00:00:06
Speaker 1: Hey team, Glen Azar here. Welcome back to the Building Better Humans Project podcast brought to you by Adventure Professionals, www.adventureprofessionals.com.au. As you know, we do Aussie Ten Peaks, Kokoda Track, Mount Everest Base Camp, Mount Kilimanjaro. We go dog sledding up in the Yukon. New dates being announced soon for that one. So get over to adventureprofessionals.com.au and book yourself an adventure and hopefully you'll get to come with me. Now, Today, we're going to talk about something that affects almost every area of your life, and that is self-belief and self-confidence. Because you can have a great idea, a powerful goal, a supportive family, and all the potential in the world. But if you don't believe that you're capable of taking the next step, you will keep hesitating. You're going to keep second-guessing yourself. You're going to keep waiting for somebody else to give you permission. Or you will stay inside a life that feels safe, but never really find out what you're capable of. So today I want to unpack where self-belief and confidence actually comes from, why so many people struggle with them, and most importantly, what you can do to start building both. So this is not about empty affirmations. It's not about standing in front of a mirror and pretending you believe something that you don't, but by creating real evidence that you can trust yourself. So let's get into it. People often use self-belief and self-confidence as though They mean the same thing, but I see them slightly differently. Self-belief is the deeper belief that you can find a way. It doesn't mean you already know every answer. It means that you believe that you're capable of learning, adapting, improving, and continuing when things become difficult. Self-belief says, I might not know how to do this yet, but I believe I can work it out. Whereas self-confidence is often more specific. You might feel confident speaking in front of a team because you've done it many times, but you might not feel confident walking into a boxing gym for the first time. You might be confident in your profession, but uncertain as a new parent, a new leader, or a new business owner. Confidence usually comes through competence, preparation, repetition. You do the work, you develop the skill, you survive a few uncomfortable moments, then your nervous system starts to understand, I can handle this. That's important because it means confidence is not something that some people are simply born with and the rest of us miss out on. Confidence can be built and self-belief can be rebuilt. One of the biggest mistakes that I think people make is believing they need to feel confident before they act. So they'll say, when I feel more confident, I'll apply for that role. When I believe in myself, I'll start the business. When I stop feeling nervous, I'll speak up. When I feel ready, I'll begin. But confidence usually comes after action, not before it. You act while you're uncertain. You take a small risk. You discover that you can survive the discomfort. You learn something. You improve. And that gives you a little more evidence for the next time. Confidence is not the entry fee required before you start. Confidence is one of the rewards that you earn because you started. Courage comes first. Confidence follows. You don't need to feel completely ready. You need to be willing to take the next reasonable step while feeling unready. At the center of self-belief is self-trust. Do you trust your own word? If you tell yourself that you're going to train tomorrow morning, do you train? If you say you're going to make the phone call, have the conversation, complete the task or change your habit, do you follow through? Every time you make a promise to yourself and keep it, you cast a vote for the person that you want to become. Every time you repeatedly break promises to yourself, you weaken your trust in your own word. That doesn't mean you need to become perfect. None of us are. You will miss sessions. You will make mistakes. You will have poor days. But you cannot build genuine self-belief on a pattern of constantly abandoning yourself. If your self-confidence is low, don't begin by making some enormous promise that requires you to completely change your life by Monday. Start smaller than that. Choose one thing that you can control and follow through on it. Get up when you said you would. Walk for 20 minutes. Finish one task before opening social media. Make the call that you've been avoiding. Read five pages. Have the honest conversation. Small promises kept consistently become self-trust. Self-trust becomes self-belief, and self-belief changes how you show up. Sometimes a lack of confidence is not a mindset problem. Sometimes you simply haven't done enough repetitions of whatever the thing is to get confident. We have to be honest about that. You can't affirm your way into competence. If you want to be a confident public speaker, you need to speak. If you want to be a confident leader, you need to practice leading, communicating clearly, making decisions, listening, handling pressure, having difficult conversations. If you want to feel confident trekking Kokoda, you need to train your body, carry your pack, climb hills, test your equipment and prepare for difficult conditions. Preparation matters. Repetition matters. Skill matters. The aim is not to convince yourself that you're already brilliant at something that you've barely practiced. The aim is to become the person who is willing to practice long enough to improve. That's a far more durable form of confidence. Ask yourself, what skill would make me more confident in this situation? Then stop judging yourself for not already having it and start developing it. Another way to build self-belief is to regularly do things that challenge you. Not reckless things, not stupid things, things that are safe and constructive but uncomfortable. Train when motivation is low. Put your hand up for responsibility at work. Attend the event where you don't know anybody. Ask the question, have