Hey mama. Welcome to the Inside Out Mamas podcast. I'm Brittany Turley, mom of six, and I know what it's like to feel stuck and overwhelmed trying to be the perfect mom, but everything changed for me when I learned that small changes on the inside can bring big results on the outside. Each week I will share simple, yet powerful inside shifts or outside tips that can transform your approach to mothering, helping you thrive from the inside out. Ready to ditch the mom guilt and enjoy this season of life. You are in the right place. The purpose of my business is to help mamas thrive by helping them feel more peace, joy, and confidence in their role as a mother. I've done episodes on peace and joy. So today we're going to talk about confidence in motherhood. The definition of confidence is the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something, a firm trust. The definition says confidence is a feeling or belief. So confidence comes from within, from what's going on in your brain. It comes from our thinking. Now, did you hear what that definition didn't say? It didn't say that confidence is already having all the answers. It didn't say that confidence is always knowing you will do everything right and never feeling the emotions of fear or doubt. It didn't say confidence is being the best, smartest, or more experienced. Confidence is believing that you can handle or figure out whatever comes your way. Confidence is showing up anyway. Confidence is believing you are allowed to try to learn and to grow. Confidence is being kind to yourself even when you mess up. Confidence is knowing your worth isn't based on performance or perfection. So for mothering, that means confidence is a feeling or belief that you can rely on and trust yourself. Confidence doesn't come because we have certain skills. It doesn't come because we've been a mother for a long time. I think we get confused about confidence and think that we can only have confidence once we have a lot of experience or once we have a lot of skill in a certain area when we've studied it for a long time or gone to school, or once I've been a mother for five years or once I've had more than one baby, then I'll be confident because I will have done this one time before. But confidence doesn't come because you have certain skills. Confidence is the skill. I have had six babies. And none of them have been the same. Each baby I had to learn different skills and they each preferred different things and they had different personalities, and so even though I gained some skills with the first one, and then the second, third, and fourth and fifth, by the time I had the sixth one, I still didn't have enough skills to do everything just right for her. But confidence doesn't come because you have certain skills. Confidence, is the skill. That's amazing news because we don't have to delay confidence until we've done certain things a certain number of times until we've raised our kids or had a lot of experience and gained a lot of skills. Until we've read all the books and took all the parenting courses, we can gain the skill of confidence now because confidence comes from our mind, regardless of our actions. Let me give you a little example of how confidence is a skill and doesn't necessarily come from other skills or actions. So, an area I'm working on building my confidence in is singing. Many people who know me well don't even know. Anything about my singing abilities, including my own kids, but I've actually had a lot of experience and have skills in singing. In high school, I was in choir for three years. I was in two musicals. I also took private lessons during those years, and I sung in church in small groups. I sing in church choirs. Then I went to college and I was in college choirs for two years, and I took private lessons. Those years I was also in a large religious choir for a year. I have been in lots of performances, many auditions. I've had choral training, I've had solo training. I've learned how to sing songs in Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Latin. Now this list is not the list of a professional singer, but still looking at the list of things I just listed off, it is ridiculous to think that I don't have confidence singing because I do have this skill of singing, but I don't have any confidence in singing. In fact, it's one of the things that terrifies me more than almost anything in the world is singing in front of other people. All of those things I listed off happened pre-kids. And then when I had kids, my husband would hold our newborn baby and he would sing to her. And I remember one time he asked me, why don't you ever sing to our baby? And it actually took me a while to work up the courage to sing to my infant. And in fact, the only reason I started is because I was given an assignment in my church to lead the Children's group, in their singing, I was the director and to help me learn the songs better, I would practice singing those songs to my infant baby. It is still mind boggling to me how I have such low or no confidence in singing in front of other people when I have had that much experience singing. But I do. I have a desire to sing in front of other people because I really love listening to other people sing, and I appreciate their beautiful voices and the feelings that it can stir within