Building your confidence

[00:00:00] In this Part One of a two-part series, we are talking all about confidence. [00:00:16] I get asked so many times, "What is confidence? How can I be more confident? Why can't I be more confident? What do I have to do to get more confident or to become confident?" And I wanted to take the time to address some of that with practical ways that you can actually build confidence. But before I do, we must address, maybe it's not the elephant in the room.

[00:00:50] It's not an elephant in the room; it's just a fact that women are constantly told they need to be more confident. So, I want to [00:01:00] address that first because I'm not talking about that kind of confidence, right? Where nothing you do is ever going to be "confident enough" in the workforce.

[00:01:10] Like, I want us to talk a little bit about what the research has been saying and then move on to, "Okay, yeah. I got that. How can I build confidence for myself, for my well-being? Not for my job, not for my employer, but for me. As a person, how do I build that part of confidence?" So, we know that women are told to show self-confidence at work.

[00:01:43] That it's a key strategy for progressing in their careers, for climbing the ladder, and for becoming successful at work. We hear that a lot, right? "Be more assertive. Watch your voice, watch your tone." And [00:02:00] we do this knowing that we need to be careful. Right. We need to be careful because we, and I'm going to say women, I'm going to say women of color, right?

[00:02:12] We can't afford not to be "likable". We have to still be "warm", right? We can't appear "intimidating". We can't be "too aggressive". And there's some really insightful research on this, um, that was published in the Harvard Business Review. It's an article you can find online and it was published last year, but it's based on this research where confidence was found to be weaponized against women.

[00:02:48] Now, we already kind of knew that, but it's always affirming to have. Data to back [00:03:00] you up. Always a good thing, right? Now what these researchers found was that when women don't achieve their career goals, it's attributed to their lack of self-confidence, right? And then if women show high levels of confidence, you guessed it, we risk going over the top and we're perceived as doing that.

[00:03:26] Like it's too much. And if we do too much or it's perceived as too much, right? We're not too much. It's the perceptions that it is too much, then that's viewed as us lacking confidence because the view is that we're overcompensating for our lack of confidence by being too much. It's like, you just can't win, right?

[00:03:46] You can check out that HBR article online. It is called "How Confidence Is Weaponized Against Women." So go check that out and I'm mentioning it very briefly because I don't want this to be a [00:04:00] regurgitation of that article or the research. If you want to delve deeper into that research, I don't want this to be that kind of episode, but I'm mentioning the research because here again.

[00:04:11] As we often talk about here on this podcast, there are obstacles and there are challenges that we have to navigate where how you show up, how we show up is constantly judged. There are constant judgments about how we show up, how we talk, how we look, all of that stuff. And so I want us to focus on ourselves.

[00:04:35] I want you to focus on you in this episode. We cannot control other people's judgments of us or their perceptions of us. We cannot control what they are going to say. We cannot control what they are going to think. We cannot control other people, people. We cannot do it. But we still have some [00:05:00] agency. Yes, we do.

[00:05:01] We got a lot of agency. You know that we can work on how to actually feel and be more confident, not for anyone else, not to appease someone else, not to feel better about someone else's opinion of us. It's not about that. We're talking about working on how to actually feel and be more confident for ourselves, for our well-being, for our peace of mind, for us.

[00:05:36] We're not trying to spiral into the depths of not feeling good enough, smart enough, not feeling capable enough, okay? So we're going to talk about what confidence really means practically, like how do you build that? Because I think it's a misunderstood term. Even though It may be weaponized against us by others, which it is.

[00:05:57] It doesn't mean that we have to use it as a weapon [00:06:00] against ourselves. We can use the term confidence and we can make it mean something to empower us. To empower us to show up exactly as we want and in a way that is real and that is true for us and in a way that makes our lives better, makes our lives better at work, at home, in our communities, you name it.

[00:06:28] So if you are one of those people who ask yourself, how do I become more confident? Or how can I be more confident? Or why can't I be more confident? Right? Those questions I asked a few minutes ago. This one's going to be for you. All right. This episode is going to be for you. So let's start with a good old definition of confidence from yes, you guessed it, the dictionary.

