Confidence Through Habit Building

This session introduces you to the sixth of the 8 C’s of Internal Family Systems: Confidence, through habit-building practices that support consistent, small steps toward embodying your Self-energy. By cultivating daily routines and committing to manageable actions, you reinforce trust in your inner leadership and your ability to navigate life with steadiness. This session encourages persistence and self-belief, helping you build a solid foundation of confidence that grows over time. This track is taken from the course Sitting in the Self: Exploring the 8 C’s of Internal Family Systems.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the session,

I invite you to take a seat or lie down and get yourself comfortable,

You can close down the eyes if you wish and take some deep slow breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth,

And with each breath allow yourself to acknowledge and release any physical,

Mental or energetic blockages along with anything else that may distract you from this session,

For the next few minutes all you need to do is breathe and be here to receive the session,

Now as your body calms and your mind begins to settle take a moment to set an intention for this session,

May this session ground me in presence focus my mind and open me to the guidance,

Clarity and insight this practice holds for me today,

May it bring me closer to embodying my highest self,

Ok well done,

Now allow yourself to relax,

So in today's session we're going to be looking at the internal family systems quality of confidence,

And we're going to be doing that through the practice of habit building,

Or connecting a behaviour,

A positive behaviour to something you're already doing,

Now the reason we're going to be looking at confidence and in particular related to habit building is because in order to evoke confidence,

In order to get confident,

We need to be taking action,

Just starting to evoke confidence out of thin air can be done,

And if you're one of these people that just feel innately confident all of the time,

Maybe this session can be skipped,

But for most of us we get confident by two things,

Number one,

Seeing the results of our actions,

And number two,

Taking those actions,

Unfortunately it's hard to just take action,

We are creatures of habit,

So the best way to establish confidence is to establish a habit,

The best way to establish a habit is to connect it to a current behaviour,

That's why we're going to be looking at habit building today,

But before we get into that,

Let's consider confidence for a little bit,

Why is confidence a quality of the self,

Well once we're in this sense of self,

Once we're calm and curious and we've got clarity and compassion and we're connected,

We start to feel like we can do things,

We can be things that life is worth living and we have something that is worth sharing and expressing,

Confidence seems to flow,

It's another natural expression of that,

And if you find yourself in a state where you're doing things that evoke confidence,

You'll know this feeling,

You're like,

I've got this,

And I would argue that most people are confident in some aspects of their life,

You may not be confident in your job,

But perhaps you have a hobby,

Or something you do with a family member,

Or some other area of focus that you are quite knowledgeable at,

Perhaps you are quite good at sport,

Or quite good at chess,

Or quite good at,

You can be anything,

But there will be an aspect of your life that you know you do quite well,

That evokes this sense of confidence,

And the idea of this session will be to help give you a sense of confidence that is a bit more global,

A bit more spread,

And a bit more able to give you a tool to improve confidence across the board,

And the way we're going to do that is to talk about habit building,

To establish a pattern of behaviour that enables you to,

Well in this case,

Get into the sense of self,

And therefore be able to continue to improve over time,

We get motivated by doing things,

And the act of doing things gives us results which further motivates us,

All of that is confidence building,

It's important to remember though,

When you're establishing a habit,

There is a delay between actions and results,

If you were to go to the gym for example,

There will be a delay between you working out,

And dieting well,

And all of that good stuff,

With changes in your physical body,

It will take time to notice your muscles growing,

It will take time to notice your body changing,

It takes time,

So we're going to have to like,

Look at habit building over time,

But the best way to establish a habit,

Isn't to just sort of start it,

It's the reason that new years resolutions don't work,

You do your best,

You've got full of confidence,

Full of motivation,

And you just shove this new habit into your life,

And it falls away,

Why?

Because you didn't peg it to something you're already doing,

You didn't give yourself the time and space to do it,

So what we're going to look at here is just adding one minute of practice to your day,

A one minute breathwork practice,

Now I'm choosing breathwork because that relates to the first thing we did here,

Breathwork is a way to attain calm,

It's one of the best things you can do for yourself,

But you could choose to establish a practice for any of the things we're doing in this course,

Or anything else in your life,

Imagine if,

If we were to return back to the exercise example for a moment,

Imagine if you were doing one minute of pushups or squats every day,

Just one minute,

How strong would you be right now?

Don't you wish you'd been doing that every day,

Right?

