Virginia Bautista is a LinkedIn and Personal Brand Strategist. She helps professionals, entrepreneurs, consultants and 
freelancers achieve their career or business goals through personal branding on LinkedIn. She is also a mother of 5 kids ranging from ages 5 to 21 years of age. Virginia was an assistant professor of communication for 11+ years. In 2008, she started doing freelance writing while she was still teaching full time. Two years later, in 2010, she left the academia and started to work from home as a full-time freelance writer and editor. She discovered LinkedIn in 2014, and when she was first featured on Forbes in May 2017, everything in her life changed.
Virginia shares how she was able to conquer her own self-limiting beliefs to become the confident woman that she is today. She also shares tips that can help you in your own journey to self confidence.
Bio
Virginia Bautista is a LinkedIn and Personal Brand Strategist.
Cultural Background
Virginia is of Filipina descent.
Favorite Self Confidence Quote
There will always be someone who can’t see your worth. Don’t let it be you.
Definition of Self Confidence
Self confidence is having the ability to make decisions for ourselves without asking for permission.
Her Life Before the Discovery of Self Confidence
When Virginia was younger, she always thought about what others would say. If she felt that they won’t like what she would do, she would just do nothing or do what she thought they would want her to do.
She was in an unending search for people to validate what she wanted to do, for people to like her.
The “AHA” Moment
When Virginia read the book The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, it changed the way she viewed success and failure. Its biggest impact on her was learning how not to ask for permission for anything that she wanted to do with her life and to reject rejection.
She learned to ask what she wanted. She learned to do what most people won’t do without feeling guilty.
She believe in the law of attraction and in self-fulfilling prophecy, so being aware of these concepts gave her the confidence to conquer her own self-limiting beliefs and create her own path to being happy and fulfilled.
Her Life After the Discovery of Self Confidence
After Virginia’s discovery, she discovered how liberating it was to make a decision and own it, how empowering it was to say yes only when it’s absolutely a YES, and say no when she meant NO.
In the past, she often found herself saying yes to everyone, even if it meant she would have to make lots of sacrifices. And she did that because she wanted their approval, and she didn’t have the courage, the self-confidence, to reject and in turn be rejected.
Now, she teaches people personal branding, and personal branding won’t happen unless we have complete self-confidence. So talking to a lot of professionals made her realize that self-confidence doesn’t come naturally for most people.
The One Self Confidence Tip For the Listener
You can’t fake self-confidence. You can’t buy self-confidence. No one is coming to give you self-confidence. The world doesn’t owe you anything. But you owe yourself that effort to believe in yourself even if nobody else does.
Here’s how you can empower yourself to believe in yourself:
#1. Take some time to get to know yourself.
What are your passions, values, strengths and weaknesses and your purpose? Be very clear about these.
Don’t trust yourself when an inner voice tells you that you already know yourself. That’s not true. You are too close to yourself to really know yourself.
So you need to step back and really understand who you are. Don’t skip this step.
Knowing exactly who you are, what you do and what excites you is the key to taking that first step to really appreciate yourself and find your uniqueness.
#2. Practice telling your story.
Remember this: The story you tell yourself is your reality. Stop the negative self-talk.
Focus on what’s great about you. Focus on what makes you unique. Picture yourself becoming the best version of yourself.
Then practice telling that story.
What made you succeed? What did you do to overcome all the struggles in the past that made you stronger at present? Whatever it is that you want, you have to declare that to the universe.
Tell your story. Share your journey. By telling your story with authenticity, you can attract amazing opportunities that can make you become more confident and more successful.
#3. Be grateful.
Always be grateful. And you’ll see — the universe will give you your heart’s desire.
Having self-confidence is the starting point of feeling great about yourself. And if you feel great about yourself, you can change the world in ways you never imagined possible.
