Calm and Confident
Calm and Confident is a resourceful state of being that allows us to be both present with what is… and open and adaptable.
- Feels alive and vital… thriving.
- Allows us to accept “what is” without wasting life energy on fight, flight, or freeze reactions.
- Calm keeps us embodied and present even while we make uncomfortable and uncertain decisions.
- Confidence provides support for inspired action.
Being Calm and Confident
To be Calm and Confident is to tend to both energy flows at the same time.
Calming ourselves is NOT passive. Calm energy has motion… it feels alive. It feels aware of what’s happening. It opens up access to ALL your inner resources. It quiets the lizard brain and monkey mind and helps us feel ourselves.
Instead of racing around and around, an actively calming mind starts pausing, listening, and sensing. Our nervous system switches from buzzing and tensing and anxious to… a place of readiness without wasting energy. The sirens turn off.
Once we start calming, there’s now room to listen more closely, see more clearly, and consider what’s really useful.
When we are truly feeling confident, we feel resourceful and strong. Confident energy brings activation of our creative potential and competence.
With confidence, we know that our life experiences (even traumatic ones) have given us strengths. Our sensitivities give us valuable insights in all situations — personal and professional.
True confidence activates our resilience and resources.
- We become aware with open presence.
- We accept what is.
- We adapt and come up with choices that benefit us and others.
- We take inspired action – baby step after baby step (even when it’s awkward and the outcome is uncertain).
- We allow support from others, and we pause to allow time and situations to evolve without constant worry.
When both calm and confidence are interweaving within us, our calmfidence radiates out and changes all our interactions.
Calm Alone is Insufficient and Weak
Imagine every muscle being totally relaxed… not a single twitch.
Well, we’d be dead.
Our muscles need “tone” in order to hold us together. Our heart does have a slight pause between beats… while maintaining readiness for the beat to come.
The reason that “calming down” is such a prevalent teaching (stress relief, meditation, relaxing) is that in Western culture, we drive ourselves with worries and pressures! Even those who are beautifully competent and productive often feel inside like they Must Do MORE! MOAR! ROAR!
If that is a distress of ours, yes, our body-mind is crying for calming. We’re not designed to work and strive constantly in a state of hyperarousal.
A challenge for those seeking to calm down is that it feels “off” — like we’re losing something! Because we are.
Calming alone reduces certain “drives.” If we are feeling like we need to fight for our survival, calming can leave us feeling like we’ve got less “fight” in us. Scary! If we’re feeling like we need to run, to get to a safer place, calming can feel like we are “giving in” to our exhaustion. Scary!
It’s why confidencing is the crucial companion for calming. Confidence directs energy to thoughts and physical presence that has more steel… more uprightness, resilience, and strength.
Calming helps us come out of the primitive brain’s unhelpful drives. Confidencing makes that feel sufficiently safe. As the two attitudes interweave, we feel capable and curious. That is thriving.
Is Gravity Working?
If gravity is working, we have access to the feeling of calm confidence.
Here’s how…
First, ask yourself the question, “Is gravity working?” and allow your body to show you it is. “Fight” gravity just a little less.
To sit, we keep tension in our butt, hips, and lower back. We resist the pull of gravity. Notice that when those muscles release just a bit of their tension… we’re still sitting! We’re just sitting more calmly.
Try that with your jaw. With shoulders. With feet on the floor. Notice how you can let gravity work in teensy increments of letting go. Notice you can tense back up and then let gravity do a bit more of the work.
Most people will notice when they let gravity work that they are holding more tension than “necessary” in many parts of their body. Check-in with your tongue, even! See if it could let gravity let it sink into the lower jaw a bit more — like relaxing in a hammock.
If gravity is working, we also have confidencing going on. For example, as you let your shoulders release tension, notice the rising feeling in the spine and neck. Relax the buttocks and leg muscles… and feel the hip and leg bones rising in the support of our tissues.
The dance with gravity brings us back into the physical aspects of being calm and confident. Calming lets us tune ourselves to the level of effort our body needs to stay upright, to move, to lift, and to let go.
Confidencing keeps us from becoming a puddle on the floor. It’s the bones of us, the tone in muscles, and the blood in our vessels. It’s in the state of our nervous system — readiness without revving the engine for no use.
Practicing this calm and confident relationship of our body with gravity also has a profound impact on our energy and emotional balance as well.
Useful Questions
- How can I use gravity to support my calming and my confidencing?
- How calm do I feel? How calm could I reasonably feel in this situation right now?
- How confident do I feel? How confident could I allow myself to feel in this situation right now?
- If I am not being calm and confident, how does the anxiety and doubt serve me in some way?
Resources
- Be Calm and Confident: How?!? When? Where? Q&A - Real Skills Workshop
- Feeling Isolated… Yet Surprisingly Calm and Confident - Real Skills Workshop
- Trauma Relief: From Scared and Timid to Calm and Confident - Real Skills Workshop
Related Concepts
Activation Energy, Adapting, Choices, Co-Creating, Curiosity, Discernment, Grounding, Heartistry, Inspired Action, Primitive Brain, Resilience, Uncertainty, Vitality
Links
- Discuss Calm and Confident in the Community Center
- Share this link to the Concept of Calm and Confident: https://www.thrivingnow.com/concept/calm-and-confident
