33 The Secret to Greeting 2026 with Confidence

Episode 33: The Secret to Greeting 2026 with Confidence | Joyfully Unstoppable Podcast

Confidence shows up as a decision you make in the moment. In this short episode, Becky Hamm shares one practical way to steady yourself when the stakes feel high and reconnect with how you want to lead.

Inside the episode:

• A simple nervous system reset you can use in real time 
• The phrase Becky uses to shift her internal posture before high-visibility moments 
• A personal story from years of public speaking, teaching awards, and leading large rooms while navigating fear privately 
• A decision filter for recognizing when an expectation is driving your stress, and when an environment is a poor fit for your leadership style 

If you want a strategic thought partner for high-stakes decisions, visibility seasons, or a more intentional version of success, explore coaching with Becky at Women Lead Well. 

Want a structured way to design goals that match your values, capacity, and season of life? The Success Blueprint walks you through a clear process for 2026 planning, built around the ALIGN Framework. 

#JoyfullyUnstoppable #WomenWhoLead #PodcastForWomen #WomenInLeadership #LeadershipDevelopment #ConfidentLeadership #ExecutivePresence #LeadershipPresence #DecisionMaking #GoalSetting #WomenLeadWell #SustainableSuccess #AuthenticLeadership #CareerGrowth

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Transcript

0:47

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to lead boldly, live lightly, and reclaim their joy. Whether you are leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. After years of high level leadership, I discovered that success doesn't have to come at the cost of your peace, your values, or your wellbeing. Each week, we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically, even in a world that tells you to hustle harder and prove your worth. You carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter. Okay, friends, I hope you are doing great. Depending on when you listen to this episode, you are either hearing this in the last day or two of 2025 or the first day or two of 20 26 or sometimes down the road, whatever. If you come at some future date and are listening back through the inventory of episodes. But if you are in that transition between years. Welcome. What a magical time. This is the week between Christmas and New Year's. I love it. This is my favorite time every year. It feels so almost sacred, this, transitional period between years and for many of us time when we are with loved ones, sometimes who we don't get to see very often. I've got, my brother and sister-in-law are here visiting my parents right now. We all. My parents and I live in the same town, and it has been so wonderful to get to see them.'cause it's been a couple of years since we have, and my sister and her family came down. They were only a few hours away. And so it was just a really wonderful time to spend with my parents who were in their eighties and you know. My mom making a pecan pie. There are only so many pecan pies that she is gonna bake. And it's just been a real gift to be able to have that time together. And so I hope wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, that you have had a similar opportunity to just sit with the joy of the experience, whatever that is, what we're gonna talk about today. It's just gonna be one tip as you start 2026. How can you enter this year confident in yourself, confident in your goals, confident in what you want to create in this year? Why am I starting the year focusing on confidence? Well, because many. Virtually all of the women who come to me for coaching, struggle with confidence. They either lack confidence in themselves, in their own abilities, or they lack confidence in, in the outcomes that they are pursuing. And frankly. I don't want that for you. I want you to feel confident. I want you to have that inner knowing that you can achieve what you set out to achieve and that you are achieving the right things for your life. And that second part is really important. I want you to be confident that you are achieving the right things for you, that you're not performing, that you're not trying to please others with the hard work that you're doing, that you really are sincerely doing work that is pleasing to you. So I'm gonna give you my number one, my life changing tip on confidence. It changed my life and I really hope it can change yours. And here it is. It's gonna sound ridiculous, but just. Just go with me on the ride and let me know. Reach out. I'm on at Women Lead Well on Instagram. You can reach me on Facebook, you can reach us on LinkedIn. It's Rebecca Johnson Hamm on LinkedIn. If you wanna go there, my maiden name is included. Let me know which you think about this one tip. And that is for any situation where you are lacking confidence, that you have doubts about your ability or you have your doubts about the situation and how you will, how you will show up in a particular situation. Take a moment. Do your breathing right, so you breathe in through your nose for six. Hold that at the top. And then breathe out through your mouth for seven. So breathe in through your nose, hold at the top, and then breathe out through your mouth longer than you breathed in. So breathe for a minute. Nobody needs to see that you're doing. You can do that in public. No one's gonna know. And then I want you to remind yourself before you step into the situation, or if you find yourself losing confidence in the middle of something, you can do it in the middle of it too. Doesn't matter. Remind yourself. I deserve to enjoy this and hear that. I deserve to enjoy this. Yeah. Think about it. It's true. You were created for a purpose and that purpose is your flourishing. Yes, of course. I, this is a statement of belief on my part. You might not share it. Okay, fine. But I, I will only speak for myself. I truly believe that we were all created for a purpose, and that yes, part of that purpose is to live in service to others, that we live as communal beings. It is not all about me, Becky Hamm. It is not all about you. It is about us and how we thrive collectively. And so that means that sometimes in a moment, my needs are sacrificed for yours and as a parent. That happens on the regular. It's what makes self-care so important because we sacrifice ourselves for others, particularly as moms and wives and daughters of aging parents. We need to pour into ourselves to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves, right? And so, yeah, it is essential that you enjoy your lived experience. It is a core part of what it means to be human. And so when you find yourself in a moment. Where you are doubting your ability, your capacity, you, when you were doubting you, when you were lacking confidence