Despair And Devastation Made Me Stronger

Tips On How To Own Your Power By Stepping Into Your Confidence

“With realization in one’s potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” — The Dalai Lama

I challenge you to think about this. Do you realize your potential? Do you have confidence in your ability? How can you build a better world for yourself, your family, and others?

I think back 11 years ago when my husband Ryan and I landed in The FL Keys. It’s 11 years last month — October 2009. We had both lost our jobs, and we were starting over from scratch.

We had this unshakable belief in the universe and that we were hard workers, but other than our confidence was very low. Days would go by, and I would wonder, how the heck are we going to pull through this?

We worked every odd job we could.

We scraped and rarely spent money on anything frivolous. Happy hour at the local bar once a week spending, only $30 total, was a treat. We networked our hearts out, looking for jobs and connections to opportunities.

We took every right action.

I could fill many blogs with all the jobs we did to make ends meet. But, we were often disappointed and discouraged. I would sit by the water with tears flowing down my face praying so loudly that I think all of Miami, two hours away, could hear me. I have tears now with the memories flooding back to me.

Wow, 11 years ago. And then it took three years to get on our feet where we didn’t have to stress about how we were going to pay rent. I remember my father said to me, “I don’t have to worry anymore.” Imagine…my father was worrying alongside us as well.

The hardest part was when the small boat we bought with our last bit of cash broke down. We had purchased an old used Mako from some snowbirds that lived in an RV next door to our building. We didn’t know the first thing about boats for The Keys, but we were excited.

My husband, a gifted fisherman, was finally able to get out on the water without begging someone else to take him. He had dreamt of being a charter captain, and this started boat was the ticket to learning the waters and fishery.

Fishing also allowed him mental peace from the world. It was his haven from the noise. When we finally realized the boat was a piece of crap and let it go, he said, “I lost my friend.” It broke my heart to pieces.

My feelings of despair of how am I going to pull through this left me devastated and broken. Someone else was relying on me, and I let my husband down. It was bigger than myself. I now understood how it was to be a parent and to feel that weight. It was crushing my spirit, which I had thought was unwavering.

The boat dying rocked my confidence. I had big plans for us, and nothing was working out. My husband relied on the boat for his mental health and working on building a charter business, and it was gone. How could I rebuild our lives and our confidence?

Confidence has many aspects.

I have found that many people use the word confidence lightly, for example, “You are such a confident speaker.” But confidence it more complex than the lightness often conveyed.

I like to break things down into buckets. When I do this, it takes the pressure off and helps you clarify your next action.

I can easily bucket just about anything- people’s behaviors, situations, things we need to purchase, etc. In this case, I needed to bucket the various aspects of confidence with our business goals and work through it bit by bit.

Step 1- Identify

When was the last time you stopped, took some time, and thought about your confidence level and how can you become more confident?

I have always loved the term “level up.” We consistently use that phrase in our household. In 2012, we finally started our charter fishing company, Good Karma Sportfishing. We identified that my husband needed to get his USCG Captain license and get a new boat. We spent time thinking about our business plan and that we needed to decide to level up. He was not meant to play small and be a mate on someone else’s boat.

How can you level up some aspect of your confidence? Do you lack ideas on specific areas? Let me help get your wheels turning on sharing some aspect ideas.

· Business

· Relationships

· Communication

· Boundaries (my favorite topic)

· Abundance

· Mindset

· Health

· Appearance

Grab a notepad, journal, or your phone and take a few minutes to think about your life’s area which may need some additional confidence boost so you can level up. Make the decision now.

Step 2- Intention

What is your big dream or goal that will result in working on the aspect(s) you listed in step 1? How would you feel if you achieved that goal? What are the results?

When you feel stuck or unmotivated, which happens, don’t beat yourself up. Circle back to your intention as a reminder. Use it for fuel to keep going. Don’t let a little setback stop any progress you are making. Keep it handy in your brain. Remembering your intention takes practice. Training your brain to remember things quickly to shift your mindset is work, but you can do it.

We had to remind ourselves of the big dream consistently, and it is a long game. Your path to building confidence often involves pivots, tweaks, mistakes, and challenges, so accept that and keep going. We had to learn about the weather, boat issues (and there are many), fishing techniques, and how to handle the clients. And when it seemed daunting, and we were not feeling very confident, we would revisit our intention, and it took the pressure off.

Step 3- Action

Why is taking action often the most challenging step for people? You make excuses, delay, or don’t start at all. I am good at delaying. I have to push through that and sit in the uncomfortable feeling that may arise. But when I push through it, it builds my confidence to do it again.

When I think back to when we started marketing the business, it was uncomfortable. Who were we to have to “chutzpah,” aka audacity, to ask local hotels to refer us? Ryan was a brand new captain and was learning as he was going. We weren’t born and raised in The Keys like the other captains. But that didn’t stop us. We drove up and down The Upper Keys stopping into local hotels asking if they would refer us for a $50 fee. It was humbling, and a bit nerve-wracking as we didn’t have any relationships with the resort owners, and The Keys has a small-town culture.

What was our response rate? One hotel was responsive and did a great job of referring us. All it took was that one hotel to start referring us, and we started building our business. If we hadn’t taken action and walked into hotels asking for referrals, our business would have slowly launched.

What can you do to take action today? List three ideas you have- it doesn’t matter how big. It could be making one call or one post. But do something. And at the end of the day, reflect on what you did and celebrate. The more you get uncomfortable, push through it and do the action, the more you will build your confidence to keep going.

“Doubt kills more dreams, then failure ever will.” — Jenn McMahon.

Don’t let any doubt or fears kill that action that you were going to take. I know that seems easy to say but not easy to do. But practice over time and keeping the three steps in mind can help with the process. And yes, you will fail at some pieces of it, but it’s how you look at it that makes all the difference.

If we considered all the other resorts that never ended up referring us as failures and stopped taking action, we wouldn’t be where we are today. That one resort was a win and went into a bucket of positive steps we keep in mind as we moved forward.

We still work on our confidence daily. Just like a muscle, you need to keep working it out, so it continues to build. And just like working out, once you stop it goes back to where it was, it shrinks.

Daily focus and attention on the aspect of confidence you choose to level up will bring you the success you desire.

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