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Imagine what you could accomplish if you had no fear.
Just think about that for a second. What would it be like to be a more confident and stronger version of yourself?
That’s what Eileen Wilder discovered. Eileen is a best-selling author, speaker, and pastor who loves showing women how to gain confidence.
Eileen suffered from eating disorders, depression, and severe anxiety attacks for years. After discovering how to pivot negative thoughts toward truths, she achieved lasting changes in her self-confidence, mood, and weight. And now, through her biblical success coaching, she teaches women about thought containment, mood mastery, and other proven strategies that will enable them to become the fearless, bold, hot versions of themselves that have always existed within.
Eileen and I sat down for a chat during the Work-at-Home School Summit. She had some valuable insights on how we can ALL become the best versions of ourselves. Who doesn’t want that, right?! Read on and learn how simple it can be to change your life for the better… starting with YOU.
Overcome Image Issues
I know a lot of my audience, women especially, suffer from a lack of confidence and low self-esteem. I’ve battled with body image issues and a lack of self-confidence. Confidence is something everyone craves, and many people want to have this confidence before they even get started. But confidence is a byproduct of taking action, especially with working from home and building your own business.
We can’t expect to have confidence before we take action. And that’s why we have to just do it scared.
I certainly didn’t have this confidence when I started my business over seven years ago. Being brutally fired from my job, being told I was trash and that I would die alone, and being extorted for money definitely had a super negative effect on my confidence.
Eileen didn’t always have confidence in herself either. She suffered from crippling insecurity for twenty years. She was so afraid of what other people thought of her she experienced full-on anxiety attacks.
Lots of you will be nodding your heads because you’ve felt this way too. I want you to know that horrific events like these don’t have to shape us or our futures. There’s a way to change all of that.
Make Changes Happen
Initially Eileen didn’t believe change was possible, but she researched and read a lot of books. She learned about neuroplasticity — your brain’s ability to change — and she discovered that the brain is not permanent. It’s malleable and capable of change.
So what does this mean? There is hope. You’re not stuck being who you are right now! You can learn things, adapt tools, and incorporate new habits into your life. You won’t get there overnight, but you can change your brain.
When you realize that change is possible, new opportunities open up. You can accomplish your goals, whether that’s starting a business or public speaking or anything else.
It will always be a journey to change your brain. I can vouch for that. I’ve overcome a lot of mindset stuff over the last few years. And I’m still on that journey! I deal with negative thoughts every day. The voices never go away, but they can change what they’re saying. Fear doesn’t go away, but it changes its face.
I want to bust the preconceived notion that where you came from will always hold you back from achieving your goals. That’s not true. YOU have the power to change.
Our brains are not at capacity. We can learn new things and transform our lives.
So how do you beat the fear and end the anxiety you’re experiencing sooner rather than later?
Eileen believes it’s all about knowing the right strategies — and they’re not difficult to learn. She’s able to help her clients in a matter of weeks. Some people worry that reconfiguring your brain will take years, but that’s not true. You just gotta learn the shortcuts.
Start Taking Action
Eileen figured out that the quicker she could learn to take action — even a small action — the quicker she could change. She did small things, like waking up ten minutes earlier, and that had a BIG effect.
Confidence doesn’t happen by desire. It grows by competence, so the more competent you become at skills, the more confidence you get. It’s called a confidence-competence loop. So if you can do a few skills just a little bit better, your confidence will start to go through the roof.
The great philanthropist W. Clement Stone had his employees say “Do it now” one hundred times a day. He was training his employees to become more action-oriented and less procrastination-oriented. He also said that “thinking will not overcome fear, but action will.”
I think that’s an amazing lesson. Say it with me: Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now!
Confidence happens with competence. You can’t expect to have confidence without doing anything.
Don’t Self-Sabotage
There are people out there who want momentum, traction, and motivation. They want all of this before they even get started. They want to know what will happen in ten years before what will happen in ten minutes. There are students thinking if they can’t find out what’s going to happen in the future then they refuse to get started. They have all this fear holding them back. It’s called self-sabotage.
Eileen says that scientists call it the decay of delay. The longer you wait to do something, the harder it becomes and the less likely statistically it’ll occur. When you procrastinate, you start to experience decay inside of the moral fiber of your being. You start to feel lost at some point.
Beat Procrastination by Taking Action
Eileen recommends writing down three simple goals you will work toward every day to achieve your purpose. They don’t have to be huge goals! Break down the big goals into smaller goals. So if you want to start a blog, write down “research how to start a blog.”
Doing three small things every day will build your competence and keep your confidence up. Write down your goals every single day and take action. Your confidence will explode!
Even if you only complete one of those three things, you’ll still feel accomplished for that day. We go back to competence breeds confidence. And another word for competence is skills. You continue to develop skills, and then with those skills you can provide value. It’s not just the results you see for yourself; it’s the results you get for your clients.
When you start your work-at-home business, you find the people that you’re going to serve, and you get results for them. You solve their problems and, in essence, your problems just resolve themselves. So when you flip the switch and take off the blinders, you see the problems people have that you can solve. This gives you a roadmap to your audience’s pain points. Then you can figure out how to cultivate competence in your skills and feel more confident when solving their problems.
