#186 - How to Cultivate Confidence
(in Your Storytelling & Life)
This is Adventures in Storytelling your weekly note with resources, insights, and actionable tools for better communication through storytelling. There’s a special announcement at the end for you. Enjoy.
Being a storyteller is the brave choice. When you can choose to be quiet, to step back, or to let someone else do the talking, stepping into your story and sharing it with your world is one of the bravest things you can do. Especially when what you’re sharing is something new or unfamiliar. Or when it goes against the “norm.”
The choice to get vulnerable, to excavate your story, and then bring it to life for an audience is not an easy one. It’s one of the hardest and most beautiful things you can do. It is also one of the most human things you can do.
And it may feel like a daunting task that first time you step out with something to share. Whether it is your life story, a brand story, your career story, or any other story that first line or step or verse can often feel hardest. Partly because you are essentially putting yourself on display for judgement. But you’re also sharing a perspective no one else has with the world. You are creating a portal into new insight. Yes it’s hard but it’s also so valuable for the audience you choose to share with.
So how do you cultivate the confidence you need to share your story? How do you get brave?
It’s actually deceptively simple. You try. You take that first risk. Because that is how you cultivate confidence: practice.
According to Katty Kay and Claire Shipman in their book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know, the way to build self-assurance is by stepping outside of your comfort zone. It’s actually essential.
And you have to be okay with getting it wrong. What has helped me in this area is realizing that when I take a risk or try something new I’ll either win or I’ll learn. Both great options. Failure is a natural part of life and growth. We’re not going to be perfect, because perfect doesn’t exist, and we’re not always going to get it right, but starting out with knowing ourselves and being brave enough to share that is a huge first step. Kay and Shipman describe failure as a stepping stone, rather than as a setback and encourage folks to make that reframe. Confidence grows through action, not inaction. In fact while some traits of confidence are innate, it can be cultivated. You just have to try.
Confidence is on my mind a lot lately as I get ready for the launch of my first kids book, Amoya Blackwood is Brave. The book is all about a brave little girl who loses her confidence and unique magic, but with the help of her gran is able to get back to herself and make the bravest choice of them all.
I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to decide the best way to help folks who pre-order the book tap into the joy and magic of the book through a workshop but couldn’t decide what to make it about. Then I had a 1:1 career storytelling session with a client who told me her 20+ career story in under 20 seconds, rushing through some HUGE achievements because she “didn’t want to bore me.” I was reminded of one of the most common missteps people take when sharing their story: not believing their story matters. In other words a lack of confidence in themselves and their story.
So while I don’t have the magic key to confidence, I do have some insight from writing Amoya and working as a storyteller all my life that I can share. So I’m offering a one-hour Brave Storytelling workshop for anyone who pre-orders Amoya Blackwood is Brave. It’s on April 14th (the day before the book launches 😆) at 6:30pm. And I wanted you to be the first to know.
A Story Well Told
Four Words: Kendrick Lamar. Super Bowl.
Did you see it? Did you scream? Poor Drake. But also if you were reading the subtext, also poor America. Pulitzer Prize winning rapper and one of the US’s biggest primetime stage? What a combination. A lot of major media outlets missed the subtext, but this piece published in The Hill outlines a lot of it. And this special episode from one of my favourite podcast goes deep on the symbolism:
Also, go green team, which I’m told won the whole thing.
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