[00:06:56] Let's just start there just to ground ourselves in something, some [00:07:00] common language, right from the dictionary. So Merriam Webster defines confident as two things, one, full of conviction, and they put a colon there and it says certain. And the number two is having or showing assurance and self-reliance.

[00:07:21] Now, think of those two things. Think of those two things. Full of conviction, being certain, and having or showing assurance and self-reliance. How could you practice those things in real-time, like tomorrow or today? Like, how can you actually make those things real in your life and feel them? Right? How can you feel more certain?

[00:07:48] How can you be more certain of an outcome? How can you feel or be more assured or be or feel more self-reliant? That's confidence. So how can you get those? How can you practice those [00:08:00] things? So I'm going to share with you six ways. I'm going to share three in this episode, three in the next one. I'm going to share with you a total of six ways to practice this.

[00:08:12] The more you practice, the better you get at anything. It's not about perfection. It's about moving the needle a little closer each time. To where you want to be and how you want to feel. All right. Don't come at me. You overachievers with this perfectionism thing. Okay. And remember there are strengths in perfectionism, right?

[00:08:33] We love that you're ambitious. We love it. I'm like that too, but we have to harness it. So it doesn't, so it does us good. So it serves us. We don't want it to be harmful to us. We don't want it to harm our self-esteem. We don't want it to be something that we use as a weapon against ourselves, right? We want to harness perfectionism and the strength of perfectionism [00:09:00] for the good, right?

[00:09:02] So, are you ready? Here are three ways I'm going to give you to practice and build confidence. The number one way to practice is to make and keep promises to yourself. Now, can I tell you how this comes up all the time in coaching? I mean, almost every single client—I will say, almost, not every, but almost every—is this concept of time. "I don't have time. I want to take back control of my time. I don't do the things I say I'm going to do because I don't have time." Or "I get lost in time. I get lost doing something else. Something else takes longer." Okay. I could do a whole other episode on that, but I'm going to focus very specifically on [00:10:00] making and keeping promises to yourself.

[00:10:03] Okay. Say you want to go for a workout, you want to exercise. You made plans with friends to go out for dinner, lunch, coffee, or something. Maybe you penciled in a break for yourself to go for a walk, or you decided, "Hey, I have a cutoff time for when I want to be done with work every day," or "maybe three days a week." Whatever it is for you. Or maybe you need to schedule appointments to go to the doctor. All of you people who don't even get physicals—guys need to get physicals, ladies need to get physicals. We all do. We need to take care of our health. If we don't have our health, we have nothing. Okay. Schedule your dentist appointments, all those things, and for your kids, right? Where you're like, "Oh my gosh, another week went by and I didn't schedule what I had to schedule [00:11:00] to take care of the things I had to take care of." Right?

[00:11:03] Now, what I'm saying is, those are all things sometimes you need to do, but one: you don't put it in your calendar, you're not making time for it. No one has time for these things. No one! We all have 24 hours in the day, okay? We all have a lot going on. You've got to carve out the time in your calendar to make these things happen. You've got to write them down, put them in your calendar. Always put more time than you think they'll take because it always takes more time, often. Sometimes it does. And then you keep that appointment. You hold yourself accountable and you keep that promise to yourself.

[00:11:29] Now, some of them that I mentioned, some of the things I mentioned are more about you moving your body, getting a mental break, you going with friends and actually saying, "When you say I'm going to meet up with you next Friday," actually text them and say, "Hey, are we meeting up on Friday? [00:12:00] Like what time?" Like actually go through those steps so you're fulfilling that commitment, you're fulfilling that promise to yourself, and in that case, to a good friend, right? When you say you want to cut off work at 5:36 PM, whatever time it is for you, but you consistently don't do that, it doesn't feel great. So instead, you have to actually set that time. And be like, "Hey, okay, maybe I can't do five days a week, but three days a week, I am off the clock at 5:30." Hey, if I have to jump online later, if there's something urgent coming through, sure, I will do that. But my routine now is three days a week. I'm off the clock at 6:00 PM or 5:30—again, whatever time it works for you. You have to think about the things that work best for you within the context of your life, but don't tell me nothing will work. Don't come to me with that. If you have not experimented with something, okay? You have to try something and be open to trying something. And then if it doesn't work, tweak it instead of throwing it away, right?

