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Welcome to the 'Lead Smarter. Not Harder' Podcast by David Kent, your window into the minds of visionary leaders, trailblazing innovators, and savvy business owners.
Get ready to immerse yourself in the captivating stories and invaluable lessons from the best and brightest minds in the business.
All right, Alyssa, thank you for joining us and for jumping on another conversation with
me.
I've enjoyed getting a chance to chat with you previously, learning more about you and
what you, uh, what you bring to the world when it comes to the science of confidence.
Um, I had a chance even to look at your podcast.
Obviously, you've been doing this for a while.
I wanted to congratulate you for passing the milestone of over a hundred episodes
yourself.
Um, and.
Thank you for the time that you're additionally spending with us.
Um, and as I, I'd like to just dive into it a little bit.
we, on our podcast, we try to focus on leading smarter and what it takes to lead smarter.
Um, and as it relates to the core of your expertise, I know you do a lot of things, but
when it comes to the science of confidence, I would love to talk more about that with you.
Um, as we, as I look into it, and as I think about confidence for leaders, for people, um,
it seems to just be.
I wouldn't even know how you would separate uh confidence from effective leadership.
think they have to go hand in hand.
I can't imagine that it would be possible to do one without the other.
ah But I would love to hear more specifically about the science of it.
Now, I know that that's really broad.
And I know you call yourself a neuro nerd, which I think is great.
think that's I would not have used that term for myself, but I definitely resonate with
it.
ah So if you could maybe give us
some of the high level, because I know you could go really deep, what the science of
confidence is when you refer to that.
When we talk about uh confidence, obviously people, when they're young, they see how
important confidence is with kids.
And as you grow up and you see the difference between somebody who's confident in a social
setting versus someone that's not, when it comes to uh the science behind it, can you give
us a little bit of an understanding of what you mean by the science of confidence?
It is a huge question, David.
So I'll take some bites out of it.
And then of course, can continue to ask more as we go along.
the perspective that I have now, and this is after being a leader for a lot of years,
studying the science and everything else that comes along with leadership development, you
said that you can't really be an effective leader without confidence.
I think part of the
the reality is that we try and teach people to be leaders, right?
We give them the operational kind of, you know, negotiation skills and communications and
executive presence.
This is one of my big soapbox things, like, you know, we tell them how to stand and how to
walk in and how to dress, but none of it matters if you don't have confidence, right?
It just, it's so fake and it's clearly fake.
It's fake in the...
person themselves, I mean, you can see it on them and everyone feels it.
And a great leader or even a mediocre leader for that matter.
um If they have at least the confidence in themselves, they're going to radiate that to
everyone else.
So the impact you have even before you say or move is going to come into that room with
you if you're confident or not.
Right.
And, you know, this is kind of like the underlying
for everything, mean, not just leadership for everything.
And, you know, I have a lot of teachers in my world, educators, and I say, you can't
really learn if you're not confident that you can learn.
You can't even really have a good relationship with other people if there's not some
confidence in your ability to do that.
it is, to me, it's almost more important than water or air.
It's like, you've got to have some confidence.
Now, science-wise, we're not going to go too deep too quick, but, you know, the
The title of my last confidence book was specifically, confidence is a choice.
And that is, it's a profound statement because not only is it saying to you that you can
choose to be confident, actually the definition of confidence is choice.
And what I mean by that is that when you think about the word confidence, right?
The roots of it being having faith, having certainty.
having trust.
You decide if you do or not.
So today I'm in Boston, it's a little gray out, but I read the weather and they said
there's a low likelihood of rain.
So when I go to the dog park later with my pup, probably won't bring an umbrella, right?
That's just kind of part of the, okay, likely it's not going to rain.
I'm looking out the window.
It's all right.
But could it rain?
Of course it could rain.
Right?
Whether men are kind of whether people are known to be a little erroneous, right?
So part of this science is understanding that we make decisions all day long about things.
