Ep 27: Can You Hack Confidence
Alyssa Dver:
If you're smart, work hard, but just aren't where or who you want to be, welcome to your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver. And I'll be sharing a bit of brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.
Probably every podcast interview I've done as the interviewee, probably every time there's a Q&A session for a workshop or keynote, somebody wants to know, the fast, easy ways to hack confidence every time, you know, just give me a pill. Well, yeah, I mean, there is definitely a shortcut. And that's pretty much what I teach. If you've listened to other things I talk about TED Talks. And otherwise, we don't learn how to be confident till we're 60. And so yes, we can hack it in the sense we can get there faster, quicker, stronger, well before then, but it's not like you flip a switch as much as I'd like to. There are some things that I'm going to talk about on this podcast, though, that make it a heck of a lot easier and faster. So if you're looking for literally a shot of confidence, yeah, not so much.
Now, funny enough, ha ha ha, there are lots of people and things on the internet that will tell you how to get confident right away. You know, and everything from power poses, of course, love Amy Cuddy for lots of reasons. But throw power poses in this under the bus pocket. Breathing. Take a deep cleansing breath. Yeah, that helps. Okay, gratitude. That's another one. Whether it's saying it out loud, writing it in a journal being grout gracious before you start your day when you end your day, whatever. Again, I love these techniques, they're all really good. But they have a place in time in the spectrum of being more confident. So I call them confidence carbs, like carbohydrates. And the reason is because at that moment where I'm having a crisis, maybe I'm upset, I'm frustrated at somebody or something. I just can't focus. I'm overwhelmed. Yeah, taking a deep breath is great, it resets your amygdala so to speak, it stops that cycle of panic, it may prevent you from going into cave person brainstem mode. Same thing with a power pose. Same thing with being gracious, it kind of says stop, timeout. Get out of cave person territory, settle down. And that's all awesome. But like a carb, you eat it, you feel good. You're like, Oh, I'm not hungry anymore. But an hour later, you're not sure what to do because now you're hungry. Now you have no fuel in the tank.
And that's unfortunately what those techniques you know, a power poses great. Walk into that interview, you've got your confidence back in on your confidence cape, but what you're going to say and how you're going to carry yourself through that interview a different problem, right? With taking a breath, right? I get myself out of that crazy cycle, whatever's happening. But then what do I do? So I want to offer a couple perspectives of not only longer lasting, sustainable confidence, but a different way not so much what to think confidence is not what you think it's how you think. That's what gives people confidence. We talk about meta confidence in a lot of the coursework. Meta confidence is the concept that you think about being confident in a way that's different than just general thinking. So you consider how and why to be confident in those moments. You breathe. Okay, I'm going to now be confident and that is the starting block for being confident. Confident thinking happens in your prefrontal, it's your, the top portion of your brain right behind your forehead. It's the place that we identify as executive functioning. That's where we make our decisions. We correlate, we calculate, we consider all the pieces of data and objective data, quantitative, quote, factual, so called factual data, all data is questionable, but let's just say, you know, kind of quantitative data as well as qualitative data. That's things that we feel and see that aren't necessarily measurable. Those are all part of that equation that goes into your prefrontal. And subsequently you come out with a decision of what to do whether you're certain about the truth of something, that's really what confidence is at the end of the day.
So if, for example, I believe that it's going to rain today, because I feel it in my skin, or I read the weather report, I can make a decision about the rest of my day am I going to drive to the supermarket, I'll take a little bit more time am I going to get an umbrella and so on and so forth, right. So that ability to slow yourself down enough to take all that data and really think about it, or at least think about it enough that you can make a decision. That's what confidence is about. Now, it's very nice for me to kind of lay it out that way. Let's talk in more practical way, let's just say that you are going into an interview and you're going to strike that power pose before you go, you walk in your head is high, you have a good firm handshake, everything's going great. And somewhere. As you get into the interview, the questions are coming, and you're starting to feel like oh, this person doesn't like me. This is not going well. Breathe, reset, think in your prefrontal, take a little bit of maybe a pregnant pause, as it's called a little bit more of time than you normally would. And try to say to yourself, don't read into this person, they may be busy, they may be hassled, I may not be the right fit. But don't assume that and act a lot more calm and rational.
I will tell you in every scenario, whether you're interviewing for a job doing a presentation in a meeting, doing a podcast for that matter. Any time you are acting, reacting or interacting with other people your best foot forward is being confident it almost doesn't matter what you say, as long as you say with confidence. So resetting that amygdala in that moment of self doubt, resetting the amygdala in a moment of my confidence isn't where it should be. All those confidence carbs will are good, they're going to give you that little jolt of knock it off. But after that, you've got to get into your brain itself, you got to say to yourself, okay, we are not going to act like a cave person, we are not going to assume that this person doesn't like us, we're not going to go into that place that is negative, passive protective, called our brain stem and we're going to stay in our prefrontal and we're going to be brilliant. We're going to continue the conversation in a way that I can think and I can focus on what this person's asking me what they need from me, what I want them to know, taking that moment to tell yourself, you can be confident you can choose it. Taking a break, as always, given our sponsors some love and we come back, we're going to give you some very specific ways to not only continue that confident Mojo, but to really put it back in place. If it gets knocked off the track. We'll be right back.
