Hey, how are we doing out there? I am so excited to be back. I have been getting my oldest daughter married and I am just so grateful for coaching for all the tools that I teach you here. I use them myself. And planning a wedding in two months and executing it has been quite a journey, and I have not done it perfectly.

I’ll be the first one to say that, but I’m so grateful for coaching and I’m grateful to. Have my daughter take this big step and I had to do a lot of thinking about, um, yeah, what it’s like having a daughter get married and be our first time figuring all of this out. So lots to learn. Lots of things I might do differently, but overall it was just really a special week, a special day, and we’re so happy for them and wish them the best.

I am really, really excited to get back to the podcast. We are coming up on another birthday. I think it’s our. Third birthday, let me do the math. But yeah, three years of podcasting and I am just so excited. I’ve got some stuff planned and my podcast birthday is right around pregnancy and infant loss Remembrance day.

I did that on purpose cuz I think it’s a beautiful day to start a Life After Loss podcast. So, Keep listening, keep watching me on Instagram. If you’re not on my email list, you gotta get on there. Once a week, I send out some inspiration and let you know all the things I’m doing, and if I have any special offers, I let you know about those two.

You don’t wanna miss it. If you follow me on social media, you know that you just, you don’t see everything. So you wanna be on my email list. If you’re interested in doing that, just go to smooth stones coaching.com. And you can sign up to, um, get those emails. Now today, I am loving this topic. As I was sitting and thinking about what do I want people to know about what do we really need right now?

I really got this feeling like, We really need to just put ourselves out there, have some fun, do some scary things to move us forward. Because what I hear over and over and over from my clients and the people I talk to is just feeling stuck, right? We, we don’t have the self-confidence we want, and we’re just not.

Being who we wanna be. We’re not doing what we wanna do, and we’re feeling really trapped. So this one little idea for today’s episode will boost your self confidence level faster than anything you have tried before. All you need to do is listen to this episode and then make the decision to go all in.

Give yourself a month and see how much more fire you have in your soul. Nothing can stop you when you are not afraid of anything. Now, some of you listening will identify as a self-confident person, and some of you will not. Some of you will think, well, I used to be self-confidence, but since you’re lost, it’s really been difficult and hard to believe in yourself.

But you also may feel more self-confidence since your loss wherever you are. Today’s podcast is for you. It doesn’t matter where you’re starting from. If you want the result of more self-confidence, I’ve got you. Self-confidence is being secure in yourself and your abilities. You trust yourself. You believe that you can experience any emotion, including failure.

Without being harmed. For most baby loss moms, there is a huge increase in anxiety, indecisiveness, and just a total loss of self-confidence. The world starts to look pretty scary. You can’t trust yourself or anything outside of you, right? It’s that total feeling of loss of control that can send you spinning.

You might spend a lot of time avoiding uncomfortable emotions. There’s a lot of fear around feeling emotions or emotions popping up and you not being able to handle them. This affects everything you do and it is not a fun place to be. I help my clients every day to increase their self-confidence and believe that they can handle whatever happens in their lives.

I also show them that they have way more control over their emotions than they think they do. If you’re feeling stuck or at the mercy of your anxieties and emotions, go in the show notes. Sign up for a connection call. I’ll show you how we can turn all of that around a lot faster than you think. The thing about emotions is they’re just sensations in our body.

They can’t actually harm us. If we know how to process them, they will stay for a little bit and then float away. If you believe in your ability to handle these emotions, you can stop being scared and start being full of Bring it on. Remember in the Emperor’s new groove, when Apache and Cusco are stuck to a tree.

And they’re going down a river, and Pacha says Uhoh. Cusco says, don’t tell me we’re about to go over huge waterfall. Pacha says, yep, Cusco says sharp rocks at the bottom, most likely. Then Cusco says, bring it on. And then he says, booya woo. And they go over the waterfall right now. I have to tell you, I love movie quotes.

I love movies. I’m gonna be using more of them in this podcast because, you know, I, I have a coach right now and we’re really working on bringing more of me to everything that I do. And so maybe I’ve held back a little bit of the dorkiness of the movies that I like, but I grew up really religious and I don’t watch anything that’s R-rated or anything that’s PPG 13 and kind of questionable.

I like ’em clean. I like ’em funny. I like sweet romantic comedies. And I will tell you that the Emperors New Groove is one of my most favorite movies. Um, I love David Spade in it, and I loved it as when I was younger and now my kids are watching it, and it has been on repeat in my car for a lot of road trips lately.

