Jenn Ditzhazy (00:00.994)
Hello, hello, and welcome to this episode of Receive. I am your host, Jen D'Ceasy, and I am a premier transformation coach for women. I have helped over a thousand women to manifest the lives that they have always envisioned. And so I'm really excited today to be able to talk to you about a topic that comes up with pretty much every single woman I've ever worked with, regardless of her level of success, regardless of her level of experience in an area.
And that is self-confidence. It is something that is so, so potent and so important in every single thing that we do in our lives. And it is something that as we begin to actually focus on it, the rewards are tremendous because when we feel more confident, that is reflected in our reality where people will reflect back to us.
wow, you look so good or you're so magnetic or they'll want to work with you or they'll want to offer you opportunities or jobs. We are drawn to confident people. listen to them. We want to be like them, right? We want to buy what they are selling. We want to drink the Kool-Aid that they are drinking. There's something so magnificent about it.
And I'm not talking about situational confidence here where we can feel really, really confident in certain aspects of our life. And that's really magnetic. I'm talking about true self-esteem and self-confidence as a whole person and a whole being of believing in yourself and knowing that failures and setbacks don't mean anything about you and your worthiness and who you truly are as a soul and as a being. That's what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the good stuff, the juicy stuff, right? So
Jenn Ditzhazy (01:53.484)
self-confidence is very, very interwoven into self-esteem. And that's what I want to talk about first. And then what I'll get into is kind of what it looks like to be a high confidence person and then a low confidence person, and then how we can improve it. And like a little teaser for you is that when I started implementing these things in my life, these are things that I've really focused on for a long time and really consciously for the last couple of years.
And it has been within the last year or so that I feel like I've been able to really make it simple to teach it to people in a really, really simple way. And what I've seen is that when you start to follow these six practices that I will give you, you will see your confidence improve literally by tomorrow, truly. And then the next week, it'll be more and more and more. There's this compound effect that happens because we express ourselves so much throughout the day.
either confidently or not confidently. And they're all these tiny micro actions and we do dozens of them a day. And so you have dozens of opportunities to practice being a confident person. And when you do that, you get this compound effect, you get this ripple effect. And then what happens is as you start to feel it, it starts to get reflected back to you by other people, by your reality. And it amplifies this tidal wave of confidence. Truly,
This one podcast episode is worth thousands and thousands of dollars because it can change the trajectory of how you feel and how you show up in every area of your life and result in so much more money, so many more opportunities, so many more connections for you. So it's exciting. All right. So first let's chat briefly about the difference between self-confidence and self-esteem.
They are different. In this episode, I'm going to talk about self-confidence as kind of the umbrella term because that's what most people say they want. I've never had somebody tell me I want more self-esteem. They say I want self-confidence and they mean both, right? They're very, very interconnected. But really what self-esteem actually is, is it's this inherent, this innate, this unconditional valuing and respect of the self.
Jenn Ditzhazy (04:10.686)
how you care for yourself and how you love yourself and this inherent belief that you are worthy and that you are lovable and that you are enough. Okay. And we cultivate this self-esteem on the subconscious level and also through our actions. So what self-confidence is, is it's more performance or situation based.
where it's based kind of more on external skill-based experiences. So we can feel super, super confident in our work and then maybe not super confident in our romantic life, right? Confidence can vary, but ideally we have a really healthy base of self-esteem that allows us to feel whole and complete regardless of how we show up, regardless of if we have an off day or we fail at something.
or we don't achieve the result that we want, we don't perform as well as we want, we still have this healthy base of, know what, I love myself, I accept myself. Yeah, I could have done better. So what I'm gonna learn and I'm gonna move on. That is self-esteem. It's this healthy, healthy essence. And self-confidence is kind of what we build in the different areas of our life. So if something's new to you, you're not gonna feel as confident, but that shouldn't affect your self-esteem, how you view yourself.
And sometimes people can get these enmeshed and entangled, and it can be very icky. You can also have people who are highly successful, super, super, super, super successful. One time I dated this guy, and he was incredibly successful. He owned a law firm. He had this amazing, beautiful home in La Jolla, super successful guy. Yet he didn't have self-esteem. He didn't value himself on that deeper level. He didn't believe that he was worthy. He didn't believe that he was lovable.