This podcast was sponsored by the American Confidence Institute, ACI treats smart, hardworking people how to use basic brain science to more effectively coach themselves and others. ACI is endorsed by top universities, The Strategic HR Management Association and International Coaching Federation. Learn more about ACI is uniquely empowering keynotes workshops and classes and coaching certification at www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com.
All right, we're back. And yeah, favorite tip of all time, you're gonna love this because it's the easiest thing to do is to actually get some sleep. Sleep. Yeah, you know what, here's the thing when our brains are tired, when our brains are tired, it's really friggin hard to make good confident decisions. It's in fact, I would argue impossible. We don't have the cognitive cycle., have that mindful moment to be able to be like, breathe, be confident, we can't do that. It's like too much effort, too much mindfulness that if you're tired, you just don't have the energy to do. You’re running on empty cognitively. And even that confidence card that I mentioned before, a power pose or breathing or being gracious, those are hard to do when you're tired, and then you're kind of like you do and you're like, I can't do anymore. I can struggle Wonderwoman I can't, I just can't do more. So sleeping is your first and foremost best defense, best way to refuel. And of course, when we sleep, our brain does all kinds of cool things, including washing out all the unneeded unnecessary neural pathways, it cleans out some of the plaque that will make us foggy in the short term and actually might cause dementia in the long term. So for no other reason, get a good night's rest, if you can, and there's, you know, of course, poster child for a wake up and I'm still tired because I didn't sleep well. So there's not always the control of getting good night's rest, but do your best, do your best to sleep well. And if you're not sleeping, well work on it, right, like melatonin or sleep centers, or whatever it is that you think you need to get a good night's rest. Yeah, before any other medicines before any other therapies, sleeping, Tanya sleeping is really the most important thing when it comes to maintaining your cognitive control and your confidence.
So beyond that, again, you're in a situation, maybe your confidence fell off the track, maybe, you know, your power pose is worn off. And now the questions are coming. And so yes, taking a deep breath, thinking through things that still helps, but as I think that the most powerful tool, when it comes to confidence is recognizing that you do have the ability to control your brain, you do have the ability to slow things down. So in a rapid fire interview, whether you're pitching a product, or you're asking for funding, or you're in an interview, and you're trying to sell something, of course, when you're selling yourself, it's one of the hardest, if not the hardest thing of all, but you're in a situation where you're having those moments of, oh, they don't want it, they're not liking it. Just stop. Just stop and listen. And here's the key, ask questions. Ask questions.
So we sit here and we're trying to sell somebody we're not we're trying to sell ourselves, we're trying to be charming and yet, most of the time, we don't know how it's landing. We don't even know what the person wants. We don't know. And the more questions the more observation you make and do, the more data you have, of course, and the more time you give yourself to really strategize to be confident to be thoughtful and mindful. One of the things if you think about anytime you have a conversation with somebody, if they're really actively listening to you, if they are not jumping to their next sentence, if they're engaged in the conversation, it gives you confidence, it gives you that ability to connect and trust. It may even intimidate you a little bit, because we're so not used to it. And you sit there and you go why they think I'm so fascinating. Why do they it's not a bad tactic, my friends, and I'll say tactic, it's really a strategy.
When you listen to somebody when you're really engaged and you pay attention. And you ask them questions, what are you doing, you're helping them feel that they matter? You helping them feel like they belong, you're giving them a sense of confidence. You're giving them psychological safety and a reason to continue talking to you, to trusting you. So listening, actively asking them questions, whether it's in an interview or sales cycle, boy, is that the greatest trick of all, and I say trick, it's not a trick. But it's a way for you to make somebody else feel confident and maintain your own so that you're not tripping over your own tongue so that you are not saying something that you want to regret two seconds later.
So to recap, it’s is very subtle stuff. But let me tell you the most powerful tricks, tools, weapons that I can offer you is not to take a confidence carb just to reset the amygdala, get some sleep so you have all fuel all cylinders firing. And when you're in that situation, whatever it might be an interview or a you're going to do a presentation or even going to do a pitch like I said, take your time, ask some good questions and pay attention to the other people.
Not only will you give them confidence, but it's gonna shine right back to you because you know this and you're gonna hear it every five guests, the best way to get confidence is to give it to somebody else. So I'll leave you with those thoughts. Thank you for tuning in, talk to you next time.
So before we completely wrap up I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other episodes can be found on the website www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again, that the best way to get confidence for yourself is to give it to others and you can do it so easily just by liking and sharing this episode on your favorite social media channels. You can even give me some competence fuel by sending in any comments about the topics I've covered or ones you'd like me to consider for the future. So for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world
This podcast was produced by Mindful Media. All rights reserved by Alyssa Dver and the American Confidence Institute. Music written and performed by Jeff Weinstein.
