EP 97
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:
The phrase I could never makes me nuts. Another pet peeve my friends, because so many times people will come up to me or in a meeting just say, I could never write a book. You know, they hear that I've written several and that's their reaction, I could never write a book, meaning they could never write a book. Or if they find out I've done a TED talk, comes out again, they'll say, oh, I could never do a TED Talk. Other times I've heard it, even coaching. I could never speak up in that meeting. I could never go up to that executive. I could never whatever.
One of my favorite things to do. I know it's a little crazy, but I'll admit it. Here is when I happen to be in a mall, not a big fan of malls, but I'll go to stores, and one of the best ones to do this is Chico's, because their clothes tend to have very bright colors. They're very sometimes busy patterns. And I love to just kind of listen in in the conversations. Now, often women will go shopping with their friends, and you could stand there and literally hear people over and over again. I could never, I could never wear that, I could never wear that color, I could never wear that pattern, I could never wear that shape. I could never, never, never, never, never. And I love to go up to them at that point and say, why not? And usually they'll say something like, oh, you know, just too bold or, you know, make me stand out. And so, you know, coach in me, I guess, tries to talk them off that ledge and say, well, if you really love it, if you really want to wear it, why wouldn't you? Who cares if you think it is bold? That's partly the fun of it.
Needless to say, when I'm not doing that kind of unsolicited, free coaching, I do hear the phrase I would, I could never. I would never. It's probably just a derivative of it, and it makes me nuts. It makes me nuts because the question in that is, do you want to? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to do a TED talk? Do you want to speak up? Do you want to wear that color? Because if you don't want to, you're then you're absolutely right. I could never you're absolutely right, because no will, no way. But if the answer to do you really want to is yes, I really do, then stop using I could never as a convenient excuse. And there's a simple way to change the mindset by just changing some of those words, which is, Wow, I'm so impressed that you wrote a book. Or I would love to write a book. I'm not really sure where to start. Or I would love to write a book, and it just seems like a big deal, but I'd love to understand what's involved. How about I would love to wear that color. I should find out how I could pull that off and feel confident, or just look at that color and go, hmm, maybe I can accessorize to bring it together. You know, there's always a solution. There is always a solution.
So instead of assuming you could never and if it is something you want to do or where or be, start looking at that amygdala moment, because that's what it is. It's your amygdala going, oh, I'm scared of something I could never do that. And rephrase that I could never into some kind of admiration or curiosity, or how could you do it? How could you take the first step in that direction?
So I want to stop and reiterate that you always have a choice. Confidence is a choice. And if you choose to be confident, if you choose that that's something that you want to do is frightened or isn't as intimidating as it may seem. You always have a choice. You can try to do it or make the decision not to. You know, I really don't like yellow. I'm not going to wear yellow. Okay, decision made, but I'd really like to do X, whatever it might be. So how are we going to do it? All right, so I'm going to share with you a little bit of ACI coaching methodology, because we also have taught people how to self-coach, particularly if there's something that you really want, but this fear, this convenient phrase of, I could never might be getting in your way. We're going to put a sponsored message in here, and then we're going to come right back with that methodology.
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Alyssa Dver:
All right, so let's, let's, let's be productive. Let's be positive, of course, and let's be in our best mind to change that negative. I could never to, I'd like to and, and how are we going to do that in reality? How are we going to make something progress beyond just that phrase of and so here's what we're going to suggest. The first thing is, be really clear what it is you want to do. And, you know, let's use some of the examples I did before. I want to write a book. I want to do a TED talk. I want to speak up in that meeting and think about what the real problem is. In other words, why haven't you done it? Why? What is holding you back? What is the fear? And I'm going to use that very intentionally, what are you afraid of? And it's going to boil down to one of the three basic fears of confidence. We talk about them all the time in the podcast. They're all through my books and my own TED Talks.
The three fears, are you afraid that you're going to fail? Are you afraid that you're going to regret doing that thing and or you afraid that people are going to think less of you? Fear of rejection. Now the secret here is that all of it really is a fear of rejection. It's a sense of I don't belong, that I'm not cool, that I can't do this thing. But regardless, you may say to yourself, you know, I could write a book, or try to write a book and never really finish it, and I would fail at doing it, and that would make me feel lousy. Oh, that's a possibility. Or I would try and do a TED talk, and I would never get the opportunity. They just would never accept me. And of course, it's a possibility, but if you don't try, those things are absolutely going to be true. You might say, well, I am going to speak up in the meeting, and people may think I'm really stupid if I do. So, yeah, it's possible, but probably not likely. So we're going to tell ourselves the truth, and we're going to tell ourselves what really are we afraid of? And once you do that, once you declare that fear, you can look it in the face, and you when I say, look it in the face, you can really address it in a rational way that says, okay, so how can I minimize that fear? How can I try and do something in the right direction that doesn't that minimizes that fear and gets me further on the path to getting done what I want to get done? So if you are afraid of writing a book that you won't actually finish. Writing the book. The fear is that right? The fear is not finished writing the book. Or maybe the fear of writing a book is you don't even know where to start, so whatever you're free afraid of, that's the key here, because once you know that fear, then you can brainstorm on different ways to conquer it. So again, as an example. If I use the book as an example, I'm afraid to write the book because I don't know where to start. So that's the fear. What are things you could do to mitigate that fear? We'll talk to other authors, get a book on how to write a book. There's tons of them out there. Google it. Lots of ways to figure out how to get started, right? If your fear of writing a book is that you'll never finish writing the book, brainstorm on ways that you could mitigate that fear. Maybe you should get a book coach. Maybe you should set some kind of a calendar to do a little bit every day or every month. Maybe you could set yourself a reward when you do finish. That's really a juicy reward, like going on a vacation or buying something really fancy.
So my friends, if you really are honest with yourself, of what is holding you from doing that thing that you think you could never if you figure out what the scary thing is, what's making you wake out, what's making you worried, you can brainstorm on ways to get past it. Now, once you do that, I'm not going to say it's easy, but you're on your path. You're on your way and find a friend, hire a coach, get one of your children involved, or your partners involved, if you have, and say to them, this is what I'm going to do. This is the milestones. This is what I'm going to try and accomplish. And let them help you stay accountable. Let them be your accounabilabuddy or friend or somebody at work. If it's a work related thing, it's hard to keep yourself accountable. We know that. But once you get on that path, once you make the choice, the decision to do this thing that you otherwise would think you could never, you're going to start to make progress in the direction that's going to make you feel confident. And once you get that milestone, once you hit that place where you're like, you know what I thought I could never, but I just did it. Celebrate! Jump up and down, sing a song, tell a friend, call me! I'd love to celebrate with you, and then pick the next thing that's going to move you forward. Right? Gets easier and easier with each step forward. All right, that's my pet peeve revealed another one on a podcast. I could never yes you can, yes you can. You always have a choice. You always have the ability. And now you got me and the coaching methodology to tell you you can too.
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 rights reserved.