the conversation, try the new skill, set a physical goal that asks more of you. Every time you voluntarily step into discomfort, you teach yourself that discomfort is not danger. You build proof that you can remain calm, think clearly and keep moving even when something feels hard. I have seen this repeatedly through the army, through adventure, through business and through working with people from all walks of life. People often discover their capability only when they're asked to move beyond what is familiar. The mountain doesn't magically put courage inside you. The challenge reveals qualities that were already there and then that gives you evidence that you can access them again. You start to think, if I handled that, maybe I could handle this. That's how one difficult experience can strengthen you in completely different areas of life. I want you to pay attention to your internal language. Some people speak to themselves in ways they would never speak to somebody else or somebody they care about. They make one mistake and they think I'm useless. They struggle with something new and say, I'm just not good at this. They feel nervous and decide, I can't do it. That language takes a temporary experience and turns into a permanent identity. There's a big difference between saying, I failed at that attempt and I'm a failure. One describes an event, the other attacks your identity. This is not about pretending everything is wonderful. It's about speaking accurately. Instead of saying, I can't do this, try saying, I can't do this confidently yet. Instead of, I always stuff things up, try, that didn't go well. What do I need to learn? Instead of I'm not confident, try I'm building confidence in this area. The word yet creates room for growth. It's what they call a supposition. Your language should not hold you accountable for standards that you're not willing to chase, of course, but your language should hold you accountable but also leave you a pathway forward. Comparison destroys confidence when you compare your beginning with somebody else's middle. And this is another conversation I think we need to have. You see, the polished presentation, not the years of nervous speaking, that's what people show. You see the successful business, but not the failure, the financial pressure, the sleepless nights. You see this strong athlete, but not the thousands of training sessions. You see the confident leader, not the difficult conversations they once avoided or the mistakes they made while learning. There is nothing wrong with studying people who are further ahead. Use them as evidence of what may be possible. Learn from them, but do not use their progress as evidence that you are inadequate. Your most useful comparison is with the person you were yesterday, last month, last year. Are you more capable? Are you more disciplined? Are you more honest with yourself? Are you more willing to act despite fear? That should be your scoreboard. And then keep evidence. Most of us have a strong memory for embarrassment of failure. but a surprisingly poor memory for the things that we've overcome. So I want you to build an evidence file. I don't care if you put this in your phone. I like to write things down. For me, it's a visceral thing of pen to paper. So it can be a page in your journal or a note on your phone or however you want to record it. But write down challenges that you've faced, difficult periods that you've survived, skills that you've developed, fears that you have moved through, and moments when you kept going even though you thought you wanted to stop. Include the small wins as well as the big ones. The conversation you finally had. The training session you completed. The boundary that you held firm on. The presentation that you delivered. The day you remained calm under pressure. The time you asked for help rather than giving up. See, none of that is ego. It's all evidence. When your mind tells you that you've never been capable, you need somewhere that you can go to challenge that story with facts. Confidence does not require you to believe that you will win every time. It does require you to remember that whatever happens, you have the capacity to respond fully. I want you to consider choosing your environment carefully too. I bang on about this all the time. Your environment can strengthen your self-belief or slowly erode it. Spend time around people who mock ambition, avoid responsibility, who criticize anyone who tries, and of course you're going to begin to shrink yourself to remain accepted. On the other hand, being around people with high standards can expand what you believe is possible. Choose people who tell you the truth, people who expect effort from you, people who want to see you grow, not people who literally blindly agree with everything you do. We don't want that. Real support isn't constant praise. Sometimes real support sounds like you're capable of better than this. You said this mattered. Are you following through? That excuse doesn't sound like you. The right people, in my experience anyway, don't carry you. They remind you that you have the capacity to stand up. And remember that you also have a responsibility to be that person for others. Ubuntu, I am because we are. Confidence is personal, but it doesn't have to be built alone. Another key thing to think about is don't attach your worth to the outcome. You will not succeed at everything you attempt. You can prepare properly, act courageously and still lose. You may miss the promotion. The business idea might not work. The relationship might end. The performance might fall short. If your self-worth depends on always winning, you will eventually become afraid to try anything that might expose you to failure. Your value as a human being is not determined by one result. Judge yourself by your preparation, your character, your effort, your willingness to learn, and the way you respond afterwards. Failure can damage your confidence temporarily, but it does not have to destroy your self-belief. You can absolutely say, that