Dru's Notes

Confidence is a trailing indicator. The feeling follows the evidence, and the evidence comes from reps. A neuroscientist's work on addiction explains why pep talks fade like a drug while months of showing up move the baseline for good.

Show Notes

Confidence is a trailing indicator. The feeling follows the evidence, and the evidence comes from reps. A neuroscientist's work on addiction explains why pep talks fade like a drug while months of showing up move the baseline for good.

Featuring: Tim Ferriss, Dale Carnegie, Judith Grisel

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Creators and Guests

Host
Dru Riley
Founder of Trends.vc
DC
Guest
Dale Carnegie
Featured in Dru's Notes: Confidence Is a Trailing Indicator.
JG
Guest
Judith Grisel
Featured in Dru's Notes: Confidence Is a Trailing Indicator.
TF
Guest
Tim Ferriss
Featured in Dru's Notes: Habits of Great Writers, Founders and Investors.

What is Dru's Notes?

One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage."
Dale Carnegie

Late one night I read Judith Grisel, a neuroscientist and former addict, explain in Never Enough why a high stops coming back.

A drug gives you a good feeling. The brain treats that good feeling as a problem and fights to pull you back to normal.

Take the drug again tomorrow and the brain fights back faster. Do it for a week and the brain fights back harder and holds longer. The good feeling gets weaker each time while the brain gets stronger.

Before long you take the drug just to feel normal. The craving keeps growing even after the good feeling is gone. You end up chasing a good feeling you can no longer reach.

I set the book down because I recognized the pattern. The same rise and fade, running on something with no drug in it. My confidence.

For years I tried to talk my way into more confidence.

- Affirmations
- Hype playlists
- Clever reframes

Each one worked for about an hour. Then the old feeling crept back and set me down in the same spot. A pep talk is that same good feeling. My brain fought it back to normal before lunch.

What moved the baseline was reps. Doing the uncomfortable thing again and again.

I train jiu-jitsu. For months I showed up and got tapped. Choked, swept, pinned, over and over.

The first weeks, panic hit the moment someone passed my guard. Over time the panic came slower. Later I could breathe under the pin and still think.

One roll I caught myself calm in the exact spot that used to wreck me. The reps built that calm over months.

Off the mat, my daily experiments work the same way. Each one is something uncertain or uncomfortable. I act first, get through it and log the rep. The brave feeling shows up weeks later, once the evidence is too thick to argue with.

Tim Ferriss runs comfort challenges: hold a stranger's eye contact, ask someone for their number, do small uncomfortable things on purpose. You act before you feel ready and the confidence catches up. Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage, as Dale Carnegie put it.

Confidence is a trailing indicator. The feeling follows the evidence. So go make some.

What's one thing you could do today to build evidence?

1. What would you do today if you trusted the reps to hand you the confidence later? (Bet)
2. Which rep could you start today that your confidence will thank you for next month? (Micro-Action)
3. What's one uncomfortable rep you could start today? (Micro-Action)
4. What have you been trying to talk yourself into that you could go do? (Forward Transfer)
5. What would you attempt now if the confidence only showed up afterward? (Constraint Flip)
6. What pep talk could you trade for one real rep today? (Subtraction)
7. Where could you put in reps before you feel ready? (Forward Transfer)

Action-as-evidence angle (all ACTIONABLE, gated):
8. What's one rep you could log today to build evidence? (Evidence. currently in post)
9. What could you put down today as your first piece of evidence? (Evidence)
10. What could you do today that your confidence will later count as proof? (Evidence)
11. What's the first rep you could put on the board today? (Micro-Action)