7: Build your Confidence at Any Age

Feeling like your confidence is fading as you get older? Think again! This episode is a rallying cry for women in their 30's, 40s (and beyond!) who are ready to embrace their inner strength and shine brighter than ever.

We'll tackle those sneaky messages from society and social media that tell us our best days are behind us. Forget the wrinkle creams and quick fixes – real confidence comes from within.

Key Takeaways:

• It's never too late to build confidence and feel amazing in your own skin.
• Aging is a gift, not a burden. Embrace the journey with gratitude and self-compassion.
• Self-care is essential, not selfish. Prioritize your well-being in small, everyday ways.
• Change and reinvention are opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
• You are worthy, capable, and deserving of a life filled with joy and fulfillment at every age.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, I'm Laura Orlando and welcome to the Build Strong Women podcast. I believe as women that we are the role models for the next generation of girls. So how do we become the best role models for these young girls? We work hard to become the best version of ourselves, whatever that means to you. It's not easy. It takes work. It takes learning, trying new things, falling down and getting back up again. But that's what we do on the show. We dive deep into how we can grow on the inside. We will learn from women that are on the same journey as us. Just trying to become the best version of themselves. Let's learn together, build our confidence, learn to love who we are so that we can teach the next generation of girls to grow up to be strong and confident women. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of the Build Strong Women podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode. It's all about building your confidence now because it's not too late. I'm really excited to be diving into this topic. It is a good one. I think I say that every single week, but I'm so excited about all these topics and everything that I want to share with you. I just get a little excited. It's okay. And before we dive into this topic on confidence, I just had to share something that I am a little bit nervous about and excited at the same time, but I really, really have to step outside of my comfort zone and work on my confidence with this so I am doing this podcast build strong women but I had a podcast before called the confident tween and teen podcast and I only did solo episodes and with this podcast I am doing guest episodes because I just feel like there are so many people out there that have such good wisdom and can teach us so much and I'm so excited to learn from them that I wanted to do that with this podcast and I haven't interviewed anyone yet as of now and I'm have someone lined up for this month and I'm just so excited about it but I have to tell you I am so nervous and I really have to work on my confidence with this because I'm like interviewing someone for real and it's so cool I'm so excited I'm totally stepping outside of my comfort zone and I know that once I do it I will have a little bit more confidence each and every time but I just have to say that you really really have to work on growing your confidence and that's what this episode is all about you really have to do Do those scary things. And you don't just wake up and you're born with this confident attitude in everything that you do. You really have to work on it. That goes for kids that are 10 years old, 5 years old. If you're 25 years old, 45 years old, 65 years old, it doesn't matter. You can always keep building your confidence. And that's really why I wanted to talk about this topic. And I wanted to share that with you because I want to share that I'm not always confident in every aspect of my life, in every area, in everything that I do. I like to try new things. us as we are getting older as women and I think as we get older we often think that our days of being beautiful as gone because our youth is just fleeting away and social media and society for sure really make us feel this way and it's sad we're always looking for the next wrinkle cream or a quick fix just to hide our imperfections and I also hear a lot of women that are older that say oh I'm this age it doesn't matter anymore it really does matter because because it's how you feel every single day. You really have to keep working on your confidence and how you feel about yourself. And I understand as we get older, we feel like, well, I'm not like them anymore. I don't need to be this way anymore. I'm at this age. But you really, really have to keep working on it. If you've never felt like you had any confidence before in your life at any age, or it seems to be fading away just because you're getting older, then this episode is for you. I want you to know that confidence Confidence isn't just for those special few people that you see. I want you to know that if you see a woman that has it all together and you think, wow, she is so confident and you on the other hand are not, the truth is that anyone can have confidence. Anyone can build their confidence and it doesn't matter what age you are. If you've never had confidence and you're 59 years old, you can start working on your confidence now and you can grow it. It's really, really cool. The truth is about confidence is that if you want to have more of it, you just have to be willing to work on it. You have to be willing to grow it because anyone can build confidence. You just have to want it. It's actually just like a muscle. The more that we work on it, the bigger it gets. And I want to go back to the example of my podcast. The more that I work on this podcast, the more that I work on my interviewing skills and the things that I want, the more my confidence is gonna grow. And that is the cool part about confidence. The more we take risks and push ourselves outside of our comfort zones, our confidence grows. And I absolutely love that. It just takes some work. Like anything else in the world, you have to work at growing your confidence. And growing up, I never really knew anything about confidence. No one ever really talked about confidence the