10 Steps to Unshakable Confidence | New Beginnings Pt 3

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Jonathan Fields: [00:00:02] So here’s my question. Do you ever wish you were more confident? Like, you could just walk up to that person at a gathering or a party or event and introduce yourself, and maybe go for a raise, or a new job, or make art, or become a creator, or write a book. Dance like nobody’s watching. Maybe you want to speak in front of people and feel good, or start taking exercise, or yoga classes, or go to the gym. As a total newbie who is unfit and doesn’t really know how to begin, or anything else that scares you, but also holds incredible potential. On the other side of action. Well, that’s what we’re diving into in today’s episode three of our special January series, New Beginnings Redesigning Your Life in 2025. So over the past two weeks, we have laid a foundation for an incredible year ahead. We started by creating a roadmap to guide your personal growth with a focus on your good life buckets, and how to do a little something to fill them on a regular basis. And then we zoomed in to set bold, ambitious, yet achievable goals and focus on how to actually achieve them by tapping the power of something I call success scaffolding. Now, if you missed those first two episodes in this five-part New Beginning series, be sure to listen to them after this. You don’t have to listen in order, by the way, but they do complement each other. 

[00:01:28] Today we are going to deep dive into something that just so often stops us from doing so many of the things that we want to do in life, both big and small, like the big things, but also the little micro moments every day. And that is how to build confidence, to say yes to all those big and little things that can, at the end of the day, change your life, even if they’re the tiny ones. I mean, if you start to do that a little bit every day, they add up to a big difference in the way you live and feel your life. So we’ll explore what confidence really is, how it’s different from that other thing called self-esteem, which a lot of people are suspect of. Then I’ll share ten proven strategies to build your confidence in all the different areas of your life. And by the way, we’ll also explain why the different areas of your life are different when it comes to confidence. So you can strengthen your confidence muscle and take bold action toward the life that you’ve envisioned in 2025 and beyond. And I’ll also wrap by sharing a powerful reframe around confidence and bravery that I learned from Brene Brown. I guess it’s over a decade ago now. By the end of this episode, you will not only really help believe in your ability to act even when you don’t know how things will end, and there’s a little bit of scariness or risk involved. You’ll have the tools to do it. So excited to share this confidence deep dive with you. I’m Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:04] Hey. So I’m super excited to dive into the world of confidence. There’s so much mythology around this area, and so many of us deal with it, even if we don’t deal with it in one area of life, we often deal with it in another, often an area that we don’t tell anyone else about or are willing to sort of publicly admit to. But before we get to how to build confidence or unconfident action, let’s tackle an age old question what is the difference between confidence and self-esteem? I mean, are they just the same thing? Do you need to have one or both? And how do they play into living your best, most fulfilling life? So let’s get into it. First, let’s define these two ideas because understanding the distinction between confidence and self-esteem can be a real game changer. Confidence and self-esteem. Think of them as kind of like siblings. They’re related, but not identical twins. And sometimes they get along really well and sometimes they don’t get along really well. Taking a little bit of friction there. So let’s break it down. Confidence is all about your ability, or your belief in your ability to perform a specific task or succeed in a particular situation.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:25] It’s kind of like saying, you know, I’ve practiced this presentation a dozen times, so I’m confident I can nail it. Or you know what? I’ve actually I’ve completed a 10-K before, so I’m confident I can do it again. Confidence tends to live in specific domains. It’s tied to skills and experience. Now self-esteem on the other hand this is more about your overall sense of self-worth. It’s about how much you value yourself as a person, independent of what you can do or accomplish. It’s kind of like having this deep, unshakeable belief that you’re worthy of love and respect just because you exist. The fact of your birth gave you that. It’s not tied to any particular skill or achievement. Self esteem is more about being rather than doing. So let’s maybe talk about a couple of stories to illustrate this. A few years ago I remember bumping into someone, let’s call him Michael. And Michael was this incredibly successful entrepreneur, super confident when it came to pitching investors and running board meetings and negotiating deals and even leading teams and tracking product and getting things to market, all the yada yada that goes into that world. He could walk into a room and command attention like nobody’s business. But here’s the thing. When we started talking about his personal life, he opened up about feeling unworthy of deep and meaningful relationships. And he told me, yeah, you know, I’m great at the work thing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:10] I’m just not good enough as a person. And Mike had confidence in specific skills and in one very specific domain of his life, but he struggled more broadly with his self esteem. That’s not uncommon, by the way. High confidence and low self esteem can and often do coexist. The two aren’t necessarily connected. Let’s maybe look at a different example here. On the flip side. Um, I also knew someone else. Let’s call her Sarah. So Sarah had this amazing sense of self-worth. You know, she’d say things like, oh, I know I’m a good person. I know I’m deeply rooted in generosity and love and honesty and truth and integrity. I know I’m worthy of love and respect. You know, all those types of things that so many of us have trouble saying, me included. But when it came to trying new things where there was some risk involved, there were some stakes involved. She didn’t know how it was going to end. Like starting a hustle on the side or, you know, a side gig or, um, learning to do something. Um, I think she was actually working on trying to develop the skills of playing an instrument, and she would just freeze up. You know, she think, what if I’m terrible at it? What if I fail? What if this doesn’t go well? So she was kind of the opposite case of Michael. She had high self-esteem. This just generalized feeling about her own self-worth and worthiness of love and love and respect and dignity and all the stuff.