EP 135: Real Confidence- Confidence Isn't Control

June 21, 2026

The older I get, the more I realize how much energy I spend trying to control things that were never mine to control in the first place.

Sometimes it's big things. The economy. My parents' health. Whether someone has the budget to say yes to a project. Sometimes it's ridiculously small things, like whether there will be a parking spot downtown or whether I've packed the exact right outfit for a two-day business trip. (Spoiler alert: I never have.)

What fascinates me is how convincing our brains can be. They whisper that if we just gather a little more information, think a little harder, prepare a little better, then we'll finally be able to relax. But somehow the finish line keeps moving. There's always one more variable, one more possibility, one more thing we should have considered.

Lately I've been wondering if that's why so many of us are exhausted. Not because life is necessarily harder than it's ever been, but because we're carrying around the impossible job of trying to predict and control outcomes that simply can't be predicted or controlled. Because even when we have great information, we're still making our best guess. Even scientists, researchers, and financial experts know there's always a margin of error. Things happen. Circumstances change. Life gets a vote.

And maybe that's the point.

Confidence isn't the reward we get after we've eliminated uncertainty. Confidence is what allows us to move forward while uncertainty is still sitting right there beside us. Not because we're reckless or don’t care, but because we've learned to trust ourselves enough to handle whatever happens next.

That realization has changed the way I think about decisions. Not perfectly, of course. I still overpack, I still overthink and I still occasionally convince myself that catastrophe is lurking around the corner. But I'm getting better at remembering that confidence isn't about controlling the future. It's about trusting yourself in it.

If uncertainty has been stealing your confidence lately, listen in. This episode might just make your next decision feel a little lighter.

Episode Transcript

EP 135
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:
Why are we such control freaks, and I don't care if you call yourself that or not. The reality is that anxiety and stress and other similar symptoms are certainly a reflection of our inability to control things that we'd like to, and we have lots of ways of kind of mitigating that, right. We say control what you can control, certainly part of the addiction eight step plan, 10 step plan, but it's also in statements like put your trust in God, Jesus take the wheel. Right, there's all these ways that we tell ourselves it's okay, we don't have to control everything, but I'm not sure it necessarily works to just say it's okay, right? We continue to have that stress about almost anything that we can't control this morning, getting a cup of coffee with my son. He was worried there weren't, wasn't going to be parking spots when in the middle of town, there's a gazillion of them. So, you know, it's, it's kind of funny that our brains naturally want to know what's happening, control the level that we can, and certainly question if we can't control something, is there a way, maybe, that we can get a little bit more control right?

Now a lot of people will then rely on things like data for that, you know, let the data tell me what to do, what I should control, how I should control it, because if I'm not sure what to do or how to do it, data can kind of give me that direction, right. And we know that data can be helpful, and there's no question, but it can also be questionable, right. The data itself, and anyone who works with data, statisticians and actuarials, and others will tell you that you can often manipulate, if not always manipulate, data to tell you what you want to know, what you want to hear. So, data may not be the best way for us to make decisions all the time, and certainly we can't get data on things like other parking spots downtown Westboro, but the more data that we have, even if it's informal, or what I like to call qualitative data, data that is based on feelings, emotions, and things that aren't necessarily quantitative. It helps us to make more confident decisions, right? That's why we want that set of data, that's what we want to do, so that we can control some kind of outcome, some kind of situation that will either impact us or that we impact ourselves.