[00:13:00] So the point here is that you become more certain of an outcome. You become more self-reliant, more self-assured when you actually hold yourself to your own commitments. You make them and you hold yourself to them. You keep your word to yourself. That's how you come to trust yourself a lot more. That's how you come to really trust yourself more deeply because you know you will do what you said you would do for yourself. You're building that trust with yourself. And again, like I mentioned, this does apply with your commitment to others, right? Don't be the flaky friend. Please don't be the flaky [00:14:00] friend. Like, don't do that. And you know, I say that because when I was working at a, when I started—this is a very long time ago—when I was a junior associate in my first year at a law firm, I was that flaky friend to the friends who weren't doing that.

[00:14:17] Like to my friends who were at law firms, it's like you saw each other whenever, but my friends who weren't, I totally would be like, "Oh, I can totally meet up at 6 PM." And then I would flake and be like, "Can't make it because I was at work," right? Can we just do our best not to be flaky friends though? Generally, I know things come up, but let's just do our best to be there for our friends because you want to continue that two-way relationship, right? Just don't do it. Please don't be a flaky friend. Keep your word to your friends. Keep your word to yourself. You show up for yourself over and over and over.

[00:14:56] That's how you'll increase and strengthen [00:15:00] that self-assurance, right? Make yourself the priority here and just practice the SHIT out of that. I'm telling you, if you do that over and over, it gets easier to do. It gets easier to do the more you do it. The less discomfort it causes, the less mind drama it causes. I'm telling you, the more that you make commitments to yourself and hold yourself to them, the more you believe you can do it the next time and the next time and the next time and the next time. That is confidence because you're building certainty. You're building self-assurance. You're building self-reliance.

[00:15:43] Okay, the second way to build confidence is preparation because preparation is queen. Notice I did not say king because I'm done with the patriarchy. Like I'm just, I'm over it. So [00:16:00] preparation is queen. Now I could do Again, I could do a lot of episodes on just preparation and all the different kinds, but I'm going to really focus us here in this episode on just a few aspects of how preparation is key for building confidence in life, just generally in life and for, and for work.

[00:16:24] So if we take the general life bucket first. Preparation could be, you know, sometimes you get, you get overwhelmed or you are feeling a little stressed or there's some dread or some uncertainty about the week ahead, right? Like you have a calendar and you have some scheduling that you've done.

[00:16:44] You have some meetings, you have work you have to do. We all have that. Some of us have crazy meetings and some of us have a lot of focus time to, you know, Do the things that we need to be doing. But what if, you know, you are on a Friday or [00:17:00] Sunday? What if you decide, you know what? I'm going to prep for the week ahead. 00:17:05] I'm going to prep for my week. And during the week, I'm going to prep. Every night for the day ahead, I'm going to see what's on my calendar, but I'm not going to stop there because a lot of people do that. They just check what's on their calendar for the next day, or they check what's on the calendar for the following week, but they don't take it a step further.

[00:17:24] When I say preparation, I'm not talking about just checking the calendar to see what's coming. I'm talking about you're checking your calendar to see what's coming, and then you're setting an intention for, for example, the week ahead. So if you see your calendar, and if you have like, you know, if you have children, you have a bunch of kids activities, you have, you have some work deadlines, you have some critical meetings.

[00:17:50] Maybe you want to think about your, your week a little differently. And set some intention around where you're going to focus your energy each day, right? If I [00:18:00] have an important kid activity, um, from three to five or from five to seven or whatever it is, whatever it is for you, like, how am I going to manage my energy that day so that I can show up from five to seven, do I need to show up or how am I going to manage my energy throughout the day?