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:51] But she had low confidence in certain specific areas or domains of her life or pursuits. Tax. Right. And here’s the thing that’s okay to both confidence and self esteem. They’re not fixed pictures where you just have what you have and that’s the way it is. They are both works in progress. They both can be built and nurtured. So here’s where it gets interesting. Also, confidence and self esteem can influence each other. They’re not the same though. I think you’re starting to realize that. For example, succeeding at something can boost your confidence, which might spill over and give yourself esteem a little nudge. And the reverse is true. If you’ve got a solid foundation of self esteem, you might be more willing to try new things, even if your confidence in that particular thing or domain isn’t there yet, simply because you know your worth isn’t tied to whether you succeed or fail. So I want to tease out that distinction and the relationship between the two, along with the fact that they’re not the same, but they do influence each other because oftentimes I think we confuse them or we conflate them into the same thing and they’re not. But I want to now really refocus the rest of the conversation on confidence, on what this thing is. And I’m going to walk through a series of ten different strategies.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:21] Right. So we’ll do a deeper dive here. This is where things get pretty interesting, because there’s actually a lot of research to draw upon. And confidence, unlike self esteem, is highly situational and skill based. That means you can actively work on it in specific areas of your life. So let’s explore these ten different strategies to do just that and walk through them one at a time here. And again, as I mentioned earlier, after we go through these strategies, I’m also going to give you a bit of a contrarian reframe on the whole notion of confidence, or maybe a mindset shift and how to look at it differently. So let’s start out with the first one we call these mastery experiences. So oftentimes the most effective way to build confidence is through repeated success in a specific area. A psychologist Albert Bandura, called these mastery experiences. So think of it this way. Each time you achieve a goal, even a small one, this could literally be walking up to a person at a coffee shop and sitting down next to them and asking, you know, like, hey, do you like that book that you’re reading? Right? So it can be itty bitty. We’re not talking about big things here. I mean, it can be big, but it doesn’t have to be. But each time you say, okay, here’s this thing, right? It’s kind of scary. There’s some level of stakes in that example I just gave.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:53] There’s what we would call social stakes. Right? It’s not really a big deal if the person blows you off or doesn’t answer you or gives you sort of like a short answer that says you’re not really interested in conversation, right? Your life isn’t going to be rattled. You may feel a little uncomfortable for the next couple of seconds before you start doomscrolling on your phone, or doing whatever it is to distract you and pretend that just didn’t happen. But at the end of the day, the stakes are pretty low there, right? But we feel them as really high and we blow them out of proportion oftentimes. Right. But the little things over time, when we do them, when we actually try them, they can make a really big difference when we just keep saying yes to these mastery experiences. Each time you say, here’s a little thing, um, I want to take an action, big or small, all, and then we succeed at it. Your confidence grows. So this is sometimes shorthanded as what people might call the confidence competence loop. Right. You want to do a thing. You don’t necessarily know how to do it. So you try to do it the first time. Um, maybe you’re not that good at it. You fumble and stumble, you’re uncomfortable, and you don’t get the response you want. So then you try again in a slightly different approach. Okay, a little bit better.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:10] And you loop through this. And over time you build the skill the competence. And that competence then develops confidence. Right. And it’s based often on repeatedly looping through these mastery experiences. So maybe a bigger picture example here of mastery experiences and how they can impact your confidence. Let’s say you’re terrified of public speaking. And by the way if you are you’re not alone. This is reportedly still the number one fear of the typical person. I remember years ago looking at a chart that listed sort of like the top ten fears of the average person. Number four was fear of death, and number one was fear of speaking. That tells you how freaked out so many people are of speaking in front of other people. So how would we approach this from a mastery experience standpoint in order to help improve our confidence? Right. Well, we might say, okay, let me start by speaking to a small supportive group. Oftentimes we call these let me speak to a handful of friendlies where we know we kind of can’t fail. And then we do that. We know like no matter what happens, we stumble, we fumble. Everyone’s there rooting for us. It’s just a couple of people who are our people, right? So we start out that way where we’re lowering the stakes and we’re lowering the potential for social anxiety. And, um, each successful attempt then. So we do that and maybe we do it a couple of times, and then we tell those friends, hey, why don’t you maybe invite a friend next time? So now we have a small group of friendlies.