way they do today. And I never understood that anyone could grow it. I just would admire people that had confidence or I thought that had confidence. And it's kind of funny because there was a girl that reached out to me on social media and I shared one of my stories of just not feeling good in my own skin and just not feeling confident and stuff. And she said, oh my I always thought that you did have confidence. I always thought you were someone that had it. And it was just kind of funny to me because I thought, oh my gosh, I... Can't believe she thought that about myself because I never believed it in myself. I never thought that I had confidence. I didn't feel confident. I was always looking outward and seeing people that did have confidence and wishing that I had that type of confidence. So you just never know what people are going through or what people are thinking about themselves. If you think that there's this woman that has it all together and she just knows and just seems so perfect and confident, you don't know what she's going through. You Just like anything, it takes consistency and intention to build that confidence. It's the same as just like working out in the gym. You're not going to get defined toned arms by working out once a month. It takes consistency. It takes intention every single day. And the same goes for your confidence. So I'm so excited to share with you my version of building confidence as a woman. I'm in my mid 40s. I'm 45 years old. I struggled with my confidence for so long, it's almost embarrassing, into my 20s and 30s until I really started diving deep into personal development and growth and just wanting to feel better about myself. That's really what happened. I just was so sick of feeling blah and just not good in my own skin that I just started really reading and listening to things on how I can feel better inside myself, how I can grow my own confidence. And once I discovered all of these things, my life completely changed. I am a completely different person than I was. And I hope that I can share my ideas with you. That's why I wanted to start this podcast. And I share these things with my children. And I hope that you can share them with other people as well, especially the girls in your life, to help them grow strong and confident and be the person that they want to be. and that's why I love sharing all these things with you. So the first thing I want to talk about is how we can reframe our aging. So society and social media often equate youth with beauty and value but in our 40s we have so much behind us. We have so much that we have lived through. We have so much strength. We have so much wisdom. We have so much self-awareness and we aren't afraid to do the things that we want to do anymore. So we have to embrace getting older and embrace this age. So what What things could you do to make this year or this decade even better than the last. I don't believe that aging is a bad thing. I never really get mad when it's my birthday and I'm one year older. I often feel immense gratitude that I got to live another year, that I got to be on this earth another year. I really, really value that. And I just think going to the next age isn't a bad thing. I know a lot of people get really upset about it and they don't want to be another year older. I totally understand. But having gratitude for being another year older and still being healthy See? is such a gift in this day and age. and our hormones and it's an entirely new category that we need to learn and navigate. It's really, really hard getting older. It's all these new things, new aches, new pains, new everything. And sometimes it stinks and it sucks. I totally, totally agree. But if you can change your perspective on all these new things that are coming into our lives and take them as a learning experience. Okay, what can I learn from this? I need to dive deep into my hormones. I need to dive deep into all these changes that are happening into my body and not just ignore them and not just think, oh, I'm just getting older. That's what happens. No, let's learn about them and figure out how we can live our best life with these things, with these changes that are going on in our body, because there's so many books, there's so many resources now that we can dive into to really reframe that aging mindset. Like, okay, this is something new. I want to learn about it so I can Be my best self with all of these changes and things that are going on I've really loved learning about my hormone health in different ways that I can start to feel better inside because It is getting crazy and the older that I get and all the things that are going on I never thought that things like hormones would like get me excited to learn about But they are and hey if it's going to help me understand why i'm feeling this way And why i'm feeling out of it and all my ups and downs and all the craziness that's going on in my body That's great. I want to learn how to feel better. I always want to keep feeling better. I always want to feel good. Just taking this as a mindset shift and reframing how I'm thinking about aging. Okay, I need to learn these new things. I'm not my 30-year-old self. I'm not my 25-year-old self. I am 45 years old and I need to learn how to balance everything that's going on in my life. So I hope that part was helpful to really reframe your aging and not just always think that Getting older is a bad thing. We really have to embrace this stage. Okay, so the next thing I want to talk about for Building your confidence at this age is really prioritizing yourself and your self-care. And my idea of self-care is really about focusing on healthy habits and how they can make you feel good physically and mentally. And this includes eating foods that help you feel good, exercising, getting better sleep as one of the big ones, and then there's little things that can make you happy too. Maybe it's just learning something new or a face mask that you use at night or the warm tea that you're drinking or if you love reading cookbooks or getting creative. It's literally anything that makes you happy during your day. All these little healthy habits and happy habits that you can do and infuse throughout