hurt. I'm disappointed, I got that wrong, and still say, I trust myself to learn, rebuild, and go again, that is what we call a mature self-belief. Not believing that you're invincible, just believing that you're adaptable. I want to give you a practical seven-day confidence challenge. I want to finish by giving you something that you can actually do over the next week. So for the next seven days, choose one action each day from one of the following or from all of the following five areas. So one is keep one promise to yourself. Make it small, clear, fully within your control. Number two is to complete one uncomfortable action this week. Make the call. Ask the question. Speak up. Begin the task. Number three is to complete one repetition of a skill you want to improve, whether it's practice a presentation, learn a bit of software, train a certain movement, study a subject. Number four is to record one piece of evidence. At the end of the day, write down one thing that you handled well, learned or followed through on. And the fifth one is correct one piece of destructive self-talk. Catch the exaggerated story and replace it with something truthful and constructive. You don't need to do all five every day. Choose one and do it deliberately though. By the end of seven days, you'll have seven new pieces of evidence. Then continue for another week because self-belief is not built on a single motivational moment. It's built through the standards that you live by repeatedly. If you take one message from today's episode, I'd love it to be this. You do not have to wait for confidence before you begin. Begin with courage. Build confidence through repetition. Build self-trust by keeping your word. Build resilience by doing difficult things. Build perspective by recording the evidence. And build self-belief by proving, one decision at a time, that you will not continually abandon yourself when life becomes uncomfortable. You don't need to believe that you can do everything. You need to believe that you can take the next step, that you can learn what's required, and that you can respond to whatever comes next. Back yourself, not because success is guaranteed, but because you are willing to do the work required to become more capable. That is often enough to begin. As always, think about how you can take today's lessons and put it into action in your own life. Because listening might give you a temporary lift, but action is what's going to change you. And if you've got kids, particularly teenagers, there might be something in this episode that you can develop and share with them yourself. That's it, team. I'm Glenn Azar. This is the Building Better Humans Project podcast, brought to you by Adventure Professionals, www.adventureprofessionals.com.au.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Building Better Humans podcast with your host, Glenn Azar. For feedback, to stay up to date, or go back and find an old episode, head over to 180.net.au. Yeah, the Building Better Humans project podcast. Let's go.
Speaker 1: Hey team, Glen Azar here. Welcome back to the Building Better Humans Project podcast brought to you by Adventure Professionals, www.adventureprofessionals.com.au. As you know, we do Aussie Ten Peaks, Kokoda Track, Mount Everest Base Camp, Mount Kilimanjaro. We go dog sledding up in the Yukon. New dates being announced soon for that one. So get over to adventureprofessionals.com.au and book yourself an adventure and hopefully you'll get to come with me. Now, Today, we're going to talk about something that affects almost every area of your life, and that is self-belief and self-confidence. Because you can have a great idea, a powerful goal, a supportive family, and all the potential in the world. But if you don't believe that you're capable of taking the next step, you will keep hesitating. You're going to keep second-guessing yourself. You're going to keep waiting for somebody else to give you permission. Or you will stay inside a life that feels safe, but never really find out what you're capable of. So today I want to unpack where self-belief and confidence actually comes from, why so many people struggle with them, and most importantly, what you can do to start building both. So this is not about empty affirmations. It's not about standing in front of a mirror and pretending you believe something that you don't, but by creating real evidence that you can trust yourself. So let's get into it. People often use self-belief and self-confidence as though They mean the same thing, but I see them slightly differently. Self-belief is the deeper belief that you can find a way. It doesn't mean you already know every answer. It means that you believe that you're capable of learning, adapting, improving, and continuing when things become difficult. Self-belief says, I might not know how to do this yet, but I believe I can work it out. Whereas self-confidence is often more specific. You might feel confident speaking in front of a team because you've done it many times, but you might not feel confident walking into a boxing gym for the first time. You might be confident in your profession, but uncertain as a new parent, a new leader, or a new business owner. Confidence usually comes through competence, preparation, repetition. You do the work, you develop the skill, you survive a few uncomfortable moments, then your nervous system starts to understand, I can handle this. That's important because it means confidence is not something that some people are simply born with and the rest of us miss out on. Confidence can be built and self-belief can be rebuilt. One of the biggest mistakes that I think people make is believing they need to feel confident before they act. So they'll say, when I feel more confident, I'll apply for that role. When I believe in myself, I'll start the business. When I stop feeling nervous, I'll speak up. When I feel ready, I'll begin. But confidence usually comes after action, not before it. You act while you're uncertain. You take a small risk. You discover that you can