Paula Edgar: Welcome to Branding Room Only, the podcast where your personal brand gets a front row seat. I'm Paula Edgar and if you're here, it's because you know your brand isn't just about what you do. It's about how people experience you. In each episode, you'll hear stories, strategies, and lessons from leaders and influencers, who built their brands and made their mark. And I'll share the tools you need to do the same.
Let's go. Hi, everybody and welcome back to the Branding Room. It is Paula Edgar, your host, and this is the final episode in the Confidence Factor series. So over the past few episodes, we have talked about what confidence actually is, how it's built, where it can leak, how the people around you influence it and why visibility matters.
And today I want to talk about something that I think is just as important as building confidence. It is sustaining it. Because here's what I've seen. A lot of people can access confidence temporarily. They feel confident after a win. They feel confident when they're in a familiar environment. They feel confident when things are going well. But then something shifts. Maybe it's a new role, a new team, a new challenge, a new room. And suddenly that confidence can feel a little less stable. So then the question becomes, how do you make confidence something you can rely on? Not just something that comes and goes. And, you know, when I do presentations, people ask about confidence all the time. The answer for me and I hope for you, it's not motivation. It is structure, confidence that lasts, it's structured. It is supported by systems.
The first system is self-awareness. You need to know that you are good at what you are good at. Not vaguely, not generally, specifically. What problems do you solve well? What are they coming to you for? What do people consistently come to you for? What do you do that makes people say, we need to have that person in the room? Clarity about who you are, how you add value, stabilizes your confidence.
The second system is reinforcement. And I'm going to talk about this until I'm blue in the face. Here's where I want to get very practical. You need what I call and I have called and you have been in the podcast before, talk about your wins folder. It is a place, digital, physical, however you want to organize it, where you are documenting your receipts, your wins, the moments where you delivered, where you solved something difficult, where you got through something challenging, where you received strong feedback. My wins folder, as every time somebody sends me something about the podcast being impactful, or that they saw me speak and they remembered and they're doing thing, I will screenshot it and put it into the folder so that when I'm having a bad day and yes, I have bad days, then I can remember the impact that I have had.
Now, here's what happens. When your doubt shows up and it will, right? We all have times when we feel a little less confident. And some of you experiencing imposter syndrome, your brain will rewrite the narrative. It'll tell you, oh, they're going to find you out. Oh, you're not ready. You're not qualified. You don't belong. And if you don't have that evidence to push back on the assumptions and the things that are happening in your head, that narrative can get louder. So your wins folder is the counter, right? It reminds you, I have done hard things before. I figured things out before and I have delivered before. Confidence needs that memory. And your wins folder makes that memory accessible and strategic.
The third system is visibility. Confidence fades when your work is invisible, like we talked about in the last broadcast episode. It strengthens when your contributions are seen, understood and associated with you. And visibility is not just about attention or ego. It is about alignment. Because when people know what you do well, your confidence stabilizes, because you're not guessing about your value. And they're not guessing about your value, which is more important, right?
The fourth system is the environment. The people around you matter. The people around you matter. Your personal board of directors matters. That's why I did a whole podcast episode on it. Your hype people matter. You know, you're going to have the folks who are there to give you feedback and also to help you and remind you of your strengths when you forget it, right? So that confidence is reinforced in the right environments. So make sure that you are prioritizing getting energy and being around people, who will give you good feedback and also who will support you, in your endeavors and help your confidence to grow.
There's something else that I think people underestimate. You need to have a strategy to boost your confidence in real time. So again, as I mentioned, it'll happen. You'll feel less confident. I'm not talking about a long-term system here. I'm talking about something immediate. What is something that's going to help you shift your energy, when you're about to walk into a room, step on a stage, go into a big meeting, or take on something that is stretching you? For me, that strategy includes my hype playlist. I have what I call my Paula's Hype Song playlist, on Spotify. Get at me if you want. Anyway, it's a little eclectic. But I collect hype songs every year, when I do my intention and goal setting session, so that folks can have something they can go to to immediately get their energy up, put them in a place where they know that they've got it. My hype list has songs that ground me. They energize me and they remind me of who I am, before I step into something important.
