The “Good Girl” Rules That Destroy Confidence

How many beliefs are you living by that are secretly hurting your confidence?

In this episode, we’re unpacking the common sayings women are taught growing up; like “just be nice,” “forgive and forget,” “stay humble” and “don’t rock the boat” — and exploring how these so-called “good girl rules” can lead to people-pleasing, self-abandonment, burnout and self-doubt.

This episode is all about challenging the conditioning that taught women to shrink themselves to be liked, accepted or chosen.

If you’ve ever struggled to speak up, set boundaries, prioritise yourself or stop caring so much about disappointing others, this conversation is going to hit home.

Because confidence isn’t about becoming louder, It’s about becoming more honest with yourself.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Wake Up Worthy, the podcast that feels like a friend who hikes you up and tells you the truth. I'm your host, Jay, and this is your one-stop shop for confidence, empowerment, relationships, and all things us girls are secretly overthinking at 2 a.m. So grab your coffee, girl, get comfy, and let's yap our way into the most confident worthy version of you. Because, babe, you didn't just wake up. You woke up worthy. What's up, my little love buckets? Welcome back to another episode of Woke Up Worthy. I was supposed to record about two hours ago. And I'm just living my best life with Apple. And you know what that means. Random updates. So my computer, of course, I literally hit record and it's like, you need a software update. So apparently the universe just didn't want me to record at that time for whatever reason. So here I am. Coffee wear it off. And here I am. Hope you guys are having a wonderful week so far. We have gone from really cold rainy weather to super sunny today here in Perth. So hopefully, wherever you are, you're feeling happy, you're feeling vibey. This week, I want to take you guys into the advice that I want you to unlearn. So think about common phrases or common mantras that you guys normally hear. Okay. And this episode might be a sprinkle of controversy. And I say that because a lot of the time we're hardwired to think a certain way, to it's even like a belief system, right? So my goal today is to kind of challenge you to think outside the box or perhaps to see a different way than you normally would. Now, a full disclosure, you don't have to agree with me. You don't have to decide that this is now what you want to believe. It's just an interesting conversation to have, to challenge the way that we are hardwired, to challenge the way that we do things. There are so many sayings and little pieces of advice, if you call it, that as we grow up, especially as women, we're hearing things that sound quote unquote good on the surface. Things like just be nice, forgive and forget, stay humble, don't rock the boat, right? Because they sound mature, kind, loving, or probably respectful. We we don't question them, especially if it's, you know, you grew up in with parents from an older generation. They have a very strict set of beliefs. And we know from all of my episodes that beliefs are passed on through family, through generations, through our parents, right? That is literally how we are raised. So that's just surely how it's supposed to be. But what if, what if we could have our own mind? What if we could have our own opinion and question things? I want you as we go through this episode to consider, you know, what do you value? What do you believe? All right. What do you what do you want to be true about the world? And I always challenge myself to believe things that are optimistic and positive. I would much rather have a positive outlook on things than a negative. It's the same energy, if not more energy to be negative and closed-minded. So let's be open-minded and positive. Okay. I'm assuming some of this advice or these mantras that we're, that we've been living by are actually the very things that are keeping us stuck in self-doubt, people pleasing, possibly burnout, and your low confidence. So today we're just going to unpack these common phrases that we're taught to live by, especially as women, and how some of them are quietly teaching us to abandon ourselves. Maybe you've been shrinking yourself, silencing yourself. And I definitely know that we're settling for less than we deserve. Okay. I don't want this episode to come across about being cold or bitter or even selfish. It's about learning the difference between being kind and then losing yourself in the process. So confidence isn't built by becoming someone else. You guys know that. It's built by reconnecting with the parts of yourself that you were taught to suppress. And maybe some of these sayings or mantras are contributing to that. So that's let's let's practice challenging them. So let's pick the first one. Just be nice. Just be nice. There may be other ways of saying this phrase, but you get the general gist, you know, often, especially in older, older times and older generations, you know, women are praised growing up for being easygoing, agreeable, low maintenance, a good girl, polite. You know, she's not hard to deal with. She knows her place. Oh my God. Somewhere along the way, you know, quote unquote, being nice stopped actually referring to your kindness and actually started meaning you were self-sacrificing. Like you weren't putting yourself first. Okay, because you did what others said, behaved how others wanted you to. So for a lot of women, this is actually turned into saying yes when you want to say no. Maybe you're avoiding difficult conversations, you're overexplaining yourself, you're probably tolerating a lot of disrespect and you're staying quiet