your day to help you feel good. It gives you confidence. Little things that you could go home and do today. I recently did a podcast episode on how I created my happy habits. I like to call them. They're just little bits of self-care that I do every single day and it just makes me feel good inside it helps me build my confidence every time i do something like this because i know i'm doing something for myself and at this age we really have to incorporate these things every single day do you have this face cream that you absolutely love and it makes you feel good yes that's a happy habit that's a form of self-care that makes you feel like yes i'm doing something good for myself it helps with your confidence so much so i really want you to figure out what are those happy little habits that you can infuse within your day every I love having these little things that I do because it just helps me feel good. on the inside. So when I get up early, I get a good workout in. I do my morning journaling in my Promise Planner. I feel so good about myself at that moment. And it's only like an hour into my day or two hours into my day when I get up and I do things that make me feel good. It's because I took care of myself. I made myself a priority and I did the things that make me happy. I made myself a priority. Life is about living every day, not just for the next massage that you're going to get at the end of the month or the pedicure that you're going to get before you go on spring break. It's the little things that you do every single day. And I really want you to remember that. So what things can you incorporate every single day to help you feel good? That's going to help you build your confidence. All right, the next thing I want to talk about is just Exploring new interests in your life. And this is going to help you build your confidence as well. So I heard this quote from a podcaster and an author who I absolutely love. You know me. I am obsessed with great quotes that are life-changing for me. And this was one of them. She said, And sometimes in our life when we feel unfulfilled or bored or not happy, we may be lacking some type of purpose. And I think this happens to a lot of people, especially when they retire. They stop working and having a purpose in their life and they kind of like just get a little bit depressed and they have no clue what to do. That's why we need to explore now and find things we love even more. Even if it's just like baking in our own kitchens or trying something new like pickleball. You have to try. You have to get outside of your comfort zone and try new things discover some hidden passions that you have maybe take a class explore a new hobby think back to even when you were younger what things did you love to do maybe you can't go out and play basketball like you used to do but maybe it's something different were you creative I want you to really tap back into those things and you know we can't just stay stuck into who we were in our 20s and 30s and even our early 40s because we're not the same person we're We're different. We're growing. And you might have a little bit more time on your hands and things like that. It's all about trial and error and hopefully just finding something you like. I'm not saying that you need to find the biggest passion in your life and that's all that you do and focus on. No, absolutely not. Find things that you don't like too. That's going to help you as well. It's all about finding things that you love, things you don't love, so you know what you can do. Finding some purpose in your life is going to change your confidence as well. If you have something to look forward to, some thing that you like to do in your life, not just sitting around reading the newspaper, watching the news or watching TV. You have to like do other things as well and connect with other people and really maybe even try some things that someone that you're in a relationship with likes. You know, my husband loves to go to the woods and he doesn't know this, but one of the goals of this year is just to really like try and go outside my comfort zone and do some things that he likes to do. He likes to go walk in the woods and I really want to do that with him because it's something that he loves and he's so passionate about and I really want to try that for him because I know that he loves it even though it's going to make me completely uncomfortable but hey you never know I could get out in the woods and actually maybe like it I have no idea so I'm going to try I want to explore new things I want to do things for other people that make them happy and maybe it'll bring me happiness as well and it's something that you can focus on with someone else and do something together it's really really cool so I really want you to explore some new interests so when you get to an age that's even older or if you're not retired yet, if you're going to retire, that you'll have something in your life. It's just about trying and it's about trial and error too because you're not going to like everything that you try. And hopefully you will find something that you really, really like that will spark something inside of you that you can be excited about doing. Okay, so the next thing I really want to talk about is how can we use the time as we are getting older and as our roles and responsibilities shift and our kids are getting older. Maybe you have kids going off to college or maybe you have kids in sports so at night you have a lot more time on your hands. I want you to think about those kinds of things and how you can redefine who you are in those moments and what you want out of life now that you have more time on your hands. And you may have more time on your hands because your kids are involved in all these activities and you're home alone waiting for them to get home for practice. Or you have have a new driver and now they can drive themselves to everything that they're doing you don't have to be the chauffeur anymore you have this new found identity that you have to get used to and I don't want you to put it to waste I don't want you sitting around just waiting for your kids to come home and I really want you to think about okay what are some things