Taking the Leap: Elisa Boogaerts of Inspiration By Elisa On How To Learn To Believe In Yourself
An Interview With Savio P. Clemente
Your why. Now that you know what’s important to you and what you value, think of what your true motivation is behind what you want. What is the deep-down reason behind this new initiative you want to start for yourself? Knowing this will motivate you to continually make progress toward it. My true motivation for quitting my corporate job to become a full-time Confidence Coach is that my passion is to help people confidently be themselves and step into a life that fulfills what they truly want. I was secretly, miserably stuck for many years of my life and I was able to break through this and became much happier because of it. Think of what the world would be like if there were more confidently humble people living a purposeful life and spreading their positive energy to everyone they meet. That’s my mission. That’s what keeps me going.
Starting something new is scary. Learning to believe in yourself can be a critical precursor to starting a new initiative. Why is it so important to learn to believe in yourself? How can someone work on gaining these skills? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders, authors, writers, coaches, medical professionals, teachers, to share empowering insights about “How To Learn To Believe In Yourself.” As a part of this series we had the pleasure of interviewing Elisa Boogaerts.
Elisa is the founder of Inspiration By Elisa, a Transformational Speaker, and a certified Life Coach and Health Coach who specializes in confidence. Elisa’s passion is to help people confidently be themselves and put themselves first so they can go after what they want and create a fulfilled life. She believes that confidence is the essence of living a happy life.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. My childhood was full of change! So I felt like I was constantly starting something new which left me feeling insecure and I didn’t believe in myself. Being the youngest and a girl in a male-dominated house didn’t help either. I felt like I was always being teased and excluded. I felt like I wasn’t capable of doing what my brothers could do. I was often left to my own devices to figure it out on my own. With a low belief in myself, I didn’t pursue much as a child. Even in school, I didn’t try to get good grades because I thought I was stupid so why bother. I scraped by and pretty much just passed all my classes. It wasn’t until I was in college that I actually put the effort in and got straight A’s. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I started to believe in myself. When this belief in myself started to grow, it was amazing the positive feedback I got. This reinforced my self-belief and gave me the confidence to start pursuing my dreams and what I wanted in my life.
What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.
There have been times in my life when I didn’t know what I wanted. I had a friend who asked me that question and I was completely stumped. There have been times in my life when I did know what I wanted but it meant change, going against the status quo or all of the “should” of life that I was already ticking the boxes of “like a good girl”. So I felt stuck, though really I was secretly stuck because why would I change a life that was perceived as good from the outside in?
The truth is, I was miserable. There have been many times when I’ve felt miserable in a particular part of my life, not necessarily the whole thing and I had to think about what I wanted on my personal development journey.
On that journey is where I was introduced to coaching and was coached myself. I saw the power in it and I was sparked! I found my passion to help people with self-confidence. From a place of self-confidence is where you can go after what you want! So I’ve made it my mission to help people with that.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first started being on podcasts and doing public speaking online, I thought that podcasts were generally audio-only. The first podcast I signed up to speak on didn’t send me any information about what would happen. I just got a calendar link. So I was kinda going in blind and had my assumptions that it would be audio only and that even though it was a Zoom link they sent me, I could remain off-camera. Well, that was not the case! The podcaster would record the audio and he was going to post the recorded video on YouTube. I was not camera ready! The lesson I learned is that whenever I meet anyone for anything to do with my business, to always prepare and be presentable because you just never know what might happen.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
I’m working on an online summit with some fellow coaches that is on May 20th. It’s called The Art of Self-Connection: A Summit on Inspiring Self-Discovery and Empowerment. This summit will help people deepen their understanding of themselves and develop the confidence to create a life fulfilled.
I’m also working on putting together an in-person retreat here on the west coast of Canada. This will be in the Fall of 2023. It will be an immersive and transformative experience to help people destress, center themselves and learn ways to align their busy lives with their desires and values.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. This will be intuitive to you but it will be helpful to spell this out directly. Can you help explain a few reasons why it is so important to believe in yourself? Can you share a story or give some examples?
It’s important to believe in yourself because, without your own self-belief, you may not live to your full potential and achieve all the things you want in your life. We often look to others for them to believe in us which can be a good motivator to get you started but to maintain progress, you need to believe in yourself. Only you can do what you do. You need to believe in yourself before other people can.
When I was in my early 20s, I really wanted to go traveling and explore the world. This meant a lot of change though. I would need to pack up my life so I could go backpacking. And do it on my own. If I didn’t believe in myself that I would be able to fly to a foreign country and figure out how that country works and how to travel around it, I wouldn’t have gone. I’m so glad that I did. My first trip was to three countries. Sure I got lost and booked the wrong date at a hostel and almost missed my bus because I forgot to set an alarm. All of these challenges and mistakes were part of the adventure. Since that trip, I’ve now traveled to 53 countries!
