The Key to Confidence: It Might Not Be What You Think (Ep. 1)

Confidence isn’t something you wait for—it’s something you choose. But most of us spend years stuck, waiting for the perfect moment, the right approval, or some magic switch to flip. That stops today.

In this episode of Confidence Unfiltered, I’m breaking down what truly builds confidence (hint: it’s not what you’ve been told) and the four key “permission shifts” that change everything. We’ll talk about why so many people feel stuck in self-doubt, how people-pleasing keeps you small, and what actually happens when you stop waiting and start owning your space.

💡 Inside this episode:

• The biggest confidence myths that keep you second-guessing yourself
• Why you don’t need to “earn” confidence—it’s already yours
• How to stop asking for permission (and what to do instead)
• A simple mindset shift that will change how you show up today

I also share a personal story about taking the leap—quitting my job, building a business, and learning to back myself before I felt ready. If you’ve been holding yourself back, this one’s for you.

👉 Hit play, take the challenge at the end, and tag @skymareesteele on Instagram to share what you’re finally giving yourself permission to do!

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Break free from the 'Nice Girl' rules, set strong boundaries, and reclaim your power to achieve meaningful results in 2025.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Confidence Unfiltered. I'm your host, Sky Maree Steele, a clinical psychologist, business owner, A DHD, and recovering people pleaser. If you've spent your life trying to keep everyone else happy while feeling like you're never quite enough, you are in the right place. Here we ditch the people pleasing, silence, the self-doubt, and have real unfiltered conversations about confidence, boundaries, and building a life that feels unapologetically yours. No fluff, no perfection, just raw, real talk To help you trust yourself, show up fully, and own your damn power. Let's dive in. Welcome to Confidence Unfiltered. If you are here, it means that you are done shrinking to keep yourself and others comfortable, and you're ready to break free from the people pleasing, start taking up space and doing more of what you love. Today's episode is all about the key to confidence, and here's a hot tip. It might not be what you actually think. You know, many of us spend our lifetime waiting. Waiting for the right time, waiting for the right qualification, waiting for the right moment, waiting for somebody else to tell us that it's okay to do the thing, and we get stuck in thinking that in order to do something, we need to be good enough. Herein lies the problem with building confidence. You say confidence isn't actually something that you are born with. And it's not something that you need to earn by doing more things. It's simply something you decide. The biggest key that we don't talk about, it comes from giving yourself permission. Permission to be exactly who you are right now. Permission to do things before you're ready. Permission to do things imperfectly despite of the outcome. It simply means allowing yourself to decide to do the damn thing and more. It does not come from approval of others. It comes from you. It comes from that deep grit within that voice that says, do it scared. Do it anyway. So if it comes within, why do we have an epidemic of people at the moment walking around struggling, feeling not good enough and feeling like they're never going to be confident? You know, there are so many of us stuck in people pleasing mode and waiting for somebody else to give us permission to live a life that we wanna live. You know, society tells us and teaches us that confidence is looking a certain way. Confidence is achieving a certain milestone, whether that be financial or relationship or in career. You know, society tells us that having likes and follows on Instagram are what is meant to build our confidence and have us feel enough, you know, having all the answers, getting it right, getting it perfect. These are the things that we are told that build confidence. Here's the truth though. Confidence has nothing to do with perfection. Nothing to do with your body size, nothing to do with external approval. It is about learning to trust yourself. It is about learning that you were actually born enough. Something I talk a lot with my clients about is this idea that there is a permission trap. We get stuck in a fear of feeling like we need to. B do or have more before we can do the thing. And before we can feel confident, many of us hold ourselves back through the fear of judgment. What will others think through the fear of failure. What if I'm not good enough through the fear of rejection? What if I show up and nobody approves, nobody likes me? Nobody hits that follow on Instagram and the fear of change. What if stepping into my power means that I lose someone? You know, when I first thought about quitting my nine to five job with four kids under five and starting my own business, I looked externally for validation, for permission. And you know what I got? I got criticism. I got judgment. I got fear from other people. And for a long time, I sat with my indecision. I was afraid to give myself permission. Not believing that I could do the damn thing until one day I just, I'd had enough. I thought, stuff it, it's up to me. I need to make the decision. I need to back myself and do the thing. And the more I gave myself permission, the more I chose action, the more confident I felt. Not always because things worked out. But because whether they worked out or not, I had my own back, and equally I was making choices based on what I wanted to do with my life. You see confidence, it's not something that you earn. It's not like this badge of honor. It's something you allow. And the moment