n my last newsletter, I wrote about the 5 Day Mind Cleanse for introverted women, my free, 5-day challenge, helping you to overcome self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and a lack of self-confidence. At the time, I was informed that people were having problems accessing it via mobile/cell phone and the issue has now been rectified. If you had problems accessing it via your phone, you can do so here.
As a reminder, the 5-Day Mind Cleanse will help you change the unhelpful, negative thoughts and beliefs you have about yourself, and increase your self-confidence.
Each day for 5 days you will receive a video to watch with an exercise to do for that day that will help you self-reflect, increase your self-awareness, and identify how to move forward. This is what one woman who did the challenge previously had to say:
"Thank you for the mind cleanse... I don't think it's any coincidence that I've been forging ahead in a way I haven't seen myself do before. I've pushed excuses aside and put myself forward with really surprising (to me!) results. I don't consider myself an under-confident person, but self-belief is something I have struggled with... However, my confidence in my own ability has grown. Thank you for giving me the encouragement to move myself to a new plateau. Your challenges were well thought out and well timed, too. Overall, it has been an extraordinary experience."
Before you can lead others, you have to be able to lead yourselves and self-leadership is key. There can be many barriers to effective leadership, some of which may be out of your control. But one of the biggest barriers I often see are the internal barriers, and these are within your control.
When I talk about self- leadership, I am referring to having self-belief, being able to self-manage, and having self-awareness. All of which are essential if you are to lead with confidence, influence, and impact.
Self-belief
Believing in yourself and your abilities is essential if you are to lead with confidence, influence, and impact. But for many people, it can be easy to let what they feel affect how they act and behave and to doubt themselves.
What you think and believe about yourself becomes your reality. If you don’t think and believe that you are good enough, or you doubt yourself, you won’t feel good about yourself and your abilities. This in turn will negatively affect your self-confidence and how you act and behave if you don’t recognise that this is happening and manage it.
Self-management
Self-management requires you to regulate your emotions, to practice self-care and to be self-motivating. The demands made on you as a leader can be stressful and it is important that you manage how you respond to stressful situations.
Responding from a place of emotion may not be the best thing to do. When we respond to situations emotionally, it is easier to do so irrationally. This can have an adverse effect on the situation at hand. Think about those times when you have responded to situations when you are angry or upset. How do they differ to those situations where you are calm and thinking calmly and rationally?
Being able to regulate your emotions means you will have a more measured, rational response when faced with stressful situations. You will be able to think more clearly making it easier for you to identify solutions.
Things won’t always go the way you want them to and there may be days when the going gets tough and you don’t feel like going. Being able to self-motivate means you can lift yourself up despite this. To help with the motivation, connect with your big ‘why’, the motivation behind why you do what you do, and be aligned with your values. Don’t sit around waiting for the motivation to come, take action and the motivation will follow.
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the key to all of this. Without self-awareness you won’t be able to recognise and understand your emotions, your mood, and what drives you; or what impact these have on your performance and on others.
Without self-awareness, you are more likely to respond emotionally, which you may later end up regretting. A lack of self-awareness can cause you to act and behave in ways that do not serve you, your teams, or your organisation in the best way.
As an introverted leader in an environment that does not favour introversion, self-leadership is key to thriving as yourself, without masking or pretending to be someone that you are not.
If you want to develop the self-belief and self-confidence that is needed for self-leadership, join the 5-Day Mind Cleanse here.
First published on LinkedIn.
If you are an introverted woman and a senior leader and want to increase your confidence, influence and impact, take my free assessment and get a report identifying areas to develop. You can take the assessment here.