We have been taught to build confidence, push through fear, and “fake it until we make it.” But what if confidence was never missing, but just buried under anxiety and system overload? Looking back on her personal experiences of anxiety and self-doubt, Kohila Sivas breaks down what is really happening beneath confidence struggles and uncovers the truth behind finding your true voice. This is not about becoming someone new, but about returning to who you were before the pressure, patterns, and noise took over.
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You Don’t Lack Confidence... Your System Is Overloaded
I am so excited to be here, and I have something very important to talk about, which is going to be about confidence. We all know that we have been told or we tell ourselves to be confident, right? Is it confident where we start from, or is it an end result? I love talking about these words because they are told to us as if they are the starting point. In fact, if we look at it carefully, they are the end.
If I want to be confident, if your child needs to be confident, if you need to be confident, if you are a teacher and you need to be confident, if you are a CEO and you need to be confident, then there are prerequisites to that. We do not just become confident, right? Confidence is not something that just shows up. It is not something that is a starting point. We have a problem with the way that we approach some things that we want in our lives.
Being In The Present Instead Of Dwelling In The Past
That is what I want to talk about. Before we do that, I do want to share with you and bring you here and now because it is important to be here and now. Otherwise, where are we? We are not here. Let us bring ourselves here and now. I want to use this past conversation with you to talk about confidence. When we want to be confident in the now and here, what do we do? We have our brain take us to the past and tell us all the reasons why we cannot be confident here in the now.
Have you ever had instances where your brain takes you, you are not thinking, it's just the brain pulls you into this mess? I like to say that some of these things that our brain pulls us into are good things from the past. Sometimes it is, but many times, like 99.9 times, it is going to be the worst thing that happened to us because our brain likes to beat us over things that we did not do right. If we are talking about confidence and we are taken to the past, what is our brain going to bring up?
What are some of the facts and stories and all the things that it wants to talk about? The things where I was not confident. Maybe as a child, I grew up not being confident. I was a child who was shy and muted herself in the classrooms, and nobody noticed that she did not even speak to anyone. She just went unnoticed and invisible. For me, confidence was a big deal. I was never confident.
I walked differently. My postures were always different. I would never talk like this. Right now I am talking to you. All of this would come up. What else would come up? When my dad asked me to answer some of the questions, such as nine times nine, when I blank out, I know most of the time it is 81. When he asked for some reason, I just blanked out, and I got in trouble.
Was my confidence going up at that time? No. Would my brain bring me back to that incident where I felt stupid in front of him, even though I knew the answer was 81, but I could not say it because the way he asked, my brain just became mush? Nine times nine, I never knew whenever he asked, it was something that he always asked that number. I do not know why I still remember it. I would go there, and my brain would talk to me about how stupid I was. That is the past event that is going to bring me negative feelings.
It is going to bring me heavy feelings and negative feelings, and now and here is going to be ruined for me. Would I be confident in the now and here if I start entertaining what my brain wants me to do in the past? Not really. It is not going to work out. It does not work like that. If I am entertaining all the failures and where I was not confident, then I cannot be confident right here and right now. That is what happens to most of us. We go into the past stories, and we are told how confident you are, not by our own brain.
Do you not think our brain needs to be told that I am the boss because I am so sick of it telling me how much I am not confident? When it comes to this, then it just goes on the list in my life. As an adult, I was incompetent. As a teacher, I went into classrooms where people made me feel bad. People did not think I had the skill set, even though I am the best math teacher ever that they would have ever had in their school systems. All of these things would come up for me.
What can I do with these stories? Am I going to sit there hour after hour after hour listening to my brain bring up all the instances where I was not confident, and I am going to sit there listening to it? Will you listen to it? No, we do not want to listen to it. I do not want you to listen to it either. These are stories that have already happened. I am not going to get anything out of it other than the lessons that in those situations, I was not competent. The reason I was not competent is because my internal systems were blocked. I was blocked. I was stuck.
It does not matter how hard I tried to be confident. I can only say the word. Maybe sometimes I cannot even say the word with confidence. What should I do with the past? Should you sit there entertaining this for hours and hours and wasting your time, so you are not now in here to live or learn or lead? No, we have to let it go. Let go of the garbage because it is garbage. It is telling us garbage. Who wants to deal with the garbage? I have already dealt with it for many years.