Same thing for this,

One minute is significantly better than no minutes,

And one minute of breathwork a day will give you a noticeable increase in calmness,

And thus clarity,

And curiosity,

And a deep sense of the self,

All of that will lead to a sense of confidence,

Because you will know by your actions,

You can change your life for the better,

That is confidence,

And we can do it one minute of the day,

You lock one minute in,

Then you add another,

And another,

And another,

Slowly improving until you've got yourself to a state where you're operating optimally,

You pick a habit to a behaviour by adding a habit,

The new habit,

To a behaviour to an already established habit,

Let's take brushing your teeth for an example,

I'm going to assume that you brush your teeth every day,

Let's say in the morning,

You do it every day,

You don't have to think about it,

It's not a chore,

You just do it,

That's just what you do,

Now I'm saying brushing your teeth,

But it could be having a coffee,

It could be driving to work,

It could be,

You know,

Insert any number of anything,

But we're just going with brushing your teeth,

You brush your teeth daily,

So what if you added or pegged the behaviour of calm breathing,

One minute of calm breathing to brushing your teeth,

You get up,

You go to the toilet,

You do what you've got to do,

Then you brush your teeth like normal,

Then after you put the toothbrush down,

You stand there in the mirror,

Eyes closed,

And just breathe calmly,

Slow down the breath,

Or do the box breathing like we did in that first session for one minute,

That'd be easy,

It's just one minute,

You've got one minute,

I know you do,

Just one minute of calm breath work,

Now that's the example I'm suggesting to you and you're free to take that practice up,

But I would suggest that you do something that works for you,

The thing that I pegged one calm breath to was opening a door handle,

Every time I opened a door handle,

I wouldn't even stop,

I would just,

As I'm opening the door,

I would just take that next breath slower and calmer,

That's how I initially got into breath work,

See every time I opened a door,

Slow,

Calm breath.

Another way that I pegged meditation as a habit to build into my day was in transitions,

Before I went to work,

Three minutes of meditation,

When I arrived at work,

In the car,

Three minutes of meditation,

As I was leaving work,

Three minutes of meditation,

And then when I arrived home,

Three minutes of meditation,

So that's four sets of three,

Spread throughout the day,

That's 12 minutes of meditation,

That's pretty good daily,

These are just examples that work for me,

I encourage you,

After this session,

To sit and consider a habit that you would like to instill,

I suggest breath work,

But it can be anything,

And a behavior that you're already doing,

That you can add that behavior to,

And then I suggest you do that,

For at least 30 days,

And notice the changes that are coming,

You will feel more confident because you know that you're doing something for yourself,

Just like doing this course will give you the confidence that you are connecting to yourself more,

The confidence that you're taking action to help yourself,

The confidence of the results of attaining more calm,

And clarity,

And curiosity,

And compassion,

The confidence that comes from seeing the result of your actions,

The reason I'm suggesting 30 days at least,

Because it takes quite a decent time to establish a habit,

And to see the results,

Now with all that said,

Let's do one more minute,

Right now,

Of slow,

Calm,

Breathing,

Just one minute,

You can do the square breathing if you like,

Or you can just aim to slow the breath down,

It's breathing in through the nose,

And out through the mouth,

Just slowing the breath down,

And if that's the habit you'd like to build to,

That's great,

So for the next minute,

Let's take some slow,

Calm breaths,

Connect back to ourselves,

So how did you go?

So like I said,

I encourage you after this session to consider a one minute positive habit,

For example breath work,

And just attach it to a behaviour that you do already every day,

For example brushing your teeth,

For example transitions to and from work,

Or touching a door handle,

And notice that your confidence will build as you see yourself taking action to help yourself,

And then build again as those actions result in the rewards that come,

For example the calmness that will come from a daily breath work practice,

So as you come to the end of the session,

I invite you to open your eyes,

Return to your body,

If you have any questions about confidence,

Or habit building,

Or internal family systems in general,

To ask them in the classroom,

I'll be there to answer them,

And I'll see you next time.

This track was taken from the course,

Sitting in the Self,

Exploring the 8 C's of internal family systems,

It's out now and available on my insight timer profile,

I encourage you to check it out,

See you there.

Reviews

This was amazing and such a simple concept. I think I will be able to incorporate some new healthy habits using your suggestions. Thank you. 🙏