What exactly does it mean to believe in yourself? Can I believe that I can be a great artist even though I’m not very talented? Can I believe I can be a gold medal Olympic even if I’m not athletic? Can you please explain what you mean?
To believe in yourself is to trust that you are capable of achieving what you want. Having this belief is unfortunately not the only thing needed to be successful. In your example, you can learn the skill of being an artist and through a lot of consistent practice and learning, you could become great. You can become athletic even if you are not right now and through a lot of training and hard work you could get into the Olympics. We can become what we believe because beliefs are the foundation of how we run our lives. Your beliefs help you make decisions towards your goals. You need to repeatedly choose, practice and live in your beliefs. If you align your thoughts, beliefs and actions, you will achieve what you want. But it takes consistent and dedicated practice on a daily basis. This takes time so be patient.
What exactly does it mean to believe in yourself? Can I believe that I can be a great artist even though I’m not very talented? Can I believe I can be a gold medal Olympic even if I’m not athletic? Can you please explain what you mean?
There have been times in my life when I didn’t believe that I was capable of having a healthy relationship. Because I didn’t believe this, I would sabotage relationships. I had a 6-month expiry. No relationship made it past 6 months. I would go into a relationship knowing that after a few months, I would decide this person wasn’t for me and I’d break up with them. It was as if I manifested unavailable men or men who were not for me to make this belief a reality.
At what point did you realize that in order to get to the next level, it would be necessary to build up your belief in yourself? Can you share the story with us?
Before becoming a coach, I was a project manager in technology. It was when I lived in Europe that I pursued my project management career. Before then I was just working “office jobs” and didn’t really know what I was doing with my career. My manager at the time suggested project management because it suited my skill set and what I liked to do at work. She gave me a few small projects to start out on. Around the same time, I decided to move to London, England which meant I had to quit my job. In London, I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t have much experience in project management. I got my PRINCE2 certification and started applying for jobs in the industry. I knew that even though I only had one certification and a few small projects under my belt I had the skills to be a good project manager, I just needed to convince the person hiring me of that. I had to build up the belief in myself that I did have the skills. That I was a hard worker and smart and would learn as I go. I had to keep this belief in myself to not give up after getting declined applications and interviews. I persisted because I knew that if I wanted to get to this next level in my career, I needed to be persistent. I did eventually get a job, not as a project manager but in the project management office so at least I had my foot in the door. I eventually worked my way up to becoming a Staff Technical Program Manager. If I didn’t believe in myself and persisted, I wouldn’t have been as successful.
What are your top 5 strategies that will help someone learn to believe in themselves? Please share a story or example for each.
1 . Focus on what’s going well. When you start to work towards a new goal or way of being, it’s important to recognize, every day, what is going well with the progress you are making towards it. I like to think of success as each step that we take towards something we want, not just when we achieve it. Most of us are so used to focusing on what’s not going well and what we’re doing wrong which can have the opposite effect of believing in yourself. Sure there will be ups and downs as you progress. Even in the downs, there is always something that is going well, no matter how small it may seem. All we’re doing is recognizing ourselves for doing the best we can with what we have. What I like to do every night before bed is write down three things that went well that day. I have my journal on my nightstand so I won’t forget to do it and I spent just a few minutes thinking of what went well that day.
2 . Positive self-talk and affirmations. Positive affirmations are statements that you make that open up your mind to start transforming and enable that statement to become a reality. They help us to make natural mindset shifts over time. They are positive statements of how you want your life to be and how you want to be as a person. They are incredibly powerful and really help when we are actively evolving and changing. Positive self-talk raises self-compassion and puts a smile on your face. Affirmations are mindset changers! When you do this daily, you will develop a more positive mindset and internal narrative which will increase your belief in yourself.
About 12 years ago, I decided that I wanted to be a more calm person. I noticed that I would react to things in a negative way and I wanted to change that. So I created some affirmations and recited those affirmations to myself each morning. During the day, if I reacted to something negatively, I would beat myself up for it. In that moment, I would catch myself saying the negative thing and would say the positive affirmation instead. I remember that one day something happened and a friend of mine reacted negatively but I didn’t. I was shocked to realize that I had changed without realizing I had. It was amazing!
3 . Define what’s important to you. To learn to believe in yourself, it’s important to live your life being authentic, doing what you want to do and prioritizing what’s important to you. Living to these can guide your choices and leave you feeling more confident in yourself. So thinking about your true authentic self right now in your life, what’s important to you? Be sure to think of what’s important to you, your true authentic self, not what “should” be important to you. We want to remove the “shoulds”. Make a list and then say them out loud one by one. When doing this, notice if any one of them lights you up and makes your heart feel full. The ones that really spark you, are good ones to start with. In your daily life, you want to try to increase the time you spend on activities that are the most important and are interesting and rewarding. Try doing only things that are easy, effortless, enjoyable, meaningful, and that contribute to what’s important to you right now. For example, with me right now, what’s very important to me is to make a positive impact on people’s lives through my signature talk. So every day I make sure to look for speaking opportunities to share my message and help people.