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:51] Each one of them is inviting one other person who you’re going to assume is relatively friendly to you because they’re a friend of your friendlies. And so you’re slowly but you’re slowly building the size of the room, and then you’re like, oh, I actually feel pretty good here, too. I’ve just had another mastery experience where I’m not only repeating the thing and building my skill of doing it better, but I’m also, um, being able to do it in front of a group of people where they’re saying, yeah, like, that’s pretty good. So each successful attempt reinforces your belief that you can do it. That belief that you can do it starts to build your confidence. So that’s mastery experiences the first strategy. Right? How can I have a or create or step into a minor or major mastery experience? Strategy number two preparation and practice. Oftentimes confidence comes down to how prepared you feel. So studies have shown that practice not only improves skill but also can reduce anxiety and boost confidence. This makes a lot of sense to us, right? So, you know, when I was a gymnast, um, a million years ago in high school, I trained year round to be a competitive gymnast for the better part of the first 18 years of my life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:21] Right. And then on a weekly basis, we would have meets. And, you know, the bleachers in the gym would be filled, or we’d be, you know, in, quote, enemy territory in another person’s gym. And so, like, the crowd there would not be there supporting us. And my specialty. I was a bars person, so it was high bar and p bars or parallel bars, right? So basically I had a routine in my head, um, and I would have about 60s to step up to the piece of equipment. The moment my hands touch it, the world would vanish away and I would do this set of skills one after another. And what I knew was that there was a direct correlation between my preparation and practice, and not just my ability to do the skill at a high level, but how anxious I was, how confident I was as I stepped to the piece of equipment to do it right. So preparation and practice, we think of it as being able to build skill, but what we don’t often think about is that they’re also really important in our ability to build confidence as we step into wanting to be able to do that skill in a way, um, where there’s a high chance of success, right? So zoom up to create an example and sort of like a modern day situation before. Say you have a big presentation, right? Um, you could 20 minutes before jot down a whole bunch of things that you want to talk about.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:57] And maybe some people are actually good with that because they have developed the skill of being able to almost freestyle or improv or presentation for years or decades. So they actually know that they have the skill to be able to do it on the fly. Most people are not that person. Most people are actually pretty terrified of that experience, or they’ve done it just enough to be okay, but probably not really good or great. So we spend a lot of time, right? Instead, before a big presentation, we write down the details of what we want to make happen. We create our deck, whatever it is we’re going to do. And then we rehearse and we do this multiple times. Maybe it’s in front of a mirror, maybe it’s with friends, maybe it’s just repeating it to yourself. In the early days of speaking especially, you know, I would often rehearse by, um, creating a pretty detailed outline of what I wanted to talk about. And then I would basically just create, um, distill it down to a single piece of paper. I put it on the wall, I’d be in my room, and I would just use that, um, to jog my memory as I would play around with different ideas and styling and stories and ways that I was going to share what I was speaking.

Jonathan Fields: [00:18:09] And in fact, every time I recreate a new topic to speak about, which I’m actually in the process of doing for this year, then I go through a whole new process of preparation and practice, because I’m pretty comfortable with a lot of my presentation skills now, but it’s a whole new body of work, or a whole new big idea or concept and stories, and that I need to really find my way through to be able to do it, not just have the skill of doing it well, but to feel confident that when I step out to do it, it will come and it will be delivered and it will show up in a way that makes me feel good before I walk on stage. So familiarity with your materials in that scenario and practice through repetition, um, can have a big impact not just on your skill or competence, but on your confidence and state of mind. That brings us to our third strategy. So, so far we’ve covered mastery experiences, preparation and practice. Number three here modeling or social learning. So what we know is that watching someone else successfully perform a task that we also would love to be able to do at a high level, can increase our belief in our own ability to pull it off. This is called vicarious experience. So modeling or social learning through vicarious experience can be incredibly effective at helping us to develop the confidence.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:44] There’s a bit of a proviso here, though. Modeling or social learning. When the person that you are looking to or watching is not in any way, shape or form similar to, you can not only help you build the skills that you need to do it, but it can also not be a super effective way for you to feel more confident in your belief in your own ability to do the same thing. So why is this? Well, you know, so if I look at somebody who is, uh, let’s say, um, a world class, Um, athlete, you know, uh, a a skier. Downhill skier. Well, actually, I’m a snowboarder, so let’s use snowboarding as an example. I look at a world class. An Olympic snowboarder. Right. And they’re snowboarding in a half pipe in the Olympics, doing these incredible things in the half pipe and catching air and, you know, spinning around and landing and defying gravity. Right now, I’m a 58 year old guy, and I’m watching somebody who is, you know, a 24 year old person and the peak of everything. Right. If I’m watching that person successfully perform some sort of move in a half pipe on a mountain. Right. Does it make sense that me sitting here at my desk watching that video on YouTube, or even sitting on the sidelines at the actual event, watching them do it? Right. Am I going to be awed? Odd.

