Hello, my friends. And today we’re talking about a topic that sits near and dear to my heart and really speaks at the heart of so many women’s experiences. This is a topic that can influence your career, your leadership, your happiness, and honestly, the way you walk into every room. We’re talking about confidence. Not the loud, look at me kind of confidence, not the polished, perfect, I’ve got it all figured out mask. I’m talking about the solid foundation of grounded confidence, the I trust myself type. Because the truth is, confidence isn’t something you’re born with or without. It’s something you build.
And I am speaking from someone who was very backwards when I was younger, was afraid to have a voice, was afraid to be looked at, believe it or not, was afraid to be seen, and definitely felt less than and inferior to others. And so I have had to really build my confidence, which is quite strong at times and at other times, incredibly, I have lots of work to do, let’s just say. But what I know is that so many brilliant, capable women are walking around at work silently doubting themselves. We are in rooms where we’re afraid to speak up. We’re waiting for permission when we don’t need permission, and we’re hoping that someone will finally tap us on the shoulder and say, your turn, you’re ready. Well, let me just tell you, you are already ready. But here’s a stat that hit me really hard. Listen carefully. Women apply for a job only when they feel 90 to 100% qualified. This means that unless you feel you have the skill set, the intelligence, unless you read through the bulleted list of the application and say, I know 95% of what they are requiring.
Women are known not to go for the job unless they have 95 to 100% of the skill set. Get this, men only feel like they have to have about 60% of the skill set. 60. That is not a skill skill gap, my friends. That is a belief gap. And as you know, we’ve talked in previous episodes about the power of our beliefs and how they influence our lives. And Carol Dweck shares that very powerful statement. The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you go about your life, which means those beliefs are deciding what you will and will not go after, even when it comes to jobs. And so our beliefs shape ourselves and our actions, and our actions shape our outcomes. Our outcomes. And so here’s the problem. We women struggle with confidence. So what does this belief gap look like in real life?
It looks like women staying quiet in meetings when you actually have the answer or a possible answer, it looks like women who, when they are praised by others for their skill set, their attributes, their tenacity, they poo poo them away, they shove them away. And it looks like feeling like an imposter, even when your results speak loud and clear. And it looks like watching someone else volunteer while you’re sitting there thinking, who am I to step forward? I can’t possibly do this. And none of this is proof, folks, that you are not capable. It is proof that you have been taught to doubt yourself. And these are learned habits. And the good news is habits can be unlearned. Because confidence starts with self belief.
We don’t have to have everything figured out. It’s about trusting that we can handle the things that we need to have it to handle. And positive psychology backs this up. Women who believe in their ability to take bolder action back, bounce back. Women who believe in their capabilities take bolder action and bounce back faster from setbacks. They show up more consistently. Now self belief doesn’t remove fear, it removes fear’s authority. And so what we have to do is unlearn this myth that confidence comes before action.
No, confidence comes from action. And I also recently read that confidence comes from keeping the promises that you make for yourself. When you keep the promises you make for yourself over and over again, you build your confidence and your belief in yourself. Because you have created a track record that shows that you are someone who is willing to take action even when it feels hard. So what I want to encourage us to do is find your voice. Speak up before your voice feels steady. Submit that application to a job even if you do not feel like you have 100% of the skill set, right? You don’t have to know everything about a project to be able to lead a project. Because courage is the doorway that you have to walk through and confidence is what you collect on the way through. And so I always think back to. I’ll just give you a real life example from my own life when I decided to become a motivational speaker.
So I launched strobel education in 2016 and I was a one woman show on the road delivering day long professional developments. I had never done a motivational speaking event. I had read about motivation. I had 20 years of self help reading. I had done the work in my own life to grow myself in a substantial way. I felt like I was a positive energy force helping others. But I wasn’t a so called motivational speaker. And I decided two years later after launching my Business. I’m just going to slap motivational speaker on my website. I think that’s what I’ve been doing this whole time. I’ve been doing it through my social media feeds. I’ve been doing it through, you know, inadvertently coaching others and coaching myself mostly.
And so I’ll never forget, I put it on my website in 2018. Three months later, I was in Denver, Colorado. I think we were in Breckenridge, right outside of Denver. I was skiing with my son. We were skiing down the mountains. And if you know anything about skiing in Colorado, it might take you 20, 25 minutes to get down the mountain. And so I had stopped halfway down to wait for our son, and I happened to click on my email, and I had a school who had reached out to book me as a motivational speaker for their back to school event.
