EP 110: Real Confidence- Permission to be Confident

July 20, 2025

I’ve spent years studying what real confidence looks like—studying it, practicing it, helping other people build it. And one thing I know for sure? Most of us are still waiting for permission.

We think once the signs are all pointing the right way, or we’ve gathered enough evidence, or we feel 100% certain, then we’ll choose. Then we’ll move. Then we’ll feel confident.

But that’s not how it works. That’s not how it ever works.

Confidence doesn’t show up fully formed before the decision. It shows up because of it. You choose first—often in the fog, often with shaky hands—and then, step by step, the confidence follows.

That choice might be finally walking away from a job you’ve outgrown. It might be naming what you really want in a relationship that’s been in “polite autopilot” for too long. It might be applying for the thing you’re not quite “qualified” for, or saying no to something everyone else thinks you should want.

These aren’t easy choices. But they’re the ones that shift everything.

This episode is for the moment right before you move—when you’re circling the truth but haven’t spoken it yet, when the decision is hanging in the air and your brain is still begging for a guarantee. The kind that says, I want “this”, even if no one else claps.

If you’ve been circling something—an idea, a shift, a truth you’re not quite ready to say out loud—this episode’s for you. Because we’re going to talk about what it takes to choose your life before it all makes sense and why that’s often the most confident move you can make.

Episode Transcript

EP 110
Permission to be Confident

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:
I do believe that when there is a will, there's a way. Now, of course, there are always going to be situations that mitigate that COVID, of course, made that a little hard for many people, but what I mean by that is, you know, the world may not allow you to do something that you really want to do, but today we're going to be talking about the confidence to choose. Because the reality is this, my book Confidence is a Choice. I get into the science and, of course, all the other social stuff about the fact that confidence, having confidence, being confident, is something that you choose. It's a, at least part of the time, a conscious, and at other times, is an unconscious or subconscious decision that you make, and definitionally, the certainty of which you believe something to be true, which may then trigger other beliefs or action.

So the whole book rather heady, and as I describe it here, literally talks about how that certainty, or enough certainty, as I also explain, makes us confident, and either we're confident or we're not, just like we're either pregnant or not. And I say we, maybe not all of you. It applies to you. Certainly doesn't apply to me anymore. But to say, you know, it's an absolute thing, it's absolute you are. You're not in a particular decision or situation, and subsequently, this whole conversation about confidence is a choice. It is a choice. But there's a kind of almost a, I guess it's a paradox, if not an irony, maybe, that you have to be confident to choose. You have to have the confidence to say, this is what I'm going to do. You have to have a will to make the way.

In many circumstances, you'll hear the word agency, not just from me, but from others, that you have the agency to control your brain, to control your thoughts, not the other way around. Now the chain really is that you, and some people might say, your soul, your mind, your higher level thinking, your ID, has the ability to control your brain, and your brain, therefore controls your body. So again, you control your brain that then controls your decisions, thoughts and behaviors, and that idea that your brain is not in charge, but you are some different entity, ideology is controlling it. Now, of course, when I say ideology, could also be religion, God, whatever you believe in that does drive some of this for you. Fine, that that's certainly your prerogative. But we're going to focus today on the things that we as human beings can control, and whether or not we decide to or not.

Now, deciding not to control something is as much of a decision, right? If you say, you know, I really should do X, I really should get a new job, or I really should get a haircut, or I really should, I don't know, take up a new hobby or take up a new, you know, a habit, whatever it might be, and then you don't do it. That's not a decision, right? But if you say you know what, I should, but I really don't want to, I'm going to let myself off the hook. I'm going to give myself compassion or permission to not do that now, because I really just don't have the energy. I have too many other things I want to focus on. Well, then, then that becomes a decision. You made a decision not to do something, and that's cool. That's confident, right? So confidence doesn't have to mean that you are, you know, I'm going to do this, but what it means is that you have. Of a conscious decision, a conscious choice, to make those decisions, to make those rationalizations that you subsequently are certain about, or certain enough about, right? All right. So enough kind of at the definitional heady level. But let's talk about why do some people have that will make those choices, and other people don't. Right? It's a fundamental question, why? Why are some people confident once some people are not now. Yes, you can learn to do this. There's methodologies to do this. This is what the institute's all about.

