Audacity INJECTION ⚡ You need to practice being HER.

Okay, good fucking morning. Welcome to the Florence Given Show. I want to talk to the woman who is secretly afraid that her confidence is delusional and you haven't actually earned it. Right? Imposter syndrome. Whatever you want to call it, okay? I want to talk to you because I just received a DM from someone on Instagram who said Florence, how do I know if my confidence is real? It feels like I am being delusional. And I want to talk about this because so much of what we see online now is all about being audacious, taking up space, right? That's one of my big messages, encouraging women to take up more space because so much of us, we squeeze ourselves into these tiny fucking boring roles that we were never meant to fit inside, we were meant to expand beyond them, right? But what about when it doesn't feel good? What about when the confidence that you are wearing and trying on actually ends up making you feel worse because guess what now you feel like a fucking fraud, okay? I want to talk about that because a lot of the stuff we hear online is about be delusional, be delusional, be delusional, be delusional, this to the point where I'm sick of hearing it, okay? It doesn't really mean anything anymore. It's almost like the shoehorn word that we use to just tell people to take more risks and be more audacious. So I want to talk to you if you've ever feared that actually you're not entitled to take up that much space, that's for other people but not you, and also to talk about the cases in which you are being delusional and the reason that your confidence and your affirmations and shit, it doesn't feel good. It's because it's not speaking to the truth of who you are and you've gone off track, okay? I want to talk to you, let's talk about confidence, let's talk about when it can help us and when it actually holds us back. Let's fucking go. It is my belief that women need to take up disgusting amounts of space on this planet in order for us to see joy, abundance, happiness, and to overthrow current power structures, okay? And yet it's also women that hold one another back, women enforce patriarchy on each other, women hold up patriarchy socially because we fucking hate seeing other women win. It's just the way it happens, we cannibalize our own movement because there is this envy in our shadow that we don't want to admit we have when we see another woman rise and often we don't even hate the woman because we actually think that she's problematic and horrible. We're trying to tear her down because we know that she's on her ascension. We know she's got what it fucking takes and what does it take audacity. When you see a woman climbing and taking risks and it makes a part of you recoil, it's because you know it works. You know that what she's doing works and you don't have the courage to do it yourself, okay? I genuinely believe that the answer to a lot of society's bullshit is that women individually have the audacity to take up more space in their personal lives, okay? And historically within the movement, the feminist movement, we've done the opposite in terms of we think that we need to sort of like micromanage ourselves and sacrifice ourselves to prove how much of a good person we are but it's an inside job first. You need to heal your own stuff because you can't change the world if you're feeling miserable and depressed and full of envy that there's like this rotten emotion inside of you that you were allowed to allow yourself to feel and so you'll always spoil and sour the ascension of other women. Women need to enable other women to be successful in order for us to even think or contemplate about toppling the current power structures, okay? And the way that we do that is through being audacious, it's through taking up space in our lives, it's through using our voice, it's through dancing when we want to, it's through wearing that bold and brave outfit, it's through asking for more money, it's for asking for what you deserve, it's from making the first move because you fancy someone taking up space in any way you see fit, that's how it's done, okay? But if you try to take up space in a way, or you try to be audacious in a way that sort of doesn't really feel true to you, it can feel very inauthentic and if you try to sort of bite off more than you can chew, not in that lovely challenging way where oh okay this is hard for me to chew but I can learn how to chew it and this is good, this is challenging for me, but biting off more than you can chew and it's just insane and it's going to give you a fucking stomach ache, then that's not going to feel good, taking on more than you can physically handle with your support system and everything, it's just not going to feel good and I've spoke about this before but trying to be more confident and sort of quantum leap into a life that is so foreign to your nervous system is going to end up fucking up your goals because your nervous system cannot hold that level of responsibility that this dream version of yourself has because you've not done the inner work yet to be able to hold it right and so when this person asked me why does my