because you want to keep the peace. You don't want to, you don't want to have a different opinion, don't want to go against the grain. Okay. But if you're doing all of that, you're probably wondering why you're feeling resentful, just tired of yourself, or possibly even invincible, right? Like, but I was always taught to, you know, be be a good girl and just be nice. But why does that feel so restrictive? Why do I still, why do I feel so far away from who I truly am? Right. Being nice has become more important than being honest. And maybe along the way, we've confused being honest with being nasty or unkind. And we actually don't know how to be honest anymore because we associate being honest with conflict. Right? It is so deeply embedded in us that we should just keep the peace. As we learnt last week, confidence sometimes means you will disappoint people. Okay, and that's okay. Because remember, if we're disappointing people, it means that you are honoring yourself because you're not pleasing everyone else. So confidence sometimes means saying, actually, respectfully, that doesn't work for me, or I don't agree. I need some space, I need some time, or what you did or said actually hurt me. You know, you can still be a kind woman, but still have boundaries, still communicate honestly, still stand up for yourself and still respect yourself. This is a big one. This next saying forgive and forget. Forgive and forget. This implies that you have to forgive someone and you have to forget about something that hurt you. Right? You can be a forgiving person. That is one of my top qualities is forgiveness, but everyone forgives differently. You can still forgive someone, and there will always be that memory or that hurt that that person hurt you. Right. That doesn't mean that you're eliminating that experience or eliminating that emotion. It just means, look, I forgive you for how you behaved, but I'm gonna be honest, it did hurt me. But then it's making the choice to move forward either with that person or without that person, right? But we don't forget. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing and is very healing. It takes a lot to be a forgiving person. And it's not a bad trait, it's not a weakness. It's a beautiful thing. But for many of us, we're using forgiveness to skip over our own pain. We think that the word forgiveness is associated with erasing what happened, and it's not. You might be convincing yourself that, oh, it wasn't that bad. Maybe I'm overreacting, like I should just move on. Maybe they didn't mean to, instead of actually processing the hurt, you're reconnecting too quickly and you're re-ignoring the red flags or continuing to give people access to you. Two things can co two things can coexist. You can forgive people while still honoring yourself, while still taking the time to process the hurt and process more emotions. And only when you're ready do you choose to forgive. Forgiveness can be part of the healing process as well, if you want to forgive. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you're pretending that you weren't hurt in the first place. We're gonna sweep it all under the rug, right? Forgiveness doesn't mean that you have to trust someone immediately again. Just because I forgive you doesn't mean that I trust you. Two separate issues, two separate challenges. You can still be a forgiving person, but like, hey, you gotta work on my trust now. Like you've broken it. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you have to tolerate that behavior again and again. Just because you're a forgiving person does not give you permission to do it again and again. That's not a green card where you don't face consequences for your actions. If anything, if that is how you perceive things, that's on you. You're a shit person for taking advantage of my forgiving nature. Okay. And if you choose forgiveness and to be a forgiving person, it doesn't mean that you abandon your boundaries either. If anything, forgiveness from being hurt is a time to up your boundaries, be more assertive on how you want to be treated, how you deserve to be treated, what emotions are tied to it, like communicate a lot better. Okay. So I want to give you guys the permission. You can still forgive someone and still decide, hey, being in your life is no longer healthy for me, but I forgive you. Right? Forgiveness is not choosing to continue with that person or keep them in your life. It's like I do forgive you, but then the boundary is like this is not it for me. And that doesn't make you bitter, doesn't make you a bad person, right? That's actually self-respect. And in all of these, I think that's what the theme is is like we're putting others before ourselves in all scenarios, in all these mantras, right? We are never our first priority. So, next quote that's pretty common for us, okay? Don't rock the boat. I hate that one. I enjoy rocking the boat in a respectful way. This in itself, it just creates so many anxious, hyper-aware women. You can imagine always being in a scenario where you have a different opinion or you want to contribute to a conversation, or you want to dis you feel like you need to disagree or stand up for yourself, but you you hesitate, you hold back because you're like, oh, I um don't want to rock the boat or I don't want to be seen as difficult, right? Um if you are someone that lives by this mantra, don't rock the boat, you'll probably notice that you're constantly monitoring everyone else's mood around you, everyone else's reactions, and everyone else's comfort. But in that, I've just listed the word everyone, but what about you? There's no time to stop and think, well, how is holding myself back making me feel? Do I feel invisible at the end of the