So, again, data can be very helpful, but we don't always have all the data that we need. Now, funny enough, I was talking to one of my advisors recently, and he's a former chief financial officer from an insurance company, so a true quant, if you will, really into data numbers and making decisions based on that data in an unemotional kind of, you know, objective way, and I was saying to him that, you know, people have budget right now in this bizarre economy, they're just not allowed to spend it, so, and I say bizarre. It's probably not that bizarre. We've been here, done that before, but people have budget and they're not spending because they're not being allowed to spend with the uncertainty of what's going to happen the second half of the year. So I said to him, you can have all the data in the world, but you know we don't know what's going to happen in the second half of the world. We've got, you know, kind of an irrational administration in that we have certainly all kinds of world events, but you know what, I don't think any of this is really different. Maybe there's a different level of it, but we never really know what's going to happen six months from now. So, what makes this different? What makes this different? You know, I think that even when I go to pack my suitcase every time I go on a business trip, I mean, I hem and haw about what to wear. You know, what's the weather going to be like, and who am I going to meet, and what could happen if my luggage could lost. I go through all these different permutations, and it makes me stress out so much, so that I feel like I have to pack at least a day before to make sure I caught all the possibilities, and I say to myself, it's so ridiculous, because inevitably, you know, I'm not going to Siberia, I can certainly buy something that I need, or, you know, what's the worst case that happens is you know I'm a little underdressed or overdressed for certain occasions, but you know it again, it's one of these situations where you try and second guess, or at least best guess as much as you can, knowing what's going to happen, and you're trying to make decisions, you're trying to do things in light of whatever information you have, but we also know that this gets really hard the older we get, and for any of you who are listening, if you have older parents and managing older parents, like I am, you can see this in dramatic escalation, you know they have to have routine. It's critical to their well-being, their mental well-being. It's, you know, they have to eat at a certain time, sometimes even in a certain place. They have to have, you know, the appropriate schedule out in advance. They have to know what, even, you know, is being served in the dining room two days from now, because they've got to plan, so there's all kinds of, I would say, somewhat irrational need to be that much more certain.

Now, is it all their brain deterioration or some other kind of factors? Quite possibly, I don't know, but I do know that the older you get, you know, you're trying to control the things you can control, because there's so much you can't, you know, your body is aging and things are happening with your friends, maybe even in your environment, that are so out of your control that you grasp onto the things you can, like what time to eat, the change the requirement to change, whether it's change where you're living or change change your routine, becomes so stressful because again it feels like the one thing or the few things that you can control you no longer can. So I keep coming back to decisions because at the end of the day, if any of you've read my books and other content, you know that confidence is a choice, it's a decision. And so, how do we make a confident decision? How do we get to a place where, like, okay, this is what I'm going to do, and feel confident about it? I shouldn't say feel that you are confident about it when you don't have all the data, and you know you don't have all the data, because, quite frankly, you're never going to have all the data.

My example that I use in my classes is that even if you're a scientist, or say you work in a laboratory, and everything is sterile and controlled in a way that you know, is not in the real world, per se, in the rest of the world, but they try and control everything, the temperature, the humidity, right, in these high-end labs, but ingredients, things can change, like if you're using natural ingredients, for example, maybe there's a different weather pattern or fertilizer or something that affected some of the ingredients, maybe the person who is working on it is wearing some kind of a new soap fragrance or perfume that could affect the results of that, whatever you're doing in the lab, right, so there's all kinds of variables that still make as much as you can control questionable questionable, right there.

There is what we would call the standard deviation of things that could go wrong, and if you remember back in whatever class you took, it's statistics or some other math class, that bell curve, right at the end of the tails, both in the left and the right side are going to be some amount of potential failure of that particular thing that that experiment in the case of the lab, then it could go wrong, but we say as long as most of the time within the bell curve things are pretty accurate, then we can be confident, right? So hopefully this is making some sense to you, in that the moral of the story is that even with all the information, even with all the control factors that you can have, sometimes shit's gonna go sideways, and if you're in the lab, you account for that, you say 20% of the time it's not gonna work, and we're, we expect that to happen, but the 80% of the time I'm confident that this is the correct result. I'm confident that the outcome will be what I want. So, apply that to your own life, right? If there's some majority percentage, 60,70, 80% of the time that you can control and make good, confident decisions. You're doing really well, because there's always going to be times where you're not going to have enough information, not enough time, and you might make a great decision, but you might not, and that's okay. That's what is considered normal. So, in light of all that, I'm going to take a quick break, and when we come back, I'm going to give you some steps to really kind of calm your brain down, calm your overall level of stress, and give you some ways that you can say, okay, here's what I need to make a confident decision, particularly when I don't have all the information.

