Confidence.
I get asked how to build this in young women an awful lot. Can I be honest? I still struggle with confidence issues myself.
Pushing my brown-eyed two-year-old along our usual trail for yet another please-fall-asleep summer evening walk, I had the blues. The weather was beautiful, the air still hot and thick, yet masked by a gentle breeze that kept my hair from sticking to the back of my neck. Bright pinks and yellows just barely hanging on in the August Iowa sky. Chirps of crickets and the rattling buzz of cicadas created their usual summer ambiance as we strolled along.
Yet, I felt heavy. Unsettled. Grumpy. Depressed, even. But I wasn’t PMS-ing!! … What gives?
I checked myself. Why today? What happened to me today that is making me feel this way on an otherwise perfect night?
My phone.
I know. This makes me sound like a nagging old lady, but I’m serious. My phone is all I could come up with. Because, sadly, all I really did that day was check my phone. I saw everyone’s updates. Everyone’s back-to-school photos with their adorable signs and cute new outfits. Everyone’s smiles. Everyone’s cool new cars, or houses, or puppies, or babies, or whatever.
No one said anything mean. No one was out to get me. No one was flat out bragging trying to make me feel any kind of way. Yet, without any real purpose for being on my phone, I was subconsciously weighed down by the idea of everyone else versus me. It was just noise. Noise I didn’t need invading my space, weighing me down, and telling me how to feel.
Seriously, get your stuff together!
My summer stroll, turned self-evaluation session, made me think of the girls I coach. How many of them come to practice, come to a meet, with extra unnecessary noise occupying space and weighing them down?
I am not judging, but have you walked by a high school or college campus lately? They never look up. Like ever. My parents used to warn me about MTV and 90210. I’d roll my eyes, but I get it now. It’s noise. It’s subliminal noise telling you what you’re not. It’s heavy. It’s distracting. It is the opposite of confidence building. The actual exact opposite.
Confidence cannot grow when there is no space for it to even take root.
Strength cannot come to light if it is constantly overshadowed.
Toughness cannot manifest if it never takes precedence.
I am not saying you should delete every app. Or purchase a flip phone. Or boycott the internet. But maybe, just maybe, if we want our girls to feel strong and proud of who they are, maybe we should help them monitor their intake of excess noise. There is no magic formula. Becoming a strong, confident woman takes practice. A daily practice of choosing the good and letting go of any and all bad and unnecessary noises.
“If we want our girls to feel strong and proud of who they are, maybe we should help them monitor their intake of excess noise.”
And maybe, it takes a sunset stroll with the crickets every now and again. I know it did for me.
Play now, play you… and take time to check yourself!
XO, Coach D
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