So you can have that discrepancy between the two. And ideally, my girl, you have both. We have both and it's healthy and it's beautiful. And the things we don't feel confident on, we can work on, right? And we can continue to build our self-esteem. So now that we have that, let's talk about, I guess what I'll do is I'll use the term self-esteem, but I mean both. mean self-confidence or self-esteem. Okay. So,
Jenn Ditzhazy (06:25.144)
high self-esteem, what it looks like, is believing that you're inherently worthy of love, of respect, of success. You may have to gain the skills to achieve it, but you are inherently worthy of having it.
Another is a person with high self-esteem forgives themselves quickly. They learn from their mistakes and they don't punish themselves for it, right? There's not this mental self-flagellation, this mental unkindness that happens when somebody has high self-esteem. They learn, they move on. That is one of the most damaging things you can do for yourself is when you're constantly berating yourself in your head. And I know it's difficult if you grew up in a household where that was the tape that you recorded and you played in your head.
And I don't want you to beat yourself up for, doing it, but just notice it. And when it happens, literally just say, erase, erase, erase, and then reprogram and say, what do you, what would you rather say to yourself in that moment? It's going to take some work, but it will be worth its weight in gold. Another one is that someone with high self-esteem sets boundaries. Boundaries directly affect our self-esteem. And that was not something that I realized, especially in my twenties and early thirties. I guess I'm in my early thirties.
So up until this point is that when we wash away our boundaries, when we don't hold our boundaries, it is slowly eroding our trust and our self-esteem, our trust in ourselves. And because what it is is it's valuing someone else over what feels true and right for us. It's saying yes to people please, to feel safe when in reality we actually want to say no. And only you know when that's the case.
Then there is your trust of your inner guidance over other people's opinions. So someone with high self-esteem, trust themselves, right? They may take in opinions of other people, hear advice, whatever, and then they decide, that feel real and true for me? But somebody with low self-esteem is going to constantly second-guess themselves. They're gonna constantly seek external validation before making a decision. When in reality, you wanna be the person who you can seek that advice and then,
Jenn Ditzhazy (08:39.238)
still do what feels right at your core for you. Somebody with low self-esteem will feel like they have to earn love, approval, respect. They'll feel like they don't inherently deserve it and they have to prove that they deserve it. So this might look like over giving in a relationship, right? Doing everything for your partner or doing way too much at work that is completely out of your
scope of your work and then not being proportionally rewarded for it. It's people pleasing, right? It's trying to make other people happy and putting their feelings and their needs ahead of your own. This is honestly kind of rampant where women will people please to the point where they'll have no idea how they actually feel and what they actually think because they're so used to contorting and molding themselves to feel safe.
to feel accepted, right? Raising my hand right now, because that has been a journey for me, you And I've gotten significantly better at it, but it was definitely a journey for me. So those are kind of some of the differences between a high self-esteem and a low self-esteem person. Now, let's get into the juicy bits. Let's talk about, first we'll talk about what damages self-esteem, and then we'll talk about how we build up self-esteem.
And I highly recommend as I'm talking about building up self-esteem, write it down, like in your notes app, in your phone or something like that. So you have a reminder and you have this little framework for yourself and you can refer back to it because every single time you take an action towards higher self-esteem, you literally put money in your bank account. You improve your relationship. You attract more opportunities. Truly. You put yourself on a completely different frequency than when you do the things that damage self-esteem.
All right. So what damages self-esteem? First, chronic self-criticism, that unkind voice in your head. So Dr. Kristin Neff, I believe she's a psychologist. She did this research about how people talk to themselves internally. And the whole idea is that a lot of overachievers will kind of beat themselves up.
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thinking that that's the way to achieve and maintain success. Like if I'm not on my own back, who's gonna be on my back, right? Who's gonna ride me to make sure that I get the result? What they actually found in the research is that people who speak more kindly to themselves and don't criticize themselves aren't hard on themselves, actually achieve more, they're happier, they're more productive, they're more focused.
Because think about it this way. Imagine that you are sitting at a table with two friends, right? One's on the left side of you, one's on the right side of you. The one on the right side of you is so supportive and so kind and is cheering you on and is supportive of you even when you fail. And then the other one is like, yeah, you shouldn't have done that. Honestly, that was dumb. That was so frigging stupid. Why'd you do that? Why in the world? That is such a mistake. Ugh.
