I used to struggle with making time to develop my confidence. When I prioritised time to grow my confidence, through coaching, training programs, and listening to various podcasts or YouTube channels, I then felt I had no time to put into practice what I learned. Can you relate?

Digging deeper into why I was experiencing this, I learned that the productivity and time management frameworks I was incorporating could only take me so far. What I needed to support it all came as a surprise to me because it was rarely promoted as a solution in my experience. It was rest.

Rest is the thing that gives your mind the space it needs to process and calibrate the new information and experiences you invest in. The consequence of not prioritising rest time includes feeling lost or burnt out. These two things lower your confidence levels.

This is why, after my research and experiencing its benefits, rest is included in the Speak Afraid Method. Want another reason why? Because it is when you prioritise rest, you allow yourself the space to figure out how to make more time for confidence in a way that suits you and meets you where you are at right now. Not resting means you crowd your mind, energy, and experience and this is a crowd where fear, doubt, and negative self-talk likes to party in.

I don’t like partying with fear, doubt, and negative self-talk. Do you? If your answer is no, I’d like to invite you to listen to my newly published book, Speak Afraid, Redirecting Fear Into Courage to Communicate Through Change. It is released first on audio because if you're like me, you like what you may discover via your favourite podcast app. Also it is a great format to help you make time to listen to the book Speak Afraid.

I included it in the Speak Afraid Audio Pack. This pack also includes the audiobook of Confidence Booster, Affirmations to Reframe Your Mindset and Boost Confidence, and 356 Confidence Shifts to help you back yourself every day. I listen to this combination weekly because it helps me stop fear eroding my confidence and gives me courage to back myself, especially when I am stepping into new territory. The bonus. It helps me discover ways that suit me on how to rest (even when I’m working or doing tasks I don’t enjoy doing), increase my capacity without overloading my system, and even experience more joy in my days full of the demands of adulting.

I invite you to invest in time to listen to this book and the rest of the Speak Afraid Audio Pack, because it takes courage to communicate and show up with fear, but this is how lasting confidence is built in a way that grows with you. You may get at blossomingspeaker.com

All the best, Susan.

P.S. Writing the chapter on rest, and applying it were both difficult for me to start doing because it was no longer a natural habit I applied to my life. The rewiring of my mind and habitual practice of this I achieved by taking it one small step at a time, practicing self-compassion, and actively telling myself to release guilt and self-judgement. I will be working with my first Speak Afraid Group Program cohort on this as together we spend eight weeks using the Speak Afraid Method to achieve one specific goal. If this is something you would like to practice too, you may still join, the program starts 12 October 2026.