Break the Rules, Own Your Power: Confidence Starts Here (Ep. 2)

Confidence isn’t built by following the rules—it’s built by breaking the ones that never served you in the first place.

In this episode of Confidence Unfiltered, I’m pulling back the curtain on what real, embodied confidence looks like—and why the old “fake it till you make it” advice just doesn’t cut it anymore.

We’ll dive into what it means to own your power, stop performing, and start showing up fully—even when it’s messy, inconvenient, or totally different from what others expect of you.

💡 Inside this episode:

• Why confidence starts with radical self-honesty (not more affirmations)
• How trying to “do it right” is the fastest way to disconnect from your power
• The real reason people-pleasing and perfectionism are confidence killers
• A bold reframe to help you stop hiding and start leading your way

You’ll also hear a behind-the-scenes story about the moment I realised I had been outsourcing my power—and how everything shifted once I stopped waiting for permission. If you’re craving deeper self-trust and unshakable confidence, this is your episode.

👉 Hit play, take the challenge at the end, and tag @skymareesteele on Instagram to share how you're breaking the rules and owning your power this week. 

FREE 3-Day Masterclass: From People Pleaser to Powerhouse

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, ADHD, 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're 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 dam power. Let's dive in. Welcome to another episode of Confidence Unfiltered. So today we are talking about breaking free from the rules that you create and looking at how you get to stop playing small and start owning your power. So if you are here, you probably already know that we don't do sugar coating. We get real. We get raw, but I also get straight to the point. In last episode, we talked about confident being a decision, not something that you have to earn. And if you haven't listened yet, go back and check it out, because today we are gonna be building on that foundation. This episode today is for everybody who's ever been told that they have to be nice. They have to be polite, they have to, you know, not rock the boat when it comes to other people and other people's thoughts and feelings. People who've been told that they, they've been too much their entire life, you know? Does this sound familiar? Well, here's the thing. Maybe you have felt like you've had to stay small. Maybe you've felt that you've always had to be agreeable with others. And maybe for you it's been that you've had to make sure that everyone else around you is comfortable before you've even considered your own needs. Well, this stops today. Because here's the truth. Confidence isn't just about giving yourself permission. It's actually about breaking free from those internal rules that have kept you stuck. And when you do, when you actually get to break free from the rules that you think bind you, then you actually get to step into your true power. Yeah, if you actually think about growing up or society or just the people around you that have been influential, you know, they've actually fed you a list of unspoken rules that you now believe that you are supposed to follow. You know, maybe the rule has been that other people are more important than you. Therefore, you have to put others first. Maybe you've been taught that if you prioritize yourself, then you're selfish. Maybe you've been taught that you need to be agreeable in order to be liked or avoid conflict. Maybe you've been taught to stay in the comfort zone, right? Because if you don't have all the answers and speak up, you're gonna be seen as an idiot or stupid, you know, maybe you've been taught to not be so ambitious. You know, if you're too bold, if you're too much, then people aren't gonna like you. Maybe you've also been taught that you need to seek approval from others and that your approval of yourself isn't enough. You know, you've been taught maybe your worth, that it's based on what others think of you, that you'll never be enough. Maybe you've been taught, you are always falling short. You know, I could go on and on with the things that you've been taught that just simply aren't true. Now, I want you to sit for with this for a minute and actually just ask yourself like. What of these rules sound familiar? Because here's the thing, these rules, they were actually designed to keep us small, to keep us from speaking up, to keep us from asking more, to keep us from doing what we want. You know, there's this thing that as a society, we don't wanna get socially killed. You know, we have been taught that we need to be liked, loved, and accepted from others in order to be enough. And while we are humans and we want connection, and we want to love and feel loved, there is a difference as bre. Now, Brene Brown said, in terms of fitting in, which means I'll accommodate me to meet your need versus actually just belonging. Where you get to be yourself and other people will love you as you are. So I want you to think about it for a minute. These rules that you've been following, how have they been serving you? Have they been helping you fit in or have they been helping you belong? Because here's what I want you to know. Every confident, successful, fulfilled person I've ever met, they've broken these rules. Because these rules they have you fit in, not actually belong. Confident people, they have learned to stop waiting for permission from others. They've learn to stop waiting to actually feel like they know what society expects of them, and they've kind of thrown out the rule book. They've thrown out these outdated standards and they've gone, I'm gonna do it my way. Let me tell you a quick story. When I started my business. I was still in deep in people pleasing mode. I didn't wanna upset anyone. I wanted to be liked, and I constantly downplayed my own ideas. I asked everybody for permission instead of just taking action. I. And guess what? It got me. It got me nowhere, right? The moment things started to shift for me was when I actually stepped back from worrying