Right? Like you don't even want to be around the one on the left side. It's not a good relationship. And that's the relationship you cultivate with yourself internally when you're unkind to yourself. And truly this is why we do the rewiring work. Part of the reason we do the rewiring work that we do in my program is so you can improve how you speak to yourself because it is such an unconscious subconscious program.
And the more that you can shift it and improve it, the easier it will be to speak to yourself kindly and then feel more productive, feel more focused, not feel like you have this negative Nellie sitting on your shoulder, right? Another thing that damages self-trust is betraying your own truth to please others, right? It's not saying what you really mean. It's not going after what you really want. It's...
kind of watering down your own voice and your own message and your own truth to keep others happy. And it truly damages your self-esteem because what you're saying is that other person's more important than me. On a fundamental level, that's what you're saying. And you don't want to say that to yourself. You're the most important person to you and you should be. You should come first because if you don't, nobody else is going to get as much of you as they can possibly get.
Jenn Ditzhazy (13:10.04)
You're not gonna feel your best. The third one is comparing yourself to others. So the more that we compare ourselves to others, the more we're gonna find things that we wanna edit and adjust and we can always find things that are not good enough, right? Especially if we pedestalize other people. But the more that you can start to look at yourself and view yourself as this own unique, amazing frequency category of one being who...
has unique and special gifts and doesn't need to look like everyone else, doesn't need to act like everyone else or think like everyone else, the more magnetic you're going to become, the less it's gonna harm your self-esteem. Neglecting your needs. my God, this is a huge one. And this isn't a really nuanced one as well because there's the obvious things of not sleeping when we need to sleep, not eating well, right? Not resting when we need to rest, not giving ourselves fun and joy.
But there's also part of this is our purpose, right? Part of your need is fulfillment and purpose. And when you neglect your own fulfillment and your own purpose, you will harm your self-esteem. So I'll give you an example of this. When I was in corporate, right? I was making really good money. I had no reason to leave. It was a very stable job. I was doing well. They liked me, la, la, la, la, And yet...
I knew I was neglecting my need for fulfillment and my need for purpose. I wasn't lit up by the work. I wasn't happy. And as a result, it did harm my self-esteem because I wasn't giving myself what I truly needed. I was prioritizing other things that didn't make me as happy. And I'm really happy to be in my purpose now. Another is allowing mistreatment of yourself or living in misaligned or
putting yourself in misaligned environments. So allowing mistreatment, that can be in a relationship, it can be in a work situation, it can even be as simple as staying with a partner who doesn't fully see your radiance and your magnificence, right? Somebody who doesn't fully see you, that is not an aligned environment, okay? So those are some of the simple ways, there's more ways that we do it, but...
Jenn Ditzhazy (15:31.35)
to really simplify this for you, I'm gonna give you what builds self-esteem because these are the six things that if you just focus on these, you will quantum leap your confidence. You will feel amazing about yourself. You will attract more opportunities. You will be more magnetic. So, ooh, I'm excited to share these with you. So the first one is the category of self-trust. So if you're able, just jot these down.
And that is really keeping promises to yourself and following through on what you say you'll do. It's so simple, yet in action, it can feel so hard. If you say you're gonna go to the gym three days a week, then go to the gym three days a week. Because what you will notice is if you go once and you've said you're gonna go three times, is you feel this kind of icky feeling at the end of the week because you know you didn't show up fully for yourself and the future you want to create.
Right, and it's so easy to prioritize other things, to say, I'm too tired. But if you truly have a vision for your life and going to the gym three days a week matters for that vision, then you've got to show up for it. Because when you don't, you chip away at the trust within yourself and ultimately your self-esteem and your self-confidence. So that's category one. Category two is integrity.
It's acting in alignment with your values, even when it's uncomfortable. And this one is huge. And what I recommend to you is I recommend you write down the things that you value in life. Most people have no idea what they value. And what a value is, is things like love, respect, right? They're emotions, they're states that we value. Financial freedom, travel, joy, adventure.
