43 | What comes before confidence

Hi there!

We're back with Season 3, which is all about professional confidence.

This episode shares a live training that goes into what comes before confidence. 

Too often we want to jump right to feeling confident, that we skip the steps that have us feeling authentically confident. 

So have a listen and make your commitment to showing up courageously, making a commitment and honing your competence.

xo
Liz 

PS do you have ideas for the podcast itself? Head on over to my Ideas page and leave your suggestion. You'll also get $10 in credit towards my programs for yourself, or to pay it forward to someone else!

Well, hello there and welcome to episode 43. We are going diving right into the deep end, around professional confidence. And we're going to be talking about what comes before confidence in this episode. So I was special one for you. What it is, is a, a live training that I gave in my Facebook group a few months ago. And I thought it would be really helpful to include in this season, since we are deep diving into professional confidence.

And I go into a thought exercise and a discussion around what actually comes before confidence. And I think it's really important, really powerful to consider these various steps we go through and what happens before we can really feel that confidence. So with that, enjoy this episode, enjoy the live training. And if you want to be able to CA to catch these live trainings, as they happen, make sure to come over, head on over to the group, come join the community. It's a free Facebook community and that's at, yeah, you can access it at the mint ambition.com/community.

We love to have you there. It's a virtual cafe of like-minded professionals. So we'd love to have you there. And with that let's jump right on into the live training

I'm so excited to have you here. So thrilled that you are joining us for the summit. Um, if you don't know me, I am, I'm a leadership coach and I do a lot of work with highly sensitive professionals.

Working on, uh, leadership and feeling comfortable influencing and rising, especially rising up to director level positions and feeling comfortable once you're in that position. Oh, I see Lindsay there. Hi Lindsay. Nice to see you here tonight. So the presentation is all about what comes before confidence, and I wanted to start off by telling a bit of a story. So when I was little, uh, I used to go to the pool quite a lot, especially when I was around that 12, 13 kind of age.

You know, my parents would drop me off. I didn't go with friends, and we'd go during, you know, kind of open. Playtime, like a open splash time. I'm not sure what it's called. And you know, it was one of those pools that it had, you know, one, it had one slide that you could slide down into. It had a rope. I remember the rope was so fun to go swinging up the rope and, you know, splash into the water.

Um, and it also had, of course, diving boards. Okay. Um, and it had two diving boards. So the one I went to had two diving boards. It had the low board and it had the high board. Okay. And I just, I so distinctly remember wanting to jump off the high diving board like I really, really wanted to, but I was terrified.

So I was like, I was okay with this, with this small one. Like it was pretty small. You'd bounce on it, you jump in the water and I would, I would kind of like glance at the high one and I'd walk around the pool. I'd kind of look at it and. I, I didn't even climb up really the stairs to it because I was just completely terrified.

So I'm curious in the comments, has anyone had an experience like that? Maybe either as a kid with some, maybe even like an actual diving board or thinking even into our twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, beyond, we have those times where we want to do something. We're kind of eyeing it up. We're kind of circling around it, but we're, we're really scared to do.

Right. Does anyone, has anyone had that? Just give a little wave or a little gif or a little yes in the comments if you've ever had that. For, for me, I know where my fear was coming from was that I hadn't yet done it. Okay. And I was, I didn't know how it would go. I was really afraid, I was scared that I would land, I might hurt myself or it might not go well, or I might look silly or, you know, what would people think?

And I was just really, really afraid. And yeah, getting in comments, I definitely have had that experience for sure. Right. So I was, I was afraid, I was scared to go. I wasn't even scared to go. climate, like I mentioned. So just kind of circle around. Again, like I said, kind of like eyeing it up and. . And I do remember thinking, you know, I remember feeling that I just, I wanted to have that confidence.

I wanted to, you know, I'd see the other kids just confidently go for that ladder, go to that high dabbing board and just jump off like it was nothing. Right? And that's, I wanted to feel that, but I was scared. And so I wanted to feel the confidence. So let's write that. Oops, I'll lose my pens here. Okay, let's write that down.