me when they're singing beautiful songs. And I would love to have that skill. When actually I probably have that skill. The skill I'm lacking is the confidence to share my skill. Confidence is not something that people just have or don't have is something that everyone is capable of having. It's a skill we can all develop. In fact, you already have confidence in something. My mentor, Brooke Castile, likes to use this as an example. She'll say, do you have confidence that you could pour a glass of water? And I think most of us can say, yeah, we have confidence that we could pour a glass of water. And the reason we have confidence that we can pour a glass of water might be because we've done it before. But there's other things that we've done before, like for example, singing that we don't have confidence in. Because we're worried about the outcome, but when I'm pouring a glass of water, I'm not thinking, oh no, I hope I don't spill. I'm not thinking, oh, I hope people don't judge the way I'm pouring this glass of water. My thoughts are, I've got this, this is easy. I can do this. If I spill, it doesn't matter. I can clean it up. It doesn't matter what people think about my water pouring capabilities, I don't even care about what people think about how I'm pouring this glass of water. Kids are the perfect example of this. I don't know about you, but I think with every single one of my toddlers, as I'm pouring them something, one day they realize, I wanna pour it. And they have confidence. They think they can pour it. They have never poured in their life, but they're a hundred percent positive they can pour. I'm the one that has no confidence in that. I'm the one that's pretty sure that their hand's not big enough to hold onto the container and that since they've never done it before, they're gonna miss. But they. Think they can do it and they just grab whatever it is they're gonna pour and they pour it. And if they spill, oh, well, they already have so much confidence we could learn a lesson from them. Toddlers have so much confidence in every area, and that's why they have mothers to help keep them safe. So if we took our thoughts. That we have when we're pouring a glass of water. I got this. This is simple. It doesn't matter what people think about me doing this. If I mess it up, it's okay. It's gonna be fine. Then we take those thoughts and we apply them to the same thing. We're trying to build confidence in, for example, singing. It's simple. You've got this. It doesn't matter what people think about your singing. If you mess up, it's still gonna be okay. If I can replace my singing thoughts, whatever they are with these thoughts, then I can begin to build confidence in singing. Another thing that my mentor teaches is that giving generates confidence. The more you give, the more confident you will be. Because you won't be focused or worried about yourself. You'll be focused and worried about the people you are giving to. Like our children, if we're looking for confidence in motherhood and we're worried that whatever we're doing is not the right thing, if we're thinking about our children, we can begin to build more confidence. So in motherhood confidence looks like. Trusting your gut, even when others do it differently, saying, I don't know, but I'll figure it out, not measuring Our success by our child's behavior and owning our unique way of mothering and letting it be enough confidence doesn't come from actions or results. It comes from thinking. Confidence doesn't come because you have certain skills. Confidence is the skill. Now because I believe small changes on the inside bring big results on the outside. Each week on my podcast, I'm going to give you a small change challenge, something small that you could do throughout the week if you choose, that could end up bringing big results to your life. So the small change challenge for this week is to think of something you already have confidence in, like pouring water. Then think of something you want more confidence in. Motherhood or in any area of your life. Practice thinking, the thoughts you have around the thing you're already confident in. Like I said, with pouring water, this is simple. I've got this. I don't care what other people think about my water pouring ability. If I mess up, I know how to clean up the spill. Practice thinking those thoughts. But changing them to fit the thing that you want to have more confidence in. Practice believing in yourself. Confidence doesn't come because you have certain skills. Confidence is the skill. Remember, small changes on the inside. Bring big results on the outside. If you enjoyed this episode or any of my other ones, be sure to share it with a friend. We're all in this mothering together and it's best when we help each other out. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Inside Out Mamas. My hope is that our time together inspires more feelings of peace, confidence, and joy in your mama journey. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a show. And if you're ready to take these insights even deeper, head over to brittany turley coaching.com to check out my digital workshop. Designed to help you reduce daily mom overwhelm without adding to your to-do list. Thanks for listening. And remember, small changes on the inside, bring big results on the outside.