Confidently Beautiful with Ciera

From Small Wins to Lasting Confidence: The Power of a Daily Journal

• Ciera • Episode 85

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Confidence isn’t something you earn at the finish line; it’s something you remember you already have—and one line a day can bring it back into view. We’re celebrating the launch of our Confidence Journals and diving into the simple, science-backed practice that helped us shift from waiting to feel “ready” to building real self-belief in the middle of real life.

We break down why small wins matter more than highlight reels, how expressive writing reduces self-doubt and boosts emotional clarity, and what the reticular activating system (RAS) has to do with noticing more moments of courage. You’ll hear exactly how a 60-second nightly prompt—“Today I felt confident when…”—trains your attention to look for strength, even on hard days. We talk about the hidden power of handwriting for memory and emotion, plus practical ways to keep the habit flexible so it fits into busy seasons without guilt.

Motherhood gets honest space here: shifting identity, changing bodies, and the tug-of-war between caring for others and remembering yourself. We share a personal move from people-pleasing to quiet self-trust, and how capturing tiny acts of courage—setting a boundary, speaking up, choosing rest—creates a paper trail of growth. If you’re craving a grounded, sustainable way to grow confidence without perfection or pressure, this is your roadmap.

Want to try the rainbow collection journals? Grab yours at confidentexpression.com and use promo code podcast for 10% off. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a nudge, and tell us your first entry: “Today I felt confident when…”

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Ciera:

