With confidence, you have won before you have started.
Marcus Garvey
…strength. Confidence is strength. When we are confident, we are strong enough to lead, to achieve, to try the daunting things, to start the adventures, to be brave enough to live life to the full. Why is it, that some people seem to radiate confidence? It seems to ooze out of every pore, to be the very core of their existence? How have they become this way? What is standing between the shy, the fearful, the timid from being the radiant, happy individuals they long to be? We’re not talking extrovert vs introvert here, we’re talking happiness in oneself. We’re talking about SELF-confidence, belief in oneself, hope, joy, all of which is intrinsic to a person. How do we create it, capture it, maintain it?
Strength Triangle
When I think about where my confident, brave interior comes from, I think it’s a combination of things. It’s being able to look in the mirror and be happy, it’s having the experience to know that often the worst case scenario is just something we made up – and it’s never as bad as we imagine it to be and it’s having the discipline to know that I take the best care I can of myself, so I am giving myself the best chance of a long, happy and healthy life.
And when I look around at other triathletes, other athletes, successful professionals, confident individuals, the leaders, the winners, the boundary breakers, they have those same attributes in common. So I developed the Strength Triangle. It encompasses the elements required to develop inner confidence.
1. Physical Strength
To be a winning athlete, of course the first thing we think about is being physically fit and strong. Of course, you can’t win a race without training, without being the fastest competitor on the day. To do that, we must nurture our bodies with the best performance fuel and hydration we can do and keep our engines moving, working. We start to challenge ourselves and the achievements we gather leave a warm glow – better than any Ready Brek! Confidence grows because we know we have strength and resilience, we know we have the best chance of maintaining independence as we age and we know we are more likely to maintain our success as a result.
2. Mental Strength
Mental strength is exactly what it says – strength of mind. When I line up on a start line, no matter how much physical training, nutrition and effort I’ve put into being physically ready for the race, I know I cannot win if I don’t believe I can win. In extreme feats of endurance like Ironman, arguably the mental strength is more crucial than the physical strength. As an amateur, you can never fully prepare yourself for the 13 hours or more of racing you have ahead. What you can do, is build yourself a reservoir of hard times, of places you can draw on for strength when the going gets tough. Suddenly all the more minor challenges seem easier and we have confidence to push ourselves even further. Physical strength might get you to the finish line, but mental strength gives you that little sprint at the end to beat someone 10 yards ahead of you.
3. Aesthetic Strength
Taking care of ourselves physically brings us the body we want, the skin we want, the energy we long for. Having a confident and secure inner narrative that says “You are strong, you are capable” brings us confidence to go out without make up, to believe we are beautiful. Looking good, being able to look in the mirror and love what we see is hard, but brings ultimate confidence. It means what we look like is no longer the priority because we inherently know that this is taken care of, that we’ve achieved our potential and that we are wearing our confidence on the outside as well as on the inside. Aesthetic strength means being able to see on the outside what we feel on the inside. It means feeling like a winner and looking like one too.
The Formula
What I see so regularly in my clinic, is that the triangle is out of whack, it’s unbalanced. Perhaps you haven’t taken care of yourself with the right nutrition and sun protection. You’ve noticed that your face is starting to sag and droop, sun spots have started to appear and the lines and wrinkles don’t spring back like they used to. The inner narrative becomes one of deteriorating self-worth, of constantly feeling inadequate, not good enough and so the spiral continues – why bother trying to improve? Is it too late for the right skin health programme? Will healthy eating and exercise make a difference now? You just need someone to gently tip the scales in your favour, to change the balance. A little education, some nutritional advice, a skin care programme all starts to show subtle improvements to what you see in the mirror…the little voices start to say “Wow, I look great!”, you smile, confidence improves…suddenly you’re getting out there, putting the lycra on, running the 5k. You’re confident enough to buy that two-piece and take the holiday. You’re confident enough to stand on the start line of that daunting race you’ve always wanted to do. You’re free because you’re confident. You have physical strength, mental strength, aesthetic strength.
At my Wonder Clinic, I help active people look and feel like winners by balancing physical, mental and aesthetic strength. I am not about turning people into something else. It’s not about filler and facials on their own. I don’t get you in for one treatment and let you disappear. I give you tailored advice on altering your whole lifestyle to become the best version of yourself. I have acutely trained my physical and mental strength to line up at countless races to push myself way beyond the physical limits I thought I had. I can share all that experience and knowledge with you as well as my talents working with skin, the complex anatomy and physiology of the head and neck and the rest of the human body and help you achieve the confidence you’ve always dreamed of.
Be confident. Be strong. I wonder what you could achieve…