How To Take Ownership Of Your Brain
You probably have as well. It is time, once in a while, to get hold of your brain and say we are letting it go. We are not going to talk about this. I have learned the lessons from it. I am moving to now and here. Now, in here, when you do that with your brain, you are going to gain confidence. That is another way to get confidence is to own your brain. Now let us talk about the future. How would my brain take me to the future and talk about confidence?
Let us talk about it. Let us say I am planning something. Let us say in the now and here, I am a CEO, I am a father, I am a mother. I got a job where I go, and I have coworkers. I am a student who is trying to do well in school, or I am a student who is struggling. How would my future talk look like with my brain? Our brain takes us to the future, and most of the time, it likes to talk about how I am going to fail, how it is not going to go the way it likes to project the past, and then let us think about the future. Do you think that is productive?
I know it is not for me because it is wasting time again telling me how I am going to be not confident again in the future. Not only was I not in the past, but now I am not even going to be in the future. Is that productive, or is that counterproductive to what I want to do now and here? It is counterproductive. What are some of the conversations I can have in the future with the topic that we have today, confidence? It could tell me that you remember you could not answer the nine times nine. What makes you think that you can speak on the stage?
If I were to listen to it, I could have a pretty pity party with it right now about my future. I was an idiot. How can I be a leader going forward? You think I am joking, but this is how our brain hijacks our own intentions. Our brain is powerful. It can make any crazy story it wants. I realized the power of this brain that we all have on the day that it told me to end my life. The next day, it betrayed me and told me a whole bunch of other stuff that I had never heard from it. How can a brain turn from one thing one day to another different whole being another day?
Our brain is powerful. It can make any crazy story it wants.
That is what I experienced. That is where all of this comes from. My experience of my death, which was almost helped by my brain. My brain helped me to think of all of the nasty stuff that I should not be living with. It told me, "Why did you do it? How can you do it? What kind of person are you to do even such a thing? Look at all the people you have just messed with and hurt, and all of this." Who is this person talking to me?
That is why we need to own this brain. The brain is yours to own. Otherwise, it will just make crap up all the time. In the future, it can tell me things like, "You know what, you remember you muted yourself, you do not even have a voice. Why would you think you want to talk online? Why would you think you want to have a live show like this? Why would you think anybody would listen to your voice like this?" It could tell me that, but I own it now. Even if it tells me, I know how to take control of it, but that is what it can tell me about the future thing I want to do. What can we do about this future?
We need to shut it down for sure. This kind of conversation does nothing for our future. We need to set intentions. I do want to speak on stage. I do want to be a leader. I do want to take care of stuff. I do want to change things that are not working in our society. I am a leader. If that is my thing, I have to tell my brain, "Thank you for all of that information. I am setting intentions for myself. Follow. Be obedient with me. You do not own me. I own it." I can set all those intentions, and I can bless them.
I can release it, and I am no longer listening to my brain when I do that. I am shutting it down. This is conscious work. Consciously, we are telling the brain we are letting go of the past. We are telling the brain we are going to release the future. You do not have control over it, so do not predict it for me. Stop predicting for me with my past crap, which does not serve me, so stop it. In that case, what it does is that you are consciously bringing yourself here and now. In this moment, you can create anything you want.
In this moment, you can learn anything you want. It does not matter who you are. This is how human development and humans work in here. I can live my life the way I want to live instead of listening to my brain telling me how bad I am at something right here. I can lead. I can lead myself. We are all leaders, so we can lead our lives and the people that we love. These are things that can happen here and now. In order to be here and now, we need to anchor ourselves by bringing our hands together.
Confidence: If your brain is talking nonsense nonstop, coming home is not possible.
Listening To Your Brain Through Breathing
This is almost a ritual. I do this all the time when my brain starts getting louder than my heart and my body. My brain wants to talk louder and louder. I just have to shut it down. Talking to your brain, which is one of my methodologies that I have created, alone makes you confident. Look at how confident I am talking right now with my brain. Owning your brain builds confidence. That is internal work.
It is not that confidence comes first, and then I talk like this. I have to learn how to talk to it to make my confidence a byproduct of it. That is why we all struggle when people tell us confidence is where we start. Confidence is the result of so many different things, which we are going to talk about. Now, in order to fully anchor you now and bring you here, we will do breathing. Breathing is something that helps us. I know we all breathe.