[00:18:18] So that when I, I had dinnertime, I'm not freaking exhausted. And then I have a short fuse with my children. How can I manage my energy for that day? Chances are you're going to want to have some you alone time in there somewhere in your day, especially, especially if you're coming home to children, especially if you're coming home to young children who over touch you, who over touch you and everything is mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy.

[00:18:47] And even when you respond, it's mommy, mommy, mommy.

[00:18:52] We need to be managing our intentions for the things we do each day and the energy we have to do [00:19:00] them and the energy we need to keep. So that we have something left for the people that we love when we get home. Now, if you don't have children, oh my gosh, you come home and you just lay on that couch and you're just breathe a sigh of relief, you know, which is great too, right?

[00:19:21] One is not better than the other. They're just different. But for you, if you don't have children, how are you going to manage your energy so you don't burn out? You may not have kids, but you have a personal life, right? You have deep relationships with people. You want to keep those up. You want to keep prioritizing your own well being, how are you going to manage your energy so you don't burn out, right?

[00:19:43] But the key here is preparing for the week ahead, seeing what's ahead, seeing how am I going to manage my energy, how am I going to manage my time, how am I going to manage my intentions for each thing that I have, right? Like if there's a meeting on Wednesday and you're like, Ooh, [00:20:00] I actually have to double check with someone about something about that meeting.

[00:20:05] You got to do that on Monday. Or do it before then. Like, this is what I'm talking about. You have to take a step further than just checking the calendar ahead to quote unquote prepare. That's not preparation. That's checking. Preparation is going deeper. It's going much deeper than that. Okay? The other piece that I want to talk about, that's the first aspect of preparation I wanted to mention to you.

[00:20:31] And you could go a lot deeper there, but I want to get to the second point because I think it's important. Now, when we talk about work preparation. Meaning you're preparing for a presentation, you're preparing for, um, maybe it's a really important meeting and you're presenting at it. Maybe you have slides.

[00:20:50] How many of you all create slides

? I do. All of us do, right? Like, if you have a presentation, you have slides, [00:21:00] um, by the way, I secretly love slides. I'm just saying, I know it's kind of weird, but I secretly do love slides. I, I do. I, I do. And, and I did not like them like nine years ago. I will say that. Um, but I, I do like them now.

[00:21:15] So I, I'll put a pin in that for now. But just FY like, I'm a little, I'm a, I'm a slide, I favor the slide type of, uh, format. But say you have a presentation, you have a bunch of slides. You, you better be practicing what you're gonna say in that meeting, right? That's preparation. You practice what you're going to say.

[00:21:35] You practice how well. You say it. You literally practice the words you're going to say in the meeting. You make yourself a script, girl, a script. Maybe it's bullets. I'm, I, what I do is I'll write down on like a sticky note, number one, two, three, like the three things I have to hit. Right? Like words to myself and the [00:22:00] words trigger what I practiced, like the words trigger my brain and say, "Oh, remember those, that sentence, those two sentences, those, that, that one takeaway," right?

Here is the proofread version of the document:

[00:22:09] That's how, that's how I do it. Other people do it differently. The point is you are practicing. You are basically in the meeting before you're in the meeting. You are replicating that feeling of being on; you're replicating that feeling, replicating it over and over and over and over and over and over.

[00:22:30] And I know I'm being repetitive, and over and over. So when you get to the meeting, you know, that like the back of your hand, you are not going to be the person that is unprepared. You may not know the answer to every question; that's all good, that's okay, but you've prepared for that meeting and you've done your best to anticipate the questions you would get because you've done the homework to ask other people, "Hey, what do you think I might be asked?"

[00:23:00] What do you think I might be asked? And you do that because you have relationships with people who care about you, right? So not only are you practicing the actual art of giving that presentation and the science of it, you are preparing for the meeting. Also the content, the questions you could be asked, you're doing that all in advance, again, to build the certainty that you will be giving your best and you will show up as your best.

