I was recently in conversation with an esthetician (let’s call her Alice) who had become quite low in self confidence. It wasn’t that anything particularly bad had happened; rather, it was that the good things she’d expected to happen hadn’t… at least not yet.

She believed in the “Build It and They Will Come” dream or maybe it was the “Do What You Love and Success Will Follow” dream. Now, both of those dreams are somewhat true but it also takes some targeted and inspired action to pull it off.

Alice had become disheartened from the disillusion that all she had to do was get her Esthetician license and folks would start lining up at her door ready to shell out big bucks for her *expert* services. Nice idea but terribly flawed.

After trying several things that hadn’t worked out well, she was ready to give up and get a ‘real job’ but before she did, she wanted to try one last thing and that’s when she reached out to me. I’m glad she did because it only took a very short time for me to help her realize that she’d just lost her confidence and there really wasn’t a good reason for that. After all, she was subscribing to these ideals of hers in good faith. It never occurred to her that she wasn’t being told the truth.

And as with every other area of life, once you’ve properly diagnosed the problem, you’re at least 1/2 way to the solution. Below, I’m sharing the steps I gave her in hope that it will help you restore any shaken confidence you may have. The key here is to become a better YOU.

1. Stop comparing yourself to others.

My business manager always says, “You cannot compare your insides to another’s outsides because you’re only seeing what they want you to see.” and it’s true. While it’s simply human nature to compare oneself to others, you have to take that view with a grain of salt knowing that you’re only seeing a snapshot and not the whole story. 

In this digital age where many of us are spending probably too much time on social media. It’s all too easy to look at what a peer is posting and start feeling bad about yourself for not measuring up. If you’re doing this, I urge you to STOP IT NOW! 

What you see on Facebook is often a sugar-coated dream. There are plenty of people taking the “fake it till you make it” path to success so what you’re seeing is what they want you to see and believe about them not the whole truth. In fact, they’re probably trying to convince themselves as much as everyone else. It’s a bit like how we clean up our house before company comes so they’ll think our house is always in immaculate order.

How to counter this?

Spend some time coming up with your own goals or measures of success and if you must judge yourself, do so by these rather than by what you’re seeing another do (or say). This leads us to the next step…

2. Stop setting yourself up for failure.

Stand back and take an objective look at your life over the last year or two. Where have you created an unrealistic environment for yourself? Have you signed up for so many things that even if you dedicated 24 hours a day to studying, you still wouldn’t complete them? Have you signed up for multiple things but finished few? Have you jumped from one bright shiny object to another seeking for the true secret to success? Really spend some time thinking about this. I’m sure you’ll immediately think of 3-5 things (or people) that you’ve become involved with that didn’t go so well and this still weighs on your conscious.

Now, think about what it was that led you to decide to become involved with each of those things (or people). I want you to keep digging deeper until you can pinpoint what made you pull the ‘yes’ trigger. When you get to the real ‘it’, you’ve learned something valuable for yourself.

How do you stop this?

Once you determine what triggers you, use this powerful knowledge to evaluate decisions more thoroughly and make only the ones that make sense for you and your goals.

Also, make sure you’re choosing mentors wisely – choose those who have actually achieved success in the areas where you’re trying to grow (it’s called follow the leader not follow the talker).  When you do sign up for something, first make sure it makes sense for you and your business. I mean, think about it, if you’re an esthetician, you are in the beauty business but should someone come to you for a gorgeous new haircut? Probably not.

And finally, when you commit – really commit and go all in. This means not jumping to the next thing when it’s time to get to work.

3. Start trusting your intuition!

We’re all born with great intuition and it’s like our own internal compass. It can only keep us on track and never leads us astray – that is, once you learn how to hear and LISTEN to it. We all instinctively know what is right for us and if we were to follow that inner guidance, we’d find ourselves in far fewer unfavorable situations. It’s just super hard to not get distracted.

The big key here is knowing the difference between where you’re being led by intuition and where you’re reacting to fear. How do you know? Well, there’s a whole entire course on that but the quick litmus test is this:

If it isn’t a HELL YES! then it’s a HELL NO! 

Another quick way is to beware of the ‘shoulds’ and don’t be driven by them. If you feel ‘I should do this…” then you’re really saying I don’t want to. If instead you say, “I shouldn’t…” then what you’re really saying is I want to.

Act accordingly – you’re an adult.

4. Know your ideal life.

Don’t buy in to any dream other than your own. What would need to happen or what do you need to create in order to live a blissfully happy life? Don’t immediately say a million bucks because I can tell you that a million bucks is NOT the holy grail of happiness. I know plenty of unhappy millionaires. So what is it for you?

We’re all different. For some people, a small clean apartment of their own in the city is the big dream while for others, it’s a nice house in the suburbs. Some of us want to work in a spa and others want their own place. You get the idea. Figure out what YOU want and put your efforts toward that making sure to check in with yourself often or better yet, have some form of accountability to keep yourself on the right track. It’s too easy to slide back into old patterns if you don’t proactively stay on top of your growth. I like to use the term *inspired action* rather than just ‘action’ because it reminds me to make the choices that are inspired by what I want rather than just any ole action that I could take. If it’s not an inspired action taking me toward my goals, it’s more accurately a ‘distraction’ taking me away from my goals. Finding your ‘tribe’ or a group of people with similar ideas can be the easiest way to keep your focus where it needs to be. This leads us to…

5. Put yourself in the company of those who bring out your best.

The truth is, it is PEOPLE who provide us with the emotional support we all need – THINGS can never accomplish this. A strong personal network of similarly inspired people will lift you out of any funk you happen to fall in. They will organically cause you to show up as your best self and you’ll do the same for them.

There is simply no good excuse for choosing to struggle alone when you could be surrounded by others who can help you see your clear path ahead. Choose whose opinion you’ll give your attention and consideration to and block out the rest.

Here’s what I can tell you about Alice, she didn’t throw in the towel, she’s taking these steps seriously and she’s watching her business grow FAST. Her renewed confidence is having a positive effect on her clients and they are walking out of her treatment room feeling their own sense of renewal (yes, this stuff is contagious!). She’s also noticing that her word of mouth referrals are way up so while she’s working on bettering herself, her business is getting better too. While she was initially hesitant to invest more money in herself, the ROI for her business has been better than anything else she could have done with that money. Alice’s situation isn’t unique, it ALWAYS works this way as long as you are willing to take the inspired action your investment leads you to.

Take these tips and learn from them – they’ll serve you well no matter where you are in your business or personal growth. If you’d like to explore how I might be able to help you with this, I have a short message for you here: