#13. Low Confidence? Learn Better Decision-Making

Staring at a menu too long, rewriting the same text, or living in the land of maybe isn’t a character flaw - it’s a signal that your confidence got outsourced. In this episode, host Kristin Hamilton opens up about how that happens in midlife and share a simple, repeatable way to rebuild self-trust so choices feel cleaner, calmer, and more aligned with who you are now.

We start by redefining confidence as the ability to handle what comes next, not the pressure to predict the perfect outcome. From there, we walk through the “confidence loop”: make a small decision, follow through, witness your ability, and bank the evidence. I share my own post-divorce story - navigating every choice alone with two kids - and how doing the reps shifted my baseline from second-guessing to grounded clarity and ultimately solid confidence from within. You’ll also learn the brain science behind decision stress: why the amygdala hijacks your system and how breath, grounding, and somatic check-ins bring your prefrontal cortex back online.

Then we get practical. Use the two-minute rule for low-stakes choices, ask better questions that honor your values, and separate fear’s urgent shout from intuition’s steady voice. Try the expansive vs constricting body test to sense alignment before you rationalize it away. We also explore the energy side of confidence: releasing the need for validation, acting from self-certainty, and letting reality organize around your stance. To anchor it all, I offer journal prompts to reclaim decisions you’ve delayed and to practice choosing without apology.

🦋 Would you like help walking through these steps, or with accountability, or deeper dives into these topics? Interested in learning more about working 1:1 with me to transform your life in your rediscovery? Schedule a free Discovery call with me here: https://stan.store/MidlifeConfidenceLab

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🎵 Theme Music: Home by Vlad Gluschenko @vladest_art — Home

License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Problem Framing
• 1:57 How Confidence Gets Outsourced
• 3:42 Midlife Shifts And Self-Doubt
• 5:07 Redefining Confidence And The Loop
• 6:42 Personal Story Of Rebuilding
• 7:32 Brain Science Of Decision Stress
• 8:37 Somatic Tools For Clarity
• 9:47 Five Practical Ways To Start
• 12:12 Energy, Alignment, And Magnetism
• 13:37 Journal Prompts And Closing Call