[00:23:32] You are sure that that meeting will be successful, right? You're giving, you're increasing those odds in your favor when you practice and you prepare in that way, right? One other example I can give you is sometimes, and a lot of people experience this, where you're giving a presentation to a senior group, some kind of senior group, whether it's partners or whomever. And you're just getting peppered with questions, like you have this beautiful slide deck, you've prepared all your talking points, and you just, you, you say a sentence and it's just question, question, question, question, question, question, question, right?

[00:24:16] And in that case, what do you do? You've prepared, oh my gosh, but you don't get to actually practice what you prepared, but you are practicing what you prepared. Because in those situations, you did all the work so you could answer those questions. And you did all the work so you could maybe say, "What I do know is X," right?

[00:24:39] What I do know is X. So you can be confident in what you do know because you're in preparation. And if you're being rushed and being prepared with questions and you feel like, "Uh, I have not gotten to like a key takeaway here. Like I need to communicate at least one or two things that I need them to know."

[00:24:59] Then you have prepared that in advance. You've got your top three, you've got your top two, you've got your number one. If you have like no time, you have You literally have 20 seconds. You have to say that last; you have to explain and say that key takeaway, right? You don't just rush through the rest of the slides.

[00:25:17] You don't have time for that. And that just is rush. That's not how you want to end that meeting. If you're being rushed, you're being rushed. You are not going to feel rushed. You've practiced. Narrowing it down to one takeaway, maybe two or three, depending on how much time you are given at the end of that presentation.

[00:25:40] You've practiced that. So when it's like, "Oh, we only have 20 seconds left or 30 seconds, or I'm mindful of time. We have only one man that left." You are like, "I'm ready. I got my one key takeaway. This is what I need from you from this group. And this is why it matters. This is why it's important. And this is what I need."

[00:25:55] So you get what you need to get out of that meeting. So you can go and do your work. That's practice. That is. Practice to prepare for that kind of meeting, right? And your confidence that that meeting will go well increases exponentially when you do that. You prepare for the meeting, prepare for the meeting, prepare for the meeting.

[00:26:22] and practice what you're going to say, practice the key takeaway, practice the different scenarios. It sounds like a lot, but once you do it repeatedly, it becomes not second nature, but it becomes more predictable. Like, you know, you know, kind of what you need to be doing, what you need to be focused on focusing on.

[00:26:44] So one example for you that I'll share that's more personal, um, is I recently Um, took up singing and piano with my daughter, who is six, who has also taken up singing and piano. She's been asking me for the past two years to put her in singing and piano. And I've been avoiding it just because, um, well, one is one of her instructors said she was too young.

[00:27:14] This is the first year that she could actually do voice lessons. And then piano. I said, no, she had the attention span, but she does absolutely does. And so we both, I decided that instead of me just waiting for her in the lobby while she was taking lessons, I said, I was going to take them too. So they offer adult and children, less children's lessons.

[00:27:35] And so I take singing while she takes piano and then when she takes piano, I take singing and we have the same singing teacher. Now, I will tell you that we decided to do the recital. There's a recital four months after you start. Yeah, there's a recital each semester. And so we started in September and there was a recital, um, this past weekend and the weekend before that.

[00:27:59] And we decided that we were going to do the recital. And for piano for that first recital, I, I played jingle bells, not the whole jingle bell song, maybe just like a few lines of the song. But can I tell you something that I practice? The SHIT out of Jingle Bells. Like I, I practiced so much. Like I have a keyboard, I have a keyboard, and I practice on that keyboard constantly so I could memorize.

[00:28:36] Where my fingers had to be, how it was supposed to sound, my pace, my cadence, like I practiced so much that by the time I got to the recital and I also had people watch me, like I had my kids watch me. I had a few friends watch me like play so I could get used to people watching me play so I could get used to that feeling, that little bit of nervousness.

[00:28:57] Um, and when I performed it, I did fine. It was great. But I remember getting up, getting to sitting down at

that piano at the recital. And remember, I am an adult. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm a full-on adult. I'm a mother, I'm an adult, and I was sitting next to six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds, nine-year-olds, ten-year-olds, eleven-year-olds who are playing long pieces, mind you, very long pieces, very long, beautiful pieces, and but when I, when I, when my name was called and I sat down at that bench at the piano, I had sat down, I had practiced how I was going to sit, I practiced the first thing I would do is I would lift my hands up so my palms are facing, like, to the opposite wall, and I would gently press, press my hands and my fingers on the keys that I needed to be playing for my first set, right?