survive the discomfort. You learn something. You improve. And that gives you a little more evidence for the next time. Confidence is not the entry fee required before you start. Confidence is one of the rewards that you earn because you started. Courage comes first. Confidence follows. You don't need to feel completely ready. You need to be willing to take the next reasonable step while feeling unready. At the center of self-belief is self-trust. Do you trust your own word? If you tell yourself that you're going to train tomorrow morning, do you train? If you say you're going to make the phone call, have the conversation, complete the task or change your habit, do you follow through? Every time you make a promise to yourself and keep it, you cast a vote for the person that you want to become. Every time you repeatedly break promises to yourself, you weaken your trust in your own word. That doesn't mean you need to become perfect. None of us are. You will miss sessions. You will make mistakes. You will have poor days. But you cannot build genuine self-belief on a pattern of constantly abandoning yourself. If your self-confidence is low, don't begin by making some enormous promise that requires you to completely change your life by Monday. Start smaller than that. Choose one thing that you can control and follow through on it. Get up when you said you would. Walk for 20 minutes. Finish one task before opening social media. Make the call that you've been avoiding. Read five pages. Have the honest conversation. Small promises kept consistently become self-trust. Self-trust becomes self-belief, and self-belief changes how you show up. Sometimes a lack of confidence is not a mindset problem. Sometimes you simply haven't done enough repetitions of whatever the thing is to get confident. We have to be honest about that. You can't affirm your way into competence. If you want to be a confident public speaker, you need to speak. If you want to be a confident leader, you need to practice leading, communicating clearly, making decisions, listening, handling pressure, having difficult conversations. If you want to feel confident trekking Kokoda, you need to train your body, carry your pack, climb hills, test your equipment and prepare for difficult conditions. Preparation matters. Repetition matters. Skill matters. The aim is not to convince yourself that you're already brilliant at something that you've barely practiced. The aim is to become the person who is willing to practice long enough to improve. That's a far more durable form of confidence. Ask yourself, what skill would make me more confident in this situation? Then stop judging yourself for not already having it and start developing it. Another way to build self-belief is to regularly do things that challenge you. Not reckless things, not stupid things, things that are safe and constructive but uncomfortable. Train when motivation is low. Put your hand up for responsibility at work. Attend the event where you don't know anybody. Ask the question, have the conversation, try the new skill, set a physical goal that asks more of you. Every time you voluntarily step into discomfort, you teach yourself that discomfort is not danger. You build proof that you can remain calm, think clearly and keep moving even when something feels hard. I have seen this repeatedly through the army, through adventure, through business and through working with people from all walks of life. People often discover their capability only when they're asked to move beyond what is familiar. The mountain doesn't magically put courage inside you. The challenge reveals qualities that were already there and then that gives you evidence that you can access them again. You start to think, if I handled that, maybe I could handle this. That's how one difficult experience can strengthen you in completely different areas of life. I want you to pay attention to your internal language. Some people speak to themselves in ways they would never speak to somebody else or somebody they care about. They make one mistake and they think I'm useless. They struggle with something new and say, I'm just not good at this. They feel nervous and decide, I can't do it. That language takes a temporary experience and turns into a permanent identity. There's a big difference between saying, I failed at that attempt and I'm a failure. One describes an event, the other attacks your identity. This is not about pretending everything is wonderful. It's about speaking accurately. Instead of saying, I can't do this, try saying, I can't do this confidently yet. Instead of, I always stuff things up, try, that didn't go well. What do I need to learn? Instead of I'm not confident, try I'm building confidence in this area. The word yet creates room for growth. It's what they call a supposition. Your language should not hold you accountable for standards that you're not willing to chase, of course, but your language should hold you accountable but also leave you a pathway forward. Comparison destroys confidence when you compare your beginning with somebody else's middle. And this is another conversation I think we need to have. You see, the polished presentation, not the years of nervous speaking, that's what people show. You see the successful business, but not the failure, the financial pressure, the sleepless nights. You see this strong athlete, but not the thousands of training sessions. You see the confident leader, not the difficult conversations they once avoided or the mistakes they made while learning. There is nothing wrong with studying people who are further ahead. Use them as evidence of what may be possible. Learn from them, but do not use their progress as evidence that you are inadequate. Your most useful comparison is with the person you were yesterday, last month, last year. Are you more capable? Are you more disciplined? Are you more honest with yourself? Are you more willing to act despite fear? That should be your scoreboard. And then keep evidence. Most of us have a strong memory for embarrassment