And the certainty of those things is when we say, OK, I'm confident it's going to rain or
not going to rain.
I'm confident this is the right text to send.
I am confident that this is what I want to say to my boss.
Now, you don't always say that to yourself out loud, of course, but in your brain, that's
what's happening.
Now, what screws that up in a big way is fear.
So if I'm in a situation, psychologically feeling unsafe or feeling that if I say
something like to my boss, I might get fired.
Or, you know, that if I, if I wear the wrong thing, somebody's going to think I'm a loser.
Or if I stand up and raise my hand in a meeting, they're going to think I'm stupid.
Any of those kinds of fears.
And we say.
There are three main fears that kibosh confidence and one of them is the fear of failure.
One of them is the fear of regret.
It's a big like scary thing that I may say or not say something and later come back and
ruminate and feel terrible about it.
And the last one is the fear of rejection is that people will not like me and they won't
think I'm cool, right?
So if those three fears, any one of them is triggered, something happens in the
environment or
something from my past, right?
And we can really dig into that.
I will be less able to have the cognitive ability, the brain power to make that decision
of certainty.
And instead I will go into my brain stem basically as my main reaction.
And that reaction is going to be one of survival.
It's one of protection.
So what we see, and I'm going to give you a little bit more of a logical scenario.
Let's say you're in a meeting and all of a sudden you're called upon to make a statement
or comment and you're like, you know, shoot, they're going to think I'm an idiot because I
don't know what, you know, I don't know the answer.
Your logical or your not logical, but your functional reaction is all of sudden either to
get very aggressive and defensive, somehow come back and be like, why are you asking me?
You know, or.
you wanting to ask him or I don't know, you know, why you call it like that kind of an
answer that reaction or do you get very quiet to be like, I prefer not to answer that,
right?
Neither one of those are very confident responses are they?
No, yeah.
So that fear triggers a moment we call the amygdala moment where your amygdala in your
brain is like, okay, guys, we got to make a decision upstairs to the prefrontal where we
can be really smart and react in a way that's in our best interest that aligns with our
values, or we can go downstairs into the brain stem.
And most of the time, people will go downstairs.
It's easier, it's quicker, it's faster.
That's what they've learned to do.
Or even evolved to do, I should say in some cases, right?
When I say confidence is a choice, what the brain science tells us today through all the
technology we have available to us through all the research that's been done is when you
recognize those triggers, when you feel those triggers and we do feel them, we can get a
little tense, nervous.
We have the ability, we have the ability, doesn't mean we will do it, but we have the
ability to stop for a second and go, wait minute.
I'm going to react in a way that I want to that I choose to react.
When you do that, that is what the confident moment is.
It's like, okay, I got this.
But most people don't know how to do that.
And that's what we teach them to do.
It's not something that I would say is necessarily rocket science, even though there's a
little brain science behind it, but it is, it's a skill.
I love that you identify it as a skill.
I'll say that for example, for myself, I end up interacting with lots of people that I
place.
So candidates, team members, and they get placed with clients and they're trying to figure
out most of the time energy I'm spending is helping them figure out how to interact with
each other.
ah And I think most of the time, whenever I'm talking to anybody about leadership, they're
really thinking about, ah or our conversations tend to be more about.
how to operate with your team or how to operate with your supervisors.
And what I love about the confidence, the angle that you're just talking about is that
especially as an asset, what it almost sounds like you're referring to is a step further
back.
It's like, I'm trying to identify how to have a relationship literally with myself,
identify myself as the person that I'm trying to manage this energy and this behaviors in
my, how I interact, operate with other people.
from the inside out, which is the right, I personally think it feels like that's the right
place to start, right?
Because if I'm trying to get anybody to do anything with me at all, um I feel like I need
to have an understanding of what I'm trying to do with them and be confident enough to be
able to communicate it.
And I think that from my perspective, that can be really difficult to do for people that
are just starting in leadership or anywhere in their leadership journey.