Jonathan Fields: [00:21:27] Yes. Am I gonna be like, ah, that’s super cool. I wish I could do that. Yes. Am I going to think to myself because they have just been able to do it? I now believe that I will be able to do that even with enough practice. Not a chance in the world. They their lives, their abilities, their gifts, their talent, their support, their training, their skills, everything are so profoundly different from me. My life, my body, my circumstances that I can’t easily transfer in and say they’re the analog. There’s enough that’s similar about them, so that if they can do it well, then so could I. So now I feel more confident about it. Right. There’s just a massive disconnect there. So the one thing that you want to really be careful of when we talk about modeling or social learning is that you pick an exemplar or an avatar of somebody who has enough similarity to you so that your, um, observation of them doing a thing that you wish you could do and that you want to do at the level you want to do, it, is compelling enough to make you say, you know what? They could do it. I could do it. So maybe, for example, if, um, you’re learning to play a piano, right? You’re a total newbie and you’re watching somebody else, right? Who is similar age? Um, sort of like similar, um, amount of time in their life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:59] They can practice 15, 20 minutes a day because an adult would have kids and a job. Um, and there were similar skill level. Um, but maybe they’re six months down the road from you and you’re watching what they’re doing, right? And you’re like, oh, wow. You know, they’re actually able to play this song that, um, I can’t play right now. But, you know, they seem similar enough to me and have similar enough lifestyles and abilities and skills and talent that I could totally see that, you know, six months from now. Or if I just keep practicing, I keep doing those actions that I’m confident that I would be able to do it, too. And so modeling and social learning can be really powerful as a confidence builder. Just be really careful who you pick to model. That brings us to strategy number four. Positive feedback. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So constructive feedback when we’re looking to build confidence in any particular domain of life. And remember we said confidence is domain specific. You can be super confident in one area and super not confident in another, right? So constructive feedback can be super helpful here. Research shows that receiving encouragement, especially from someone you trust, can significantly boost confidence. Right. So that little part there, though, is the key, especially from someone you trust. So if you are, you know, um, working on a drawing and you’re trying to get better at it and, you know, you’re you’re in a class maybe, and at the end of the class, there’s going to be all the students get together and you do a show, a class show, and you invite all your friends and they invite all their friends, and you put up your three best things up on the wall.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:06] And everybody’s kind of coming and and celebrating and checking out what you’ve done, right. Um, so you really want to improve. You know, you’re taking this maybe it’s a semester long class or a month long class. Maybe you’re in school, or maybe this is just, you know, this is your fun thing. Adult ed on the side, But you really want you want to feel confident about your abilities here and confident that you can stand up next to your work and and feel really good about it as people observe it. Right. So part of that is you’re working and you want feedback so that you can get better. You want input, but you want input from somebody who actually knows how to help you improve. So often we don’t do that. We just ask any random person, hey, what do you think? You know, you write something, you put it on social media and then you get all this feedback and, you know, and you have no idea, um, whether people are actually qualified to give you feedback that is constructive versus just socially compliant with what they think the norms are when they’re telling you what they think you want to hear or, um, outright destructive or, you know, like malignant in the way that they’re actually Responding to you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:20] So constructive feedback is and can be super important in helping us build confidence. Positive feedback right. This is a strategy here, but super important that we solicit that feedback from someone that we trust both to have the insight, the skill, the wisdom to know what they’re talking about to help us improve, and also the benevolent state of mind to want us to improve and not just be saying things to potentially take us down. So if you’re trying to improve at a sport, you know, maybe it’s a coach who provides specific, actionable feedback that can make a huge difference. If you’re at work and you’re trying to just get better at presentations, right? Maybe you’re going to find somebody there who’s awesome at it. Maybe that’s your boss or your colleague and ask them, hey, can I, like, run a couple lines by you? Can you take a quick look at what I’m doing here and ask their feedback? Right? Positive feedback. But just beware who you’re asking for it, because that can either build or dismantle confidence if it’s the wrong person. That brings us to strategy number five. That is reframing failure. So confidence isn’t about never failing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:41] It’s about seeing failure or reframing failure as a part of a learning process. Studies show that people who view setbacks as opportunities to grow tend to not only grow and develop the skills needed to develop competence that leads to confidence, but they also just have a mindset that makes them more confident trying because they believe that their actions will