From Motivation to Mastery: The Role of Confidence in Wellness
When working toward healthy lifestyle changes, your confidence in the goals you set matters more than you might think. Confidence acts like a barometer and a compass: it reveals the conditions you’re facing and helps you decide when to adjust your course. By regularly examining and appraising your confidence in reaching your lifestyle goals, you can guide your decision making in a simple and intuitive way.
Your confidence may fluctuate over time for several reasons: unexpected obstacles or waning motivation might bring your confidence down, while consistently achieving your weekly goals and increasing skill and resilience often bring it up. Transient fluctuations in your confidence may not necessitate changes, but if confidence stays consistently low or high over weeks or months, that may indicate your goals need revision.
A crucial factor affecting your confidence is the difficulty of your goal. Having persistently low confidence may mean your goal is too tough for now. Conversely, persistently high confidence may mean you’re ready for a bigger challenge. The sweet spot – where goals are demanding yet doable – puts you at the greatest advantage for achieving flow: a satisfying state of feeling energized and focused for optimal learning.
Flow thrives when:
Your goal tests your ability but doesn’t overwhelm you
You regularly adjust difficulty or complexity of your goal as skills improve
The pursuit of your goal causes you to hit new milestones. Not all low confidence is alike, and revising the difficulty of your goal may not be enough to restore an appropriate level of confidence. Sometimes low confidence reflects diminishing motivation, and other times it reflects doubt in your ability. Sorting out whether motivation or ability is affecting your confidence will help you decide the right intervention. Ask yourself:
Why does this goal matter to me?
How do I feel when imagining my success with this goal? Excitement? Obligation?
Which steps toward this goal feel unclear or daunting?
Has something important changed in my priorities or circumstances since I started?
Will my likelihood of success improve with learning and practice?
These quick reflections can help discern the nature of your low confidence as well as inform your decision to continue investing in your current goal, amend it, or pursue an entirely different goal.
If low motivation is an issue:
Clarify and reconnect with what makes this goal worthwhile to you
Be honest about the importance and relevance of the goal. Is it worth revising or changing?
Consider granting yourself a reward for making progress
Enlist accountability partners
If low ability is an issue:
Break the goal into smaller, easier steps
Modify your routines or environments to make practicing the goal easier or more automatic
Seek help: coaching, learning, or teaming up with others accelerates growth
Building healthy behaviors is a dynamic and challenging process, and fluctuating confidence is natural. Rarely does someone accomplish a meaningful lifestyle goal without needing to adjust course along the way. Regular appraisals of your confidence provide you feedback which can help you know when to adapt and problem-solve, as well as celebrate when your skills and abilities improve.
At Providence Basecamp, you don’t have to work through these challenges alone. Our community offers support, resources, and inspiration to boost your confidence in adopting lifelong healthy habits.