Because while I think
I mentioned before, seems like you can't separate effective leadership from confidence.
It doesn't mean that the confidence, even if you've been a leader for a long time, is a
constant thing.
uh I actually like identifying it as an asset or a resource because I will enter a
conversation or a situation where I've got a finite amount and I might not be able to meet
that required amount of confidence to really be effective in that situation, which
actually like that, I would be very interested in your thoughts.
Like what would you, how would you recommend to somebody who's trying to develop their own
confidence?
to be able to build it up to be in a situation where they could be maybe a more effective
leader.
I think just the last time you and I spoke, I was talking about my own, I guess, ah sense
of imposter syndrome, right?
Like I'm in a position of leadership and I might make a decision that I believe is
correct, but I'll have this doubt and that doubt is palpable to the people that I'm
leading.
So how would you recommend a leader, for example, to build up their own sense of
confidence and their own asset or resources of confidence?
Well, I want to tell you three bits, very small bits that I think will change the mindset
or at least reframe the way you're thinking about it, which I think is really the answer
here.
First and foremost, you have to be confident to admit you're not confident.
Right.
So, and nobody is confident in everything it does.
That's not reality.
Right.
So saying to yourself, you know, I'm about to do something that I'm not very confident in
is a confident statement.
And that will reflect to everyone else.
Now, confidence is contagious too.
So if you're not confident and you're like, oh, right, this imposter syndrome baloney, you
know how I feel about it.
It's like to me, it's stop talking about it, do something about it.
If you feel like an imposter, figure out why, right?
But if you're in that moment, you're like, oh, don't know what the answer to this is.
What's more liberating to say to your team, hey guys, you know, this is new for me too.
So I would like all of you to contribute as we figure this out together.
Come on, that takes a lot of confidence to say it as a leader because a leader in some
cases are going to think they're supposed to have all the answers.
Absolutely not.
What your job is, is to create that psychologically safe place, but that confident space
for other people to not only feel confident, but to help you with your confidence too.
That's what a great leader does.
you know, don't pretend you have all the answers because you won't.
Nobody's going to believe that you do.
And quite honestly, they're going to see right through it.
number one, number two is confidence is binary, but it's not absolute.
And what I mean by that is you either are either confident or you're not.
You're not sort of confident.
You're kind of confident.
You don't feel confident.
You either say, I feel good about this and I can do it.
But when I say it's not absolute, again, like the example I gave with the rain, there's
always a chance that your certainty is wrong.
Right.
That maybe it'll rain or maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was, whatever.
But that, that part and, you know, scientists, probably all remember back in maybe biology
or some of the other science you take in probably middle school, where you do the bell
curve and you have those confidence intervals at the end.
Guess what?
They're coming back at you right now.
You're like, why did I ever have to learn it?
Because Alyssa is going to teach you again that those tails of those bell curves mean that
You're probably right, statistically speaking, you have a high probability that you're
correct, but there's a small chance that you're wrong.
And that small enough chance you're like, okay, I can live with that.
And if you were in a scientific lab, it would be the same thing.
Like, okay, we've done this experiment 82 times and chances are it's going to be right
again.
But something could be weird today, right?
The barometer or the ingredients or whatever we're doing could be a little bit different
than yesterday.
And there's.
slight chance.
So we say that we are confident enough, confident enough, that enough really makes a
difference, right?
Because you're giving yourself the compassion, the leeway, the space, what are you going
to call it, to be wrong?
Because we're human, we're not chatty buty.
Chatty buty can be wrong too, just for the right.
So number two.
So
Going into that space where you're saying to yourself, I'm not perfect, I don't have all
the answers, I could be wrong.
My third thing is don't take yourself so seriously.
And I don't mean you personally, David, but all of us, right?
As a leader, you are still a human.
And the best quality I think that a leader can bring to the table is their humanity now.
