#69: How Can I Be More Confident in Myself? Summer Sessions no.1

Wish you could feel more confident in yourself but don’t know where to start? 

In this first episode of Hello Therapy’s Summer Sessions, I explore the truth about confidence: it’s not something you’re born with - it’s something you build.

Through evidence-based psychology and practical mindset tools, you’ll learn how to boost self-confidence in real, sustainable ways. Whether you’re doubting yourself at work, in relationships, or in everyday situations, this episode offers compassionate, actionable strategies to help you shift from self-doubt to self-belief.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ Why confidence is a skill - not a personality trait
✅ How body language and posture influence your self-belief
✅ Simple ways to set the stage for a confident mindset
✅ How to talk to yourself like a compassionate coach - not a critic
✅ The small action rule: why doing is the secret to believing
✅ Alternatives to “fake it till you make it” that actually work

Who This Episode Is For:
This episode is ideal for anyone who:

• Struggles with self-doubt or imposter syndrome
• Wants to build authentic confidence
• Is tired of surface-level advice and wants grounded, psychological insight
• Is beginning personal development work and wants clear, encouraging support

Highlights include:
1:41 Understanding confidence and its challenges
3:53 Tip 1: Power of posture
6:17 Tip 2: Setting the confidence mindset
8:30 Tip 3: Channel your inner cheerleader
10:35 Tip 4: Take action now

✨Lack confidence to make those big life decisions?  My new online course can help✨

If you want to build skills to make decisions with confidence and finally ditch the self doubt, join the waitlist now for early access and 10% off. 

If overthinking and worry is draining you, start with my 30-minute mini course How to Stop Spiralling. It gives you the exact tools I teach clients to interrupt thought loops in real time.

 If you want something for the moments you’re already anxious or overwhelmed, the Spiral Rescue Kit has guided audios and a printable SOS plan you can use anywhere.

 → Get both HERE (get £5 off when you buy both or gift it to a friend!)

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The Hello Therapy podcast and the information provided by Dr Liz White (DClinPsy, CPsychol, AFBPsS, CSci, HCPC reg.), is solely intended for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute personalised advice. Please reach out to your GP or a mental health professional if you need support. 

Transcript

Welcome to Hello Therapy

Dr Liz White 0:02

If you're looking to improve your mental health and well-being, then keep listening. I'm Dr Liz White, a consultant clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience. Whether you're a frazzled parent, a stressed out professional or finding your way through the challenges of midlife, you're in the right place. Through a mix of solo episodes and insightful conversations with expert psychologists and therapists, I'm bringing you evidence-based tools and strategies to help you navigate life's ups and downs with confidence, clarity and compassion. With confidence, clarity and compassion. This is your space to feel seen, supported and empowered. Welcome to Hello Therapy. Hello, and a warm welcome to Hello Therapy's Summer Sessions, a special series all about questions that we quietly Google at 11 o'clock at night, the ones we don't always say out loud. We're diving into the messy real life stuff motivation when you're exhausted, guilt over putting yourself first, the pressure to have it all figured out, and how to move forward when you're stuck. So join me now as I explore the first question in the series how can I be more confident in myself? And if you have a friend, you think this would help. Don't forget to share this episode. So let's dive in.

Dr Liz White 1:41

The first thing to know about confidence is that, for most of us, confidence is something that we build, not something that we just have Granted. There are some people out there in the world who just seem to exude confidence at all times, but I would argue most of us have to work at it and there can be lots of reasons for this. Maybe you have an inner critic that tells you you're not good enough and when you listen to that, perhaps over many years, you believe it and of course, it erodes away your self-belief, the trust in yourself and your decisions and therefore your self-confidence. Another reason is that maybe you've had a few knocks in life and that has allowed self-doubt to creep in. You know, maybe you've lost your job or you never get any matches on that online dating app. Sometimes it starts earlier in life and you may have had parents who told you you weren't good enough or you'd never amount to anything, or who had a tendency to put you down. Sometimes it can simply be that you look around. You see your colleagues and your friends all partnering off, all in big jobs, being successful, and it really highlights to you what's missing in your life, leading to that sort of gentle erosion of self-confidence.

Tip 1: Power of Posture

Dr Liz White 3:05

So before I go into my tips for building confidence, first I want you to ask yourself what is it that I lack confidence in? So what areas of your life? Is it the way that you look? Is it your abilities, relationships, relationships, career or job, social situations or decision making? Or is it a combination of all of those or some of those? Now, this is important because it's really easy, isn't it, to get overwhelmed, especially if there are a few areas that you lack confidence in. Sometimes we can assume that we just don't have any confidence, but when we take a closer look, it's actually sometimes just a couple of areas that need some work. So now on to my tips on how to build confidence.

Dr Liz White 3:54

Number one is walk or sit tall. So let's do a quick experiential exercise. So, whatever you're doing right now, whether you're sitting on public transport, walking the dog, doing the cleaning at home just pause just for a few seconds. Firstly, I want you to really slump your shoulders and when we do this, our head naturally lowers, so that you may notice that you're looking at the ground and notice how that posture feels. Now, relax. Now we're going to go and do the opposite, so I want you to stand or sit as tall as you can. Roll those shoulders back, elongate your neck. Raise your head Now. Reflect on how this makes you feel and how does it compare to when you were slumped over. So I do this exercise all the time with my clients, so I know what you probably experienced when you slumped over was a feeling of despondency, maybe low energy, certainly low confidence. It's a posture that says I don't think much of myself. In contrast, though, standing tall shoulders back, head up, makes you feel confident, even powerful, strong, like you can take on the world. So the learning point here is watch your posture. I have to remind myself of this all the time because I've always been tall and I've always slumped on my shoulders. So be aware of your posture and what it's doing.