lead to change and to growth, not that they will lead to futility. Lady Carol Dweck became pretty famous in the world of positive psychology and also in the business world and then in the education world. She wrote a book called mindset based on her work, where she coined the phrase growth mindset that so many people have used. Now, you’ve probably heard the phrase yourself, right? And this is about reframing any challenge, any adversity, um, which can lead to failure. Like, let’s say you’re you’re trying to learn how to you’re taking a test, right? And you end up, you know, it’s a math test, um, or you’re coding and, you know, you’re, um, you’re unable to do the thing or you code it really poorly, right? And you get a really bad response. Right? There are two ways to look at this. One is, well, I guess I just don’t have the talent or the skill or the ability. And I’ve hit the edge of what is my lot. You know, like, this is just not what I’m capable of doing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:13] That would be What Dweck would call a fixed mindset. You know that there’s you, you’ve got what you’ve got. And when you hit the edge of it, you’re just busted, you know? And it is incredibly futile and confidence destroying for so many people. It’s all so wrong. That is not how human beings function. The opposite is this thing called the growth mindset, where the frame is okay, so I did something. It didn’t work the way I wanted it to work and hoped it worked. But you know what? Um, this was just a learning experience to what can I learn from this? I’m going to work with the assumption that I can do it again, differently and better. So what can I learn from this so that I can iterate again and grow from it and, you know, keep my skills growing and keep my abilities growing, keep my ability to deliver the outcomes that I want growing. Right. So reframing failure not as saying, oh yeah, like this was just a total bust or I suck. I’m not good enough. It’s not good enough. It never will be. Um, as saying. Yeah. You know what kind of a bummer didn’t work the way I hoped it would work. But I’m also, you know, like, look, I’m all along a learning journey here. And honestly, everything that we do in life, from the moment we open our eyes to the moment we take our last breath, is one big learning journey.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:38] So if we frame it that way, even things that we quote think we should be good at say like, okay, so I’m not where I need to be right now. But the cool thing is, I can be I can learn pretty much anything I want to learn. I can develop skills that I don’t have now. I just need to practice and do all the things right. Reframing that failure as a learning and growth opportunity can be huge at helping you build the confidence needed to keep taking action. So instead of thinking I’m terrible at this, just reframe it as, Huh? Yep. Didn’t work out the way I wanted. I’m learning. And the cool thing is, every mistake is filled with data. And that data, that information can be used to help me improve. So the next time I step up to do this thing, I’ll be better. And then better, and then better. And then better. So this then helps actually fuel us to go back to that first strategy the mastery experiences. It helps us say yes to dropping back into mastery experiences, which let us develop the confidence and eventually, potentially the mastery to let us not just be able to deliver on the outcome, but feel confident that we can on a consistent basis. So reframing failure is starting to probably see that some of these things feed into the others.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:01] The strategies you kind of you piggyback with them and they work together and they have almost like a compound interest effect when you When you start to use multiple ones together. That brings us to strategy number six. And that is visualization techniques. So visualization or what some people call mental rehearsal has been shown to improve confidence and performance. Athletes often use this technique to imagine themselves succeeding. There is a phenomenon called mirror neurons in the brain, um, where we know that visualizing doing a particular thing actually makes our brain feel like we’re doing the thing. Uh, athletes, musicians, artists, performers of any kind. Speakers often practice the thing not by doing it, but by closing their eyes or open, whichever is your preference, and literally imagining themselves doing the thing and doing it at the highest level, and it performing and it all unfolding in the way that they dream of it unfolding. And what we now know is that there are signs behind this that says that it primes the brain to believe and and reinforce the neural pathways as if you were actually doing the thing. Um, and that starts to make us not just more skilled at it, but more confident that we can. So going all the way back to since I shared I was a gymnast as a kid. Um, one of the things I did was I practiced a ton. Like, I trained year round to be good, in part because I wanted to be good.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:49] I wanted to feel confident when I stepped up to the bars. In part because my specialties were kind of dangerous. And if I peeled off, it was not fun and often ended in injury. Um, but the other thing that I did was visualization. So and there was one event that I did for a number of years. That was not my strongest event, but it was kind of the easiest to to imagine myself doing. But what I would often do is there was a limit to how much I could physically practice without my body just kind of being a wreck, you know? So I would often practice in season two to, you know, like three hours a day and then work out outside of that off season. I probably do, you know, like a couple of hours a week to stay in tune. Um, but in season in particular, I couldn’t physically do the practice enough times without it wearing on my body so much that it would actually be, um, detracting from my ability to perform at the level I wanted to. So I started complementing my physical practice with visualized practices, and I would close my eyes and I would imagine myself from the very beginning, like I would imagine literally my hands covered in Covered in chalk with these old leather grips on them. Touching the bar. And the minute I touch it, I would literally imagine myself moving through every single beat of my routine, every move, every breath, until I would do my dismount and feel my feet land on the mat.