So, you know that on every playlist I have, it's Prince's “Baby I'm a Star”, because that's my song. I love Prince and I love the assertion that I'm a star. But, you know, playing music and getting yourself into a space, where you're like, remember who I am, is important, because confidence is not just intellectual, it is also physical and it is definitely energy and it's presence. And sometimes you just need something that helps you access that quickly to remind yourself. So I'm going to share something that I haven't shared before on the podcast, which is one of the songs on my personal playlist is from one of my favorite movies, “The Sound of Music”. And it is Fraulein Maria, a.k.a. Julie Andrews, she's singing, “I Have Confidence”. And part of the lyrics are, I'm going to badly sing, “I have confidence in sunshine. I have confidence in rain. I have confidence that spring will come again”. And then this last line, “besides what you see, I have confidence in me.” Listen to that last line, besides what you see, I have confidence in me. That is the work. Not pretending everything is perfect, not pretending you know everything, but reminding yourself, I have gotten through things before. I have figured things out before and I can do this, whatever the thing is, too.
That is the confidence strategy. So when you talk about sustaining confidence, which is what this episode is about, it's not just one strategy and not just one thing. You have to have these systems. Systems help you to get into reinforcement. They help you to think about the environment you're in, and they help to remind you about the need to have visibility paired with confidence. Well also, like I just mentioned with the song, what are the things that you need to bring you back to center, to remind you of what you've done and what you're about to do? So let's connect and bring all this back to my favorite subject, personal branding. Your personal brand is the structure that holds your competence in place. It is how your value is communicated. It's how your work is seen. It is how your reputation travels, when you're not in the space and people are talking about you. And when your personal brand is intentional, which I always tell you it should be, your confidence then becomes more stable, more consistent. Then you are not starting from zero in every new environment. You are carrying around your clarity, carrying around those receipts, those wins. You're carrying around your positioning, right? You have thought about who you are, how you want to add value, and what your vision and goals are for yourself. And all of that creates consistency.
So let me say something important. I am confident, yes, but I've had long experiences and had a chance to do and fail at a lot of things. So confidence is not always about feeling certain. There are moments that will stretch you. There are things that you have to do that are going to be harder. There are rooms that you're going to be in that require you to adjust and flex. And there are all the time, if you're doing things, right, with growth mindset, there should still be experiences that feel new to you or people that you interact with that makes the things feel more high-stakes or different.
But what changes over time is the trust. It's the trust that you have in yourself, in your ability to prepare, in your ability to navigate. Trust in your ability to recover if something doesn't go the way you planned, which happens a lot. So confidence should not be equated with perfection. It's not. It's more trust. You're confident, because you can trust in your output. So if you take nothing else from this series, take this. Confidence is not something that you're waiting for. It is something that you continually build. It's something that you protect and it is something that you reinforce over and over and over again. And it's something that you sustain through intentional action.
So I leave you all with these reflection questions.
Do you have a wins folder?
Do you have a way to reinforce your receipts?
Do you have a strategy to boost your confidence in real time?
What's your hype song?
Do you have the right people around you?
Who are your hype people?
And are you visible in the ways that matter consistently?
Because confidence is not a one-time achievement or action, iIt's an ongoing practice. So get yourself in the mirror and tell yourself, I got this, I've had this and I'm going to have this. And sing little Julie Andrews.
This has been the Confidence Factor Series. I hope it helps you to access your confidence greater and more consistently and with strategy. Until then, next time, y'all, stand by your brand. Confidently stand by your brand. And I'll see you next time in the Branding Room. Bye.
That's it for this episode. I appreciate you hanging out with me on Branding Room Only. Now, please do me a quick favor. Head over to ratethispodcast.com/branding, so more people can join this conversation. And make sure to stop by PaulaEdgar.com/events to see what's next. Whether I'm live, online or in person, I'd love to see you there. See you next time in the Branding Room.
And until then, stand tall, shine bright, and always stand by your brand.