So I was just thinking about this movie, and if you haven’t seen it, you need to go see it. And if you have seen it, watch it again. I love this lesson. Now at this point when he is like, bring it on. Let’s go over this waterfall. Ksko has already been through a lot in the movie. So he got lost. He was left alone.

He got caught in the rain. He got chased by Jaguars. Then he got rescued and swung on a vine, then wrapped around a tree with that same vine. He, the tree broke off. They went underwater. They’ve popped back up. Now they’ve gone down this rushing river. They finally get to a calm place where it seems like they can take a breath and say, okay, until he hears Pacha say, uh oh.

Now Cuscos actually built his self-confidence because so far he’s survived all of those things. And what’s one more thing? If you’ve watched this movie, you know that before this, Cusco had a very cushy life with no obstacles ever. He had a lot of arrogance, but he did not have self-confidence. So arrogance is thinking you’re better than others, and it thrives on putting others down.

It is false and full of scarcity. It’s puffed up, but it does not have substance. Now, self-confidence comes from knowing all humans are good and worthy, including you, you and everyone else are capable and awesome. Self-confidence is genuine and it has a lot of integrity, and it comes from abundance. It is grounded and solid.

But as any good hero’s journey has, Cusco has to face the hard stuff to learn who he really is and what’s most important. Now, I want you to have that bring it on mentality too. I mean, why not? Why live our lives in fear of everything. If you just put yourself out there and do the scary things, you’ll start to see that you can handle way more than you thought you could, and you’ll grow so much from it.

Most of us don’t have self-confidence because we don’t trust ourselves and our ability to manage our minds. We put ourselves down often, so very often, and I have to say that like. Women are the worst. We are just so mean to ourselves and we do not believe in ourselves in so many ways. Or we think we have to wait till we’re skinnier or I don’t know, just there’s so many things, so many ways we tell us.

Tell ourselves that we can’t actually do what we wanna do. We don’t wanna take risks or put ourselves out there. It all feels very, very vulnerable. We’re terrified of failure. Many of us are perfectionists who would rather not try than try and fail? Cuz we’ve been taught that anything less than an A is a failure.

We see all the places we fall short and continually remind ourselves of them. We compare with others and despair. It’s a vicious cycle, but keep listening because we are gonna break out of it. First, let’s be clear. Self-confidence doesn’t have to be all loud and outgoing, bossy, or a know-it-all.

Self-confidence means you are able to admit what you don’t know and handle failure gracefully. It means you’re able to let yourself be you fully. You can increase this by practicing, believing in yourself. The default in our brain is to see all the ways that you aren’t enough. You have to be intentional to start believing in yourself.

Find thoughts that help you practice believing there’s enough and that you are enough. Now, let’s get on to why I called this episode Dare of the Day. This is a super simple tool that when practice will skyrocket your self-confidence. See, as we move to increase our self-confidence, we have to work against three obstacles.

Our humanness. Our programming and our beliefs and our thinking, you need to train your brain to believe in you, not to become like the sassy, selfish, insecure, Cusco at the beginning of Emperor’s new groove, but to realize that you can do so many things you never dreamed of. Like at the end of the movie, confident Cusco, you no longer need to protect yourself from humiliation, rejection, embarrassment, or isolation.

The way we stop being afraid of these things is to open all the way up to experiencing them. Visualize yourself instead of curling up, to protect ourselves and only living part of a life. You gotta open your arms wide. Do it with me. Throw back your head and jump lady. That’s where Dare of the Day comes in and it is really simple.

Every day do something that makes you feel like throwing up. Now that sounds amazing. I think a lot of us spend a lot of time avoiding throwing up. Now you don’t need to actually throw up, although you might, but. Something that makes you feel like you might, if you think about something and you notice butterflies in your stomach, sweaty palms, and your brain coming up with a thousand reasons not to do the thing, that’s exactly what you wanna do.

Now, don’t force yourself to do it. You gotta choose on purpose. So make a decision and stick to your decision cuz self-confident people trust themselves to follow through. If you do this for 30 days, you’ll be able to see that, number one, you didn’t die. And number two, it wasn’t as scary as you thought.

And number three, you can do things you never thought you could. So what is a good dare? A lot of people are gonna be like, tell me exactly what to do. I’m not gonna tell you exactly what to do, but it needs to be something that has a possibility of failure, right? Someone could say no to you. You could not complete it.

You could not complete it perfectly. It needs to bring up some fear or nervousness, right? If it’s totally in your comfort zone, you’re not gonna be afraid. So we want something that does. Bring up a little bit of nerves and it needs to move you forward in some way. Now, this could be as simple as doing this scary thing that can be enough.

