Five Easy Daily Habits to Quietly Build Your Self-Confidence
Hello everyone, and welcome to another Teachable Moment.
I’m Patricia Noel Drain, and I’m your teacher for this moment today.
We started these in between interviews, and you asked me to keep going—so here we are. I’ll keep this in the 10–15 minute range, just like I promise in my videos.
Today’s topic is close to my heart:
Five easy daily habits for improving your self-confidence.
Do they work?
Yes. They’ve worked for so many people that I simply have to share them with you.
Why Confidence Matters More Than You Think
As a business mentor for many years, I began to notice something important:
I could only take people—as well as myself—to the level of their confidence about what they were doing with their life.
Not their talent.
Not their education.
Not even their big ideas.
Their confidence.
So I realized, “I need to do something about this. I need to help people raise that inner ceiling.”
And then, life decided to give me a lesson.
When My Confidence Took a Hit
I’ve been blessed with a lot of natural confidence.
Sometimes with things I probably shouldn’t even be confident about!
I’m not the person who walks into a room thinking,
“Who’s looking at me?”
I walk in thinking,
“Who can I go meet? Who can I talk to? Who can I get to know?”
That’s just how I’m wired, and I’ve always considered it a gift.
But recently, like many of you, I’ve been shaken a bit.
The world has gone through a lot together all at once. Many of us have had to reinvent, adjust, or start over in new ways.
For me, one of those reinventions was podcasting.
You might even be watching or reading this because of that decision.
I loved it—but I knew I didn’t have all the tools. So I joined a podcasting course.
There were about 20 people in the course. I could have been their mother… or grandmother. That alone put a little dent in my confidence.
But here’s where it really hit:
Every time the teacher would say:
“Go ahead and share your screen.”
“Show us your Facebook group.”
“Pull up your settings.”
…everyone else just clicked and did it.
And I sat there thinking, “I don’t know how to do that.”
I couldn’t even listen without wearing headphones, which made me feel silly every time I appeared on the screen.
I was humbled.
Taken right to my knees.
It was a good reminder:
Confidence is not something you have once and keep forever.
You tend it. You care for it. You rebuild it. Daily.
That’s what these five habits are about.
Habit #1: Check In With Yourself (On a Scale of 1–10)
This is where we start: with you, not with social media, not the news, not everyone else’s life.
Once a day, ask yourself:
“On a scale of 1–10, how happy am I today?”
Write down the number.
Then ask:
“What could I do today that might move that number up by just one point?”
I asked one of my clients, Mary, this question. She said she was at a 7.
So I asked:
“What would make it an 8?”
She thought for a moment and said:
“If I go for a 30-minute walk, with my favorite playlist, I know I’ll feel fresh and new when I get back.”
She did it.
She didn’t just move from 7 to 8—she went to a 9.
Another woman told me she was at a 6 and wanted to be at a 7, but she felt stuck. Her first impulse was to go get ice cream, even though she was already struggling with her weight.
Sometimes you’ll know exactly what will help.
Sometimes you might need to ask for support.
That’s okay.
The point is not to “jump to a 10.”
The point is to ask, every day:
“Where am I… and can I be just a little happier today?”
That practice alone starts to rebuild your confidence.
Habit #2: Ask, “What Do I Love About Myself Today?”
Years ago, I wrote a children’s book called I Love Myself the Way I Am.
It has a little song that goes with it, and it’s just delightful.
Do you know who cries when I read it?
Not the children.
The adults.
We are so practiced at criticizing ourselves, and so unpracticed at loving ourselves.
So, once a day, write down:
“Today, what I love about myself is…”
It might be:
“I kept going, even when it was hard.”
“I showed up, even though I was nervous.”
“I told the truth about how I felt.”
In that podcast course, I decided that what I loved about myself was this:
“I stayed.
I finished.
I found the golden nuggets, even when I felt like the worst student there.”
Another woman in the course shared her story—pregnancy, loss, nervous breakdown, rehab, and grief she had never fully processed after her husband’s death. And she was still there, still willing to grow.
What she loved about herself that day was her honesty and her courage.
You have those kinds of strengths too.
You just have to start noticing them.
Habit #3: Use the “Even If…” Method
We are all walking through big things right now. You are not alone in that.
One of my favorite tools is what I call the “Even If” method.
It sounds like this:
“Even if the news is heavy today, my job is to bring joy into my life and into the lives of the people who matter to me.”
“Even if I didn’t get that deal I really wanted, I can still let joy into my heart.”
“Even if today didn’t go the way I planned, I can still choose one small step forward.”
You’re not pretending everything is wonderful.
You’re simply saying:
“Even if this is true… my job is still to bring in joy, meaning, and hope.”
That is a quiet, powerful confidence-builder.
Habit #4: Ask, “What Was My Highlight Today?”
About 35–40 years ago, our family started a simple question at the dinner table:
“What was your highlight today?”
We still do it.
Our children do it with their children.
Friends have adopted it. It’s become a tradition.
One evening, my son Stephen—about seven years old at the time—said:
“My highlight was that I didn’t get beat up at recess today. Billy actually played with me.”
Can you imagine if I had never asked that question?
I wouldn’t have known what he was going through. That one “highlight” opened up a conversation we needed to have.
You can ask this of yourself too, even if you live alone:
“What was my highlight today?”
It might be as simple as:
A kind smile from a stranger.
A moment of laughter.
Finishing something that had weighed on you.
When you train yourself to look for highlights, you build confidence that your life already holds more goodness than you might be noticing.
Habit #5: Create a Visible Confidence Anchor
Years ago, I listened to Tony Robbins talk about having a physical “reset” signal—something you do with your body to bring yourself back to center when life knocks you down.
It might be:
Tapping your hand
Touching your ear
Taking one deep breath and squaring your shoulders
I created my own visual anchor:
I give myself a small thumbs-up and silently say,
“I’ve got this.”
When I’m walking into an important meeting, I do my little thumbs-up.
When I’m about to ask for something scary, I do it again.
It’s visible. It’s simple.
And it sends a message to your brain:
“We can do this.”
You can choose your own anchor. Just make it:
Easy
Repeatable
Meaningful for you
Then use it—over and over.
Try These for One Week… and Let Me Know What Happens
So here are your five easy daily habits:
Check in with yourself on a 1–10 happiness scale.
Ask what you love about yourself today.
Use the “Even If…” method when things feel heavy.
Name your daily highlight.
Use a simple confidence anchor (like a thumbs-up: “I’ve got this.”).
I’d love for you to try them for just one week.
Then email me and tell me what changed for you.
📩 You can reach me at:
patricia@patriciadrain.com
Want Extra Support? Download My Free “5 Steps” Guide
If you’d like to go deeper into who you are at the core, I created a free resource for you:
“5 Easy Ways to Get to the Core of Who You Are.”
It will help you:
See yourself more clearly
Notice what truly matters to you
Begin aligning your life and work with who you really are
That kind of clarity builds real confidence from the inside out.
👉 You can download the 5 Steps guide on my website.
After you do, feel free to email me and share what you discovered. I love hearing your stories.
Until we meet again, this has been your Teachable Moment.
It’s my delight to walk this road with you.
— Patricia Noel Drain