all of the time about how I was perceived, and instead started actually focusing on what it is that I wanted. You know, did it feel scary when I did this? Absolutely. But confidence doesn't come from feeling comfortable. It comes from having the courage to do the thing you wanna do, to step outside of the rules, to step outside of the comfort zone and choose you. It's about doing the very thing that you feel terrified to do. And here's the thing, the more you break the internal rules that are keeping you stuck, the more powerful you become. When I decided to stop playing small, there were a few rules that really stood out for me that I needed to break. And I'm gonna go through these and I really want you to hear and feel into what ones might be the ones that you actually need to start breaking. The first one, and it's a big one, and you'll probably roll your eyes and go, I already know this, but I want you to listen from a different perspective. The rule that I had for myself was I needed to stop saying yes when I actually meant no. Every time you say yes to something you don't want to do, you are saying no to yourself. Confidence is actually built by honoring your own needs. And not falling into the trap of letting guilt make the choices for you. The second one is speaking up even when your voice shakes. Confidence doesn't come from knowing all the answers. It comes from having the courage to use your voice even when it's uncomfortable. Stop waiting until you're a hundred percent ready. Or you're getting it perfect and start speaking your truth now. Like even in these episodes, as you listen to me and you go along with the next one and the next one, you will hear mistakes. You will hear where I blunder my words. But here's the thing, I'm not gonna go back and correct that. This is confidence unfiltered. And when we are learning to use our voice and speak up, it's gonna get messy. Sometimes it's gonna be awkward, it's gonna be clunky. And all of that's just okay. The third thing that I needed to break when I learned to step into my power was owning your success without apology. You know two, many of you are downplaying your wins, your downplaying your strengths. You are downplaying those things that make you uniquely who you are. We've gotta work on not worrying as much about actually being too much, you know, if you've worked for it, own it. Celebrate yourself. Celebrate yourself the way that I know you would celebrate others. Now, as I, as I said in the first episode, these podcasts aren't just gonna be around giving you more information. Like the things I'm telling you somewhere in the deep recesses of your brain, you've probably heard it before, but knowledge, knowledge isn't power. Knowing things and actioning them is where you actually gain your power and where you build your confidence. You know, confidence isn't built by just thinking about being confident. So here's what I want you to think about and do this week. The first thing is I want you to start noticing where you are getting caught up in the rules, and I want you to think about if you got to choose one internal rule that you could break, what would it be? Right? Like, are you saying no to something you wanna do and so you're gonna practice saying yes to yourself? Are you speaking up? When, like, are you not speaking up? And maybe you could start speaking up in certain scenarios or with certain people. Can you actually practice like gloating about yourself? Like can that be the rule that you're gonna break? Like you're gonna own your strengths this week? Are you gonna stop minimizing your success this week? Like think about it. What is one internal rule? That you can write down on a post-it note, put it somewhere, put it as your screensaver, and actually consciously start choosing to break that internal rule. The second thing is I, I know you are not gonna like this one, but I want you to get comfortable with discomfort. Confidence literally grows when we're uncomfortable. So the next time you start to notice resistance, and not from an instinct like this is wrong, but from a, oh, this is uncomfortable, this is not familiar. Whether it's setting a boundary or saying no or showing up boldly, I actually want you to lean into this discomfort, right? Told you I'm gonna stuff this up. We are gonna keep moving on, right? I want you to lean into it and remind yourself, this is how we grow. This is actually the only way to grow things. Grow under pressure, right? And not pressure as in stress and distress pressure, as in this is not familiar. This is uncomfortable. I haven't been here before and I dunno what's gonna happen. That is the pressure in which we are gonna grow. So this week when you're picking your rule and you notice discomfort show up, I want you to say, oh, sky said lean in, hold steady. I got this. Like, you can do this. And then the last thing. Which is so important is I want you to share it with someone. Let somebody know how well you are doing in practicing this stuff. Or you could even put up a post and tag me at Sky Marie Steele and let me know what's the rule you are breaking so we can actually celebrate you together. You know this confidence unfiltered is all about being community. It's coming together. It's working as a team to support each other in owning our uniqueness in a way that isn't about being perfect or getting it right. You know, I'm gonna say this, 1,000,001 times confidence is going to come the minute you start to own your power. You own your strengths, and you own your uniqueness. It is not going to come. If you're focused on being just liked, likes on Instagram, likes on Facebook, likes on TikTok, likes in real life isn't gonna build your confidence, it's gonna be momentary, and then you're gonna need more and more of that to be confident, right? Confidence isn't about pleasing everybody. It's owning who you are unapologetically. And working on practicing giving that internal validation. So I put it to you. Stop waiting. Stop shrinking. Stop asking others for permission, start showing up as the powerful human that you were always meant to be. I cannot wait to see what you'll do with it this week.