failure. There's impostor syndrome.

There's oh my gosh. All all sorts of things

that can hold you back. oh, one of the things I

forgot about, the other thing that can hold you back,

is this belief that you're getting

what you deserve Like, all of

the external results that you're seeing are

based on what you believe you're worth,

and what you think you deserve. Right?

So in other words, even if you

are experience something in which you're doing really well and you're winning, you're

still thinking to yourself, is this real?

Is this really happening for me? Like, do people

see that I actually don't know what the hell I'm doing right now? Right? Like,

you kind of have this this this thought, this really

tricky thought that says, I'm only I'm

getting what I deserve. And

so I can't, you know, I

can't make a lot of money or I can't do this or

that because I've never experienced that

before, or because I'm not as

good as someone else. Right? Like, we kind of have

these tricky thoughts that think, well, I mean, I I I guess I

got I got what I've earned before. So that's where

I'm at. And it gets really tricky with us not even

believing that we're winning when we're winning.

Right? I'm curious what you think. If you're in the group, I'm super

curious. What what are some of the areas

in your business or your life where you feel like? Yeah.

I'm really confident. Like I said earlier, I know what my

values are. I know that If

I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it. Now it might take me

a little while, but I'm going to do it. I know that I am

loyal. I know that I'm honest. and transparent. Like, these are the

solid things because these are my values. I am a 1000%

confident in that. I'm a 1000% confident in And

when I say to you, look, here's how I can

here's how I can assist. I I am saying that

from a place of absolute belief. So I'm

curious. Share with me. And if you're if you're not watching this

live, I want you to just take a step back. Maybe you can journal on

it or think about it. Where are some of the areas where you feel most

confident, and where are some of the areas where you feel least confident?

And when you're thinking about those, Why is that? What is

the barrier that's keeping you

feeling that way? What are some of the barriers that you've encountered

in your in your journey. So I'm curious and

super curious as you're all thinking back through what

are some of the ways in which you lack self confidence

or you feel most confident

And what were the barriers that created that?

If you're in the Facebook group, Earlier this week, one of the things that

I asked you was to think about some of the accomplishments that you had

in throughout the week in which you had feelings

of self confidence. And part of the reason why I was asking about

that was because the self confidence isn't built

in the achievement or the accomplishment,

it's built in the process. and we're gonna get into

that in week 3. So I would love for

you to if you're in the group,

Tell me some things that you feel really confident about right now in

your business or your life, and tell me something that you don't feel

confident about in your business or your life and what you think

your barrier is in relation

to that feeling of low self confidence. I'm

super, super curious. I'd love for us to start

identifying what those barriers are so we can start

looking at them and saying, okay. Is this real? Is this just something that we

were taught? What you know, what's going on here?

because that self awareness if you were in my

Monday mindset, that self awareness is one of

the foundations to self confidence as well. Because without that self

awareness, it's gonna be really difficult to believe and

trust in yourself and your ability to achieve your

goals that you say you're going to achieve.

Alright. I think that about wraps it up for

part one of our series on self confidence. I hope

that you I hope that you really enjoyed this. because today, we

know we basically talked about, okay, what is self confidence? Why it

matters in your business? How it can impact your

decision making, it can impact your relationship building,

the importance of you believing in what

you are offering and who you are

and how that is reflected in your relation shipbuilding and the sales

that you're able to make and why that's so important. We also

talked about some of the barriers that we

might encounter the fear of failure,

the impostor syndrome, some of the scarcity mindset,

even gender stereotypes, Those all come into

play. Even the belief that

I can only get what I deserve, and I don't feel like I deserve this.

That plays into self confidence as well. And

then lastly, if you're in the group, I hope

that you do interact with these with the prompts that I've shared

earlier in the week in thinking through some of the times in which you

felt really confident, and that you'll share an area in

which maybe you don't feel confident in your life for business right now, and what

some of those barriers are because I want us to start

Myth busting, if you will, some of those

barriers so that we can start just getting them crushed

out. Alright. Thank you all for joining.

And if you're not in the Facebook group, get your butt over here,

and we will see you next week for part 2, which will

be about overcoming impostor syndrome.

So I hope that you'll join me for part 2. Until next

time, keep making Shift happen.

Hey, Shifters. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of a whole

lot of shift. If you heard something today that inspired you or

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