Tip 2: Setting the Confidence Mindset

Dr Liz White 5:45

And if you want to feel more confident, you need to embody a sense of confidence. Notice my words there you don't have to feel confident to take on a confident body posture, but moving your body into a confident body posture may help you to feel more confident. You see how that works. My second tip is set the stage for a confident mindset. A confident mindset embodies this idea of having a kind of can-do attitude, and it's nigh on impossible to have that attitude if all we focus on is our flaws and that we're not good enough. So my second tip is to reflect on the times when you have felt more confident or times in the past when you felt more confident. My second tip is to reflect on the times when you do feel more confident in yourself, or times in the past when you felt more confident.

Dr Liz White 6:49

So, when you get a moment, I want you to get a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and you know I'm a big fan of actual physical writing. I think it makes a difference and at the top of the page I want you to write I feel confident when. And then I want you to really think about all of the things that contribute to your sense of confidence, and this could be anything wearing your favourite colour, listening to a particular song, or listening to a particular episode of a podcast, or doing an activity that you are good at. And the next part to this is to think about when I feel confident, what is different about me. And I don't necessarily mean sort of external things like and I don't necessarily mean sort of external things like well, what's different is my hair is perfect or someone gave me a compliment. I'm talking about really more of the internal stuff. So you know, when you feel confident, what is your mind saying. You know what thoughts are you experiencing, how do you actually feel and how does your body feel physically. And I think the key thing here is to identify the thoughts that are showing up for you. When you're in that confident mindset, you know what is it that helps you feel confident, what kind of things do you tell yourself, what are you believing to be true in that moment, and can you use that to help build confidence now?

Dr Liz White 8:30

So moving on to my third tip channel your inner cheerleader. Clearly, I am not American and I know nothing about cheerleading although I did watch a great show on Netflix about it once but I love this concept of an inner cheerleader. Essentially, it's a form of self-compassion or having a compassionate part of you, and when it comes to increasing your confidence, there needs to be an internal sense of there's a part of me that has my back, that is cheering me on from the sidelines and that has this sort of can-do attitude, the sort of attitude that says I can do anything I put my mind to. So I appreciate that some of you listening may struggle with this idea of an inner cheerleader, and that's okay.

Dr Liz White 9:21

Not everything that I suggest is going to resonate, but for those of you that are a bit curious about this, have a think about times when you needed to sort of someone up or you know, as a friend, or maybe you have a child or a work colleague who needed a confidence boost. When you did that, you were channeling your inner cheerleader and all you need to do is direct that energy inwards towards yourself. So if you can think back and have a situation in mind when you had to do that for someone, think about what did I say to them? How did I say it? Tone of voice is really important. What did you actually do? And write that down as well, because the next time you need a confidence boost or when you're actively working on increasing your confidence, you have a page of stuff that you've already done for someone else that you can then try on yourself. So my last tip I think is the best one, and it is stop waiting to feel confident and just take action.

Dr Liz White 10:35

The mistake we often make is waiting for when we feel more confident in ourselves. I've heard this time and time again oh, I'll apply for that job when I feel more confident or I'll set up that online dating profile when I feel more confident in my appearance. The problem with this approach is that that day may never come. So if you take anything from this episode, let it be this Confidence comes from action, not the other way round. It's like saying, oh, I'll do weights at the gym when I have stronger muscles. It doesn't make sense, does it? You have to go to the gym in order to build strength, in order to build those muscles, and it's exactly the same with confidence.

Dr Liz White 11:27

You build confidence by doing the things that move you out of your comfort zone and and this is important then paying attention to that achievement. I did that even though I felt like I couldn't. I did that even though I felt like I couldn't. I stood up and presented in a meeting at work, even though my legs were like jelly and I thought I was talking absolute rubbish. But I did it and, in fact, people said it was great.

Next Steps and Course Preview

Dr Liz White 11:58

So identify some really small steps, or even just one small step that you can take that moves you out of your comfort zone a little bit, that represents a situation that you don't feel confident in, and see what happens. And don't forget to use that idea of the inner cheerleader and using those things that you identified to help you move into that confident mindset. And, going way back to the beginning, walk tall, pay attention to your posture when you are doing that thing. Now, these small shifts might seem simple, but they are the foundation of real confidence, the kind that doesn't come from acting as if you are confident, that sort of fake it till you make it idea, which tends to be the advice out there on social media and so on, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it's a little bit surface level. What I'm talking about today is building confidence that comes from a place of truly knowing and trusting yourself, and in the autumn I'm launching a course to help you make clear, confident life decisions with that kind of grounded self-belief that I'm talking about. So if you want an exclusive 10% off this course when it launches in the autumn, then hop on the wait list. The link is in the show notes.

Dr Liz White 13:31

So, to wrap up, I'm going to leave you with a question what would you do this week if you were just 10% more confident? And here's a suggestion more confident, and here's a suggestion go and do that thing, follow the steps that I've just gone through and let me know how you get on. You can DM me on Instagram at Harley Clinical, you can message me on the Hello Therapy sub stack or, if you're on our email list, you can just hit reply to the email that we send out with this episode. So stay tuned, because next week I'm going to answer the question how do I motivate myself when I can't be bothered? And I know that I'm not the only one that's asked this question to myself, so I will see you then.

Dr Liz White 14:20

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Hello Therapy. We'd love for you to join our growing community over on Substack. You can sign up for free or become a paid subscriber for access to exclusive perks like never before seen video interviews and downloadable guides designed to support your mental health. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new release, and if you got value from this episode, it would mean the world if you left a five-star review. As always, check the show notes for my full disclaimer. Thanks again for listening.