Now, I immediately read everything about it. It was going to be 900 people in the auditorium. I knew the fee that I was going to charge, which was probably, I think, when I started out back then, it was at least six times more than I would charge for a full day of professional development, even though I was only going to be speaking for an hour. And I immediately had this mixture of excitement. Like, this is my first one. I can’t believe I’m actually going to be able to do a keynote speaking event. I’m going to do motivational speaking. And so this was, like, in March, and the event was in April, so. Or, sorry, August.
So fast forward to August. I’m sitting at Lafayette School Corporation in Indiana. I’m in the front row. The superintendent is introducing me as the motivational speaker for the day and doing all their notes and their summaries and their celebrations that they go through. And I had about 15 minutes of sitting in that front row, and I was shaking all over. And I was thinking, what. What have I done? Like, I have never stepped on a stage and delivered a motivational talk in my life. Who am I to think that I can even get up there and do that?
And why does Kim Strobel always have to do things that scare her to death? And I thought, this might be the craziest thing you’ve ever done, Kim Strobel. But you know what? I got up on that stage, I delivered that keynote address, and the crowd was very responsive to it. If I would look back right now and watch that, I would probably cringe at how terrible I thought I was. But I was good enough then. I was good enough. And I always think to my life now, right, Like, I travel across the country and I give motivational keynote talks everywhere. Schools back to school events, school conferences, the FBI, Google, health care organizations, insurance agencies. And I think about what my life is like today because I chose to bet on myself, even though I was scared to death. I chose to believe in a version of Kim Strobel that wasn’t quite there yet, but I took the leap anyway.
And I think, how many times in our life do we not have the confidence to go after what we want? Because we women think that we have to have it all figured out in order to say yes. And we will never have it figured out. You have to start saying yes, even though you don’t have all the skill set, even though you don’t maybe have all the attributes that you need yet, but you have enough to go after it. And I’m going to veer off for a minute, because I will tell you what else happens is I work with women all the time who have to go in and negotiate salaries. They want to ask for raises, and they are scared to death to ask for a raise. But we got our male counterparts who are not afraid to do that at all.
And in fact, unfortunately, right now, the research shows that if you bring your spouse, your husband with you to negotiate, then it’s. Then the person on the other side is more receptive. Now, I call a spade a spade. That’s just the way it is. But I’ve got girlfriends who are like, oh, yeah, I’m negotiating my contract, but I’m putting my husband on the zoom call with me because they’re more receptive. If so. And I understand that. I understand that we as women are still trying to work towards some of those things.
But what I’m wanting you to walk away with today is to quit doubting yourself. To know that the only way you build confidence is by taking steps forward, even when it feels uncomfortable. I want you to understand that perfectionism is the lowest standard you can possibly hold yourself to. Because when you hold yourself to perfectionism, you limit your ability to take those opportunities that are right in front of you. And perfectionism steals more confidence than your failure ever will. You know, perfection is not the standard. It’s a prison. And confident women are not perfect. They are willing to learn. They are willing to make mistakes. They are willing to dust themselves off and try again. And they don’t let those mistakes define them. And. And so what I really want you to hear, folks, is that when you start taking these actions in your life, even though you don’t have it all figured out yet. I would have never launched my business if I thought I had to have it all figured out because I didn’t have a business degree. I barely knew what I was doing.
But I was reading the books and I was listening to the podcast and I was taking courses and I was feeding my brain with enough knowledge to be able to. To take a leap and act on it. And this is what I really want for you. I want you to know you belong at the table. Your voice matters. You are allowed to walk in a room and claim space. And when we. When you believe in yourself, you start taking different actions. And when you take different actions in your life, it takes you down an entire different trajectory.
And of a sudden, folks, you are engaging in life in a much bigger and broader way because you realize that the more times you take a chance on yourself, the more times you elevate your life. And remember, you are allowed to go after it, even if you don’t have it all figured out just yet. Let me just tell you, if you know a woman, if you have a daughter, if you have a mother, if you have a girlfriend, if you have a coworker who needs this episode, send the link to them. Folks, we’ve got to get women stepping in to the bigness of who they are and claiming space, because it’s women who can lead, who can initiate change, and can create a trajectory going forward built on the belief of possibility within them.