But let's just talk about in general, people who you probably know, a few I certainly do, who refuse to make a decision, they just can't make a decision. And when I say can't make a decision, it's not on everything, but in general, they have a hard time making decisions. And you could say that they're not confident. Maybe they're confident in other parts of their lives, of course, but in this particular area, they just don't want to make a decision. And so is it because they're weak? They just, you know, they're they can't do it because they're weak, they don't have the mental stamina, the mental cognitive resource, to do it. It's very possible, right? Especially as we get older, it may just be they don't have the energy to do it? Are they lazy? Could be absolutely could they be seeking attention? Oh yeah, oh yeah. I certainly have friends, I'm sure you do too, who love to just bring up all the issues and misery and challenges and drama and things that are going on in their life, because it's easier to kind of whine a little bit about it than really do something about it, of course, right? But part of the ease is that they kind of get pleasure out of sharing it and letting people know how hard their lives are, right? So they're they are tangency.

Another reason. You know, I did a podcast a while back on enablers, and these are people not just get it done, and they don't really have patience for other people not getting it done, so they often just get it done, and as a result, they allow others to be off the hook. So you know, maybe you are married to somebody, or know somebody had a parent like this, that instead of waiting for you to clean your room, they just went in and did it for you. And after a while, you're like, I'm not gonna clean it, because they're gonna take care of it, right? So enablers, then really take agency away from those individuals, and subsequently, after a while, you know, there's no will. Why should I do it? Somebody else is gonna do it, right? So that's a learned dependency or a learned enablement, and that's a good reason why somebody wouldn't have a will to make a decision. In that case, you know, why should I decide what to eat? My partner is going to decide what we want, because that's the way they are, all right?

Another reason, maybe they're a little defiant, you know, they want to be like, angry about it, and it's just a way of expressing that frustration that they can't make a decision, and so they're going to tell everyone about it, you know, oh, I can't do this, and it's not right, it's not fair, and I can't do it. And damn the Democrats, damn the Republicans, right, whatever it might be. So there is a frustration, a defiancy, maybe even a denial, and some of that as well. But of course, you know that all of these things, they're tied to being scared, they're tied to a fear, and that fear, as we always talk about at the institute here, is that they're afraid of failing. I make it the wrong decision and I look stupid, or they're afraid of regretting the decision. If I make that decision and something goes really south, I'm going to regret it the rest of my life. Or if I don't make the decision right, there's this back and forth regret. And of course, the big if I make this decision the way I really want to make this decision, people are not going to like me. So if I decide not to go to the party because I really don't want to go to the party, the people are going to be really mad at me, right? So fresh, frustrating on all levels, right? As I'm saying these things you go, we all suffer from them, but anyone who is really incapable, unable to make a decision at the end of the day, a lot of it usually has to do with some kind of fear. Now, how does this come out? Well, we see it in all different ways, but here are some of the most common things that tell you, somebody is scared to make a decision in some way, shape or form, just doesn't have the wherewithal to make it on their own. And you hear things like, I'm just so tired. I'm overwhelmed. I have decision fatigue, choice overload. I can't do it right. So they lob onto some kind of syndrome, perhaps, or condition, or some other way of describing this that seems to be. Be a permission to linger in it, and because it's so common, everyone has, it's not my fault, right?

My favorite on top of the list, of course, is imposter syndrome. Oh, I have imposter syndrome, and it's holding me back. Well, yeah, it is. It's holding you back because you're letting it hold you back. And imposter syndrome is a term. It's two words. It doesn't have, you know, gun to your head. It's just something that somebody coined, and all of a sudden, everybody has imposter syndrome, and it's okay. It's not okay. Get over it, do something, make a decision to get a new job, get some skills, find out if it's true, do something to get that imposter syndrome to go away, right? But people will lean on that a lot. Same thing, even with mental health, not obviously, a big proponent for having solid mental health, I wouldn't be doing this work if I didn't. But if you're going to use the excuse that I don't want to make a decision or I want to run away from this particular situation because it's not good for my mental health, I have news for you. Running away is not good for your mental health, and that issue doesn't go away just because you close your eyes. You know, remember, like when you're really little, and somebody thinks that if they close their eyes. Nobody else can see them. Yeah, it doesn't work, does it? No. So you know, you close your eyes, you run away. You say, I can't deal with that because of my mental health. It doesn't make the decision any easier. Doesn't make it go away. In fact, it might make it worse, because now you know inside your head, inside your heart, that all you did was defer the decision and subsequently kind of pussied out. I don't know how else to say it, right. All right. Well, so much for all the reasons why this happens. We certainly want to give you we I want to certainly give you some ideas, very simple things on how to rectify it. So I will be right back with some solutions.