I know it's a little bit of a sensitive topic in today's political environment, but how
can you expect your team to be creative, to think freely, to give their best if you're
creating a situation where you're saying to them, oh, I'm scared about saying something
that they shouldn't be?
Of course they're going to be.
So coming with a little humility and some humbleness and being like, you know,
I'm a leader.
Yeah, that's my title.
But guess what?
I got up this morning and put my pants on one leg at a time, just like you did and, you
know, brush my teeth and did the same thing that you did.
you know, I maybe I more experience or more something than the rest of you for having the
title, but we're all human in this room.
I one of the things you just said, which I think either I myself misinterpret and conflate
a lot, or maybe generally, I would say people may be misconstrued whether or not humility
and confidence are opposites or are there not, you know what I mean?
Like you can't be humble and confident.
But what you just described is actually very specifically the opposite.
In fact, you it demonstrates confidence to be able to be humble.
And I would say
I would be surprised if that doesn't seem intuitive to me.
Those two words don't seem intuitively combined, but you did combine them in a way that's
elegant and intuitive and makes a lot of sense.
It creates that space for people that are being led to be able to uh participate in a way
that they can feel confident that they will be able to engage.
It's basically like I'm comfortable being able to fail forward in like a, there's no wrong
answers in brainstorming.
kind of thing.
So that's a very interesting combination.
I also love the element you described when you talked about confident enough.
It kind of to me sounds like you're talking about the confidence and in science.
And I love that combination.
ah Statistics, basically statistics you're referring to.
ah So you but you also mentioned to me before that the opposite of confidence is not
insecurity.
ah And I would love for you to tell me more about about that because people will I would
have intuitively thought it is.
Right.
And I love that you brought it up.
It's one of my favorite topics to talk about because, you know, I think what you were
referring to before when you said humility or humbleness is not, you wouldn't see those in
the same mix.
It's because a lot of people think of confidence as arrogance or they think of it as
overconfident.
And those are polar opposites.
And here's the funny thing is that people who are, well, let me start with the other side
of it.
People who are overconfident actually believe they have
absolute certainty in their head that they can do something.
And everybody else is like, hey dude, like you can't do that.
Like you don't have the goods, right?
You don't have the data.
You don't have whatever it is.
You should not have that certainty.
That's overconfidence.
Arrogance, I said this on the other spectrum, arrogant people actually know that they're
not confident.
And what they're trying to do is bully and otherwise make up for that gap by taking other
people's confidence away.
So they want to the field a little.
don't know?
Is it possible that an arrogant person doesn't realize that they're arrogant and they
think that they're right but discover they're not down the line?
Is that?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And here's why.
Because when I answer your question now, finally, the opposite of confidence is actually
guilt.
And when I mean by guilt, it's kind of like what?
The opposite of confidence is guilt.
Because when you are making those decisions about how you want to behave, what you're
going to say, what you're going to type, what you're going to convey, you know,
behaviorally and visually, when you're making those decisions, whether they're
very conscious or subconscious or unconscious for that matter.
The rule book that you play by is your values, your needs and your wants.
So if I value the other people in the room, then if I'm not doing something that's
confident, it's because I violated that.
I've done something and I feel, oh, right, or, right.
So the...
I see like their boundaries.
They're like, you know, when you go play in the bowling alley with the bumpers in there,
that this is what keeps us in our lane, in our, in our own values lane.
And subsequently when we're in our lane, we feel confident when I'm doing things that
reflect that things that are important to me.
And I, I, know, whether I go protest or I send a text, as long as it fits who I am and
what I value, I'm going to be confident.
An arrogant person, the reason they're arrogant and not confident is because they can't
act in their lane and they don't know how to, so they act arrogantly.
And it's interesting because I was actually interviewing someone yesterday for my podcast
and he's a very old school military leader.
And his whole approach is to basically kick
kick an arrogant person hard, verbally hard, like knock it off.
This is not my problem, it's your problem.
