Note 68: The Confident Woman Doesn't Have It All Figured Out
We have this idea of what a confident woman looks like, like she has it all together, all the answers, all the certainty before she takes a single step.
In Note 68, Yaya is calling that myth out and replacing it with the truth: confidence isn’t certainty, it’s trust. Trust in yourself, in your ability to figure it out, in your worth regardless of outcome. And she’s proving it with her own story of starting a coaching business from rock bottom, without a roadmap, because she believed in what she had to offer.
Inside this episode:
• The myth of the confident woman and why it’s keeping you stuck
• Yaya’s personal story of rebuilding from rock bottom and starting a business without a blueprint
• Why the perfect moment you’re waiting for is never coming the way you think
• How confidence applies to every area of life, not just career or business
• A reflective moment to help you identify what you’ve been saying “later” to
This is the episode to share with the woman in your life who keeps saying she’ll start when she’s ready. Save it. Send it. She needs to hear this.
Visit The Confidently Her Collective website here.
Transcript
Hey, girl.
Speaker A:Hey.
Speaker A:Welcome back to Notes to her, the daily pep talk.
Speaker A:I'm Yaya, your confidence and mindset coach, here to tell you the truth about confidence that nobody talks about enough.
Speaker A:So lately I've been thinking about the past a lot.
Speaker A:About how my business started, about the woman that I was when I first decided to do this, Before I had a plan, before I had a roadmap, before I had any idea of how it was all going to come together.
Speaker A:And thinking about that really led me to something else.
Speaker A:It led me to thinking about women that I know, the ones in my life, in my community.
Speaker A:Women just like you, who are capable and smart and talented, with so much to offer the world.
Speaker A:And yet they're holding back.
Speaker A:Not because they don't have what it takes, but because they're waiting.
Speaker A:Waiting for the perfect moment.
Speaker A:Waiting for everything to line up.
Speaker A:Waiting until they feel ready, until they know more, until the fear quiets down just enough for them to finally move.
Speaker A:The I'll do it when you know that phrase, maybe you said it yourself.
Speaker A:I know I used to say it all the time.
Speaker A:Like I'll do it when the kids are older, when I save enough money, when I lose weight, when I feel more confident, when I finally have it all figured out.
Speaker A:But here's what I do know from experience.
Speaker A:That moment is not coming in the way that you think it is.
Speaker A:And the women who are out here doing the thing, building the life, chasing the dream, stepping into who they were always meant to be, they didn't wait for it either.
Speaker A:They just started, figured it out as they went, trusted themselves before they had all the answers.
Speaker A:That's what today's note is all about.
Speaker A:Now let's talk about the image that some have of the confident woman.
Speaker A:She walks into the room like she owns it.
Speaker A:She speaks without hesitating.
Speaker A:She makes decisions without second guessing herself.
Speaker A:She has a plan.
Speaker A:She has a vision.
Speaker A:She has it all together.
Speaker A:She's never, not once, feeling lost or uncertain or like she has absolutely no idea what she's doing.
Speaker A:That's the version that we see.
Speaker A:That's the version that we compare ourselves to.
Speaker A:And that's the version we tell ourselves that we have to be before we can start.
Speaker A:And that version, it's a myth.
Speaker A:The confident woman is not the woman who has all the answers.
Speaker A:She is the woman who trusts herself enough to move without them.
Speaker A:She is the woman who says, I don't know exactly how this is going to go, but I know I have what it takes to figure it out.
Speaker A:As I Go.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:That's the whole thing.
Speaker A:Confidence isn't about certainty.
Speaker A:Confidence is trust.
Speaker A:Trust in yourself.
Speaker A:Trust in your ability to figure it out.
Speaker A:Trust in your worth, regardless of the outcome.
Speaker A:And I know this not because I've read it somewhere, but because I have actually lived it.
Speaker A:So I want to take you back to a season in my life where I hit rock bottom.
Speaker A:And I mean that not as a figure of speech and not as a dramatic opener.
Speaker A:I mean, the lowest point in my life, that.
Speaker A:The kind of low where you don't recognize yourself anymore.
Speaker A:Where you look in the mirror and the woman that's looking back at you doesn't feel like you.
Speaker A:Where confidence feels like something other people have, something you used to have.
Speaker A:Something so far away that you can barely remember what it felt like.
Speaker A:I had lost myself.
Speaker A:My confidence, my sense of who I was and what I was worth.
Speaker A:And I had to rebuild.
Speaker A:Not overnight, not perfectly, but piece by piece, decision by decision.
Speaker A:And I started to find my way back to myself.
Speaker A:I started to remember who I was before life knocked me down.
Speaker A:And I started building a confidence that wasn't borrowed from a title or a relationship or somebody else's opinion of me, but one that was mine, that lived in my bones, that nobody could take away.
Speaker A:And somewhere in that process, something shifted.
Speaker A:I realized that what I had been through, the rock bottom, the rebuild, the journey back to myself, was something that other women were going through too.
Speaker A:Every day, quietly, alone, wondering if they were the only ones who felt this loss, this unsure, this far from the woman they knew that they were supposed to be.
Speaker A:And I knew that I could help.
Speaker A:Not because I had certifications in coaching, not because I had built a coaching business before.
Speaker A:Because truthfully, although I had businesses before, they were product based businesses, completely different from offering a service.
Speaker A:So I had never done anything like this before.
Speaker A:But I had something more important than a roadmap.
Speaker A:I had lived experience.
Speaker A:I had walked through the fire and come out on the other side.
Speaker A:I had rebuilt my confidence from nothing.
Speaker A:And I knew exactly what that journey looked like.
