I feel like I trust myself to do challenging things more and I let myself express my emotions and thoughts even though I still judge what comes out. I just practise not giving much importance to whether or not other people judge what comes out and what they might think of it.

I definitely say what I suppose/think/feel knowing it's possibly false and welcome any correction/validation/invalidation. The goal is to let it out.

I had my first equine therapy experience and it revealed that this is something I have to work on:

- Take up space

- Be grounded in stillness and not moved easily to plase others

- Express my dislikes freely

- Have more courage

- Stop comparing myself to others

https://personalexcellence.co/blog/self-confidence/

The lack of confidence is the root of most problems. Having confidence is the end to all issues. This one is the hardest thing to do.

At friends events I've been speaking to new people and made new friends

This is something that I admit, I have struggled with for years. Working on something that is not there, is....well...hard work?

About a year ago my partner saw my poetry notebook lying around and went to read it - I quickly flew across the room and grabbed the book away defensively and couldn't bring myself to let him read it. In the autumn I held a poetry reading night round a bonfire, and read out a few of my poems. Ok, I was so nervous I raced through them and they were read out really badly, but I actually managed to bring myself to read them to a group of people and even got a couple of compliments! (Not on my group reading skills however...!)

Participated in Kickboxing lessons - this one was a while back now, but my sister had been asking me to go to classes with her since I was a little kid and until a year or so ago, I had never had the confidence to agree to it. I really enjoyed it but unfortunately we had to stop the lessons as the time the class was held was prooving difficult.

I participated in Zumba classes. I have been trying to work on my confidence for years now and never would have dreamed of attempting any kind of class let alone an aerobic/dance based one. I went for a few weeks and always put all my effort into it and even found I was managing to keep up pretty well! Really good fun but the classes were getting pretty samey so seemed better value for money just doing it from home...