And I said to him, how that work for you?
And in some cases that actually can kind of work because it kind of calls their bluff,
right?
It calls them out and says, I know you're not confident.
And it does work with a lot of bullies.
But of course, for many, I do not recommend that because it will also trigger more of the
arrogance.
That's such an interesting, you know, I was thinking about how would I interact with
people all the time.
And when I noticed that they're confident and maybe it causes problems, I always from a
sporting position when I'm in sports, when I, I grew up wrestling and for us, we knew
confidence is quiet.
The louder you are, the more likely you are not uh confident in yourself and you're trying
to
Compensate and hide that lack, which sounds exactly like what you're describing when it
comes to arrogance.
Um, obviously in a sporting situation, obviously also maybe more specifically in a
situation where you're going to fight somebody that will be aligned very quickly.
And I think when you were describing, um, like that he, he becomes boisterous and he
basically checks them and calls them on it.
It's basically the communication equivalent of a confrontation and addressing it directly.
But I would be interested because while I can see confidence is quiet, I would be very
interested in how often that does work because I would expect most of the people are
arrogant that are boisterous.
Most ah I'm actually, I cannot even think of an example throughout my own experience where
somebody was confident and that resulted in them needing to be boisterous about it.
It, seems again, counterintuitive that it would, that that would be combined at all.
Yeah, you know, mean, the old adage that people who have real money don't tell you about
it, right?
They don't brag about it.
It's like people who are confident don't need to.
And we started this whole uh body of knowledge back in 2015 by interviewing Olympic and
professional athletes to really understand, you know, what was going on.
Now, at that time, we were just getting functional MRI data from the brain science.
So a lot of it was still very kind of
psychologically, sociologically based research.
But, you know, it was very clear that if you're a high performance athlete or a high
performance leader and inside you've got that imposter stuff going on or you for a minute
doubt that you're going to be able to beat your opponent, you might as well not compete.
You're done before you even get on the mat, right?
So you really have to have that inner set of peace.
again, maybe a little humility that I'm going to do the best I can and I believe I can
beat this person.
If you leave that mat with, ah didn't perform the best I could and all that, you're going
to beat yourself up.
That's that guilt, right?
And it's going to roll into the next situation unless you say, you know, everybody has a
bad day.
You know, it wasn't my best performance and this is what I'm going to try and do better
next time.
having a little self-compassion in that way, I'm not saying, you
You know, it's too bad.
No, I don't mean that.
mean, like looking at and going, okay, I could have been to him, but I think there's
things I could do better next time.
Right.
There is a absolute reflection of radiance.
And this is where the executive president is not going to be able to teach you to walk in
the room and do it.
You just can't.
You either have it inside and it comes out or you don't.
And so working on that alignment with your values, that's what it's about.
And we have another part of our neurology course.
talk about mirror neurons and mirror neurons are how we learn to do things.
So when you are an infant, you don't know how to grab a baby bottle until somebody
basically puts it in front of you.
go, oh, that's how it's done.
Right.
And you're mirror, mirror that mirror.
No, it's a fascinating.
We could talk about that for an hour and a half.
We're not going to do that.
Suffice to say, when you walk in the room in a confident space and you're radiating that,
everybody else's mirror neurons are gonna pick up on that.
You walk in the room as an arrogant jerk, guess what?
It's gonna raise everybody's arrogant jerks too.
They're also gonna get scared and fearful and they're gonna lock down in their brains.
So the difference between walking in a room with yourself in that calm, peaceful,
confident way,
as a leader and not, you set the tone the minute you walk in the room.
It doesn't matter what you say, it doesn't matter what you're wearing.
It's what you're conveying and everybody else will pick up on that.
So you wanna own the room, that's how you do it.
I love that description.
So what you've basically done is you've identified the difference between confidence over
confidence and arrogance.