Speaker A:And I care, like deeply care about helping other women do the same.
Speaker A:So I started without having it all figured out, without knowing exactly what it would look like, whether it would work, or whether anybody would even listen.
Speaker A:I just started and I remember telling myself, we are going to figure this out as we go.
Speaker A:We're going to make it work and we're going to make it happen.
Speaker A:And that right there, that decision to start before I was ready to trust myself, before I had all the answers to bet on what I had to offer when I couldn't see the whole road.
Speaker A:That was confidence, not certainty.
Speaker A:Confidence.
Speaker A:Now, the moment that you're waiting for, the one where you feel ready, where you have it all figured out, where fear is gone, the path is clear.
Speaker A:Everything lines up perfectly before you take the first step.
Speaker A:That moment's not come and go.
Speaker A:It does not exist.
Speaker A:And every day that you wait for is a day that you are giving away the version of your life that is smaller than you were made for.
Speaker A:Because the truth is, just about every woman who has done something great, something bold, something that scared her, something that stretched her and changed her life, she didn't have it all figured out either.
Speaker A:The woman who moved to a new city or country alone, she didn't know how it would go.
Speaker A:She just trusted herself enough to go.
Speaker A:The woman who left a relationship that wasn't right.
Speaker A:She didn't know what was on the other side.
Speaker A:She just knew that she deserved more.
Speaker A:And she believed herself.
Speaker A:The woman who started the business, invented the thing, created the life she had been dreaming about.
Speaker A:She didn't have a guarantee.
Speaker A:She had confidence in herself and in what she had to offer and her ability to figure it out as she went.
Speaker A:And that's what I want for you.
Speaker A:Not certainty.
Speaker A:Confidence.
Speaker A:Because certainty is a lie we tell ourselves just to justify staying comfortable.
Speaker A:Certainty says, I'll start when I know it'll work.
Speaker A:And nothing, nothing works that way.
Speaker A:But confidence.
Speaker A:Confidence says, I don't know where this is going to go, and I'm going to go anyway.
Speaker A:Because I trust myself.
Speaker A:Because I believe in what I have to offer.
Speaker A:Because staying small is no longer an option I am willing to choose.
Speaker A:Now, listen, this note isn't about starting a business.
Speaker A:It's not about a career move or a job opportunity.
Speaker A:This is about anything that you have been dreaming of, anything that you've been telling yourself, I'll do it later.
Speaker A:Maybe someday, when I'm more ready, when I know more, when the timing is better.
Speaker A:Maybe it's moving to another country, packing up everything you know and trusting yourself to build something new, new.
Speaker A:Somewhere that is completely different.
Speaker A:Maybe it's starting a new relationship after the one that broke you.
Speaker A:Letting yourself be seen again, even though being seen is terrifying.
Speaker A:Maybe it's going back to school, writing the book, starting the podcast, applying for the program, saying yes to the thing that's been sitting in the back of your mind for years, that you keep talking yourself out of.
Speaker A:Maybe it's something that feels small to everyone else.
Speaker A:But enormous to you.
Speaker A:Joining the class, making a new friend, walking into the room, introducing yourself, showing up as the full version of who you are instead of the edited, smaller, safe version that you've been presenting to the world.
Speaker A:Whatever it is for you, that is a thing that you keep saying later, too.
Speaker A:Hear me when I say this.
Speaker A:You don't have to have it all figured out before you start.
Speaker A:You just have to trust yourself enough to begin.
Speaker A:Because confidence isn't the absence of uncertainty.
Speaker A:It is a decision to move forward in spite of it.
Speaker A:Now, sit with something for a moment.
Speaker A:What's the thing that you keep putting off because you don't feel ready enough, certain enough, or prepared enough?
Speaker A:What's the dream that keeps showing up quietly, persistently, that you keep pushing back because the timing isn't right, or you don't have all the answers yet?
Speaker A:And I want you to ask yourself this honestly.
Speaker A:Either that you're not ready, or is it that you're waiting for certainty that was never going to come.
Speaker A:Because the woman you're becoming, the confident one, the bold one, the one who walks into rooms and knows that she belongs there, she didn't wait until she was certain.
Speaker A:She just decided that she was going to trust herself more than she feared.
Speaker A:The unknown.
Speaker A:That's who you are.
Speaker A:That is who you've always been.
Speaker A:She's just waiting for you to stop waiting.
Speaker A:I started my business without a rolnut.
Speaker A:I had a calling.
Speaker A:I had a story.
Speaker A:I had women I knew I was meant to help.
Speaker A:And I had confidence, not exactly knowing how it was going to work, but in knowing that I had something real to offer.
Speaker A:And I would figure out the rest as I went.
Speaker A:And here we are, six years later.
Speaker A:Season one of this podcast is almost behind us.
Speaker A:A rebrand that finally feels like home.
Speaker A:A community of women who show up twice a week to be reminded who they are.
Speaker A:None of that was certain when I started.
Speaker A:And all of this was possible because I started anyway.
Speaker A:And that's what I want for you.
Speaker A:Not a guarantee, not a perfect plan, not certainty.
Speaker A:Just trust in yourself, in what you have to offer.
Speaker A:And the dream that keeps showing up no matter how many times you push it away.
Speaker A:Start before you're ready.
Speaker A:Figuring out as you go.
Speaker A:Trust yourself the way that I trusted myself, imperfectly, nervously, with everything I had.
Speaker A:The confident woman doesn't have it all figured out.
Speaker A:She just decided that she was not going to let that stop her.
Speaker A:And neither are you.
Speaker A:With love, Sam.
