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In today’s video, I talk about four crucial steps for how to feel more confident in your relationship.
Read or watch below to learn more about how to feel more confident in your relationship.
Zachary Stockill: If you follow me on Instagram, you’re probably aware that periodically I will do Instagram Live Q&A’s. Occasionally, I get a question that kind of stops me in my tracks and necessitates a much longer, more in-depth response. And that’s exactly what I’m going to offer you today.
In today’s video, I’m going to talk about four steps that you can take for how to feel more confident in your relationship.
Okay, how to feel more confident in your relationship. By the way, if you’ve ever felt a lack of confidence in your relationship, join the club. This is an experience that I would imagine most men and women can relate to, you’re certainly not alone.
Thankfully, there are clear, proven ways out of feeling this way, and how to feel more confident in your relationship.
The first tip I would offer is to get clear on exactly what makes you precious and unique.
Now, before you roll your eyes, I mean: Get clear on the unique constellation of personality traits, of values… the unique constellation of everything that makes you unique, that makes you valuable, and that makes you valuable to the people around you.
Maybe there are other people who are better looking than you are, who make more money than you, or who have a bigger impact in the world than you, or who are more financially successful than you are. By whatever metric you can think of there are always going to be other people who are going to “beat” you.
I am under no illusions as a man that I’m the best looking, or that I make the most money, or I’m the smartest. I’m under no illusions about any of that.
But I feel confident in the fact that I’m a unique dude. I mean, the unique constellation of everything that makes me me is pretty interesting, frankly, and pretty rare.
Now, I’m not going to run down all of my amazing habits and characteristics and stuff. Because that would be obnoxious…
But the question really is what makes you you? What is the unique constellation of everything that makes you you?
And if you want to get clear about this, you can spend some time journaling. And just remember things that people have told you about you that maybe you took for granted. Like, maybe you’re a wonderful listener, maybe you have a great sense of style. Maybe you have a wonderful ear for music, or you are just a really good friend, because that’s very hard to find.
Maybe you’re a wonderful lover. Maybe you are really intelligent about certain key areas that your partner finds interesting. You get my point.
But the whole trick is to get clear on everything that makes you unique without relegating yourself to a few key categories, like looks or money or anything like that. Every spirit is truly unique. And again, this is gonna sound really woo-woo and out there to a lot of people, but it’s a fact.
Every human being on this earth is truly unique, and your partner clearly sees something precious in the unique constellation that is you.
My second tip is one that I tell jealousy sufferers all the time. And, in particular, people struggling with obsessive jealousy in their relationships. That is: human beings are selfish.
My second tip is to remember that human beings are selfish. And, that your partner is with you for a reason. In all likelihood, your partner is with you for multiple reasons.
As jealousy sufferers, we often sell ourselves short. We often don’t give ourselves the pat on the back or the credit we deserve. We often play small, or think of ourselves as being a lot smaller than we really are.
We’re generally not as confident as we should be. We often don’t trust words of affirmation that we may hear from our partner or our parents or other people. We often sell ourselves short.
And as I often tell retroactive jealousy sufferers, in particular, your partner is not with you as an act of charity. Because human beings are selfish. No one is going to stay with anyone very long unless they’re getting certain benefits from that arrangement and certain rewards from being with you.
So try to put yourself in your partner’s shoes as much as possible. Try to park your emotions at the door and just think rationally. Why is my partner choosing me? Why did they continue to choose me? And why did they get up every day and continue to say, “Yep, I’m all in on this person” again and again? Why are they continuing to make that choice?
Because in all likelihood, your partner has a choice. In all likelihood:
Your partner has other people that they could be choosing, but they’re not. They’re choosing you and the question is why?
Why are they choosing you? Because again, they’re not choosing you as an act of charity, or because they feel sorry for you, or they can’t find anyone better or anything like that. Of course, those cases exist, but they’re pretty rare.
So you can journal about this: what are some comments my partners made about why they’re choosing to be with me? What are some of the things that they have told me unprompted about how they feel about me? What do I bring to their table, so to speak? Or what do I have to offer them? And why are they choosing me over many, many others each and every day?