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Alyssa Dver:
Okay, so let's make an assumption that it's you or somebody else that you know that really gets stuck on making decisions that they don't have the confidence to make choices on a regular basis. And we're not talking about a big single decision, like which job should I take, or should I tell my boss off, or something like that. Because, you know what? Here's the thing there it that's a real problem. We all get confidence challenges. That's what the coaching methodology, that's what having a good thought partner helps you with but I'm talking about somebody that maybe you've asked, you know, where do you want to have dinner tonight? You know you're meeting somewhere and they can't make a decision, or just, you know, a general scenario, if you will, that somebody is constantly unable to make a decision. So you can kind of help push them through it. And this includes yourself, right? You can coach yourself through that.

So I hinted to one before, which is this incorrect notion that you have to be 100% certain to be confident that doesn't exist. It's not real. It is a misnomer, if you will, that certainty and confidence is 100% that it's absolute, it's never there's always a margin of error. So even if you say, I'm certain that this is the right thing to do, it's perhaps not the right thing to do, but you're allowing yourself to live with that small possibility that's not right, right? You've looked at the odds, you've looked at the circumstances, you looked at, you know maybe the data, if you have data associated with whatever the decision is, and you're like, you know what? I'm good enough with this decision, because I'm good enough with this information, and I'm going to go this way because I'm certain enough that it's the right decision. All right, so if nothing else, just remember 100% certainty is is not true. It never exists. And when you are enough decided.

And for all of you out there that are hungry for data, hungry for facts, hungry for justification that whatever you're going to decide, you have the data, I have some news. You're never going to have enough data. There's always going to be data that is questionable or arguable. So here's where it gets a little bit squishy. You have to have enough information that you say to yourself based on where I am today, based on the timeliness of this need. In other words, is it something I need to decide now because I'm going to dinner tonight, or is it something that I need to decide in a couple weeks, and I subsequently need to get more data before then? But the reality is this is that your gut is going to tell you when you have enough data to be certain enough. And that may be hard for some people. Again, this is part of this. You need to have confidence to choose. You need to have confidence in your gut so first 100% certainty doesn't exist.

Second in most cases, not all cases, but most cases, taking action is better than inertia. So doing something is almost always better than sitting there, admiring, ruminating about what you should do. And the reason I say that is because you'll learn very quickly. In most cases when you take action if it's right or wrong, you get feedback from from yourself, how you feel, but you also get feedback from the outside world, and in that case, you can make a decision, you know that wasn't the right decision. I'm gonna make another decision. I'm gonna choose otherwise. So it gets you into that agile mindset, that ability to go forward and course correct as needed. But you can't do that if you're sitting there pontificating on well, I really shouldn't make a decision yet. I need more data, right? So beware of that. Take a little action. Maybe it's not the big decision, the whole decision. Maybe bite off a little piece if you can. But needless to say, do something.

And the last one is you fix it if it's wrong, right and wrong is really true, right? If you pick a restaurant, and you get there and you and your friend have dinner, and it's not great. So what it happens? That's life. Look up a review online if you really want to be sure beforehand. Oh, you know what, Mary, this is a really good restaurant according to all the reviews. Let's give it a try, right? But in most cases, if something, you make a decision, and you're like, it's not the right thing, and that didn't work out so well. You course correct again. You fix it, and you go into the decision saying to yourself, if it's wrong, I will correct it. So you give yourself that padding, that insurance, to say, this is not a life threatening, life changing moment. You know these, these everyday decisions that do not necessarily define who I am or what I'm going to accomplish, but you know they're simple decisions, and subsequently you can fix it all right. So confidence to choose, absolutely, having the gumption, the will to want to choose, maybe easier said than done, but I hope the conversation here is giving you, as usual, good food for AHA thought. Thanks for tuning in.

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.

EP 110: Real Confidence- Permission to be Confident

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