confidence feel like delusion, it could be a number of things, it could be the fact that you are so self-deprecating that even the idea of being confident and walking into a room and holding your own makes you feel sick okay and that's something that you need to learn to get over and so take up more fucking space, make people say who does she think she is and walk into that room hoping that the girls say who does she think she is but if you fill it your confidence is delusion because you are applying yourself for things that you don't have the skill set for or the experience for in any way shape or form then yeah you're going to feel like a bit of a fraud and that's totally fucking normal that's totally part of the process of building the skills that current the current version if you doesn't have you understand that's what life is all about right everyone is a fucking beginner I hate when I hear people say oh I can't do that and it's literally just something that they tried once failed at and then never tried again I have a friend that says she can't do impersonations I am the queen of impersonations okay I do impersonations and accents so well and she can't do them she says I can't do them but it's not that she can't do them she just never lets herself do the full impersonation because she cringes at herself before she even gets to the end of the sentence right she doesn't even let herself try properly she'll just say she'll do the first bit of the impression like I say she's doing an American accent or something she goes oh my god oh no I can't do it that's so embarrassing oh no I can't do it I'm so bad and she stifles herself right I can't do this thing but yes she can she's just not failed enough times in order to gain the experience of knowing how to move her vocal cords to do an American accent properly do you not I mean life is about fucking around and having new experiences if your confidence feels delusional it's because your body has not yet adjusted to this new frequency that you are calibrating yourself too that's part of it just like building muscle in the gym you have to go consistently day and day out for years to build muscle yes but proper muscle you know years you've got to put the reps in of this new identity and I think you know when I talk about make people say who does she think she is a lot of people a lot of women are afraid that the space they want to take up is too much they think no I can't be a millionaire that's that's disgusting that's too much I believe in phrases like eat the rich and so I should stay in my humble crumble and not make any fucking money and then you like put yourself into a hole of shrinking when actually you've just not developed the capacity to hold that much money because you're afraid that you're going to lose friends and family and support from your community you're going to have people telling you that you're an evil millionaire do you understand how generous money is in your hands because you're a good person think about what you could do with that million this is why I think money shaming is such bullshit because money is neutral money is an energy money do you understand and how many people's lives you can change with money. You can afford to tip the waitress at a restaurant so she can quit her job and pursue her career like she's been telling you during her shift. Like you can just casually change people's lives with money, money isn't evil, money is fucking beautiful. Let yourself want the things that you want. Stop coercing yourself out of wanting the things that you want because you think it's evil, it's not evil. You've not practised positioning yourself and your body and your mind and your values and your nervous system in this thing. Confidence feels delusional when you have not put the reps in. So guess what, just fill in the gap with reps. I'm an illustrator, okay? And I illustrated my first book, Women Don't Know You Proceed. And I got that book deal because I'd been illustrating and sharing my art online on social media for years. My first illustrations, Crap. Did I have the right to be confident enough to share my art online? No, I gave that right to myself. I let the work be shitty. I allowed myself the space to share my shitty art on social media and develop over time, yeah? I can't wait to launch new projects. I can't wait to finally do my rings and my jewelry. I can't wait to make a movie one day, whether it's a short film or a feature film or fucking music video, whatever. I can't wait to be a beginner on it and no one's gonna let me do it. I am. I am gonna allow myself the freedom to be shit as something new. And it's the same thing we're building confidence, okay? The people in your life know you as the small, shriveled up version of yourself and you are looking for permission in other people to say you are allowed to be confident. But no one's gonna give you the permission to be confident in life. You literally just have to become her. You have to become that version of yourself and grow through those growing pains of feeling like a fucking fraud. Okay, quick little interruption from me. If you've ever listened to episodes of The Florence Given Show