4 . Live to your values. This is another way to learn to believe in yourself because when you are living to your values, you feel like you are living more on purpose and will have more confidence in yourself. Sometimes it can be hard to think of what your values are. One way to help with this is to think of people in your life that you admire. These could be people that you know, don’t know, dead or alive. What qualities do these people have that you admire so much? Why did they make your list? What qualities do these people have in common? These common qualities are likely what you value as well. The idea here is that you can only see in others what you have within you. So the qualities you see, you also have and value. I did this exercise myself and I took the top 10 qualities and wrote them on a post-it as an “I Am” statement. For example “I am calm.” I put this post-it with all my “I Am” statements on the mirror in my bathroom. So each morning as I brush my teeth, I say them to myself. This really helps me believe in myself, who I am and what I value.
5 . Your why. Now that you know what’s important to you and what you value, think of what your true motivation is behind what you want. What is the deep-down reason behind this new initiative you want to start for yourself? Knowing this will motivate you to continually make progress toward it. My true motivation for quitting my corporate job to become a full-time Confidence Coach is that my passion is to help people confidently be themselves and step into a life that fulfills what they truly want. I was secretly, miserably stuck for many years of my life and I was able to break through this and became much happier because of it. Think of what the world would be like if there were more confidently humble people living a purposeful life and spreading their positive energy to everyone they meet. That’s my mission. That’s what keeps me going.
Conversely, how can one stop the negative stream of self-criticism that often accompanies us as we try to grow?
Well, the first thing I want us all to realize is that we are perfectly imperfect. We are all perfectly imperfect. We can often get stressed out worrying about what other people will think of us. We get stressed out if we don’t get something right or don’t do something good enough. We think that if we get it perfect, no one will criticize us. The thing is, someone is always going to judge you or criticize you somewhere at some point. You can’t please everyone because we are all so different and have different perspectives that what you see as perfect, someone else will not see it the same way. And it’s likely that you will judge yourself even harder than anyone else. This can be even more painful.
So when judgements come up or you’re resisting an imperfection or you’re about to give up because you’re worried about what someone might say to you, try to catch it in the moment. Acknowledge it. These feelings are real right now so feel them and get curious about these thoughts and feelings. Ask if this judgment is really true and how you can flip it into something positive or more compassionate or more loving.
Are there any misconceptions about self-confidence and believing in oneself that you would like to dispel?
Yes! Being confident isn’t about ego. It doesn’t need to have an aggressive tone to it. You can be confident and still be kind and gentle. You can be confident without bragging or boasting or being overly bold. You can be confident without being in a position of power. If you break down the word confidence, confide means to trust. Having self-confidence is to trust in yourself. It’s just you, trusting yourself that you can do what it is that you want to do.
What advice would you give to someone who is struggling with imposter syndrome?
When someone is struggling with imposter syndrome, it’s usually based on some type of fear that is translating into negative thoughts and chatter in their heads. So you want to discover what the underlying fear is behind what you feel an imposter for and embrace that fear. Likely, your fears are not as bad as you think they are so try facing them head-on. Then you want to take the power away from this fear that is holding you back. See this fear or challenge as an opportunity to learn and grow and trust in yourself. See if you can change the meaning you are making about this fear and flip it to something more positive (refer to the #2 tip above). From here, think of a bunch of things that you love about yourself, that you are really good at. This will boost your confidence and smash out imposter syndrome!
Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Self-love. I believe that you must love yourself, take care of yourself, and give yourself permission to put yourself first in your life. When you love yourself, you will have extra energy and love to give in abundance to those in your world! It starts with you.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)
I’d love to have a private breakfast or lunch with Caroline Goyder. I find her so inspiring. I’d love to know her journey. She is big in the field of confidence and speaking. I’d love to pick her brain on how she came up with Gravitas and grew her empire.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspirationbyelisa/
Website: https://www.inspirationbyelisa.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InspirationByElisa
Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success
About The Interviewer: Savio P. Clemente coaches cancer survivors to overcome the confusion and gain the clarity needed to get busy living in mind, body, and spirit. He inspires health and wellness seekers to find meaning in the “why” and cultivate resilience in their mindset. Savio is a Board Certified Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC, ACC), #1 best-selling author, syndicated columnist, podcaster, stage 3 cancer survivor, and founder of The Human Resolve LLC. He has interviewed notable celebrities and TV personalities and has been featured on Fox News, The Wrap, and has worked with Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, BuzzFeed, Food Network, WW and Bloomberg. Savio has been invited to cover numerous industry events throughout the U.S. and abroad. His mission is to provide clients, listeners, and viewers alike with tangible takeaways on how to lead a truly healthy, wealthy, and wise lifestyle. Savio pens a weekly newsletter in which he delves into secrets to living smarter by feeding your “three brains” — head , heart , and gut — in the hope of connecting the dots to those sticky parts of our nature that matter to living our best life.