day? Do I feel like I'm not living in alignment with how I want to behave or who I want to be and what I want to say? Right? Women who feel physically uncomfortable speaking up because they're terrified of rejection or conflict. That's that's normally the bubble we put ourselves in. But to be honest with you guys, avoiding conflict isn't creating peace. Avoiding contact isn't creating peace. It's actually creating resentment, anxiety, and you're abandoning yourself. A lot of women aren't afraid of conflict. They're just afraid of losing love or being rejected and possibly losing approval or connection with people around them. Okay. So our defense mechanism is to shrink ourselves to stay quote unquote safe. Right? If I am quiet, I'm not rocking the boat. And if I'm not rocking the boat, I'll be accepted. I'll be seen as a good girl, I'll be seen as manageable, right? But that's not we don't want to be seen as manageable. We want to be respected. We want to have a voice. Confidence does require honesty with yourself and other people. And it doesn't mean that having a voice means that you're aggressive. We don't want to cause drama. It's just honesty. And healthy relationships can survive difficult conversations. And relationships can be friendships, romantic, even in the work, even in the workplace. Right? Because without honesty and without respecting yourself and speaking up, you're not honoring yourself. And you can't expect to be in a healthy relationship unless you're being your true self and honoring yourself. Okay. Next quote. Stay humble. I hate this one. I really I'm someone that's very, very proud of myself and I'm very confident. And I did a full episode on this, confidence versus cocky. Okay. And the whole fucking theme of that was there's no such thing as being too confident. There's only arrogant people that put others down to look, make themselves look better. Okay. So I always don't understand why people are humble, where they're like, oh, I don't like talking about my achievements, or I don't like celebrating. Like each to their own. If that's how you feel, all good. I'm not gonna force you to be someone different. But I just don't get it. I'm like, what do you mean? You should what this is what you achieved. You should be fucking shouting that from the rooftops. So then there's like the psychology behind why are you really not shouting it from the rooftops? Like I get people don't like attention. I'm just wired differently. But my question is, why are women taught to shrink their achievements the second they start shining? You might hear yourself or women around you actually downplaying their achievements. You might hear things like, oh, I just got lucky. Oh yeah, it's not a big deal. I'm probably not even that good. Oh, I just don't want to sound arrogant. Yuck. I hear that from people's mouths and I'm like, shut the fuck up. Tell me everything. What did you achieve? How did you achieve it? That's incredible. You should be so proud of yourself. They are very, very talented. They're intelligent, capable. But why do we feel more comfortable insulting ourselves rather than acknowledging our strengths? Think about that for a second. Why is our go-to self-talk, like inner self-talk, to downplay our accomplishments rather than wanting to shine and have the attention and stand out? It's not humility, it's conditioning. We are conditioned to put ourselves in a box. We are conditioned to not want to stand out, not get attention, right? We don't, we just stay humble. It's cocky to be proud of yourself. It's cocky to talk about your accomplishments. Yuck. I love listening to people talk about how proud they are of themselves. Like you can see it on their faces. They just shine. They are so excited. They're so proud. They're so confident and happy. I would much rather be, I would much rather have people in my life like that than people that talk shit about themselves. I want to give you guys permission. You're allowed to celebrate yourself. I want you to speak highly of yourself. Take up space, be seen and own your growth. Like we have done so much work to better ourselves in silence. We spend so much time in silence working on ourselves to be proud of ourselves. And then when the moment comes to shine and take up space, we're like, oh it was just luck I didn't do any of that on my own. Girl, please. Do it without apologizing for it, would be my advice. So next one, put others before yourself. This is a tough one. This is something myself personally have struggled with. People pleasing tendencies, right? A lot of us are taught that love means self-sacrifice. You know, we become the helper, the fixer, the emotional support person, or quote unquote, the strong one. Okay. Being the strong one means that nothing can ever be wrong with me because I have to be the strong one. I have to be that rock for everyone else. This can happen with kids in families where maybe other children in the family have gone through really rough times, right? So all the attention's on them. So they take on this persona that's like, well, I'm not allowed to have anything wrong with me because my parents have already got a lot to deal with with my sibling. Or in relationships where you don't feel confident enough. Your friend's always going through turmoil. And it's like every time you catch up, you feel bad, even saying that you're going through something really upsetting and personal. And in relationships as well, same dynamic. This what can happen is you start giving and you're giving and you're giving until there's nothing left in the tank. Right. Then the guilt kicks in the second that you try and prioritize yourself. You're like, well, I've always been someone that helps everyone else, and I never focus