and you thought, I wish I could have more of this. I am doing bonus episodes of The Florence Given Show every single Sunday over on my sub-stack. It's basically where all of the extra bits of my brain end up and it's where I get to be a lot more open and honest and vulnerable with you. It's a bit like a diary entry with everything that's on my mind. Some life updates, it's a bit more personal and when you become a paid subscriber on my sub-stack, you also gain access to the entire archive of podcast episodes, voice notes and my essays that I've been posting for the last two years. If you're already a paid subscriber, thank you so much. This is how I pay my incredible team of women that make this show possible. I created the show myself and it's so important for me to remain independent so I can do whatever them. Fuck I want! So thank you so much for all of your support. I really appreciate you. If you want more bonus episodes of this podcast, you can become a paid subscriber at sub-stack. That's Florence Given.substack.com. (upbeat music) You have to let yourself feel like a fraud when you are trying to become confident and take up space in your body, in your outfits where you walk on the street when it's something you've never done before. Of course you're gonna feel like a fraud. You've never done it before. Your nervous system is so afraid of even like sitting with your arms back on a chair in a coffee shop or a restaurant or in the sauna, right? I take up so much space in the sauna. Tits out, pussy out, hairy armpits out, sat back like this, loving it. Did I do that the first time I went in? No, I went in with a towel. I went into a sauna with a towel on 'cause I wasn't, I wasn't, didn't feel safe yet, right? And then the second time I went, fuck yeah. There's a ladies pond in London and it's just women's sunbathing completely naked in London in Hampstead Heath and the first time that I went there, honestly I never felt so safe in my entire life. Just women with their bodies, it was literally light heaven. Just women with their bodies out is literally called the ladies pond. It's so incredible. And it just gave me permission to just exist in my body period. Just exist in my body amongst other women who were just taking up space, walking bending over with their fucking stomach rolls and their saggy tits and their perfect tits and whatever, right? All of it perfect. Just existing. But my body had not felt safe in that environment yet. So I came in with my top on and then slowly it's not to take item off and item off and item off and item off. And then you're fully comfortable and suddenly you just feel really relaxed. And when you are practicing something new, you are gonna feel like a fraud, okay? Imposter syndrome is a thing, but also I just think it's valid sometimes because you are doing something new, babes. You are doing something new. You've never been this version of yourself before. So guess what? You're gonna keep going back to that old version of yourself. It's not because, oh, that's the real version of you and you've been clocked as a fraud. No, you've literally never been this woman before. You've never been the woman that goes to bed at 10 p.m. You've never been the woman that sticks to her habits before or you've never been the woman that wears color. You've never been the woman that speaks up in meetings and so you're gonna experience friction, resistance and reactions in your environment from people and they're entitled to fucking have them. You can't control them. The only way you're gonna control those reactions and that friction is by staying the fucking same in your sick of them. You're so down with that. You're so down with people seeing you in that way that you just don't relate to anymore. You're done with it. So yeah, you're gonna feel like a fraud but it doesn't mean you're a fraud, okay? You are not a fraud. You are trying on a new life. There is no shame for trying on a new life because guess what? The version of yourself that you've been playing your whole life, you didn't get to choose her. You didn't get to choose her. She was almost like assigned to you by your environment and now you're trying to be someone new. You try to take up a little bit more fucking space. Maybe you're in court, but you wanna have a music career and you're thinking who the fuck do I think I am? That's not me. Yeah, it is. It is you. That's the real you. This is the you that you are choosing. You didn't choose consciously the previous version of you. This new version of you that you are trying to birth that feels delusional. Of course it does. Of course it has, you've never been this version of you before. She takes repetition. Yeah? You wanna have some identity anchors in your environment to remind you of this new version that you're stepping into. So that in those moments where you normally form and shrink because you feel like a woman in your social circle doesn't like you or she's threatened by you, right? This has happened to me so many times. A woman in your social group feels threatened by you and so you shrink and you shrivel and you hide yourself away and you make yourself smaller and you downplay your achievements