The more you realize that your partner is selfish the same way as you are, the more you realize that they’re not with you as an act of charity,
The more you realize fully all of the benefits that you bring to their life, the more chances are very good that this will lead to increased feelings of stability and safety, and this is partly how to feel more confident in your relationship.
My next tip is, in some ways, maybe even the most important. Or at least this will have probably the biggest impact on your confidence in your relationship. My third tip is to define and pursue personally meaningful and ambitious goals.
Now I talk about goals a lot. A lot of people struggle with the idea of setting goals. They don’t know where to start. So I like two qualifiers that I just added, personally meaningful, and ambitious. Ambitious, and personally meaningful goals that have nothing to do with your relationship. So, your goal can’t be “I want to stay with my partner for the next 30 years.” Or, it can’t be, “I’m going to raise a wonderful family.” Of course, those can be relationship goals. And those are important as well.
But if you want to increase feelings of confidence in your relationship, you need to increase feelings of confidence in yourself as an individual.
One of the ways confidence is built is by setting ambitious, personally meaningful goals that have nothing to do with anything else; goals that are simply about you.
Defining and pursuing what you want, looking for ways to improve, looking for ways to learn, looking for ways to grow… Because your confidence will grow the more and more you pursue your goals. Your confidence will grow the more you’re making progress toward your goals.
So think about anything new that you want to learn, or anything new that you want to become. Or changes you want to make, whether it’s related to your fitness, your job, your income, your spirituality or your education, or anything else. I mean, it can be anything you want.
Because the other qualifier aside from ambition is personally meaningful. So I have a number of goals that are personally meaningful to me. Goals that have nothing to do with my girlfriend. They’re personally meaningful to me. In fact, they involve recording this video right now, growing my business. Putting out meaningful content on my blog, on my YouTube channel, that helps people is a huge goal of mine.
And I have a number of very specific goals related to that. They keep me motivated and inspired all the time. I also have fitness goals; I also have creative goals. I also have some social goals.
The point is they’re personally meaningful to me. So you can’t just take mine. Your goals have to really resonate with you deep down.
So again, you can pull out your trusty journal. You can write down some ideas for anything you want to grow or learn, or any skill you’d like to develop, anything you’d like to create… Really anything at all as long as it’s personally meaningful and ambitious. And crucially, it has nothing to do with your relationship.
Because, counterintuitively, a great way to build confidence in your relationship is to have a full, rewarding, and dynamic life outside your relationship.
My final tip for you! If you want to feel more confident in your relationship, simply accept and make peace with uncertainty. Because life and love are extremely uncertain. The only thing we know for sure about life is that nothing is certain.
When we’re born we know we’re going to die, and in between, it’s a total crapshoot.
We don’t know what’s going to happen. A lot of jealousy sufferers look for rock-solid certainty about their future, in their relationship, their partner’s past, and all these things.
When so often in life our only choice is to simply take the risk; to take the gamble, to decide to leap and fall in love.
As I often remind jealousy sufferers, uncertainty is embedded in the term falling in love itself. It’s not securing in love. It’s not a certainty in love. It’s not guaranteed in love. It’s falling in love; it implies a certain danger, certain risk. But we wouldn’t want it any other way because half the fun of relationships and dating and falling in love is taking the risk, because many of those risks eventually pay off.
Think about how boring life would be if all of our future was 100% predetermined, and we knew exactly what was going to happen.
I wouldn’t want a future like that. And I imagine you wouldn’t either.
So realize that as amazing as your relationship probably is, and as incredible as your partner is, the future is not a guarantee/ Your partner could eventually change her mind or change his mind, or you could do the same.
It’s completely up in the air. There are no guarantees in life.
So the only real choice we have is to make peace with uncertainty, because doing the opposite will guarantee many sleepless nights and stress and agitation and exhaustion. Because we’re looking for certainty about elements of life that are inherently uncertain.
So you can read Buddhist philosophy, you can read Stoic philosophy… I found both of those schools of thought really helpful when it comes to making peace with uncertainty.
Try to make peace with uncertainty because I promise you your life and your relationships will get a lot better once you do.
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