Confidence allows us to face life with boldness, openness, and honesty.  It enables us to live without worry and to feel safe.  It enables us to live authentically.    Joyce Meyer

Confidence.

When did it start slipping away from us?

If confidence does what Joyce says it does, the only time I can remember living that authentically and freely was as a little girl.

Somewhere along the way things started to eat away at my confidence and now I find myself trying to reclaim the confidence that so quickly eludes me.

There are a lot of enemies to confidence, but there are three that seem to occur repeatedly:

1) Fear

We fear not being good enough… not being beautiful enough… not having enough… not getting what we want… not being liked… not doing something significant with our lives… and the list goes on and on.

What’s worse is that we don’t want to admit our fears, so rather than face them we stuff them under airs of self-confidence.

2) Jealousy

Need I expound on this one?

As women, I think we have an innate propensity to compare.  We compare everything: our looks, our family, our things, our intellect… And once we compare, we determine where we don’t measure up and jealousy creeps in.

3)  Insecurity

This one breaks my heart because insecurity is defined as “a profound sense of self-doubt – a deep feeling of uncertainty about our basic worth and our place in the world.”

This tells me that we are so far from understanding who God says we are.  We’ve lost site of how He values us.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Ephesians 2:10

I love this quote from Beth Moore:

“If we knew who we were and what God has conferred upon us, what everybody else thought of us would grow less and less significant.”

Most of our battles with confidence occur when we are focused on ourselves.  Our fears, jealousies and insecurities become self-fulfilling prophecies that keep us from confidently being ourselves and leading from a place of confidence and security in Christ.

Which one of these enemies of confidence do you wrestle with the most?  Is there another enemy to your confidence that you would add to the list?

Our March event was AMAZING!  The fabulous and amazing Kat Davis was our guest speaker for the day and she challenged us to take our DREAMING to DOING (the right stuff).  Kat’s talk was packed full of great stuff to get us thinking… and more importantly to get us focused on how to bring our dreams to life.

But there were two things that Kat shared that have kept me thinking:

F.E.A.R. – yeah, when we talk about our dreams, this word usually is swirling in our head somewhere.  Kat gave us two acronyms for the word fear.  We can choose to:

1) Fear Everything And Run

or

2) Face Everything And Recover

I just love this!  It’s really got me thinking every time I’m facing a challenge to my dream.  Am I going to fear it and run or am I going to face it?  How about you?

The other biggie that stuck with me was when she was challenging us about what we say “yes” to and what we say “no” to.  She shared this continuum that was a great visual for me:

Careless ————————————- Obsessive

We can easily find ourselves carelessly saying “yes” to everything or we might be on the other end obsessively protecting our time and our sanity and screaming “no” to everything.  Kat challenged us that somewhere in the middle is where we respect ourselves and choose to say “yes” or “no” to the right things.

How do you related to all of that?  Are you beginning to take the steps from dreaming to doing?

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Mark your calendars for our next event:

Friday, April 30th 7:00 AM

** More details to come!!

Often times, fear carries a lot more weight than the thing that we’re actually afraid of happening (or not happening). Margaret Becker quotes in her song “Dear John,” “…the fear of losing you, was much worse than coming true” when referring to something in her past that she was afraid of letting go. Does that ring true in your life?

A lot of times, we stand still because of fear – or even worse, we turn from tackling our fears and moving closer to our purpose and actually run far away from what we’re afraid of. If you look at the book of Joshua in the Bible, the most common phrase in it is “do not fear.” In the original language of many of those passages, you’ll learn that that phrase actually literally translates into “do not run.”

What is in store for you and what you’ve been uniquely created for isn’t necessarily going to be easy – on top of that, you are the only one on the earth designed to do it. So ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” and then start answering that question. Start assessing your answers and try to look at your fears objectively – get other perspectives from people around you with whom you feel safe and cared for. Then, start to look at your fears through the eyes of someone who has already conquered those fears and develop a plan of action.

And ladies, be kind to yourself - baby steps are OK. If you’re afraid of flying, that doesn’t mean you need to go hop on the $50 helicopter ride at the beach – but maybe it means you join a group of friends to go see a play in Chicago and you take your first flight with people who build you up and can walk with you through wanting to turn around and head the other way; they’ll also be there to celebrate with you as you conquer your fear and embrace the confidence needed to continue to overcome it.

So much like the questions asked to us last week, what is one step you could take this month to work toward your dream? As Henry David Thoreau stated, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the live you have imagined.”

The only think stopping you from conquering your fears is you surrendering to them. Surround yourself with people who will help you tackle your fears, and go confidently toward the dream that’s been appointed to you.

And I’m a closet dreamer.

If you meet me you’ll encounter a very practical, problem solving, get-it-done, A-type, responsible individual.  But underneath that composed exterior are some dreams that have been brewing for years.  Dreams that excite me and yet scare me to death.  Dreams that if I shared with someone over a cup of tea I’m afraid they would laugh out loud with tea spraying from nose, mouth, ears and eyes or even worse, give me that blank stare complete with a placating “oh, that’s a nice idea honey.”

You know the kind of fear I’m talking about.

And that’s what Cultivate Her is.  It’s one of my dreams.  A dream that after years of journal scribbles and the occasional passing comment made to a few friends, I took a monster step (for me) to gather a group of friends and beg them to begin the journey with me.  Surprisingly (again, too me, because I work these things up in my head) I didn’t have to do much begging.  These friends got it.  They were longing for it too and my guess is that so are you.

Through my journey as a woman leader, I have often found myself very isolated and longing for more connectivity with other women leaders.  Cultivate Her was started out of a passion to create a place for leadership-minded women to connect and encourage one another.  I believe the more we equip and encourage each other, the greater our confidence will be and the greater the opportunities we’ll have to lead.

Cultivate Her is a leadership environment where women are inspired, challenged and encouraged in their leadership growth.  No matter what your leadership influence looks like, your gifts will be cultivated to encourage you to embrace our motto “wherever you lead, lead well!”

And speaking of dreams, that’s what we’ll be talking about THIS Friday at our next Cultivate Her event.  January’s topic is “Dream Anatomy – Creating the structure to realize your dreams”.

My guess is that you, like me, have a God-given dream buried somewhere.  At some point you faced some criticism, fear or discouragement that caused you to leave that dream tucked away, buried in your heart somewhere.  Are you willing to at least give it another look?

If so, I hope you’ll join us this Friday.  We have an exciting morning planned for you and I can’t wait to hear about your dreams too!

Cultivate Her January Event

Friday, January 29^th

7:00-8:30 AM

Cross Point Church Gym – 4301 Charlotte Ave Nashville 37209

If you have not already RSVP’d through evite or facebook, could you leave a quick comment and let us know you’re coming?

**By the way, for those of you not in the Nashville area, we’ll be using the blog to share notes, highlights and video from the event.  Stay tuned!