You're listening to Confidently Beautiful with Ciera, a podcast to help you stay confidently beautiful because we all have confidence inside us. We just need to bring it out, and I'm here to show you how. Body image, dreams, parenting style, personality, and more. Here we cover it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful. Welcome back to another episode. This is a bonus episode because today that this podcast is airing is a very special day. Today is the day that my confidence journals have officially launched. So I am so excited to share these with you and get them in your hands because I know for me they have made a huge shift in my confidence and helped me improve the way I see myself and helped me to see patterns in my life. If you want to hear a little bit more of exactly how the confidence journals have helped me, go back to episode 83. This is going to be part two of that episode where we're going to go back a little bit deeper into how journaling can really benefit our confidence and our mindset. I used to think that I would feel more confident when I had the right makeup, when I dressed the way that all the other people that I thought were really confident dressed, when I was achieving all these really big goals, then I thought I would feel confident. But what I have learned is that confidence is something that we already all have inside us. When I had my kids and I watched them grow and I watched them try new things, I could see that they already had all of that confidence inside us. They already had all of that confidence inside them. So we all have confidence inside us. We are born with confidence. We just need to train our brains to see the confidence and to recognize it. So journaling has become the tool that has helped me to do that in my life. I am not perfect at it. There are still a lot of areas where I have confidence lows, but I can see the patterns. I can see the areas in my life where I am succeeding and where I can feel confident. Sometimes those areas I can feel really confident one time, but then maybe a month later I'm not feeling confident in that area anymore. But journaling helps me to be able to train my brain to see the times when I am feeling confident and to feel good about those times and let my confidence grow. I created these journals as a way for women, especially moms like me, to have a daily space to notice their confidence just one line a day. So it's just today I felt confident when, and then to say what they felt confident for. If it's just that one sentence, then that is going to have progress. But if you want to fill out the whole page, then that can also be very powerful. And those entries that you do are going to lead to more confidence and to you feeling better about yourself. There's a big myth, like though I said that I believed, that most of us think that confidence comes after we achieve something or when we feel ready to have it. But this reframe of confidence actually grows from noticing our small wins, our consistent efforts, and the moments of our self-trust. That is when confidence truly comes. It's not the after, it's not the final result. It is the process throughout life. You can be confident. Confidence isn't something you earn, it's something that you remember, something that you remember that you already have inside you. You just need to bring it out. Journaling helps you to see evidence of your strength every day. As you reflect on your day, you can see actual moments where you had a confident, shining moment. A 2023 study from the University of Texas found that expressive writing can reduce self-doubt and improve emotional clarity, both of which are key parts of confidence. So self-doubt, emotional clarity, those are going to be big parts of confidence. So if you can reduce your self-doubt and improve your emotional clarity through writing, through journaling, this is going to lead to more confidence. Okay, we're gonna get a little nerdy and we're gonna talk a little science right now. So reticular activating system, the RAS. This is the part of your brain that filters what you focus on. So when you are writing daily about confidence, you are actually training your brain to look for more moments of confidence through the day. It's like the Mel Robbins thing. She talks about finding hearts. And the more she's looking for hearts, the more she sees them. She sees them in rocks, she sees them in clouds, she sees hearts everywhere because she is training her brain to look for hearts. When you're buying a car, all of a sudden you're seeing that type of car that you're looking at everywhere, right? They were always there. You just weren't noticing them because you weren't training your brain to see it. So when you are taking time to write down daily confidence moments, it's going to be hard at first. It was hard for me at first because I couldn't find those moments. I was having a hard time. I was like, nope, not confident in any area. But the more and more I start to write, and the more and more I notice and reflect on my moments in my day, the more I notice them because I am training my brain to look for those moments of confidence throughout the day. It's like setting your mental GPS for self-belief. It's just going to get to the point where you can be on autopilot and you can just be cruising along and noticing those moments where you feel confident without even having to think about it. This is like the same thing that you hear about like gratitude journals. So journaling what you're grateful for increases your optimism and well-being. Confidence journaling works the same way, it trains optimism around yourself. What I talked about in episode 83 was the handwriting study. So I for a while was just doing my journaling in my notes app in my phone, which was, I think, a great way to start. But there are so many studies about handwriting. Pen to paper activates more emotional and memory centers in your brain. So it's going to help you to actually feel what you are writing and to retain the information. It's going to, it just fires more pathways in your brain by actually doing pen to paper. And so it's going to make you remember it and to feel and believe it a lot faster than if you were just typing in a keyboard on your phone. That being said, if you're just going to be like, nope, I can't take the time to write on pen and paper, then do the keyboard in your phone. Do the notes app in your phone. Whatever it is, just do something. Because something is going to be better than nothing, than not doing any journaling. But if you can, that pen to paper, there is just so much research that that is the way to do it. This doesn't have to take a long time. This can take 60 seconds at the end of your day. Today I felt confident when just finish that sentence and then you can be done. If you're feeling like you want to keep writing and you want to write more, then can continue writing more. But even just that one sentence that will take less than a minute is going to have a huge impact and change everything. So some examples. Today I felt confident when I handled my kids meltdown calmly. Today I felt confident when I showed up for my workout, even though I didn't feel like it. Today I felt confident when I spoke kindly to myself after a mistake. What happens over time is you are going to have proof in those pages of who you are becoming, who you are. And you are going to see that. Or I am actually really confident in my cooking skills. Like I did all of those things that I felt like I wasn't doing a good job. But I'm look at that. Like I'm doing a and it could be so it could be something so, so small like that. So something small like cooking or a hobby, or it could be something really big like you are a really true friend. You are loyal. You are an incredible mom and very involved with your kids. Over time, those pages will be the proof that you are the person that you want to be. It's okay if you don't feel confident every single day. I know I sure don't. I there are some days that I am sitting there trying to think of, I don't know if I felt confident today. But what is really important is about noticing even the smallest spark of self-belief. So some days your confidence might look like I got out of bed this morning. That still counts because we are going to have those days. Sometimes that's just how it is, and that is okay. And I think that journaling is a good way to remind yourself that it can be the small moments or it can be the big ones, but it doesn't always have to be the big ones. It's not always about the result, right? It's not always about the ending to feel confident, it's about the journey and believing in yourself along the way and finding that proof that can help you see patterns and proof that you are who you want to be. You know, I talk a lot to mothers in this podcast. Motherhood is a huge part of my life, obviously. It's one of the most important things to me. And I think motherhood is one way that can really shake your sense of confidence. It can really change the way you see your body, it can change the way you see your identity, it can change the way you see your time, your worth. It changes so much about how you view your confidence. So journaling really, really helps to rebuild that confidence piece by piece. We're quick to writing down our to-do list, but what if we started writing down our proud lists instead? What if we started writing down the moments that we feel proud, the moments we feel confident, the moments we succeeded, the moments where we noticed that we were doing something good rather than just writing another thing that we need to get done. So I will share a personal story of how I have seen my confidence shift during this habit. I have always been a I want people to like me kind of person. I have always wanted to please people. I've wanted to do things that will make people happy or be the peacemaker who's like, it's okay, let's just do it that way. And I just want everyone to be just be happy with the situation, but especially happy with me. As I have journaled, one of the personal stories of my confidence shift is I have noticed how I can feel more confident in saying what I actually want to say or what I actually believe rather than just being the people pleaser or the one who is just trying to keep the peace or just try and make someone like me or whatever it was that I was doing before. I have been able to see where I have been able to stand up for myself. I've been able to say actually what I think. I have actually been able to form some opinions because sometimes I was just being such a people pleaser that I wasn't even like, I didn't even actually really know what I thought about that thing. I didn't really know what I wanted in that situation. I was just going with the flow. And that was eventually leading me to not feeling confident in knowing who I am as a person. So as I've been taking these moments to write down my confidence, I have felt that confidence shift. This is something that I am still continually working on because I just deeply in me, like I was just, I think I was just born with wanting people to like me. But I think, you know, I think that's a normal thing. I think a lot of people want people to like them, but I think writing it down and pushing myself to do things like this podcast or like other things that are scary to me has helped me to see the confidence shift and feel the confidence shift where I can know that I am a person who can have my own beliefs, and it is okay if somebody doesn't agree. It's okay if I'm not everyone's favorite person, and I will find people who are like-minded like me, and I can let that confidence part in me continue to grow. So that is just one little story of how these confidence journals have really helped me and how writing and journaling has been beneficial for me and my confidence. I encourage you to start your own confidence journaling habit, even if it's not in an official journal, even if it's just in an old notebook, even if you find a scrap of paper at the end of the day and you want to write something down, if it's just a sticky note, or if it's just in your phone, start that practice of writing down a moment where you felt confident. If you do want to try one of my rainbow collection confidence journals, they are available now. They are very cute. They are bright, they are happy. It is exactly what it says. They are a rainbow collection. So there are seven colors with very fun, cute, happy designs. And they have blank pages inside with just lined pages. But at the top of each page, it says today, I felt confident when. So it's 365 days worth. But if you miss a day, it's not a big deal because you're just writing in the date. They're not predated, so you're just going to write in the date. And if if it takes you three years to fill 365 entries, that's fine. That's fine. That is still three years that you were noticing moments in your life where you had confident moments. So if you want to check those out, I will include a link in the show notes, but they are available at confidentexpression.com and make sure that you use promo code podcast and you will get 10% off your entire order. Confidence isn't something that just shows up one day. It's something you build one line at a time. Tag me, share your journaling moments on Instagram. I want to cheer you on as you are finding your confidence moments. So be sure to use hashtag confidently beautiful moments or tag me on Instagram at confidently beautifulpodcast. And I can't wait to see your journaling practices and have you feel the journaling and the benefits of writing down your confidence wins. Stay confidently beautiful. Thanks for listening. Connect with me on Instagram at confidently beautifulpodcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are. Stay confidently beautiful.