you give yourself permission to actually get in the arena of life and do the damn things that you've been holding back from is the minute that everything starts to shift. Now, here's my secret to permission and I call it the permission code. And there's four essential self permissions that unlock true confidence. The first one is permission to take up space. You don't need to shrink yourself to make others comfortable, whether it's in a meeting or a relationship or a social setting. You get to own your space. Confident people aren't waiting to be invited in the room. They're not waiting to be allowed to take up space in their environment. They simply act as if they belong. And the second permission code is permission to say what you think. No more over explaining, sugarcoating, diluting your voice. You don't need to sound perfect or have all the right words to be valuable. Your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas, they actually matter and you get to start owning them. A big one that I have had to learn along the way as the recovering people pleaser, and especially the A DHD, right, is permission to do things your way. Society tells us that success, happiness, confidence, they follow a blueprint, right? They follow this linear path, and it's just not true. It's actually a lie. True confidence actually comes from trusting your own path, whether it's your career path, your relationship, or your personal goals. The most magnetic people aren't the ones who are a carbon copy of someone else. They are the people who are unapologetically themselves, and the last code is permission to stop proving yourself. You do not have to work twice as hard just to get to this idea that then I deserve success. You don't have to earn love worth validation, it's already yours. And confidence is knowing. It's a knowing that you are enough without needing confirmation from other people around you. As a child, I had severe anxiety. You know, I wouldn't speak to strangers. I would cry every single morning when my mom would drop me to school, and I just didn't have a voice for a very, very long time. You know, I became the anxious people pleaser with A DHD, who always thought I was too much, and I would shrink into small spaces through fear of being seen and upsetting others. Fast forward a few years, and I'm now the owner of Uniquely Used Psychology A business. I grew to seven figures last year, and I did this by using my voice, by taking up space, and by doing it with four kids in toe. And I don't say this from a space of gloating, I say this, so you get to see what's possible. When you don't give up on yourself, when you choose, when you decide to give yourself permission to do whatever the damn thing is that you've been holding back from. Okay? So here's the deal. In these podcasts, I'm all about giving you real steps that you can take right now. To shift from playing small to owning confidence in your life, it is not gonna be enough to just binge more information. I want you to do this work in real time, so step one, and if you need to pause it and come back to me, but step one, identify. Where are you waiting? Like where are you spending your life waiting? Right? Where are you waiting for approval? Where are you waiting for someone to tell you what to do? Where are you waiting for somebody else to give you permission to speak, to do whatever it is and look in all the areas of your life, career, relationships, social settings, your personal life, where in life are you waiting for approval and what's one thing? One thing you have wanted to do, but you've held back on because you're not yet being given either internally or externally permission to do the thing. My step two, and I actually love this one, and we will loop back to this one in a few episodes, but it's acting as if, you know, confidence doesn't come first. Action does. And this is why we all seem to get stuck. So I want you to ask yourself, if I already trusted myself fully, if I already gave myself permission and just chose confidence, how would I act differently today? What energy would I embody? How would I be walking? How would I be speaking and using my voice? How would I be showing up as the confident version of myself? And step three, stop. Stop asking for unnecessary permission. Pay attention to when you seek validation from others before making a move and challenge yourself. Say yes to yourself without waiting for approval.'cause your voice. Your choices and actions do not need to be co-signed by anyone else, and I want you to put that in your phone as a screensaver. You know, the most confident people, we don't. We don't have it figured out, right? We've just stopped waiting for ready. We've stopped waiting for permission from others, and instead we've started to trust. Ourself anyway, so give yourself permission and make a choice. This podcast episode, I want it to be your reminder, that confidence, it's not something that you need to earn. Confidence is going to be something that you actually start deciding and the only permission you ever needed was your own, your challenge this week. Give yourself permission. To do one thing, one thing without seeking approval. Maybe it's speaking up at a meeting. Maybe it's gonna be setting a boundary without actually overexplaining it. Maybe it's gonna say yes to something that you would normally second guess yourself in. Because here's the thing, the most powerful thing you can do. If you wanna build your confidence is to stop waiting and start owning who you already are. Now here's the thing, I'm all about connection and community. So if this episode, if it spoke to you, if you actually going out there and you're gonna do the thing, tag me on Instagram@skymareesteele and share with me. Let me know what are you going to start giving yourself permission to do this week? I would actually love to hear from you.