So I wanted to feel. Confident. Got confidence. If I can spell , is anyone else like that? Like when you know someone's looking over your shoulder, you're like, am I spelling this correctly? Well, that's me for sure. Um, so wanted that confidence. I wanted to get there. The problem was that I kept feeling like, well, I'm not, if I knew I I'd be good at it, then I would feel confident.

Right. And the thing is, is that when we. when we, when our, when we feel like we should be good at something in order to feel confident or we should be good at something before we've ever done it. I like to refer to that as, uh, pre perfectionism, you know, we've all heard of per, per uh, per perfectionism, right?

But a lot of times we get this like pre perfectionism and we kind of like, we kind of expect ourselves to be good at something before we've ever done. And so we have this kind of like this backwards feeling, like that we should feel confident before we've ever done it. But then when we think about it like that doesn't really make sense in a way.

Right. That's almost, that doesn't really feel authentic to be like, I'm so confident I can totally do this, even though I've never done it before. Now I mean like sometimes that can be helpful. But the, the challenges, and so I gotta walk through here, is that there's, there's other things that can, that usually come before confidence.

So I'm gonna tell you about this model. It's, um, a model from, uh, Dan Sullivan who designed it and, and I think is a really helpful way of thinking about confidence and especially around something that scares us. Something we're kind of like walking around the pool, kind of looking at that high diving board.

Maybe it's a real diving board or something like that, but maybe it's a, a scary opportunity or it's speaking up or it's talking, um, telling someone that we want to get to director level. Maybe it's something like that, that we, we want and we want to feel confident doing it, but we're not really sure how it'll go.

We're kind of afraid. We don't really know what's gonna happen. Are we gonna land wrong? What do people think of us? And we keep telling ourselves this story, like, I just wanna feel confident. So what the Dan Sullivan model says is that confidence really comes after competence.

Hey, when we're really competent at something, that's when we feel like that's sort of like a genuine kind of confidence and. You know, I don't wanna take away from the idea that we can feel confident in ourselves, even we haven't, haven't done it. But it's more like the confidence that we know exactly how it'll do, how it'll go usually comes out of competence.

We've been doing it, and even actually in the, in PPPs in the program, we do a week where we tackle imposter syndrome. And there's one of the exercises that week where I do something called, um, imposter zone mapping. And how I look at it is, In the very center of the model, we feel very, um, very comfortable.

Not even just confident, but like very comfortable. And those are the things that like we don't even think about. So it's so easy we don't even think about it. Then after that, we get into more of growth zones and, uh, sorry. We get into the confidence zone. That's where I put the confidence zone is right after con uh, um, comfort.

So it takes a little bit more effort, but we feel confident because we know it, we're, we're pretty competent at it. And then from there we go out into other zones. But the, the confidence zone usually, like it's something we've done and we feel pretty well, we feel pretty confident about it because we're competent.

So we do, we, we usually have competence before we have confidence. But the thing about competence is it requires us to, to do the thing, to practice the thing. Remember I was saying, remember I was saying about that pre perfectionism, right? It's kind of funny when we think about it, like I'm, I am have so much pre perfectionism, so there's no judgment, there's no shade being thrown here.

Cause that's why I'm smiling. Cause I have so much of it myself. I just, I expect myself to be good at something before I've ever done it. The expectation of being good at it sometimes ends up holding me back because, well, I'm not good at it yet, so I don't feel confident. Right? You end up in this funny kind of cycle, so before we can even be competent at something, we need to commit to doing it.

So in the Dan Sullivan model, what comes before competence is commitment.

Okay. I've got a couple comments here. Public pool days for sure. And living. And living confident. Right. A lot of us do live in the confident zone. Right. It's scary to go out beyond that zone for sure. That's a natural human reaction. To be a bit afraid to go out beyond that confident zone. But if we wanna go out for a minute to be competent, we need to commit to it.

So for with the metaphor of climbing or of, um, going on the diving board, it would be that commitment to climbing, that commitment to saying, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to try this. And I'm going to practice it and it might not go well the first time. I mean, in fact, it probably won't go well the first time.

Anything we do the first time, like we have, that's a really high expectation on ourselves to expect that we'll be great at it before we've done it. Right. That perfectionism that can creep up, but we need to commit to be then become competent and this, and then we get the competence. We become confident, right?