And by focusing on confidence, even you bring that into a room and you're able to get
people to mirror it, especially if you can combine it with humility and creating that
space, you've basically identified the formula of how to manage your own behavior in a way
that will create the highest level of productivity for any group that you're in and
whether or not you're the leader of that group.
Um, that's that's
Probably the most insightful combination takeaway actually just for me.
I'm just for me that is while I want that to be true.
And I think intuitively think that's what I should be doing.
I've not put together the science of it or the risks of not doing it correctly in that
way.
So thank you so much for basically breaking that down for me.
And hopefully for people that are listening as well, I'm sure it's going to be very
useful.
Some of the go-to fails of arrogance and things like that.
I get to see that a lot and it's a
You know, you can say this doesn't feel good.
I don't like what you're doing.
But when you bring this like very, very practical breakdown of not only is what you're
doing, not feeling good for people, but this is where it's really causing failure.
And you could benefit from doing something in a different way that reflects true
confidence.
ah
I think it'd be really meaningful for people.
And I probably, I imagine people like the people you were just coaching that you said was
an old school military guy.
I would be interested in how he might respond to the breakdown of, you know, what does
true confidence look like?
And if you were to apply it in a way that creates safety, what would the difference be for
the people that you end up having to lead versus having to just check everybody all the
time and treating every person like they're a nail and you're a hammer?
ah Which I'm guessing is what you're
what you learned when you were interacting with them.
That's just my interpretation of what that might've been like.
Is that...
two things that I think may be even more profound than what you just said was profound.
And one of them is not everybody is going to, you have to have a will to have a way,
right?
We know that.
And so if you're going to expect somebody to change or make a choice that is better, they
have to want that, right?
So yeah, like your battles in that sense where it's like, this person open-minded enough
to do it?
Not everybody will be and not everybody will be in the right space to do that.
you know, especially as a leader at work, for example, we don't know what that person has
gone through in their life or last night or this morning.
And so they just may not be in the right place and time to be receptive to you saying,
hey, you know, I have some feedback for you, for example.
So.
Yeah, pick your battles with people and situations and be a little bit more strategic when
it matters.
But again, if you can re-adiate that confidence, it helps.
So not everybody's going to be have a will.
Not everybody's going to like you.
I mean, you can be as nice as you want to be.
And this is probably more for uh some of the female listeners.
And I'm not trying to genderize this, but a lot of women, um a lot, not all, are so
preoccupied with the Glyte that
They won't step up into leadership roles.
I'm not going to tell somebody to knock it off.
And my friends out there, got to, you got to get over that.
Cause not everybody's going to like you no matter what you do.
And that's all right.
That's all right.
Should they still follow and respect you if they're the leader?
Yeah, they should, but doesn't mean they have to like you.
So that's another big like liberating thing, but here's the big David, are you ready?
Yeah.
Yeah.
When we talk about confidence, everyone comes at the conversation where they're trying to
get more confident.
I want to be more confident.
I want to be more confident leader.
I want to be a more confident parent.
want to be, right?
And the real secret, the real way to do it is not worry about what you're doing for your
confidence.
It's worrying about what you're doing for the other people and giving them confidence.
Because when you give them confidence, that is like a superhero.
action, right?
Think about any superhero that's your fave, right?
They're not worried about their own confidence or worried about everybody else.
And so when they save somebody, when they give somebody that safety, when they give
somebody that relief that you're okay, you can do this, that's when you get confidence for
yourself.
So you can go to any class, including our own.
And yes, we're going to teach you how to align with your values.
We're going to teach you how to make better confident choices and all that.
But the moral of
Every story that we teach, every class that we teach is to get more confidence.
You have to give it away.
Great leaders give away confidence constantly.
That's, that's, that's really, that is the bigger nugget.
You're absolutely right.
you would know better than me, which one it is.
And I would say that I resonate with that quite a bit as well.
one of the things I was focusing on for this podcast, the biggest reason I wanted to do it
is because I recognize what felt like the most important thing a leader could do is evolve
themselves, but in order to elevate others.