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:24] And I would imagine a perfect routine and a perfect dismount and a perfect landing. Right? Did that mean that I always did that as a skill? No. But what I learned was that the act of visualization really helped me feel more confident that I would be able to perform at a higher level. And I do believe that it let me do that. Um, especially when there were times where I actually didn’t have the time or the ability to physically practice and prepare as much as I wanted to. You know, if there were finals or if I just wasn’t feeling great or if we were traveling or something like that. So this is a huge technique in confidence building and skill building, in athletics and performance and art and things like that, but we can do it any time on a day to day basis before a job interview. You can close your eyes. Picture yourself walking in, confidently, answering the questions with ease, and just having this amazing, rich, story driven conversation and developing a deep connection. Laughing and feeling like, wow, I really showed up and and did my best and it landed really well. And leaving on a high note, right? We can literally close our eyes and visualize that experience.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:45] Not only does it help us feel more at peace, but it helps us feel more confident that we will be able to actually show up and deliver on that visualized experience and make it more likely that we actually will. So that brings us to strategy number seven. And that is um, physicality or body language. So your body can influence your mind. In fact, um, a long time, uh, podcast community members know that I have said so many times over the years that the age old distinction that we used to make between body and mind actually is a complete and utter fallacy. There is no difference. Your mind and your body are one seamless feedback mechanism. And in fact, there’s a really strong argument to say that they are not two distinct things at all. So they’re not even a feedback mechanism because you can’t feedback from one thing that is the very same thing. Um, but your mind and your body influence each other, um, back and forth. Research shows that adopting certain um, body, uh, positions or stances, um, the way that we hold ourselves can either make us feel more or less confident. You know, body language is a real thing. So if we’re sitting kind of collapsed with our shoulders down and our head forward and our chin down and our arms wrapped around ourselves, you know, pretty safe bet that we’re not feeling great about ourselves. Our physical stance, our physical body positioning often represents our psychological stance.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:28] And that is true of confidence, too. Now, there was a body of research around something called power posing. Um, a number of years back. And that research has been, um, explored. Um, some people still strongly support elements of the research. Some people don’t. Um, so I don’t even think we need to go into that, though, because what we do know is, in general, that your body language doesn’t just transmit information to other people, but it literally transmits information to you, to your own brain, to your own state of mind. You know, oftentimes if you’re kind of bummed out, kind of tired, kind of worn out, kind of depressed, you’re going to slump down, you’re going to feel your physical body will reflect that. But what we don’t realize is that there’s a reverse pattern to that. The state of our physical body can actually send signals up to our brain telling it whether to feel alive, energized, confident or not, or dejected, tired, unconfident. So just really think about that. Think about how you’re carrying yourself physically. Um, are you carrying yourself into a situation? You know, if you’re wanting to approach somebody at you’re at a small party at a friend’s house, right? And there are maybe 20 people there, you know, some of them. And, you know, there’s great and fun. And then you see somebody off to the side who you really don’t know and you’re like, huh? That person looks kind of cool and interesting.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:56] I would love to know more about them. And, Butch, you’re kind of nervous, but but you’re like, you know what? I’m just gonna walk up to them and approach and, like, and and take a flyer and see how it goes. And you kind of walk up to them, right? And you walk up and you’re kind of shuffling and your head is kind of down and you’re fidgeting and you’re playing with your fingers, and your shoulders are rolled in and, um, as you’re walking up to them. Right. Okay. So as we know, you are sending a social signal to that person if they see you coming, that transmits a whole bunch of things that you don’t necessarily want to be transmitting. And we’re aware of that. What we don’t know is that we’re sending those very same signals to our own brains about how confident we really are and how we feel about ourselves. So rather than just sort of like readjusting and saying, you know what? Um, I’m going to just kind of stand tall, um, and relax and breathe a little bit and drop my shoulders a little bit and take a few long, deep breaths and calm and relaxed and that that physical signaling actually helps us feel psychologically more confident along the way. That brings us to our eighth strategy. Gradual exposure. This is about starting small and building up.