[00:29:56] And you know what? Once I felt that piano and I touched those keys. Like, I felt confident because I had done that so many times. I had practiced that exact thing so many times. Like, I would be at the keyboard and be like, again, talking to myself again, again, again, again, because I wanted to make sure that when I got to the recital, I felt really good and prepared.

[00:30:29] For that recital. The same thing with singing. We did a singing duet, my daughter and I, um, once upon a December for the movie, Anastasia, when my singing teacher gave us that song, I was like, what? That is high. And the last. I was like, can we get like a Taylor Swift song or like something like, I mean, even like an R& B ish Beyonce from back in the day.

[00:30:53] Nope. Once Upon a December. And my daughter likes it. So I said, we'll do it. Um, I really didn't have a choice. So my daughter and I practiced that song. I mean, a lot to the point where in the car, my son would be like, Oh gosh, the song again. Like he just was like, he was done with the song. We practice incessantly and we had to practice the last line of the song.

[00:31:18] The key changes and it goes higher and higher and it's a really difficult line for someone like me. Like I'm, I'm, you know, I have an upper range, but I. You know, it's, it's a challenge for me, right? Like I have to know when to take my breath and kind of control my breathing so that I can hit those notes and my daughter too.

[00:31:39] And so we practice that so much. And we actually want to take a, um, like a last-minute lesson with our voice teacher to make sure we had it right. And so we practice it as if we were performing that day and. We practiced and practiced, and then the day of the recital, we sang the song together, and it was so much fun, like it was a lot, it was a lot of fun, and we nailed that last line, but we hadn't been nailing it like a month before.

[00:32:09] We had to practice to get that right. And it just came together really nicely because we had prepared and practiced so many times. So that's just, these are just some examples to give you a sense of when I, when I say you practice to prepare, this is what I'm talking about, right? I'm not, you don't, you don't have to be taking voice lessons or piano lessons, right?

[00:32:29] But it is the same idea. Because when a lot of those kids who had been at the piano recital playing the piano or singing the owner of the studio of the rather the music academy, she had said, I remember, you know, the 10-year-old who used to who started when they were six. And she's like in the progress.

[00:32:52] Oh my goodness, how much you've all grown and your capabilities and your skills is amazing. And I believe that because they're practicing piano every week, every week. They're practicing piano every week. They're coming in for voice lessons. They're showing up for themselves because they want to get better.

[00:33:10] And they know that if they got a recital, they got to practice. They have to practice. So when they get to the recital, they feel assured, they feel certain that it's going to go well and it will because they've prepared and they've made it so. Which brings me to the last way to build confidence in this episode, because I'll share three more in the next one, it is practicing getting out of your comfort zone.[00:33:42] So you may feel like your whole job is a stretch. You may feel like your whole job is outside of your comfort zone, and I want to address that right now. I want you to do [00:34:00] something for me. No, no, not for me, for yourself, for yourself. I want you to write down everything about your job that you do, everything you do in your job, the tasks, like what's in your job description, what it were.

[00:34:13] And then what are the things you do? Because we know that so many of you do way more than what's in your job description. I want you to write it all down. What do people go to you for, what advice are you giving? What meetings are you in? Like, what are your contributions and what do you do every day? And tell me.

[00:34:35] So once you do that, like literally write that down and if you've never done this exercise, that's something to do so you can appreciate yourself, right? And be like, damn, I do all of that. Yes, you do. Sometimes you don't get credit for it, right? But you know, you do it and you know, you contribute and you know what you're doing is significant and that's important.

[00:34:55] So write, write that all down and then tell me if based on that, [00:35:00] that list you have, is all of that really a stretch for you? Is all of it really outside of your comfort zone? Or is only some of it outside of your comfort zone? Maybe none of it is, honestly. But I'm talking, I was talking to, I'm talking to those of you who, when I say get out of your comfort zone, your immediate reaction probably was, what are you talking about?