in yourself or the situation, come back to the inescapable truth that you deserve to enjoy your life you were created to enjoy. Your life. How does that feed your confidence? Because you are reframing that experience, that situation from something where you have to perform to a particular standard or there's failure involved, right? Because why do you lack confidence? Because you don't think you can do the thing. You doubt your ability, you doubt your capacity. That is a performance standard. That is an expectation placed on you for your ability. To, meet the mark. Your ability to clear the bar, and what I'm telling you is that you don't have to look at the situation. That way. You can look at the situation as, wow, this moment I am meant to enjoy. What can I do to enjoy this? How can this be fun for me? How do I experience this as pleasurable, as opposed to fearful or anxiety Invoking. But if I am meant to enjoy this, how do I show up? How do I experience this as a moment that I get to enjoy, not that I have to enjoy, because again, then that's me striving to do a thing. That's me conforming, but how do I show up in a way that I, I get to have fun here. I get to enjoy this. Then that is how does the situation move to you? Right. Even if it is. That you are, let's say you've got a presentation to give, you're trying to land a client that you're not. Do you think that client might be a little bit outta your league, but you're still going for it? So congratulations. Good for you to go for it. A big one for me, in my own professional journeys, I did a ton of public speaking and nobody would know that. I mean, I've talked about it on the podcast, but in the moment you wouldn't have known it. I would panic. Anytime I would speak in public and I would be gripped with this just whole body terror that I was gonna fail, that I wasn't gonna do a good job, that I was gonna let down my students or the audience, whoever it might be. I would talk to, on the regular, I would talk to audiences anywhere between 200 and 800 people. It was just part of my job and, and I was objectively good at it. People like I won teaching awards. I was. I was good at it, but it terrified me. I didn't feel good about it. And, and I mean for close to a couple decades that, that I had this experience and it wasn't until I finally said, okay, we're gonna just slow it down before I go on. We're gonna stop. And I would pull myself away from other people to give myself a moment to ground. And I would say, okay, like one, you've done this before, two. Like people tell you you're good at it. So you're getting the external validation. So why you're worried about not being good, like it's objectively. So I would feed myself some truth and I would say, Hey, and you know what Becky, like once you're on this stage and you're talking, you actually love it. It's fun for you. You enjoy communicating complex ideas in a way. That people understand that you are unlocking insight for people and you are helping them grow as professionals. You were helping them get better in their, in their passion. You are helping them pursue their passion and excel, and it's fun for you. So why are you freaking out? Like you actually like it? Why are you freaking out? And it was this ability for me to see that the experience could actually be fun, that I was allowed to enjoy it. I started out with allowed to, right? I, I, I am allowed to enjoy this. I actually do enjoy this. And then once I figured that part out, then I, then I took the next step and said, you know, it's not just that I'm allowed to enjoy it, it's that I'm supposed, like I was created to enjoy this situation. I was created to enjoy my life. And so, I would say as we round out today,'cause I wanna be, I wanna be briefer than normal. It could be when you were lacking confidence that you were putting yourself in situations you were not intended for, right? You were meant to enjoy your life. I had to realize that I actually did enjoy public speaking and that I had put all these expectations on top of it that that God in the way of me enjoying something that I naturally do just enjoy. So I had to let go of the expectations and focus on the enjoyment. I would invite you to do that same discovery. Is it that you are lacking confidence because you have put an expectation on yourself that is getting in the way of you enjoying a thing that you naturally would enjoy? Or is it that you have put yourself in situations? That you are not naturally ever gonna enjoy because it's, it conflicts too greatly with your personality, And so then it's not the expectation that is blocking the enjoyment. It's that you're at the wrong table. You are in the wrong room. And if you find yourself in that situation, okay, then you've got some decisions that you can make to move you toward. The environments, the situations, the tables, the people, the groups where you actually will enjoy yourself. And hey, if that's you, reach out. Let's have a conversation. Let's have a 60 minute, I will gift you a 60 minute coaching call, and let's talk through what that could look like for you to make those moves in your life.'cause that that can feel impossible. And I'm telling you, I've made some big moves in my life and I've coached other women who have made some big moves in their life. It ain't impossible. So reach out again at Women Lead Well on all the social platforms. Becky Johnson Hamm on LinkedIn. Reach out. Let's just set up a call and let's talk through it. You certainly should not make those kinds of decisions alone. You should have someone in your corner on your side walking you through them. So that was it for today. It is a shorter episode because of the holidays and because I'm trying to get shorter and I'm, I'm gonna maybe make'em even shorter. Still, this still feels a little bit long, but that's it for today. Y'all how to greet 2026 with confidence. And I hope you'll join me next week when we take a brain-based look at motivation and follow through, because not only do I want you to greet 2026 with confidence, I want you to get a sustainable start on your 2026 goals. Now if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend who's running on empty. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline. And please don't forget to like and subscribe. And if you could leave a review, I would really deeply appreciate it. Building those reviews on Spotify, apple, and YouTube really does help a little podcast like mine get some traction and get shown to more women who could benefit from it. Also, you can always grab one of our free resources like the Thought Catching Journal, prompt the Yearend Review, the Mental Load Reset. All of that is available on the Women Lead Well website, and I'll link them in the show notes below. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm and this is Joyfully Unstoppable.