that I can do for myself that can help me feel good inside and it can be anything from trying new things like we just talked about and finding a purpose to anything at all that helps you feel good inside yourself and can help you build your confidence. It's kind of funny because my time freed up immensely in the mornings when I didn't have to take my kids to school anymore. My daughter got her license this year and when she first started to drive her and her brother to school I felt lost. I mean let me tell you I literally cried for a week straight. I'm like what am I supposed to do? I have been taking them to school since they were babies and I was First of all, terrified to see my kids driving away alone in a vehicle. I mean, no one prepares you for that moment. It was terrifying. Nobody talks about it, I swear. It's terrifying to watch them drive away. Anyway, that's not the point. I had an extra 20 minutes every single morning before I left for school to teach. I wasn't rushing around trying to get kids out the door with myself. It was only me. I was only responsible for me. I only had to drive myself to work. I could actually listen to my podcast for that 10 minutes of driving to work. It was pretty incredible after I cried for a week. So instead of just like the two minutes that I had for myself when my kids were home to maybe get my gratitude practice in, I had an entire 20 minutes before I had to go to work. It was awesome. So what I did was I just started doing my morning journaling practice. I did my promise planner that I made that helps me do my gratitude, my goals and work on my promises that I make for myself and really focus on that to start my day off right. It was amazing. So I had an entire 20 minutes before I even had to leave for work and it changed everything about my mornings. So what I want you to do is really think about those pockets of time now that your kids are getting older and maybe involved in other things or if you're an empty nester, how you can use your time to help work on yourself and really help yourself feel better inside and maybe try new things that you've always wanted to do so as we wrap up today's episode I really really want you to remember it's not too late to reclaim your confidence and to step into the best version of yourself I never thought that in my 40s that I would have more confidence in myself than I would in my 20s and 30s absolutely not but I do I have more confidence in myself now than I ever have before and yes maybe it comes with age but it also comes with working on myself I see so many women that are my age And that just hurts my heart in every way, because I remember that feeling when I hardly had any confidence within myself it's a terrible feeling you just feel less than you are comparing yourself you're scared to try new things you're scared to be alone it's just it's a horrible feeling and I don't want any women to feel like that anymore I want them to understand that you have to work on yourself you have to work on your mindset you have to work on your confidence because it just takes consistency and work every single day there's no days off you have to keep working and building because confidence grows just like a muscle. Every single time you do something that puts you outside your comfort zone a little bit, your confidence is going to grow. And as we get older, we don't have to say, oh, I'm this age now. I don't need to worry about that anymore. Yes, you do. You want to feel good inside yourself until the day you die. I don't want to feel less than and not worthy and not have any confidence within myself just because I'm 65 years old. I always want to feel good inside myself. I want to always have these happy habits that I do that help me feel good inside. I always wanna be learning new things and really growing my confidence each and every day. especially as a mother, because I want my daughter and my son to feel good inside themselves. I want them to have confidence. I want them to see their parents have confidence within themselves so that they can learn from us. They are watching us all the time. And if we just don't feel good inside ourselves and we aren't working on ourselves and we just feel less than, they're going to feel the same way. They are learning from us every single day. So you really have to do the work. I don't care if you're 62 years old, 70 years old, 75 years old 55 years old you have to keep doing the work because there's always someone watching you I want you to feel good inside yourself for you but I also want you to teach that next generation because it's so important we have to stop that cycle of feeling less than if you need to really work on yourself and you can have confidence at any age that's the coolest thing ever when I heard that you could have confidence no matter who you are it was life-changing for me you always had the power you just have to believe it and know know that you're worthy and that you're capable and you are deserving of a life that's filled with joy and confidence and fulfillment every single year. So I hope this episode was helpful for you. I'm so passionate about helping women feel good inside themselves and building their confidence. And I really hope that something inside this episode sparks something inside of you that you really want to keep working on yourself and know that your age is only a number and that you can have as much confidence as you want. You just had to be willing to work on it and to know that you're worthy because you are. So I want to share with you an affirmation that I found that I absolutely loved and it's perfect for this episode and I hope that you can carry it with you throughout your day and think of it and know that you are amazing in every way. So the affirmation is, I embrace the beauty of aging gracefully, honoring the wisdom and experiences that have shaped me into the radiant woman I am today. So I hope this episode was helpful. I would be so grateful if you could share it with a friend, share it on social media, text it to someone that you think this would be helpful to. I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And I hope you have a wonderful day and I'll see you on next week's episode.