Six steps to a more confident you

Negativity and self-doubt are an esteem-sapping drag. Melissa Field finds out how to access confidence and shut down your inner mean girl for good.

Does your subconscious constantly whisper you’re not good enough at work and you will get found out – and soon? Or that your home isn’t nearly as organised or simply as nice as everyone else’s? Or even that yes, you do look too big in those jeans? That insidious voice is a confidence drain, yet it seems far too many of us aren’t able to dial down its volume or even switch it off completely. Despite outward successes, be it a happy home life, a satisfying career and/or loving – or at least liking – what we see in the mirror, too many women will secretly admit to feeling “not good enough”.

Even Meryl Streep says she sometimes feels a fraud. “I have varying degrees of confidence and self-loathing,” the 20-time Oscar nominee has said. “You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent – or that you’re boring and they’re going to find out that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

So why is the inner mean girl voice getting the better of so many of us? It’s a quiet epidemic that Melbourne-based clinical hypnotherapist and trainer in neuro-linguistic programming

(NLP), a personal development therapy,

Dr Vesna Grubacevic treats daily. “We’re simply too hard on ourselves,” she says. “Some women never feel good enough, despite their many achievements, or they strive for an unrealistic or unattainable perfection. Imposter syndrome – the inability to recognise accomplishments and a fear of being exposed as a fraud – is rife.”

Dr Grubacevic’s point is backed up by statistics and studies. Diversity Council Australia compiled information on the “confidence gap” in 2016. A key point included the fact that while men and women share comparable leadership ambitions when commencing their careers, over time, women report a “60 per cent decrease in ambition and a 50 per cent decrease in confidence to reach the top jobs”.

This diminishing confidence was attributed in part to women not imagining themselves fitting “the typical stereotype of success”.

According to Dove’s 2016 Global Beauty and Confidence Report, which surveyed more than 10,000 women and girls aged from 10 to 64 across 13 countries, only one in five Australian women felt they had high self-esteem.

So how do you switch off the negative inner monologue, face the “I’m not good enough” fears and instead plug into “I’ve got this” confidence?

Dr Grubacevic says the first step is a mental reboot. “It can be hard to ‘unlearn’ thought patterns we’ve held onto for years, even if they sap confidence,” she says. “A quick flip is to force ourselves to think the positive opposite of a negative thought. So think ‘I can’ rather than ‘I can’t’ as a retraining exercise.” Investing time, effort and perhaps money towards professional help can also help unlock inner self-belief.

Both Annette Densham and Suzanne Williams actively addressed their confidence issues. “I lost my mojo in childhood,” explains Annette, 47, from Brisbane. “I’m from a single parent family

“We’re too hard on ourselves. Some women never feel good enough.”

and I was bigger than other kids so I got bullied relentlessly.” Despite her lack of self-esteem, Annette forged a successful career in corporate communications, although she says she often felt she was “no one special” and that her successes were flukes.

When she was headhunted for her dream job in 2013 – only to be made redundant 12 months later – Annette hit rock bottom. “It was proof, after all, that I was no good,” she says.

She was tempted to wallow in self-pity, but the redundancy forced Annette to address her confidence issues by attending self-esteem workshops. “I had time, so I used it to work on myself,” she says.

For Annette, a weekend seminar was the first step. “One of the speakers said, ‘Everyone in this room is an expert on something, it doesn’t matter what it is.’ That made me realise that I possess valuable career skills. I then regularly attended an emotional healing bootcamp – which I was sceptical about – where I learned to face the issues stemming from childhood that sapped my confidence. Being proactive was a boost.”

Two years on, Annette has launched her own PR business, Publicity Genie, and recently won an international industry award. “Working on myself gave me the confidence to launch my company,” she says. “I still have bad days, but now I don’t dwell. It’s incredibly empowering to value yourself.”

Suzanne Williams is 33 and also from Brisbane. Her confidence nosedived in 2011 when she took on new responsibilities in a previous job.

“I started a role in corporate HR and I suddenly began doubting myself, even though I received great feedback,” she says. After calling in sick for a training program, Suzanne knew she had to address her imposter syndrome issues. “First, I saw a GP to check it wasn’t anything deeper, like anxiety. I then started working on my confidence mind-set myself, using different tools including education, research, meditation and yoga.”

It took time for Suzanne’s confidence to grow. “Every day, I practised positive affirmations, for example, ‘I’m intelligent. I’m experienced. I’m good enough’,” she says. “Those reinforcements changed my mind-set. Over two years, my confidence grew dramatically.” Suzanne’s epiphany led her to launch Grace & Grind, a holistic career, health and lifestyle coaching business.

“Throughout my HR career,

I always enjoyed the coaching element,” Suzanne says. “When I improved my confidence, I realised that I wanted to do this in more than one organisation to help other women, too.”

Body confidence issues also sap self-worth. While a few wrinkles or extra kilos can lead to personal dissatisfaction, Debra Balhatchet,

39, had to live with a facial issue that severely affected her confidence.

“In November 2012, I had an operation to remove a 4.5cm brain tumour. The op and subsequent stroke I had damaged my facial nerves,” explains Debra from the Gold Coast. “The left side of my face was affected, which meant I couldn’t blink, so in order to preserve my eye, my doctors’ recommended it be sewn shut for a year. It was so visible, I really hated it.”

After the procedure, in January 2013, Debra didn’t want to look in the mirror. “I felt like hibernating,” she says, but with a family to support, that wasn’t an option. When Debra was well enough, she returned to work at the Subway franchise she’d just purchased with her husband, Mark. “Having to serve 80 customers an hour every lunchtime was confronting. People flinched, stared or openly asked what was wrong with my eye. I could tell people felt uncomfortable and that drained my confidence.”

Debra’s family, husband and friends helped her cope, but it was a comment by her teenage