So make that the mission.
So become a better version of yourself so that you can elevate other people.
If that's the purpose then.
it then the cost of not doing it's too high.
Like, um, so anyways, I, what you just said was exactly, was exactly that is, is you get
basically more confidence by giving it out.
I, I don't know if I could have without doing it.
don't know that people would intuitively believe that is another feels like another
counterintuitive, right?
Like if it's a resource and I'm giving it away, isn't that reducing it, but no, it's
actually how you build it.
Um,
Speaking of things that are counterintuitive, was interested in just a last question about
all of these topics that you've covered.
When you say that guilt is the opposite of confidence, I'll just count maybe it's like the
enemy of confidence.
ah How do you personally end up coaching people who deal with guilt in order to deal with
what would be the enemy of confidence so that they can focus more on being confident?
All right, so it's not the enemy.
It's actually, no, I mean, I think it's great.
I'm glad that you even said that because it's a signal.
It's like, even like pain when you have physical pain, like your neck and your back and
you're like, I'm all stressed, right?
Or just any kind of signal that your body's giving you, it could be a stomach ache.
It could be, you know, cause everything's connected and you know, especially between the
head and the stomach.
Those were all signals.
Guilt is a signal.
It's saying to you, hey,
You just did something or you're about to do something that doesn't jive with your values.
So it's a wake up call.
It's when your body or other parts of your brain are trying to get that attention in your
prefrontal to say, hello up there.
You're not doing your job because we're going to go against something that's important to
us.
And think about anytime you've done something and we've all done it, you know, where
you're like, I know this is the wrong thing, but I'm going to do it anyway.
You feel guilty.
It's because.
Your brain said, yeah, your brain does know.
Your brain does know.
And so they're signals.
They're not enemies.
They're signals.
And actually, if we make friends with those things, if we say, OK, I'm going to listen,
you're inner critic.
Same thing.
The inner critic is a signal.
Listen to them.
They're trying to coach you.
But you're not paying attention.
say to folks, if you've got that perpetual backache, it's because you're not listening to
the signal.
So it's pay attention and then adjust accordingly, it sounds like.
I like that you had also mentioned that about the imposter syndrome.
You sound like you'd be a tough coach, because when I brought that up, your response is
just, well, just get over it.
Don't stop focusing on.
not just get over it, like imposter syndrome is also another signal.
It's saying to you, hey, you know, I'm not a hundred percent certain.
I'm not confident that I can do this, whatever this is.
And so find out, figure out why.
Is it because you've never done it before?
Is it because you don't have enough data?
Go ask some people that you trust that can give you some feedback.
Figure it out.
And either you're going to go, okay, I need to learn how to do this piece that I feel like
I don't have mastered yet.
or it's gonna convince you that you can do it.
But miring in something like imposter syndrome, just saying, I just have imposter syndrome
for me.
Yeah, I'm a tough coach.
I'm like, all right, good for you.
Let's get on.
Let's figure out why.
Yeah, well, yeah.
I mean, come on.
It's kind of like a lot of things.
And don't get me started on this.
We'll go for another hour.
But you know, like as humans, we love to give syndromes and excuses, know, long tail
COVID.
You know, it's this, it's that.
I'm overwhelmed, too much decisions.
Okay, now you know what the problem is.
Now let's do something about it.
But miring in it, that's not gonna make you more confident.
Yeah, that totally makes sense.
ah I would love also, so I know not only are you somebody who reads books, but you've
written several.
ah I would love to know from your perspective, we're going to show a list of what your
recent books are, what all of your books are, what books would you, other than your own
recommend, but also of your own, which would you recommend for somebody who is looking to
build their own confidence to be a better leader or just a better person as they're
interacting with people and relationships in general?
my God, that's a big question, right?
uh
your own because obviously you know them very intimately.
Well, the right behind my head for anyone is looking at black one in the back of there is
confidence is a choice.