on myself because that's selfish. I can't talk about what I'm going through because everyone else has got it harder than me. So when you do try, because you've done it for so long, you're at your tipping point where you finally need help, and then you feel bad because like the focus is suddenly on you and you're not used to it. That means that you're constantly abandoning yourself to care for everyone else. And that's it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable for your mental health, for your physical health, even for those around you. Like I always use the analogy of when the plane's going down, the oxygen masks come down, and there's a reason you put yours on first. You can't help others if you're dead, girl. Put your own oxygen mask on first and, you know, take away the guilt that it's allowed to not, you're allowed to not be okay and you're allowed to ask for help. And you can't build confidence whilst you're teaching yourself that everyone else's needs matter more than your own. Right. And a lot of people take this as being selfish if they talk about themselves. Well, my friend's going through something. Yeah, so are you. You can support her whilst looking after yourself. Like you are the most important part in your life. And a lot of people feel guilty saying that. Well, yeah, but I love my family, I love my kids, I love my husband. Yeah, that's still true. Like that doesn't go away if you you look after yourself, if you prioritize yourself. People don't understand that if you are not honoring yourself first, you are not like you can't help people to your full advantage. You can't be your true self. You're not living life as yourself because you're not looking after yourself. So choosing yourself isn't gonna make you selfish. It's it makes you responsible for your well-being. Okay next one. And this is why this is like controversy. Cause I don't know if I agree with this one, but I want to put it out there. Let's talk about it. Fake it till you make it. Now, two sides to this. This advice can help people take actions, right? And possibly with confidence, like fake it till you make it. But for many of us, it actually turns into performing confidence instead of genuinely building it. Because you're so used to putting a mask on and putting a facade on when you leave the house that you're not actually doing the work to be a confident person or to feel confidence because it's a facade. When you're around a certain type of people, oh, put that mask on, or when you leave the house in general. But when you come home, the mask comes off and you're like, fuck, I feel shit about myself. Let me think about the whole day that's happened. How did I behave? What did I say? You know, so it's like you're not actually embracing that true confidence. You're just pretending. So that's where it can kind of lead you astray. It uh it becomes exhausting trying to look confident, sound confident, appearing to have it all together. But internally, obviously, you probably feel insecure, anxious, disconnected. Because I want you guys to understand that real confidence doesn't mean being perfect. And I think that's where a lot of people get scared to work on their confidence because they're like, it seems so far out of reach. I'm never going to be perfect. Good. I don't want you to be. You should always be growing, always be working on yourself. Anything that you do, like that 1% better, I know that's cocky to say, 1% better every day, that's still building confidence. And it's actually putting trust in yourself that you are capable of being uncomfortable to get better. You know, it's it's that deep knowing in yourself that you can handle discomfort, you can survive rejection, and you don't need to be perfect to be worthy. Okay. That's where your real confidence will come in. All right, my loves. A lot of the beliefs, sayings, and advice that you're carrying were never intentionally designed to hurt you, but many of them were built around keeping women likeable. Think about the old days. Keeping women quiet, agreeable, accommodating, and easy to manage. And we don't want to be like that. Okay. At some point you have to ask yourself is are these mantras or is this belief actually helping me become more connected to myself? Or is it more disconnected from myself? Because healing and confidence often require unlearning before relearning. And sometimes the most powerful thing that you can actually do is accept every piece of advice that you were handed as well, but then have the confidence to challenge it. You know, does this actually align with the woman I want to become? You get to choose what you believe in, and you get to choose how you show up in your own life and how you think. So it's okay, people that give you advice, and it's okay that you're probably raised with certain beliefs, but at one point you go, cool. I get to actually choose moving forward if I want to live my life like this. So I want one power question to leave you. What belief or piece of advice have you been living by that's actually causing you to abandon yourself? So good. Feel free to DM me your answers, pop your answers in the Facebook group. But yeah, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you guys next week. Bye. Okay, gorgeous. That's a wrap on today's episode of Woke Up Worthy. If this spoke to you, don't forget to follow the pod, hit that bell, and drop a five-star review so more gals can find this space too. If you're needing some extra support, confidence tools, and maybe some behind the scenes goodies. Tap the link in the description to connect with me and join the community. Until next time, babe, don't forget to choose yourself, back yourself, and more importantly, remember you woke up worthy.