I know you are breathing, but neither you nor I breathe intentionally. We just breathe to live and survive. When we get into survival mode, it becomes even harder. Right now, I want you to take a breath of four. Hold for four. I want you to exhale for eight, all the worries and stress and fear and lack of confidence, everything. Really let it go because we do not need to store. Our body is not for storing garbage.
These things need to be out of our bodies. That is why our body was made to inhale and exhale all the garbage. Instead, as humans, we learn to store them. Where do we store them? In our necks, in our shoulders, in our back, in our lower back, in our thighs. We feel like it hurts. It hurts because we tend to store all the stuff.
It does not belong in our body. Our body is a temple. Why do we not take care of it? Why do we not take care of this machine that helps us live every single day? We need to look at this as a machine, just like we would take care of your car before you drive it, just like everyone takes care of the plane before they take off. Why do we not take care of this body the same way? It's because we were not given the education for it. Let us take a breath for four.
Our body is a temple. We must take care of this machine that helps us live every single day.
Hold for four. This time, send it to all of the places you want to send this air that you have not sent this week. Send it and love it, and then pick up all the waste that you do not want to have in your body, and then release it for eight. Really letting it go. Do not hold anything. Your body is not for storage. Let us do that one more time. Inhale for four. Hold, send it everywhere. Now, collect everything that you do not want, anything in your body that feels hard, heavy, scary, blocked. Grab everything, and then really let it go with the sound.
When Did You Try To Be Confident In Life
It is not yours to keep. It is to be released. When you do that, you should feel grounded with that conversation. Talk to your brain using what I just showed you, plus this breathing intentionally will help you ground yourself and bring yourself now in here. Now that we are in here, we can talk about confidence. How many times have you tried to be confident in your life? How many times were you told to be confident in your life? Be true to yourself, right? When you are thinking about confidence, were you told at school to be confident?
How was it for you with the word confidence? What came up for you when you were a child, when you were growing up? How was confidence presented to you? How was it presented to you? Confidence. I am just waiting so that I can have some answers in the chat, and I am checking for the chat to see if anyone is here answering me, because I need some answers. What is coming up for you? Probably it is coming up for you where you were not confident, where you struggled to gain confidence.
What are we told in the regular world? What are we told in the regular world about confidence? In order to build confidence, what creates it? We are told that we have to stay focused. How do we stay focused? We have to set goals. If you want to be confident, you have to set goals. We set them up. Many of us fail, but we know how to set them up. We are told that confidence should come because if you start taking those actions, you need to feel confident.
If you spend a lot of time and push through things, you should feel confident as well. Is that not what we are told? Is that not how confidence is presented to us, as if it is something we should already have feelings for? What really is confidence? Confidence is not something you build. It is something that shows up when nothing is in the way. Inside, meaning inside this body.
My program, everything I have developed over the last 25 years, including starting with my brain and how I own it, the conversation that I just shared with you, what it has done is give me the sense that this needs to be taken care of. We need to be home here. Inside our body is the home that I am talking about, not your physical home. If nothing is in the way inside this body, then confidence is something that comes out of it as a result. It is the result of it. Is it not the beginning of it? Because we are told in a way that it is the starting point, we get stuck.
Most people think they lack confidence. What they are actually experiencing is a system that does not feel safe enough to express it. For example, in my situation I talked about earlier, I muted myself because I was not confident with the language. What is the best thing my body and my brain can come up with to protect me? If you do not know a language, what is the best way to protect yourself? Stay silent. Mute yourself. The extreme would be to mute yourself.
I decided to go to the extreme and mute myself. That is my body and my brain protecting me. When we do not feel safe somewhere, our body is going to react in a different way. It does not mean I was lacking confidence. It does not mean I was born lacking confidence. I am a confident person right now. Not that I can speak so much better. I could have spoken then, too. I just did not know the language. Why did I not think that I did not know the language, and that is why I am not able to speak? Why do I not just spend the time to learn it?
Instead, I tried to hide it because my body took over as a form of protection. Whenever we are hijacked by our body's response as a protection, everything else shuts down. That is why confidence is not something you build. You need to figure out if anything is in the way. Can you figure out what is in the way? That is the most important thing. That is going to be inside work. That is why confidence has to come from the inside out. We do not just do things to become confident. We actually have to clear everything in this system and be home here to have confidence. Confidence is a clean expression without internal resistance.