And that's kind of reflects everything we talked about today.
And then some has got some worksheets and things in it, too, if you want to like kind of
really analyze your own confidence.
So that one would be the one that I would say start with.
uh As far as other books on confidence, you know, here's the thing.
There's a lot of people out there writing about the topic.
Some are a little scientific, some of them are not.
uh
I am a big fan of anything that you can read that kind of makes you think about who you
are.
here's the funny part.
don't, you know, it could be a horoscope.
could be, you know, going to get Chinese takeout and getting the zodiacs and thinking
about, you know, is this really like me?
Anything that's going to give you more insight into who you are.
Now, here's the caveat.
If you're going to take an assessment and it's going to stick you in a box.
I don't like those.
I don't think we are static as humans and I don't think putting people in boxes is
necessarily going to help them as much as helping them be more aware of who they are and
where they want to be.
any tool or system that does that, I'm all for it.
But if you're going to make excuses because you're an LP DJ, PYQ, it's like being an
imposter, right?
It's like, no, no.
Is that fair?
right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, confidence is a choice is the book.
And then you said anything else that basically helps you understand yourself better so
that you can make decisions with more information.
Yeah, and there's so many, I don't even know which ones to list.
There's a lot of even older books that I think before the brain science came out, whether
it's Stephen Covey's, Seven Habits and things like that, that when you read it, you'll go,
oh, now I understand why it makes sense, right?
So needless to say, think once you understand a little bit more about the brain science, a
little bit more about yourself, everything else becomes just reinforcement.
makes sense and uh other than for confidence and personal development, what are some
books, any book that you're reading right now or that you really enjoy for just casual
reading?
So fictional books, anything that, and please, I didn't prepare you for this question.
So what would be the fictional book that you're enjoying?
it's a fictional book.
So um I'm reading like really goofy like fiction right now just because I feel like I'm
working really hard and I'm on the computer for so many hours.
I just need something like light so I can go to bed.
yeah, yeah.
So I'm reading some like goofy, some goofy books and just random things that my sister
throws at me all the time.
But, you know, here's the thing.
My husband says I write more books than I read, which is not true.
Just just saying.
ah But I also mix things up.
you know, like I just took Animal Farm with me on one of my trips because I was like, I
read it in high school and I kind of just felt like I needed to read it.
I printed out a copy of the Constitution a couple months ago, a weeks ago, and I was like,
I think I read the Constitution.
So I'm like the weirdest reader.
I remember doing uh a blog post years ago about, you can tell a lot about a person from
what's on their nightstand, right?
ah Yeah, don't look at my nightstand.
It's bad.
It's really bad.
I've got, you know, everything from Obama's books to um the Constitution, like I said, but
also, you know, juicy romance novels and so forth.
I have a friend who actually moonlights and sometimes sends me stuff like that.
ah Yeah, a little bit of everything.
Whatever I feel like my head needs at the time.
Wow, that was the most eclectic miss I've heard.
yeah, of course.
Just throw in some brain science on top of the...
book that I, it's a little hard read, but it's called Your Brain on Art.
Like, well, how does art affect your brain?
like, you know, and emotions and the brain and you know, so there's always a brain science
or two book on my next.
Is this probably the best way to define what you mean by neuro nerd with all of the
different how things affect your brain?
Yes, I really do enjoy it.
I've read, there's a whole other bookshelf on the side that you can't see of all kind of
narrow books.
I like them.
make me, and I read a lot online all day long and constantly, but needless to say, I read
as much junk too because people magazine me on Friday nights.
Don't get in my way.
Well, I totally understand.
I also ended up needing that little bit of a break after what was otherwise just a
constant drain of energy in work and trying to study.
So recovery is important too.
And that's probably brain recovery.
Um, thank you so much for your time and joining us on lead smarter podcasts.
really appreciate it.
I've loved getting to know more about what you do and the science behind confidence.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you.