EP 89: Control is Confidence in Action
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic 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.
Alyssa Dver:
Many years ago, some people that I really do care about, I had heard called me a control freak. And I was so offended. It's like, I'm not a control freak. How could they say that they are control freaks, and they really are. But it's still really, really and honestly, to this day still irks me. And I've had conversations about this funny word control over the years with many people. And I'm always fascinated by words that have almost the contradictory meaning to people. What I mean by that is some people look at that word control and they think of it and just negative, right? It's manipulative. It is not creative. It's not fair, it's, um, you know, it's limiting is restrictive. It's not natural, it's, it's something that you do with manipulation with that intention.
And then there's other people who look at control, and they go, wow, anything I control is awesome. I can, you know, optimize time and space, I can be very intentional in what I want to do. And I can learn better I can repeat those processes, because there's order and there is comparative space, right. And that sense of control. Right? is good. I mean, even in an experiment, we call it the control, right? It's that piece that is predictable. And that is something that we can measure against. So again, some people look at control as a really scary negative word and other people look at it is a really good thing and I find that fascinating.
The question that I want to pose in this podcast is, though, when we control other people, is that terrible? Is that something that makes you feel good, or makes you feel crappy? And of course, it's gonna depend on the person in the situation, you know, control your kids, control that baby on the plane, right? Good thing to do, right? Control your boss, control your friends, control your spouse, maybe not as much. But I'm going to make an argument here, that in a lot of ways, controlling other people can actually be good for everyone. And here's what I mean. If you're dealing with somebody in the service industry, your waitstaff and a restaurant, somebody on the customer service person on the phone, maybe you walk up to somebody in a store, and you're, you know, to pay for something. And just by being nice, by being friendly, you're giving that person the opportunity to reciprocate. In many cases, they may get very negative behavior from other people aggressive, demanding, and here you are, you're being friendly and nice and actually looking at them and caring about them in that way. And that's a welcome thing in most cases, and they will be nice back to you. As they will be, should be usually are. But in that way, you are controlling their behavior. You're being nice, you're controlling your own. But you are in fact, maybe doing it so that person treats you in a nice way. Is that bad? Is that negative? Is that manipulative?
I have a friend who is very religious. And she said to me once that she doesn't think there's anything such thing as charity. And it was really interesting conversation. And I said to her, why do you say that? She says, well, people are charitable for some reason. Maybe they're getting a tax deduction. Or maybe they feel that they owe it to God or they owe it to their redemption or whatever it might be that they should do that charitable act. And so I said to her, what about somebody like Mother Teresa? Do you think she was doing it for some personal gain? And my friend said, absolutely, Mother Teresa felt obligated felt that it was something she needed to do. And so she was fulfilling that obligation, she was fulfilling that maybe a little bit of guilt or need, or need to belong even. That that was her calling and that was what she was supposed to do. So interesting thought, right, no such thing as charity. And in that regard, thinking about when you are doing something in your head that you're like, this is not controlling, but it's charitable, or it is doing something that benefits somebody else that's not bad, right.
In fact, you know, I, I like to close most of my podcasts and most of my presentations with the phrase that to get confidence, you have to give it away. And it sounds charitable, but in reality, it's this is that when you are able to give confidence to somebody else. Yeah, you're empowering them. It's a good thing, but in a lot of ways you are controlling them. Right, you're giving them confidence, you're enabling them to be confident. So, you're controlling, not in a negative way, oh, but in a positive way, making them feel better. And by making them feel better, you feel better. Maybe it it's a little Mother Teresa, there.
So interesting thought on this word control. And when people say to me, you know, we can only control what we can control. I kind of say, well, it's true if you're going to talk about things like the weather. But even that, I'm sure a lot of people would argue with what's going on with the weather these days. But needless to say, there's a lot more that we can control, then I think we give ourselves credit. Now, again, religion kind of is a stinky issue here. Because in a lot of cases, we say, you know, it's God's will. Or it's not something that I'm empowered to do, I'm just human. But I think we kind of skirt out from our responsibility to control a lot of things. And the thing that I'm going to put on the top of the list is not just our brains, but also then the subsequent behavior that we exhibit day to day. Now granted, many people are not self-aware, they don't realize that they're being toxic, or they don't realize that they're being depressed, or even, just not happy, right? Whatever the case may be, we're not always self-aware of those moments, different topic for a different podcast, but when we are aware of those things, when we realize that we are reacting to certain types of people, or certain types of situations, and we allow ourselves to do that, just because that's how we are shame on us. Shame on us.
So first and foremost, is owning up to how we want to show up in the world, understanding what we value, but also understanding what we want to be known for what is that personality type? What is that sense of legacy we want to leave and behaving in accordance with those values? Key, it's a center of everything we teach here at the Institute. But here's the thing, some days, we're tired, or someday somebody really gets under our skin for whatever reason, unexpected and we don't act our best. We send that email that we shouldn't have sent. We lash out, we react, we gossip, we do whatever it is that we do, and we go oh, that was so uncool afterwards. You can still control it because you can go back to those people at least. And say, hey, you know that just I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. I that was not my best I in hindsight, bad on me. It takes a strong confident person to do that. And I do it more often than you'd be than you'd assume because you know what, I'm human too.
But when you do apologize when you do say look, you know, bad me. I was not heard, not only are you telling that person, I'm sorry, certainly not what I intended. But you're telling your own brain don't do that, again, not cool. So, it is a form of learning, of course, it's a form of owning that reaction, and hopefully avoiding it in the future. But you're asking forgiveness for that person, you're also asking yourself to forgive yourself. Self-forgiveness, you know, screwed up, don't want to do that again. So, look at this sense of control. Look at this sense of owning who you are, what you are controlling that behavior. And brain is a really positive thing, because it is the center of the heart of being confident.
And by the way, when you do that, and you show up in a confident way, other people will follow because confidence is contagious. It's like part of our mirror neuron system, right? People see that confidence; they are attracted to it. And they start learning from you too. So again, you may be controlling a little bit of behavior, but it's in a really good way. All right, that's all I got for you today. Hope that was helpful. Go out and be your confidant best.
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again, that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others. And you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics 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.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All