If you do not have any resistance, confidence is going to show up in every aspect of your life. Have you seen some people and people admire them, saying, "Look at their confidence, look how much they are showing up, and look how much they are able to express themselves openly and communicate clearly?" That is because they have no internal resistance.
Confidence is what it looks like to us when our system is not protecting us. Confidence is what it looks like when your system is not protecting you. If you feel like you are lacking confidence, or your child is lacking confidence, or your student is lacking confidence, or as a CEO, you are lacking confidence, we have to turn inward. When I was not confident in many of my areas, I used to look externally.
Confidence: Confidence is not born outside. It is born inside from the alignment of all the systems.
What a waste of time. How can somebody else give me confidence when my internal systems are blocked? It makes no sense. I did that in business. I did that in my personal life. How many of us are in relationships where we think the other person is going to give us confidence? That is why co-dependency starts. It does not make sense. Confidence does not start with another person or the external world. It starts internally. Is your system blocked? Are they resisting? Are they in protection mode?
I would research all of that by myself. Start noticing. In what areas of your life do you have confidence issues? What is it stemming from? What systems are blocked because of that? If we go deeper into that, we can find the root cause of it. We are so at the surface, and we are so externally thinking about something that is born from internal alignment. If our systems are not aligned, forget confidence. Have we checked this system? Are we home? How do we come home? We need to first take care of our brain because you cannot come home when your brain is your enemy.
Confident Starts From Within
If your brain is talking nonsense nonstop, coming home is not going to be possible. How can you live with a brain that is talking nonsense nonstop? You cannot be home. Have you taken control of your brain? If you have not, why not? Maybe you are just buying the story your brain is trying to tell you. It is time to talk back to it and say the stories are over. I want you to think of a moment you felt confident and another where you did not.
Where in your life did you feel confident one time, and where in your life did you not feel confident? Why is it that you are the same person? You still have the same skills. Why did you not feel confident in both of those situations? What was the difference? Your body interprets those situations as if from a different state. Your body state changed. Internally, your state changed. What caused the change? Change might be something related to the past that you had experienced. It is not like confidence just disappears.
Your system just shifts into protection in areas, and that stems from stories that we have stored. That stems from our brain hijacking and telling us how horrible I would be in this situation. If our brain has the power to do that, why not take control of the brain? You own it. You have ultimate control over your brain. Do not allow it to speak to you in that way. What I want you to do is stop blaming yourself for not having confidence. If you are one of those people, if your child is lacking confidence, stop blaming them, stop blaming yourself.
You have ultimate control over your brain. Do not allow it to speak to you in a negative way.
It is not it, it is the internal state that is being affected, and if that affects it, we are going to act and show a lack of confidence. Through our model, we always look at a few things. I want to talk about how to get yourself always in flow, so that when you do arrive at situations where your confidence disappears, just because it does not seem like it was a problem, and it just disappears, here are things that you can look at. Number one is safety. We are 100% at any given moment if safety is not protected.
Our body will react in order to protect us. That is a universal law for humans. Safety can be adjusted by the tone of somebody, the way they are speaking to you, the way they are looking at you, and the way the environment is. Many things can alter safety. Number one, we need to become very aware of what type of situation, what type of tone, what type of person can alter our safety and our protection mode. When does it turn on?
When does it get triggered? Now, trigger is a word everyone is using, but when does it get triggered? A trigger is when something is acting on us that is making me act upon it. What are those situations for you? Become aware of it, extremely aware of it. For example, since I was growing up with my dad, the way he would ask me questions, there are men I meet in my work now who can really trigger that. I am already aware of that. In front of them, my confidence can drop.
That does not mean I am not confident. Sometimes I am even more qualified than the man I am talking to. Sometimes I know he does not know what he is talking about. Why am I lacking that confidence? It’s because of the tone and because of the way he has already upset my safety and my protection, nothing to do with this person in front of me. It was to do with something from my past.
That is what I have to be aware of when I am talking to someone. When I notice that this person has the same or similar thing that can alter my or trigger my confidence, I get into even more positions, like body postures, how I sit, and how I speak. The words that I choose have to be very intentional. That helps me to stay. That helps me to stay. Right now I got into the state to talk to somebody who would be close to representing my dad because I do have it.
That is why we need to know the stories that affect us. Now my confidence does not drop in front of those men. The conversations are different. My posture is different. I talk differently. I am confident. I have got to stay confident because the minute I do not, guess what happens to me? This is from experience. Some men have taken advantage of me in the business world by telling me they can do this and that, and then eventually not delivering anything.
