EP 133
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:
Recently, we had a house gotta even know what to call it, cluster of issues, and all three of our heating systems, they're all different, and they have different sources of energy- one is propane, one is solar and one is oil, all failed at the same time. So we had, I don't know, we don't know why, and whatever, but we had people come out and fix each one. And when the oil guy got here, he's like, yes, you definitely have a broken part that can be fixed, but you have a bigger issue, which is your oil tank is leaking. And the problem with that is, not only could it explode and make a huge mess, that is a real difficult thing to to deal with, but they wouldn't fill it now because of that potential. So we have to get it fixed now, $6,000 later, you know, it certainly was not something that I wanted to spend my money on. And when I would talk to some friends and folks about it, they would say things like, well, it could have been worse, right? It could have exploded. You're lucky that he was able to find that before anything terrible happened, and it's true, but still didn't make that $6,000 bill feel any better to me, right?
So it dawned on me that we do this a lot. We take a situation, and this is a very innocent example, right? It could be a tragedy in our lives. It could be something that was really scary, you know, an accident avoided, but other things impacted right? It could be a lot of different scenarios where the resolving moral is it could have been worse and true. I think it always can be worse, pretty much. But it doesn't negate the feelings of frustration of the situation that still happened, right? Or the results, in this case, my $6,000 banking charge, right?
Do I think I was lucky? Absolutely. Am I grateful for avoiding a bigger, uglier situation and possibly a lot bigger bill. Absolutely. But as Maureen, one of the most special people I know in the world, and certainly somebody who will be listening to this, because she participates in the production. She says, don't stack rank your misery, right? So don't compare it to something else or someone else. Don't say, well, it could have been worse, like so and so's could have been worse. At least I'm not them could have been worse, right? All that, and I agree, I agree. You know, it's like the many times I've heard from different people that said they were so lucky to learn that they actually have cancer after going for a routine something else. You know, maybe it was an ultrasound or something to look at something else, and something was that, you know cancer just you got cancer, right? You're not going to negate the fact that you're so lucky that you found out by accident.
So this gratitude of I'm so glad I found out, even if it was by accident, hmm, doesn't negate the suck. No, not really, right? It's still gonna suck. You have cancer, you need a new oil tank, whatever it might be. And, yeah, we can count our blessings. We can tell ourselves all these wonderful idioms about this, too shall pass. I'm equipped to handle it. You know, God gives those who can handle it those challenges, whatever, but whatever you want to do to kind of quell that sting, to put a little bit less of a oh, woe is me. Perhaps the thing that you can really start to do is take action right? And no matter what the scenario is and how you learned of it, trying to deal with it in a productive way is really the thing that's going to give you the most confidence so fearing it out and figuring it out, whether you are calling friends, getting some advice, getting on the internet, doing some research, using your favorite AI tool, whatever it means. Why? Because the minute you take control of a sucky situation, you're going to feel better, you're going to feel more empowered, more confident.
So we know that things are going to suck. They always come here and there. We can't avoid that, right? I'm not talking about political, economics, things, but I'm just talking about things in life. This is what part of the human condition is, we have situations. This is what happens, and we'll never have enough money, enough connections, enough experiences to negate all that. They could all help. It can certainly make it easier to help with. But ultimately, the thing that's going to help us is taking control and taking control of it in a way that makes us feel that we're at least doing something to mitigate and to minimize the impact of whatever the sucky situation is.
Now this has nothing to do with being smart or intelligent, I've seen some of the smartest people that I know. When some kind of crisis happens, they panic, right? They panic. And I've done several podcasts with experts who deal in this kind of panic management, crisis control, chaos squad, and they'll say the same thing is, it's that moment of, oh, this really sucks. Yeah, let yourself kind of okay. It really sucks. But then take a deep breath and go, Okay, so what can I do about it? What should I do about it? What will I do about it? And that flip of the amygdala, call it a hijack, is that moment of, okay, it's happening, whether I'm lucky or unlucky, that I know it's happening, it's happening, and I need to do something about it. So we're going to take a quick break as usual, and I'm going to paint some ways that we can flip that switch to the up position into the prefrontal so that the amygdala doesn't send it into the brainstem and continues to make us crazy people. All right, I'll be right back.
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Alyssa Dver:
Okay, so let's hopefully you're not dealing with something really hysterical right now. I say historical, not in a funny way, but hysterical, like, oh my god, what am I going to do? Kind of moment, but a hypothetical that will happen at some point, could be a death of a loved one. It could be a car accident. It could be an oil tank exploding. It could be anything that would send you into Oh, no, what am I going to do? So the first thing is that panic moment, that hysteria, that crisis in action, you're going to feel it, and maybe your pulse is going to go up, maybe you're going to start to sweat, feel a little nauseous, whatever those signs are, that's your body telling you, okay, we got to get control of this. We got to pay attention. Because we're, we're we're wigging out here. We're worried that something terrible is happening or about to happen, and that's the truth. So confront the truth. Got it? Okay? I hear you throw yourself a little pity party, if you need to. Why did these things always happen to me? I hate this. Why me? Why couldn't happen to somebody else? She's so much this less than I am. She should have had that situation, whatever. Do it for some finite amount of time.
Give yourself permission to have a pity party for a few minutes, maybe even a full day, but give it a deadline, and then promise yourself that once you kind of have that pity party out of the way, you are going to take action and you're going to look at that problem, whatever it is, head on. Be very clear what's happening, and then brainstorm with yourself, or ideally with a thought partner, with a coach, what can I do to fix it? What can I do to deal with this situation, and what is the impact of the situation in reality? Right? The $6,000 in my reality sucks, but it's not going to change my way of life. It's just going to make me frustrated for a little while, and I'll probably forget about it in a year from now, right? So be realistic with yourself. Be realistic with what's the impact and what are the things I can do, multiple things I can do to deal with this so that you can pick one of those things that feels best.
So whatever that thing is that you've decided, okay, you know what? This really sucks. I got passed over for that job or I got laid off again? Pity party, for sure, but tomorrow I'm gonna pick myself up, figure out what I want to do next and get on it right. And even if you haven't resolved the issue, even if you haven't found the job or whatever the situation is, they haven't resolved itself yet. Celebrate the fact that you've made a decision to do something about it. Celebrate your confidence. Celebrate the fact that you aren't waddling in it, that you are not sitting in a corner crying, but you're actually taking action. All those things can really help. Does that mean that life's going to get easier and better? Not necessarily, but what it will do is help you reset that amygdala reaction that wants to make you feel really crappy. And just say, You know what? I'm going to feel I'm going to feel crappy for a little bit, and then I'm going to move on. Because life does these things to us. It kicks us in the gut. But it doesn't mean that we have to give up or fall over. Alright? I hope that was helpful. Love to hear your feedback always. And please, please, please, let us know what topics you'd like to hear going forward.
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