Love. I lost my pen here. I was gonna do a different color. Okay. I'll use this one. Um, the thing is, is that commitment before we're good at something is really scary. Right? It's really scary for anything I. So that's, that's really natural that your brain is gonna feel scared, your brain's gonna wanna hold back.

And that's why, to the point about living in the confidence zone, we often do live in that confidence zone. And, and it makes sense too with every, there's so much going on and so much in life that we're just, you know, kind of protecting ourselves to stay in the confidence zone. And that's okay. Right? And that is okay.

Like we can live in that confidence zone. But the thing that, I work a lot with my clients, and so when people are ready to make that commitment and they come and either join my program or work with me, the thing that they're, what they're coming with is the number one thing in, in Dan Sullivan's model here, and they're coming with courage.

Okay.

Okay. They're coming with courage. . You know, when you think about climbing and jumping off a high diving board, if you're have a fear of heights or not sure how it's gonna go, like with my case, it needs, it requires courage to do that. It requires courage to commit to something that you're not sure how it's going to go.

That scares you. So then you, so you can develop the competence and then you can get to that confidence. So, so often we, we we're so busy that we're, we, we kind of focus on feeling confident. We wanna feel confident, and it's sometimes, and it's helpful to kind of take a step back and realize that there's a lot that goes, that comes before that, that builds into feeling confident.

Now. Uh, the other thing on, on courage, uh, oh, I didn't write it down. I hope I'll get the, the quote right. Cause there's a really great quote out of, um, out of Octonauts of all things. So anyone who has kids or has nieces and nephews might have heard of Octonauts, and one of the characters is called Captain Barnacles.

And there's one episode, um, oh, it's in one of the movies. Actually, I take it back. One episode is in the movie and he is, it turns out that he's afraid of small places. He's afraid of tight spaces, and he has to, in this, in the movie, he has to navigate these sea case and he's really afraid and he gets support from this other character who in the whole show pa um, um, peso Pedro, um, who is often.

And who, and that character then helps Captain Barnacles, who's usually so brave and strong, and they have this really lovely conversation about fear and what we're afraid of and facing our fears. And what Captain Barnacles says is that you, you have to, you, you can't be. Um, um, you can't be, uh, bold without being afraid, right?

It takes courage. It takes courage to face or fears to stand, to stand up, almost like standing up to her fears or to face them and to move forward to something that scares us. To have that commitment, to try something, to move towards that confidence. And I just, I just thought it was such a, um, a, a lovely, simple model because I'm sure you've all been there and, and this is part of what I, I conceive for you, my vision for you too with this summit, why we do these summits is to have a place where we can get that courage together, right?

So we can make that commitment so we can work on these pieces and get to that confidence. So, oh, I see someone here saying they also love Okta nuts. Yes. It's a, anyway, if you side note, if you do have kids, you haven't watched it. Okta nuts is very lovely. So we are here to have that courage together to to, you know, to link arms together to support one another.

And that's the beautiful thing about groups. So the summit or joining a program with other people. It's the beautiful, beautiful thing about finding that courage together because it can be scary to do it on our own. And so it's nice to have a group to do it with. And so that's why I'm so excited that you're all here doing this summit with us, going through this like saying, take, getting that courage saying, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to commit to this. So I would love to hear from you in the comments. You know, who's going to commit? Who will commit? And what I wanted to ask you to type out as part of your commitment is to type out the phrase, I will do big things. I will do big things. Hey, I would love to see you. Type that into the comments and, and kind of you've got that courage and make that commitment, right?

Like going to a summit like this is all about having a transformation and we can, we can only do that for ourselves. We can only go through this for ourselves, but it's so much easier when we have others cheering us on. So that's what we have here in the summit. So I'd love to hear from you. Who's committing now?

I will do big things. Now if, if, uh, if that sounds familiar, anyone who's taken the quiz has probably seen that. That was in one of the questions around which me, which, uh, image really speaks to you. I mean, I will do big things, you know, that's a great one. All right. We've got a few people here already in the comments.