It is not man against woman, but as a woman, I need to know exactly where I can lose my confidence. It is safe. My nervous system, if it does not feel safe, will start shutting down, and it will start protecting me. I will look at the lack of confidence, and the minute somebody knows you are lacking confidence, you know what, they have the upper hand. It is like boxing. I love boxing. I am a boxer. I go there at 6:00 AM. You know why?
That is where I get my confidence to tell my old stories to back off. Get out of my way. You had enough time in my life to control me. Now it is my turn. That is what happens if I do not work on my nervous system and if I do not protect my nervous system to stay calm at all times. My confidence will disappear. That is one of the things that you can look at as well, safety. The next one is alignment. If systems are in conflict, you will hesitate, you will overthink, you will pull back. What does alignment mean?
We have systems working for us. This is one body, but inside we have many systems. I map across twelve systems when we are helping and coaching people. By doing that, we find the exact block in which system. The systems are in conflict. Guess what happens? You will hesitate. You will overthink. You will pull back. That is why when I am making decisions, I do not overthink anymore because my systems are in alignment.
If they are not in alignment, I know how to get them into alignment like that because it comes from a lot of time talking to my brain. My brain is the biggest culprit in upsetting the systems. I know things might seem very simple right now, but that is what life is. It is simple. We complicate it. Our body and everything is very much a code that, if we follow, is universal. What happens if my alignment is in conflict? Do you think you are going to be confident? Do you think confidence is born outside?
No, it is born inside from the alignment of all the systems. That is when we do not hesitate. If I do not hesitate in any situation, what does that look like to the external world? "She is so confident." If I do not overthink and I say, “Yeah, I think that is the right answer. Let us go. Let us do it. That is the right solution. Let us do it.”
If I do not overthink and come to things like this, people are going to say, “Look at her. She is so confident." Of course, because I am in alignment. My systems are in alignment. If I do not pull back and I stand and ground my stand in any situation, what are they going to say? "She is very confident, or he is very confident." Why do I not pull back? It’s because my systems are in alignment.
Have I done the opposite before? Of course. I know this because I have lived lacking confidence for many years. What I had to do was get my systems into alignment. Another thing that you can look into is your systems. Are your systems in alignment? The next thing that happens is when we have the safety and alignment. If they come together, if I am not in my protection mode, and if my systems are in alignment, guess what that is going to do to expression? Look at this. I am not protecting anything.
My systems are in alignment. If they both come together like an equation, what do you think it is going to equal for you? Confidence, exactly. Yes, confidence shows up naturally. Guess what? Confidence is a byproduct. It was never the starting point. Do you see why we are pushing confidence, but we are not looking at it from this internal system? It makes confidence such a hard thing to come by.
Where in your life do you feel you know what to do, but something is holding you back? Where in your life right now do you know what to do, but something is holding you back? Is that a lack of confidence after all the conversation we had today? No. That is your system protecting you. It is time to look at why that protection is there. What is going on? Why is your system protecting you? That is what I would look into.
We need to shift saying, "Be confident. Why aren't you confident? Come on, let us be confident." We need to stop saying this. We need to start saying or asking a new question, which would be, "What would make this moment feel safe enough to move?" Can we shift? Can we honor our body and look at what our body is doing in order to help us, instead of saying all these things back to the body and ourselves by saying, "I lack confidence, or you lack confidence." You are coaching, parenting, or teaching someone else.
Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words
Here is what I want to leave you with. Confidence was never something you had to earn, or you have to be with, or be born with. It is something that you always have within you when your system is ready, when this body in your home is ready. Stop trying to be confident. We need to stop trying to be confident.
We need to start clearing what is in the way, and then everything flows. Stop trying to be confident. Start clearing what is in the way, and then see what happens. Tell me what happens. Send me a DM because I am interested in knowing. I can guarantee that you are going to have confidence. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you all of you for sending in all of your comments, and I get so many DMs now, which I love to read. Thank you so much for doing that.
I want to hear if you can follow this and stop trying to be confident or get too confident and make the clearing happen so that confidence becomes a byproduct of that. These words are byproducts. That is why we have been stuck. We have been told that they were the starting point. Instead, they are the end result. We have so many of these words that have kept us stuck. Let us not get stuck. Let us live in flow. I will see you on another live. Thank you so much, and have a blessed day.