Want to level up your confidence, your career, maybe even your coaching. Well, then head over to AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com. E-classes are there, as well as our coaching certification program, and you don't need any coaching experience to do it. However, if you are an experienced coach. You can get ICF and SHRM continuing credit. It's fast and easy. If you work in an organization, consider bringing in a kick-ass keynote or a uniquely engaging workshop. You also have team learning programs, and they all apply to both your personal and professional life, which makes them really special. They're great for ERGs, the leaders, the member programming, or really any type of professional learning and development in your organization. So, give us a holler at www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com

Alyssa:
All right, so let's assume that you have to make a decision about something that is important, right? Not, you know, necessarily what to eat for dinner, but you know, maybe it's a new job opportunity, or stepping away from your current job, or ending a relationship, or starting a relationship, something that's really important, and you're saying yourself, boy, I feel so stressed out by this decision. I'm not sure what to do, and yet I need to make a decision one way or another, and move forward in this, and so I'm going to apply some of the American Confidence Institute coaching methodology in a way that you can use it for yourself in any time that something like this comes up, and the first thing you want to do is, you know, identify what really is the problem. What, why is this? Why does this decision so important? What is it that you really are debating down to a level of what's freaking you out? What, what is something that is really scary about that decision? You know, what is the worst, basically, that could happen, but most importantly, you know what is something that, if it were to happen, would be really, you'd regret that you would otherwise feel that it was a bad decision.

So, just, you know, get to the core of what that is, and then say to yourself, like, what kind of information would help me to deal with that, so if you are, for example, considering taking on a new job, and you're like, I don't know if the culture is really as good as they say it is, you know, and if I go into another culture that's toxic, I just don't know if I can, you know, weather it from my emotional well-being. So, what are the things that you would like to know? I'd like to know about the culture, and like what kinds of things that people do in terms of off when they're not working at work time, or you know, together, or is there time to spend, and you know what's the feeling about getting together off hours, and so on and so forth, things like that. You start to ask yourself, what do I really want to know, and then you can figure out who do I got to ask those questions. How do I get that information? You know, not everything, sorry to say, is Google-able or AI-able these days. You have to ask some people, so that makes a huge difference when you're like, okay, this decision that I'm about to make, what is it really at the core that I want and need to know to make myself feel more confident about making a yes or no decision. And then who do I need to ask, or what do I need to do to get that information? Now, again, you may not be able to get all the information, and of course, you'd like to interview everybody at the company, ideally, but you can't do that, so you have to be reasonable. I'm going to, you know, talk to three people who work there. I'm going to look into Glass Door, you know, whatever it is you're going to do, just be reasonable, because you don't have all the time in the world, of course.

So, once you get that information and you have that plan, you're already going on your confident path, right? You're making, you've made a decision that I'm going to get this information, or at least as much information as reasonable, so I can make the best possible decision, and that best possible decision is really key, because you're never going to make a perfect decision. There's no such thing, but the best possible decision, and getting enough information, getting enough of that insight, if you will, to say to yourself, I'm probably within the 80% of that bell curve, then I'm going to make a good decision, right. So that's really important. Now, once you do that, you could also say to yourself, well, what are my options here, can I work at this company, maybe part time, or come in, like in the restaurant business, they call it a stodge, where you go in and you don't get paid, but you work there for a day, just to see what it's like, or two, or three, or a month, or whatever it would be, but you can do a stodge at a new company, perhaps, or maybe you know you can put in your contract that after a week or two you want to do a review of certain things, so think about ways that you can kind of mitigate the possibility that your data is wrong, that your decision that you make is wrong. What could you do? If you say, you know, I come back with the decision not to take this job, so what am I going to do? What's plan B? You know, where else am I going to look? What else am I going to do?

So, thinking through all of that is going to give you confidence that you are getting closer to not only a decision, but getting closer to being confident with the outcome of that decision, and that's really, that's really the game, right? It's being okay with making the decision based on as enough information, and being okay with a decision in which either direction, yes or no, more or less, whatever the decisions pointing you to, and saying to yourself, I'm going to make this decision, and this is what will likely happen, and I'm, I'm good with that.

Now, again, you can't control everything, can't know everything, so being okay with something is somewhat just being prepared for a potential outcome that you've already thought through, right, and a simple example again, with the parking example I gave before. I said to Ben, I'm like, look, there's no parking in front of the place, you're going to go down the block and walk, or you find one of the many lots, I mean, not a big deal, but it is a big deal when you all of a sudden are panicked about having to make a decision or something that you have to do that you don't have control over, you forget you have a lot more control than you realize, so I'm telling you to exercise that control in a way that is proactive, it's it gets you to progress that decision and be a little bit more prepared for the outcomes that could happen, so I hope that was really my, you know, kind of mind boosting, because we don't need to trust in God or Jesus take a wheel, we have our own control center in our brains, we just have to use it better, love to hear your feedback always, and hope to see you online.

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 135: Real Confidence- Confidence Isn't Control

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