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:12] This is a technique that comes from therapy often CBT cognitive behavioral therapy. Sometimes in that domain it’s known as exposure therapy. And it helps you gradually face fears and gain confidence. And the idea here is really pretty straightforward that rather than saying yes to the whole big thing upfront, something big and scary, we kind of say, well, um, what if we chunk it down a little bit and say yes to just a small version of it where the stakes are low, right? So, for example, if networking events scare you, by the way, I hate that word networking. I don’t know why. It’s just it feels so transactional to me. Can we change it to something like if you like events where you get to know other cool humans, um, rather than networking events. But let’s say if these types of events, if they scare you, if they make you feel unconfident, um, you know, and the thought of just walking into a room and there are, you know, like 100 people or 500 people or a thousand people all there. And your job is to go and quote, network, work the room. Right? That is not me. That has never been me. It will never be me. I am introverted, I am sensitive. So I have had to learn a different way to approach it. And a lot of times the way that I’ve done it and start to feel more confident, even walking into those bigger rooms is by gradual exposure, starting small.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:37] And then instead of saying, I’m here to work the room, I sort of say, okay, what if I pick out a single person and maybe two people, um, in a low pressure setting before I even go there. And then I build that from there. So instead, before that event, you know, or if I know that I’m going to need to attend those on a regular basis, then I find smaller groups. You know, maybe it’s a local meetup where I know about ten people meet on a regular basis who are in my industry, who talk about cool, interesting things. Um, and maybe I’ll go to that and I’ll say, okay, so now I’m going to a small, much more intimate, um, place. And the only thing is to talk to the person next to me for two minutes and see how that feels. Low pressure setting. The stakes are low. I know this is really just skill building and practice for me. Rather than showing up somewhere where the expectation is, I’m going to make things happen and it’s big and it’s a lot of people and the stakes are high. So gradual exposure. What is your version of that? Right. What is the small version of that where you can start by small, tiny little chunked pieces of it where the stakes are low. There’s low pressure.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:49] That brings us to strategy Number nine. I don’t know exactly how to phrase this, so I’m just going to call it self-talk, right? Um, and you may think of this as chatter, as the way you talk to yourself. Um, but what we know is that your inner dialogue actually really matters. Pay attention to your inner dialogue. And we want to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts. This doesn’t mean delusional Pollyanna type of things, you know? If affirmations are something that feels good to you and you like doing them, and it works and it makes you feel confident, awesome. But what we’re really looking at here is study suggests that positive self-talk can significantly enhance confidence. So a simple example instead of saying, uh, you know, there’s this thing, um, uh, I’m really going to mess this up, right? So what we’re telling ourselves in advance is that we are not competent. We are not confident, we are not capable, we are not skilled. And that the thing that we want to happen, we are going to mess up, right. That kind of increases the likelihood that all those things are actually going to happen, because we’re spinning ourselves into a space of disbelief, disempowerment, and lack of confidence. Rather than saying, okay, for that exact same experience. You know what? I’ve worked really hard. I’ve prepared really hard. I have practiced, I’ve rehearsed, I got this down, I have got this, and it’s going to go well, right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:31] Going into that now, we primed our brain to reinforce the fact that we do have the skill. We have practiced enough times so that we know this really well. We are capable of doing it. We are competent at doing it, and that helps us feel confident. And that competence, plus confidence allows us to walk in, feeling better and increasing the likelihood we’ll actually be able to deliver on the outcome that we want. And that becomes this, again, reinforcing dynamic, because that then becomes a mastery experience that we talked about a strategy, number one, that helps us build more skills and feel more confident and create that upward spiral of confidence that brings us friends to number ten. Seek support and we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Surround yourself with people who believe in you. Research shows that having a supportive community boosts confidence and resilience, so don’t do this alone. Share with your friends. Share with a trusted group of people. Share with people who are trying to do the same thing as you and working as a peer group and champions and cheerleaders. If you remember back from our last episode to in our New Beginning series, where I talked about this thing we call success scaffolding, I talked about the six roles of people who can really be there to support you in achieving something big. Those people, or any one of those groups of people, can also be amazing support just on a day to day basis for day to day stuff to help you build confidence in what you’re doing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:47:13] So share what you want to do with a trusted friend or a mentor who