[00:35:21] I'm always out of my comfort zone at work. I'm talking to you. Right? Write down what you do, even the things that are not in your job description, write them down. Then based on that, tell me, is all of that outside of your comfort zone? Is all of that a stretch or is only some of it a stretch? We have to be really careful about the stories we tell ourselves and what we catastrophize in our minds.

[00:35:47] We've got to be really careful about the mind drama. Really careful about that. That thing can spiral and can throw you off your game, right? We don't want you to get [00:36:00] off your game. I'm not passing judgment and I'm asking you to stick to facts, okay? I'm not passing judgment and I'm asking you to stick to the facts, not stories that you might be telling yourself when you spiral, okay?

[00:36:24] Because even if some of your job is out of your comfort zone, I want you to do something because you're exercising that muscle of the [00:36:49] Being outside of your comfort zone at work is already exercising a little bit, but to amplify the practice of being outside of your comfort zone, I am going to invite you to do something. It's an invitation, obviously not a requirement. I'm not holding you to anything. This is an invitation for you to go pick something else.

[00:37:00] Go pick something and get out of your comfort zone with that thing. So typically it could mean you trying something new, you know, trying something new that you know you're not going to be good at. Don't be like, "Oh, I'm going to go try hockey" when you played field hockey. Like, come on, don't kid yourself. Try something new that is safe, by the way, please, please be safe.

[00:37:12] Try something that is new that you were not likely going to be good at the first try or the second or third or fourth or fifth, but you know, maybe you won't be too good at it at first, but you maybe could get good at it later, right? You just got to pick something that you're not good at, okay, people, which is really hard, I know because we like to be good at everything, but we can't.

[00:37:50] And this is the way to practice that. So for me, [00:38:00] I'll give you an example. I went to this wellness center. It's like this outdoorsy center and we decided to do hatchet throwing. Hatchet is like an axe, but it's like a little smaller, I think. And let me tell you, the first time I threw that thing, it bounced right off the target.

[00:38:17] I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna kill someone" because these hatchets are coming back towards the line of people that are throwing the hatchets. No, it was fine. But I was really frustrated. And I was like, "Why can't I just like nail this target?" Eventually throughout like the hour, you have an hour to do this.

[00:38:39] There are different challenges you get and you obviously get better throughout the hour, but you're still not, you know, great at it because how could you be? You have never thrown a [00:39:00] hatchet before. So you get used to like the discomfort of like, "Oh, I'm not good at this" and the frustration and you learn to lean in a little bit and to let go of expectations, right?

[00:38:58] A little bit. You know, it's not totally, but just enough for you to feel the discomfort and then you're getting a little bit better and then you're getting a little better at the hatchet throwing and you're still uncomfortable because like, you're not great or not good.

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[00:39:29] But you're getting a little bit better. So you have some momentum, right? The same thing when I took archery. This is the same trip. I took archery and I was, I was really bad, y'all. I was really bad. Like I, I, it was bad. It was not good. And I was getting frustrated. But again, really getting out of your comfort zone, trying something new and going through those feelings of frustration of needing to still focus, of needing to really practice.

[00:39:55] This doesn't feel good to me. And I'm not great at this. But I know I [00:40:00] can get better at it because I saw it each time I did another round. I saw me getting better. I adjusted certain things that I could get better. And so this is what I am talking about. You have to exercise the muscle of moving through discomfort.

[00:40:18] So that you can strengthen that muscle and apply it to different areas of your life. Everything is transferable. We talk about transferable skills all the time in the word context, right? This is a big one. Can you navigate complexity? Can you navigate the unknown? Can you navigate discomfort? To figure it out.

[00:40:39] Can you do that? When you exercise that muscle, you're damn right. You can do it because you've done it so many times. The more you work out a muscle, you know, don't overdo it. You can injure yourself. The more you work out a muscle, that muscle gets stronger. It has memory. Like, you know, if [00:41:00] you, for, for a lot of us, um, especially if you've had children, if you've had children personally.