People mistakenly think motivation comes first when, in fact, you have to do it without motivation. When you take action (even when you don’t feel like it), you get results… and then you get the motivation to keep going.
Take Care of Yourself
But none of this will be worth it if you don’t take care of yourself. We have this mindset that we must put everybody else first, especially if we’re parents or married.
You think you’re prioritizing yourself when you work on your business, but you find yourself completely burned-out and stressed.
So how do we learn to put ourselves first for a change?
Eileen believes women are generous by nature. It’s the nurturing part of us that wants to take care of our family members and everybody else, and we become last on the list. She’s learned the greatest way to serve others is to be your best self.
So when we turn this concept on its head, it’s actually more selfish to put everybody else first and yourself last. Changing this requires establishing good habits that set us up for success. And it doesn’t have to take all day! You can do an incredible amount of self-care in ten to twenty minutes.
Proper self-care gives you a competitive edge in your business. We actually become more productive when we take regular breaks and see to our basic human needs. If I have lunch, use the bathroom, and maybe lie down and listen to some music for a while, I can get back to work and get more done in the next hour than I could have done
in the next three hours when I was ignoring my own needs.
Create a Morning Routine
We’re all super busy these days. How do we prioritize self-care when we feel like there’s no time?
Eileen struggled with creating a great morning routine at first. She says you have to be very selfish with your morning time. You have to become focused on you. When you’re busy, that morning time becomes very valuable — especially if you have kids.
One way you can practice some good habits is to wake up ten to twenty minutes earlier than normal. When Eileen started waking up earlier than her children, she began spending that time writing down three things she was grateful for. She spent a little time meditating and in prayer and was amazed how that made her ready to greet the day.
It’s about figuring out what works for you and knowing you need to do that to care for other people. Don’t feel guilty about being selfish with that morning time!
I like to call it being a fierce guardian of your time where you’re able to say no to certain activities. I had to train myself to stop checking my email right before bed and first thing in the morning. I’d rather just sit there smiling at nothing, being happy, and enjoying my downtime. Try it; it’s very therapeutic!
Free Up Your Time with Outsourcing
Studies show that women who work at home and pay someone else to do tasks that will save them time have increased life satisfaction and actually report being happier. So why isn’t everyone doing this?
Imagine how much more you could get done if you freed up your time by outsourcing! For example, if you want to start your own business, hire a high schooler to look after the kids for a few hours each week. You can also outsource everyday tasks that worry you and take up too much time. I hired a full-time assistant a couple of years ago, and it was one of the best things I ever did.
It makes financial sense too! If you can earn $30 an hour while you’re paying someone else to look after some everyday tasks for $15 an hour, you’re still coming out on top.
Outsourcing is great, but there is a stigma attached to it. Some people will just insist on doing everything themselves. I look at outsourcing as helping the local economy. It’s allowing other people to have a livelihood doing something they’re good at and that they enjoy and allowing them to solve your problems while also solving their own. It is so cyclical, and I really feel like the future of business or the future of life is in collaboration.
The more we can work together and help each other, the more we all win.
Give Yourself Grace
We can make all these positive changes in our lives, but sometimes the negative feelings we worked so hard to get rid of rear their ugly heads again and affect our mental health. How do we put them back in their box?
Eileen explains that bad days will happen. We can’t do every day perfect. Give yourself grace on off days. We’re all going to have them. Don’t feel ashamed or judge yourself because that’s just life. It’s normal.
One of Eileen’s tactics for when she feels insecure is to say the phrase, “I am so excited.” She read a scientific study where researchers said that if you say this phrase, your heart rate decreases and you actually shift from a threat mindset into an opportunity mindset. Say this phrase as often as you need to. It will help you to feel better and switch your mindset.
We all take ourselves too seriously. So when you’re having a bad day or month, acknowledge it but be excited about the upcoming happy days. Try to infuse fun in everyday life and know that if something goes wrong, it’s all in how you look at it. Look at supposed failures as stepping-stones, especially if you’re trying to figure out what you want to do in your work-at-home life. And if you don’t know what kind of skills you’re good at, do some things you know how to do even though you don’t love them. It’s through doing that you can potentially find the right thing.
Things can change so quickly if you just do what comes naturally to you, have fun with it, and not take it too seriously. Don’t write yourself off. Prioritize yourself.
Get Started
Eileen has shared some powerful tips to help us build self-confidence and take action. You can get started by just dedicating a few minutes to yourself every day. By incorporating some or all of these tips into your daily routine, you’ll start to see a better version of yourself. I know I’m pumped to incorporate more self-care into my routine!
If you loved what Eileen shared and want more, her awesome Ultimate Confidence course is included in the Curious Curriculum Package within Work-At-Home School. It’s about finding your God-given identity and learning how to gain self-confidence and self-acceptance with who you were made to be. It’s a four-week course designed to help you take charge of your life by removing negativity, doubts, and fears.
I’ll see you on the inside!