Like I did something that was scary and I proved to myself that I could do it and I didn’t die. Or it could help you to reach a goal that you want, right? Some result that you’re working towards. Now, I don’t personally recommend dares would break laws or do damage to other people’s property, but anything else is on the table.

The goal here is to show your brain that it doesn’t need to be afraid. When I first started my business, I used Dare of the Day in so many ways, and I still use it now whenever I think of something and then notice my brain shutting it down. I take that as my push to do it anyway. I use the thought often.

The worst they can do is say no. As I’ve put myself in situations that used to be impossible, over and over, my confidence has grown. I used to be so scared to say something wrong that I wouldn’t say anything at all. Dare of the day, got me speaking up, dare of the day, got me on Instagram, connecting with you.

It helped me sign up for a podcasting course to get. My knowledge and tools out on these airwaves to you. It helped me ask guests to come on that I admired so much. It pushed me just recently to apply to participate in an international stillbirth conference that I am attending today. All those things were outside my comfort zone and all of it has helped me grow.

I can see such a change from when I found my first life coach and began doing things that were scary until now. When I am able to just dive in knowing I can handle so many situations, I believe in my own voice and in my success. And I’m not afraid to feel all those uncomfortable emotions cuz just cuz I’ve done it doesn’t mean all that fear doesn’t still come up.

It will come up. But you do it anyway. It’s a beautiful thing to see and I want that for you to be able to look back and see where you were and where you are now, because the point of this life, I mean, what is it if it’s not to grow and to change and to evolve, not from a place of needing to fix yourself, but just a place of wanting to try things and be better and do better, and.

And see what you can accomplish. Like it’s fun. It’s good. It’s good to just improve from a place of confidence. I love seeing it in my clients who feel like they are stuck behind a thick wall of fear, but as we work together, they start believing that they can do hard things. They can handle bursting into tears in public at an event they can deal with other people’s comments.

They don’t have to stay home and hide. They don’t have to avoid friends and family. They dare to live, and that’s what we’re all here for now, because I know that you probably want some suggestions. I’ve made a list of some dares with spots for you to fill in on your own on a little PDF that you can print out.

And you can check off each of these dares you do and visually see that you’re doing it. I love the satisfaction of a check mark, right? You may be early in grief and your dares could just be. Getting on social media or switching on the tv, knowing you might see babies or pregnant bellies. You may be further along in your grief and ready for more challenges, or you might have a big dream you’ve been waiting for a push to go after Dare the day will boost yourself confidence and get you taking.

Action. So if you want that printable pdf, it is totally free. Just go to smooth stones coaching.com/one 13. So 113 and you can just. Uh, throw in your email and I’ll send it to you and you can print it out and put it somewhere where you’re gonna see it every day and get daring. And then come over to Instagram.

I’m at amy dot Smooth Stone’s Coaching. Let me know what’s going on. We’re gonna be talking all about dares this week and throughout the month, and I’m gonna keep encouraging you, but I’d love to hear. What you’re doing that is so scary and so fun, you don’t need to wait to start. Here is your kick in the pants.

Don’t overthink it. Right? Again, there’s no right way to do this. Just do something out of your comfort zone every day and see what happens, right? And that’s the thing we wanna do when we do the thing afterwards, we can process it and see what’s going on. And on that pdf, I have some questions for you to look at and say.

Huh? What happened? Like, what was this like? And, and just analyze it a little bit and, and show your brain again. You didn’t die. You’re okay now. Why not wrap up this episode with a little bit more emperor’s New groove wisdom. Remember at the end of the movie when they need to put their backs together and link their arms to climb up the big scary wall, to get the potion so Cusco can turn back into a human.

Pacha and Cusco are totally confident, but why? Because they’ve done it before and Cusco was questioning it all the way through. It was terrifying. It did not go perfectly right. There were bats and bees and all kinds of stuff, or scorpions. Anyways, there were bugs. Um, it did not go perfectly, but in the end it worked.

And then they had both learned to trust themselves more and they had learned to trust each other, and so they were totally self-confident. That’s what I want for you. Let’s do those hard, uncomfortable things. The, that maybe are like peering into the darkness or stepping way outta your comfort zone. It is so worth it to become the person you want to be, to feel alive in this life.

And that is what I want for you more than anything. And if you want it to, let’s do dare of the day together. I’m gonna do it and I can’t wait to see what happens. I’ll see you next time. Are you tired of feeling like your baby was somehow your fault? Go to Smooth Stones coaching.com and get my free minicourse.

How to stop blaming yourself After Loss.