[00:41:07] Your, you, your muscles remember if you worked out before you were pregnant and then you worked out, you worked out to stay active, but not as hard, obviously, as you did before you were pregnant, your muscles, remember that it can bounce back. They, they have, there's muscle memory there, right? You are going to keep working out that muscle.

[00:41:26] So it gets stronger and It can take more load over time, right? So the more you exercise the muscle, the more load you can put on it to make it work harder. And then it gets more efficient over time, over repetition, over time, over and over and over. You don't get strong by working out once every three months.

[00:41:52] You don't get better and move into discomfort when you're only doing it once every three months. Because every time that happens to you, it's going to [00:42:00] feel like it's brand new and you're going to be like, I don't know how to do this. And you're going to have sometimes that spiraling effect in your brain.

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[00:42:07] You're going to do a little bit of freaking out. But if you put yourself into situations, into stretches, into challenges, where you have to move through discomfort and practice it, then, then if you hit it the 10th time you confront it, you're like, "Oh, I've seen this show before. I don't know what this is, but I know I can figure it out. I know I can move through it. I know I can get better. I know I can learn. I'm not going to be a master at it after a week, two or a year, but I can be damn good at it. Or it can just be better than when I started."

[00:42:41] This is the same thing. Practicing. Preparation. This is about confidence. This is what it is. It's practicing. How do I become self-assured? How do I become self-reliant? How do I increase my chances of certainty of an outcome? Right? One of them is [00:43:00] navigating through discomfort and practice saying that. So you're building the capability.

[00:43:08] And you're increasing your self-belief, the belief that you can deal with those feelings and those thoughts, right, that like freak out. "Oh my God, frustration. Oh my God, what do I do?" You can deal with those feelings and those thoughts that arise within you, questioning whether you can do it. Because when you practice turning down the noise, and you practice turning down the volume on that voice, that's like, "You can't do that. Who do you think you are? Who are you?" When you practice turning down the volume on that voice,

[00:43:40] and you amplify the voice that says, "Hold up, wait a minute, hold on! We've been here before. Hold on. Wait a second. What [00:44:00] do you mean? I mean, maybe not the same exact situation, but we've been here. We have got this, my friend. We've got this." That's confidence. That's confidence. Don't be fooled by these. Don't, don't be fooled by, you need to be more assertive and more confident.

[00:44:20] Don't be fooled by that. Let's, again, let us not entertain perceptions of confidence that are harmful to us and don't serve us. No, you empower yourself with the true components of confidence that will make you feel better and make you feel more powerful, make you feel more alive, make you feel more at peace with yourself, make you feel like you're honoring yourself.

[00:44:53] Focus on those pieces, right? Focus on those pieces. [00:45:00] Because you can build confidence every single day. It's not about your posture and making sure you wear a suit and all that. That's just, that is not true. Now, if you are in a, like a, an old, old guard type of environment, like super traditional, then maybe we can have a different conversation.

[00:45:21] I mean, the old guard still holds. A lot of power, right? Old guard is still in charge, right? We, we know that, but that's not going to change right now. It'll change eventually, but not right now. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do to protect your peace, to build some self-assurance, some self-reliance,

[00:45:43] to feel more conviction in what you do and to feel more certain of the outcomes that you can significantly impact. What can you do? That's all about confidence. All right, let's not get it twisted. Let's, [00:46:00] let's keep our eye on the ball. Okay. You have every, you have every capability to do this. And I know, I know a lot of you are thinking of imposter syndrome.

[00:46:16] I get it. I'm going to talk about that in the next episode again, because it just keeps coming up. So I'm going to address it again, but this is what I'm talking about. When you do these things, when you do, when you actually do. We actually practice something over and over you building the muscle. So when something happens again, it's not a knee-jerk reaction.

[00:46:36] It's not a freak-out moment. It's a, "Oh, I remember I can. I believe that I can, I've done this before. I could do it different contexts, but I could do it again." That's my three ways to build confidence in part one. You will be hearing about part two next week. See you next time. [00:47:00]