can cheer you on. Remind you of your progress and the fact that you’ve got this and it’s going to be okay. So these strategies, these ten strategies all contribute to something often called the confidence loop. It’s one of the simplest yet most powerful frameworks in confidence building. Basically says that action leads to results, which leads to belief which fuels more action. It’s this self-reinforcing cycle. And the ten strategies that we just talked about, They’re basically designed to help get you into action and keep you continuing to take action that is needed to build proof that you are competent enough to feel confident in whatever domain or task or challenge you’re focusing on. Before I wrap, though, I want to share a bit of a contrarian but maybe helpful perspective on confidence. I actually call it the confidence paradox. It’s focused on a very specific mindset. So if you’ve heard all ten strategies we just explored and you’re still thinking, I don’t know, dude, that sounds scary to me. Still, maybe here’s a different take that will resonate. So often we keep telling ourselves, you know, I’m not confident enough to do the things I really want, but that scare me even when I kind of know they’re really not all that risky.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:32] And if I succeeded, the possibility on the other side of fear is so exponentially bigger than the few seconds or minutes of discomfort I might experience that, you know, like, I kind of know Like it makes sense to try. What if this was all an illusion? What if confidence was actually more fake than real, and waiting for it to magically arrive was actually stopping us from living truly amazing lives? What if, in fact, even if that magical state of confidence arrived, it was actually not the asset or ally we thought it would be, but was rather a sign of an unwillingness to grow, to take meaningful risks that could lead to a better life, better relationships, better work experiences, and more. What if, in fact, it was the very willingness to live, to make decisions, to take actions when you not only were not confident, but literally could not be confident given your circumstances? That was the real power move in life. What if cultivating the skill of unconfident action was the unlucky for so much, and chasing confidence was really just kind of a bit of a of a distraction that kept you from doing all the amazing things you dream of doing, and creating all the awesome things you’d love to bring to life, and becoming who you deeply yearn to be. I have experienced this so many times when I was in a situation where I was going to launch a book, or start a podcast, or show up at an event, and there was no way that I could actually know if this would succeed or fail, or if I had the ability to make it succeed or fail until I did it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:50:13] So here’s what I know. The only way to be 100% confident about anything is if you’ve already done it, or someone else has. And at that point, the stakes are so low it just doesn’t matter anymore. It’s the moments you’re not confident, but find a way to do it anyway that hold the greatest opportunity for growth, for connection and for impact. So what if we reframe the whole concept of confidence as simply bravery, or willingness to act when you when you don’t know or can’t know how things will unfold. This is a take that I first learned from Brene Brown, who champions bravery over competence. Because the truth is, when something genuinely matters, you are rarely able to have certainty or perfect information before committing and acting. So what if instead we learn just how to be brave, how to. Especially when it comes to taking that first step in this scenario that we don’t and can’t know how it ends? To say, you know what? I’m going to take this step and all the ten strategies above, by the way, they’re designed to help you do that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:14] The ten strategies we talked about, they help really set you up to take that first step in so that eventually your own competence becomes the reinforcer for your confidence. But the reframe from confidence to bravery, a willingness to take unconfident action can be the mindset shift that we also need to help us start doing the things needed to first be brave and then, just maybe, as her bravery proves, our competence, become confident. Confidence isn’t something you wait for. It is something you build. It grows through action, through community, through bravery and mindset. So this week, my invitation is to take one small action towards something you would love to make happen. Play with those ten different strategies. And remember, as with all of the sessions in this five part New Beginning series, we will have a quote cheat sheet with all the key elements, including the ten strategies here that you can download for free. There’s a link in the show notes to just be able to do that. You’ll get it instantly if you want. So go ahead and do that and then pick something where you don’t know if it will work or how other people involved might respond. Yet it holds the potential to not only open a beautiful door for you, but also leave you changed. Next week, we’ll dive into how to sustain motivation and momentum throughout the year by building a set of good life habits.

Jonathan Fields: [00:52:38] In part four of this Good Life Project New Beginning series, so stay tuned. And if you haven’t listened to the first two parts of this January series, crafting your 2025 roadmap and achieving big, meaningful goals, go ahead and check those episodes out now. Thanks so much for joining me today. You are capable of so much more than you realize. Let’s make 2025 your year to make life happen on an entirely different level. Take care.

Jonathan Fields: [00:53:09] This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did, Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.