Something strange happens when women become mothers.  Many of us lose confidence in ourselves when in fact we have gained new skills by becoming a mother.  There is a whole raft of reasons why this happens.  Your sense of identity changes.   Suddenly someone else is the centre of your universe.  You may put your wants and needs on hold for a while; it is amazing how many women will almost hold their breath for a few years until the children have gone to school, gone to secondary school, left home….  Children don’t come with a set of instruction manuals and you get conflicting advice from “experts”.  How do you know that you are not ruining your children’s lives?  Suddenly you have to become an expert juggler.  Simple tasks before like going out for dinner require military strategic planning.  So what can you do?   How do you improve your self-confidence?

1. Surround yourself with supportive people- As a mum; you spend a lot of time caring for other people. Who is looking out for you?  Make sure you accumulate a group of people who will say “yay!” when things go your way or will put the kettle on when things go wrong.  Have a look at the people that you spend the most time with at the moment: are they helping your confidence?
2. Take stock- Quite often we get busy doing things and we forget to look at our achievements.  You have all the skills that you had before you had children!  You may not be using all of them and some of your priorities may have changed, but they are still there. PLUS you have also acquired some new skills by becoming a mother.  Why not spend a little time acknowledging them?  If you can cook a meal with a baby on your hips while chatting on the phone, what else can you do?  If you can manage to get three children up, dressed and to school on time, what else can you do?  If you can create a meal for your family from a virtually empty fridge because you haven’t had time to go to the shops, what else can you do?
3. Do something different or something new – If you are not expanding and growing, your world is becoming smaller.  If all you spend your time doing is child-orientated and all your conversations revolve around your children then it is not surprising that you don’t have confidence doing something else.  You are out of practice!  When did you last go somewhere you haven’t been before?  I am not necessarily talking about visiting a new country.  Somewhere new could simply be that little lane that you have passed a hundred times but have no idea where it leads.   When last have you learnt a new skill?  Or did something you normally do in a different way?  When last did you do something that scares you a little?  You don’t have to jump out of plane, but if you do something out of your comfort zone, if you stretch yourself a little, you start growing again.
4. Don’t compare yourself with other people -we are good at thinking other people have perfect lives and being down on ourselves, but do you know what is going on behind closed doors?  That Supermum may be on antidepressants!  Don’t put other people on pedestals; they are just people doing the best they can: they are not perfect.   Mums are good at assuming that they are the only one who feels fears, but even confident appearing people have fears.  The difference is that they do not let their fears stop them from doing things.
5. Act as if you are confident!  Guess what, if you act as if you are confident, people assume you are confident and you eventually become confident.  Look out how confident people carry themselves: shoulders back, standing tall and head up.  Alternatively, buy yourself a lovely pair of shoes with a heel. You will carry yourself in a different way and your strides will become more confident!  What a great excuse for a new pair of shoes!

If you want to raise children with healthy self-esteem, we need to make sure that our self-esteem is good first.

Related posts:

1. Getting in the Zone
2. Why looking up can lift your spirit!