of failure. but a surprisingly poor memory for the things that we've overcome. So I want you to build an evidence file. I don't care if you put this in your phone. I like to write things down. For me, it's a visceral thing of pen to paper. So it can be a page in your journal or a note on your phone or however you want to record it. But write down challenges that you've faced, difficult periods that you've survived, skills that you've developed, fears that you have moved through, and moments when you kept going even though you thought you wanted to stop. Include the small wins as well as the big ones. The conversation you finally had. The training session you completed. The boundary that you held firm on. The presentation that you delivered. The day you remained calm under pressure. The time you asked for help rather than giving up. See, none of that is ego. It's all evidence. When your mind tells you that you've never been capable, you need somewhere that you can go to challenge that story with facts. Confidence does not require you to believe that you will win every time. It does require you to remember that whatever happens, you have the capacity to respond fully. I want you to consider choosing your environment carefully too. I bang on about this all the time. Your environment can strengthen your self-belief or slowly erode it. Spend time around people who mock ambition, avoid responsibility, who criticize anyone who tries, and of course you're going to begin to shrink yourself to remain accepted. On the other hand, being around people with high standards can expand what you believe is possible. Choose people who tell you the truth, people who expect effort from you, people who want to see you grow, not people who literally blindly agree with everything you do. We don't want that. Real support isn't constant praise. Sometimes real support sounds like you're capable of better than this. You said this mattered. Are you following through? That excuse doesn't sound like you. The right people, in my experience anyway, don't carry you. They remind you that you have the capacity to stand up. And remember that you also have a responsibility to be that person for others. Ubuntu, I am because we are. Confidence is personal, but it doesn't have to be built alone. Another key thing to think about is don't attach your worth to the outcome. You will not succeed at everything you attempt. You can prepare properly, act courageously and still lose. You may miss the promotion. The business idea might not work. The relationship might end. The performance might fall short. If your self-worth depends on always winning, you will eventually become afraid to try anything that might expose you to failure. Your value as a human being is not determined by one result. Judge yourself by your preparation, your character, your effort, your willingness to learn, and the way you respond afterwards. Failure can damage your confidence temporarily, but it does not have to destroy your self-belief. You can absolutely say, that hurt. I'm disappointed, I got that wrong, and still say, I trust myself to learn, rebuild, and go again, that is what we call a mature self-belief. Not believing that you're invincible, just believing that you're adaptable. I want to give you a practical seven-day confidence challenge. I want to finish by giving you something that you can actually do over the next week. So for the next seven days, choose one action each day from one of the following or from all of the following five areas. So one is keep one promise to yourself. Make it small, clear, fully within your control. Number two is to complete one uncomfortable action this week. Make the call. Ask the question. Speak up. Begin the task. Number three is to complete one repetition of a skill you want to improve, whether it's practice a presentation, learn a bit of software, train a certain movement, study a subject. Number four is to record one piece of evidence. At the end of the day, write down one thing that you handled well, learned or followed through on. And the fifth one is correct one piece of destructive self-talk. Catch the exaggerated story and replace it with something truthful and constructive. You don't need to do all five every day. Choose one and do it deliberately though. By the end of seven days, you'll have seven new pieces of evidence. Then continue for another week because self-belief is not built on a single motivational moment. It's built through the standards that you live by repeatedly. If you take one message from today's episode, I'd love it to be this. You do not have to wait for confidence before you begin. Begin with courage. Build confidence through repetition. Build self-trust by keeping your word. Build resilience by doing difficult things. Build perspective by recording the evidence. And build self-belief by proving, one decision at a time, that you will not continually abandon yourself when life becomes uncomfortable. You don't need to believe that you can do everything. You need to believe that you can take the next step, that you can learn what's required, and that you can respond to whatever comes next. Back yourself, not because success is guaranteed, but because you are willing to do the work required to become more capable. That is often enough to begin. As always, think about how you can take today's lessons and put it into action in your own life. Because listening might give you a temporary lift, but action is what's going to change you. And if you've got kids, particularly teenagers, there might be something in this episode that you can develop and share with them yourself. That's it, team. I'm Glenn Azar. This is the Building Better Humans Project podcast, brought to you by Adventure Professionals, www.adventureprofessionals.com.au.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Building Better Humans podcast with your host, Glenn Azar. For feedback, to stay up to date, or go back and find an old episode, head over to 180.net.au. Yeah, the Building Better Humans project podcast. Let's go.