Transcript

Kristin: 0:40

You're listening to Edge of Real, a podcast for women rediscovering who they really are, beyond the rules, roles, timelines, and expectations. I'm your host, Kristin Hamilton, and I am so glad you're here. If you've ever stared at a menu for too long, rewritten a text 15 times, or stayed stuck in a maybe until it made you anxious, you are not alone. For so many women in midlife, it's not that we don't know what we want, it's that somewhere along the way, we stopped trusting ourselves to choose. We became the ones who made decisions for everyone else, the family, the job, the community, but not for ourselves. And over time, that steady external focus eroded our internal trust of ourselves. Today we're talking about rebuilding confidence and decision-making power in a way that feels authentic, embodied, and truly yours. It's about remembering that you are the authority on your own life. In this episode, we'll discuss why confidence and decision-making fade in midlife, how to rebuild both, practically and energetically, and the connection between self-trust and inner peace. So let's get into it. For most of us, this loss of confidence doesn't happen all at once. It's a slow fade. A thousand tiny moments of second guessing. A hundred times you put someone else's comfort before your truth. Years of being rewarded for playing small, for being agreeable, flexible, easy to get along with. Confidence, in many ways, isn't lost. It becomes outsourced. We learn to look outside of ourselves for direction to ask, what will they think? before asking, what do I feel? I know I certainly had that people-pleasing tendency. I absolutely deferred to my husband, my parents, my friends, my kids to make the decisions, half believing that I was just there to follow through on whatever they decided. And then midlife arrives. Roles shift, kids grow, our household makeup changes, relationships change, bodies change, and suddenly the external avenues of identity don't feel solid anymore. Women in midlife often hear the cultural messaging of it's too late or you shouldn't change now, which can trigger self-doubt. And because we have externalized the decision making for so long, that self-doubt can be deafening because we've gotten used to not listening to ourselves in order to hear everyone else. Hormonal shifts can also heighten anxiety and hesitation. This makes decision fatigue a real thing. That's when the questions start to come in. If I'm not who I've always been to others, then who am I now? Think about the last time you doubted yourself. Was it really about not knowing? Or was it about fearing the fallout of your choice? Because that's the exact moment that confidence is asking to be rebuilt, but this time from the inside out. So let's redefine confidence. Confidence isn't knowing what to do, it's trusting yourself to handle whatever happens next. That's why confidence and decision making go hand in hand, because decision making is the outward expression of self-trust. Decision making is an energetic muscle. It's a muscle, one that can atrophy when we spend too much time deferring to others. But it's fully capable of being rebuilt by doing the reps, exactly how we build every other muscle or habit. So here's what I call the confidence loop. Number one, make a small decision. Number two, follow through on it. Number three, witness your ability. Number four, build evidence that you can trust yourself. That evidence becomes your new baseline, and the loop continues. So confidence doesn't come before the action, it comes from the action. After my divorce, I was on my own in a town we'd only lived in for two years. No family, no co-parent, and I felt an immense amount of pressure about suddenly having to make every decision for myself and my two kids. Everything from the basic what to make for dinner and logistics to what kind of car should I get, to how much to budget for if something big was needed, to all the travel arrangements to visit family, literally everything about my and my two kids' lives. Now I had very low self-esteem and very low self-trust at that time. I told myself two things around decision making right around then. One was that I was the only one who would do it. So I didn't have a choice but to do it, and eventually I would get good at it. The second, that I needed to step up and learn to trust myself quickly, because again, what choice did I have? I second-guessed myself over and over, but I also learned to trust myself and my intuition over and over. It was truly a sink or swim situation, except that the two little people I loved the most in the entire world were counting on me, and they trusted me entirely. So I learned to trust myself also. I stumbled, I fell flat on my face more than once, but I got up again every single time. I reassessed, I got better, and I kept going. I followed that confidence loop around and around and around and around and around until I was no longer dizzy. I reset my baseline each time around, getting stronger in myself and my confidence with every loop around. And I am pretty damn solid now. When I do question myself, I know I have the foundation and I have the tools to be able to get right back up again. So here's a little neuroscience behind why decision making feels so hard sometimes. When you are stressed or uncertain or afraid of getting it wrong, the amygdala in your brain, the fear center of your brain, kicks in the high alert. It tells your body that you are in danger. Even if the danger is just making a choice that someone else might not approve of. But when you practice mindfulness, grounding or somatic awareness, you calm the nervous system. And that allows your prefrontal cortex or the logical higher thinking part of your brain to step back into control. This is why body-based awareness is such a powerful tool in decision making. I've said it before, and I will say it again. Being aware of your body mechanics is so important. Meditation, like I do, or yoga, or just taking the time to be in your body. Try this. Before any decision, pause and ask yourself: does this feel expansive or constricting in my body? See, your body knows that it's been speaking the truth way before your mind even learned to doubt the truth. So I hope I've explained how taking back your decision-making power builds self-trust, which in turn builds your confidence. So, how do we rebuild decision-making power? Let's talk about how to start today. One way is to start small and build momentum. Confidence builds through repetition, not perfection. Start with low-stakes decisions. Choose what to wear, what to eat, how to spend a free half hour in your day. Make a quick choice, stick with it, and remind yourself I trust myself. A second way to start today: separate fear from intuition. Fear is loud and urgent. Intuition is calm and grounding. Learn the language of your body. We've discussed somatic intelligence, noticing differences in the physical sensations of when something is aligned versus when it's not. Episode seven about living in alignment was where I really went into a lot of detail about this. So go back and re-listen to episode seven if you want to kind of relearn or or listen again for the first time if you haven't heard that one yet. I also go into a kind of a body check-in technique, a somatic exercise that can be really, really helpful. So another way when you're unsure, take a deep breath and listen for which voice feels rooted versus reactive. You can use a short body check-in technique before making decisions and ask yourself again, does this feel expansive or constricting? And sometimes when you have those big decisions to make, journaling or breath work before making those decisions can really help quiet the noise of fear and can help you tap into your intuition to help you make those big decisions. A third thing you can do today, use the two-minute rule. If a decision doesn't carry long-term consequences, make it in two minutes or less. Train your brain to trust your instincts again. This will also help to avoid the dreaded analysis paralysis that we've all experienced. A fourth thing, ask better questions. Instead of what should I do? Try what choice honors who I am or what would feel most aligned with myself right now. When you ask better questions, you get better answers. And a fifth thing, actively rebuild your inner authority. Say it out loud. I am the authority on my life. Confidence is a reclamation. It's permission to stop waiting for validation from anyone else and then find proof of this in your life. Every time you make a decision that is in alignment with who you are, that is proof that you can trust yourself to make decisions. So confidence isn't just mindset, it's energy. It is energetic permission to live your life as your truest self. We've talked about the energy receptivity paradox. When you need something to validate your worth, you actually push it away because that sends out this desperate energy, right? So when you release the need, you magnetize naturally. Einstein and Tesla both spoke to this idea that everything is frequency, everything is energy. I've discussed this in lots of past episodes. Confidence operates on a frequency of self-certainty. When you stand in your own energetic vibration, your own vibe, your own, your own energetic signature, the universe will meet you there. That's the law of assumption and action. Assume your own capability. If I already trusted myself fully, how would I act today? Embody the confidence before the evidence of the confidence is there. When you embody that now, reality will begin to organize around it. So confidence isn't about becoming her, it's about being her now. When you believe that your choices are valid, you magnetize experiences that affirm those choices. Because like attracts like energetically. It's physics, it's it's science, it's it's the rules. Let's end with a few journal prompts to ground this and really get it into your life. Where have I given away my decision-making power? And what small choice can I reclaim today? What would trusting myself look like in this season of life? What am I ready to decide without apology? And one more. What's one choice I've been delaying? And how would it feel to make it now, even if imperfectly? So confidence and decision making aren't about knowing everything. They're about knowing yourself. When you trust yourself again, your world expands. If this episode resonated, please share it with someone. Let's start a revolution of confident women who are choosing more out of their lives. Also, leaving me a rating and review helps me so very much, and it would only take seconds out of your day. Until next time, stay open, stay curious. Choose to trust yourself in your decision-making power and rebuild that confidence to start feeling into and embodying who you really are. And remember, you're not lost. You're on the edge of something real. Love you. Bye-bye. If what we talked about today feels close to home, if you're tired of dimming yourself down, second guessing every decision, or feeling like you've lost track of who you really are, I want you to know you don't have to figure it out alone. This is exactly the work I do with women in my one-to-one coaching experience. Together, we talk through what's keeping you stuck, reconnect you with the truest version of yourself, and create simple, empowering steps that help you move forward with clarity, confidence, and a clear path. Knowing the steps is one thing, but actually walking them out is another. That's where coaching becomes so powerful. I'll be there to help you stay accountable, to support you when old habits try to pull you back, and to keep you moving forward even when the path feels buggy. Sometimes we all need a guide, someone who can hold the mirror, remind us who we are, and walk alongside us until we're steady in that truth ourselves. If you've been listening and thinking, yes, that is what I need, I'd love to invite you to book a free discovery call with me through the link in the show notes. I'd love to meet you and walk this path of rediscovery with you. Because the edge isn't the end, it's the becoming