I will do big things, right? We're gonna do this together. This is gonna be such a wonderful opportunity to get that courage, make that commitment, make some changes, right? Envision for yourself, what is that change for speaking up for self-advocacy? You know, I've been having lots of private conversations and seeing lots of comments, uh, both in the group as well as privately and in, in the different, um, applications that we have different places, and, and I can see that what people want and they wanna get to that place.

And I can see the courage, I can, I can feel it coming through my screen. The courage that people are showing, right. You know, think about whether, you know, is it that you're going to speak up more at meetings? Is it going to be, you know, that you're gonna go to a conference and actually go and stand and ask a question?

Right? That, that was one of my big fears. I always wanted to do that and I always wanted, it's. So hard to do. So that's why I think about it. Is it that you're going to go meet some, meet some people, expand your network or your constellation is like to call it, I love calling networks constellations rather than, you know, kind of the, the net board network term.

Um, but think of it as a constellation of connecting with other bright stars out there. You know, is it about having a really difficult conversation, a really direct conversation with someone? A really important, um, crucial conversation is the other term or an honest conversation, and maybe that's hard.

And so you want this, you're gonna make that commitment. You're gonna find that courage or the commitment or work through this work, through this model. You know, is it, um, advocating for yourself around salary or on a promotion maybe you're looking at, in the next couple of months, coming up on that period where you're advocating for yourself or pro for, for an increase in salary?

I mean, that's it. Or maybe, maybe it's as, uh, you're looking at it, uh, changing jobs, either transition or you're looking to, to try something new. You've been in the same role for five, 10 years. You're looking for something new, so you wanna put yourself out there. But that feels scary. It can feel scary too, especially if we've been in a job for a long time, that can feel really scary.

So whatever it is, whatever your self-advocacy thing is, I want you to feel that courage and recognize that there is, there is a special type of emotion, and if anyone has an idea for what to name it, please drop it in the comments as well. But there's that special type of emotion when we feel fear and excitement at the same time.

So that diving board, when I finally worked through this and you know, found the courage worked, focused on more on the courage piece to climb. That ladder all the way to the top. Oh my goodness. Can you see it with me? I can almost see. I can see it in my mind's eye. You know, I think the, um, the diving board was that, what's that color?

It's like sea green, like that very light sea green. The little bit of, um, what the little bumps that are on it. Right. Don't slip. I still remember, you know, climbing up and feeling that feeling, having to work through the courage to jump. And that feeling, that's like fear and excitement all at the same time.

Okay. That's what we wanna feel and recognize that we will feel afraid. There are things that we're going to feel afraid about. That's okay. And that's, that's natural, right? That's us pushing out to those outer edges of the zones that I was talking about. Right? Because like I said, it's okay to stay in that, in that confident zone if we are choosing to, if we're choosing to stay there and we've got our reasons for it, that is totally fine.

What if we're wanting to push out and we're wanting to make changes, I will, I will do big things. If we want that, then we, then we are gonna feel that fear and feel the courage alongside it and feel the excitement that exhilaration I've, so I've heard of it as being like, nerves, nerve excitement was the word that I'd I'd heard before.

You know, anticipation, exhilaration. Some fear. There's a word called that, I think it was called Fi fien. Fi fis. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right, but it's that f that rush of excitement almost like, you know, like that rollercoaster feeling, that rush of excitement. Hey, and the more we get used to recognizing what that feels like and realizing like, oh, that's the feeling of me doing this.

Right. Recognizing that, yes, it is fear, but that's okay. It's fear. That's the fear that's telling. I'm in this, I'm coming into this place, I'm coming into that zone where I'm going to grow and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be developing myself and changing and transforming. You know? The more we embrace that and recognize that feeling as as growth, as change, change, the easier it'll be.

Like it just kind of self reinforces as it goes. It reinforces. The more we recognize what that feels like and embrace it. So with that, have a wonderful evening. Bye everyone.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Now, before you go, make sure you click to follow the show this way you don't have to go looking for the latest episode. I'll come to you. Just click the plus button or the follow, and you'll get the latest episode fresh off the press. Thanks again. And remember that you are amazing. Now, get out there and RISE.