Maybe not travel, that's a little too specific. It'd be more like adventure. So when you act out of alignment with the things that you value, it's out of integrity. So if you say, value being a kind person, but then you're rude to the wait staff at a restaurant, that's out of integrity. The same is true if you're dating somebody and you say, I value being a kind person, but the person you're dating is unkind to the wait staff at the restaurant, that's out of integrity.
Jenn Ditzhazy (17:49.378)
because you're accepting it in somebody who you're in an intimate relationship with. It's different, I think, in terms of friendship, right? Friends are not as much of a, they don't have as much of an impact on who we really are. And that's your choice if you wanna be friends with that person or not. But recognizing that it can be out of integrity. Another way that we're out of integrity, and I'm gonna, this is gonna be a lot of people who I think do this, especially in the United States, is,
When we say I value financial freedom, but we're spending our money in wasteful ways, right? We're spending it on things we don't need to be spending it on low quality things, things that are not investments, on things that don't nourish us and make us happy. And that's a personal decision, what that would mean, but that's out of integrity. It's out of alignment. It damages your self-esteem, your magnetism, your ability to manifest what you want.
Okay, category three is self-compassion. And this is what I've talked about is speaking to yourself with understanding and not criticism. It's when things don't go your way, how do you show up for you? Do you show up for you as a loving mother would with her child? Or do you show up for yourself with, damn, you're such an idiot. Ugh, like that hurts my heart even thinking about anyone talking to themselves like that. So notice and begin to shift.
Then category four is boundaries. So it's, you saying no when you mean no? Are you saying yes when you mean no? And really noticing it. And it's also boundaries with yourself. So something that I noticed that was damaging my confidence is at the start of the week, I would like pack in my week. I would have like myself time blocked and scheduled with so much to do. And it would give me this kind of low level anxiety.
and because I wouldn't have as much time for fun and play and my friends and my family and those kinds of things. And I was neglecting a boundary I had for myself of giving myself time to rest, giving myself time to do the things that matter to me. So there can be internal boundaries as well as external boundaries of not allowing other people to treat you in ways that you don't want to be treated. Or if you don't want to do something, saying no.
Jenn Ditzhazy (20:11.246)
You don't have to say yes, as women were so taught to say yes to people pleased to appease. Then the fifth category is ownership. And this is taking responsibility for your results without shame. So if you say, I want to grow a business and then it doesn't go as well as you want it to go, okay. You look at that and you take ownership for that and then you adjust without
speaking to yourself unkindly. Same is true for if you say something that hurts someone else's feelings or you are triggered and you lash out at somebody, taking ownership of that rather than just kind of sliding it under the rug or making it about them, taking ownership of the things that you could do better without making it mean anything about yourself. And that's one of the most massive things that you can.
do for yourself and shifts that you can make is realizing that when you make mistakes, when you mess up, it doesn't mean anything about you and your character and the quality of your being. All it is is that you have learning and growth to do. That's it. We stop making our mistakes so much about our worthlessness and make it more about, okay, I'm a soul and I get to learn just like everybody else. Then number five, excuse me, number six is celebration.
And this is literally acknowledging and being proud of yourself for your wins, no matter how small they may be and allowing yourself to be excited for yourself when you do well. And this is huge. This is fuel for everything else. If we're constantly going for that next level and we're never celebrating anything, we're going to get burned out. We're not going to want to keep going because we won't feel like we have the fuel. Celebration is fuel for the things that you want.
So I hope that that has been tremendously helpful for you. I would love, love, love if this is a topic that interests you, if this is something that you want to work on, I'd love to invite you into the visionary challenge happening right now in my community. It is 22 days. We just kicked off three days ago where we are working on all of these things, on building your confidence, on helping you become the visionary of your life.
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where you really truly go after the things you want. You are in alignment with the things that you want. You become the version of you who you want to be with high confidence, high self-esteem. That's really what the visionary is about. It's about manifesting your vision from a place that feels incredibly good and manifesting the version of you who you really wanna be. So if you'd like to join that, you can.
I'll put the link in the show notes. You can also go to my Instagram bio. The link is there. You can message me on Instagram at Alignment with Jen. I would love to hear from you. Tell me in the comments of this episode on Spotify or on Apple what landed for you, what you enjoyed, what you learned. I love hearing from you guys, so please let me know. And I am so excited to share the next episode with you next week. Have a fabulous week. Bye.