because you want her to like you. You want her to be okay with you. After you don't even want her to like you, literally just don't want her to be upset. And so you shrink and you shrivel yourself down like a little tiny fucking reason, yeah? You walk away from the interaction thinking, why the fuck did I do that? I don't want to be like that. I want to be big and bold and audacious and claim myself, claim my success, claim my happiness, claim my joy. Why, when everyone started talking about miserable things at the dinner table, did I join in? When actually I'm trying to practice being positive and optimistic and that's not who I am anymore and you catch yourself reverting back to these old sort of survivor behaviors that you did to get your environment to like have as least friction as possible. But guess what? You are here to create dents in this life. You are here to create friction in your environment because that's what life is about. You're here to rub up against people, yeah? You're not a fucking fart. (laughs) Fart in the wind, existence. You're not a ghost, okay? You need to create friction. You need to leave a dent on this life. And that dent is gonna piss some people off. You're gonna ruffle some fucking feathers babes that's what it's all about. Ruffling the fucking feathers. And you know I'm not talking about being intentionally annoying and pissing people off just for the sake of it. I'm talking about ruffling feathers because you've got something to say. You've got space to take up in this life. Leave a dent in this world. That's what you were here to do. Have I convinced you? (laughs) Who cares if your confidence is delusional? Step into it. Step into it until it's a reality, you know? Mike, there will come a day where the things that you are currently struggling with are so effortless to you. But it's only because this current version of you stuck to her repetition because she refused to let her environment cause so much fear that she's there. the fucking saying, that's not who you are, it's not what you're here to do. Okay? This is your sign to do that thing that you've been afraid to do because you think it's going to cause friction in your social group. They're going to hate me if I get successful, do it. They're going to say who the fuck does she think she is now? She's a corporate girl, what is she doing making music? Do it, do it, do it, do it. This is your permission. Go and do it because you are here in this planet, in this physical human body, yeah, to create and leave a mark and leave a dent on this world. You aren't meant to just float through like a fucking fart in the wind, okay? We are not fart in the wind women, okay? We're women that ruffle feathers. We ruffle feathers, not because we're trying to piss people off, not because we're trying to hurt them, but just by existing in our pure essence, wild essence that is so inspiring, so inspiring because we set this domino effect of freedom, yeah? You want to be a glitch in the fucking matrix. You want to be the kind of woman that people see and go, holy shit, she's so free and that makes me uncomfortable. You want to be the kind of woman that actually triggers other women and that's okay because that's what we're all here to do, we're all here to trigger one another so that we can rupture one another's shadows and bring them and expose them to the light so that they can be healed. You were not meant to just be a fucking fart in the wind babes. Should I call the episode don't be a fart in the wind? No, no. I don't know what I'm going to call this episode. I don't care. I fucking love you. Your confidence will feel delusional because your current environment and your reality and the way that your friends think is the product of how you've been thinking for like, I don't know, however old you are, 15 years, 20 years, 35 years, 50 years, 60 years, babe, come on now, that is a path in your brain that has been constantly troddened down again and again and again and again. Of course, going in the complete opposite fucking direction to the way that you have been raised and socialized in society is going to make you feel like a fraud. You've never walked there before and your only job is to keep going, keep going down that path, keep choosing those things that make you feel so fucking good and become her. This is your permission to become her babes. You already are her. You are just cementing her now, okay? Yes, it's going to feel like you fucking crazy for a little bit, but just fill in the gap between who you want to be and where you are now with action and repetition. Just one step after the other and guess what? You're going to fuck up. You're going to people please so many fucking times. You're going to let people guilt trip you, you're going to shrink yourself, you're going to do all of that. And that's fine, but it doesn't mean that that's the real you. It is just the most practiced version of you. Make this new version of who you're becoming, the new solidified, practiced version of yourself, create her, architect her. That is you. Fuck yeah, I feel amazing now. I love you so much. I can't wait to talk to you next week. I love you. Bye. [Music]