Why Courage Beats Confidence Every Time

00:00:00So we have spent multiple hours nowbreaking down confidence into its mostfundamental constituent parts, analyzingit, understanding the nuances of it. Iwant to return to the question that weraised at the top of the show, which isis confidence even the point? Is thiseven something that you should beworrying about, thinking about? And inthis chapterI want to argue that it's not. I didn'trealize this until we startedresearching this episode, but for mostof human history, confidence was not acompliment. It was not a good thing. Itwas not something that people aspired tohave. And I think once people understandwhy that is, they'll actually agree. Soif you look at the etymological roots ofof the word confidence, it comes fromLatin. Comes from confidere, which isthe the combination of con, which meanswith, and then fidere, which roughlytranslates to faith. So it's like withfaith or with trust. And for most ofwestern history,uh confidence meant it was a relationalstatus. It was essentially that youtrusted somebody or that youhad faith that somebody was going tocome through for you.It had nothing to do

00:01:15with how you feltas an individual in the moment. It hadnothing to do with your ability toperform anything. It was simply I haveconfidence in this person. It means Itrust that this person's going to dowhat they say they're going to do. Itwasn't until the 15th century that thisidea of confidence in yourself began totake shape. This idea of like you couldrely on your own powers and your ownabilitywithin your own life.But what's interesting is that at thetime, this was seen as a bad thingbecause ultimately you should only haveconfidence in God. That was the argumentat the time. The church saw ofself-confidence as transgressional. Itsaw it as a sin because you wereessentially saying that I don't need tobelieve in God, I don't need to trustGod because I trust myself. It's withthis background that you get to theUnited States in the 18th and 19thcenturies where you have a phenomenonthat's cropping up, which is essentiallyjust these snake oil salesmen. Peoplestart popping up on the western frontierand in different American citiesclaiming to have cures for everything,claiming that they can solve all yourproblems, running all sorts of scams andfrauds and misdirections, and basicallycheating people out of their money.

00:02:30Andyou know what these scam artists becameknown as? They became known asconfidence men.Again, alluding to this idea that theyhad more trust in themselves than in Godor society. So, you really don't see thetransformation of the word confidencehappen until the 20th century. And aswith self-esteem, it it it began withWilliam James. You know, everybody'sheard the term fake it till you make it.Well, it turns out that this ideaoriginated with William James. He He hada principle that he called act as if.Act as if you're already good at it. Actas if you already know what you'redoing.And thenthe behaviors will generate the reality.This idea wasn't taken that seriously atthe time. It wasn't until World War Ibroke out and 15% of the soldiers whowere fighting on the front came homewith what today we would call PTSD,but at the time they called shell shock.They were completely debilitatedmentally, like falling into constantpanic attacks, just completelyimmobilized. And the western militarylooked at this and they're like, "Whoa,we would actually like to be able tokind of predict who's going to be ableto maintain their poise and their efforton in battle and who's going to crumbleand

00:03:45and fall victim to shell shock." Itwas during the war that they went outand contracted a bunch of psychologistsfor the first time, they start studyingsoldiers and really trying to deduce whowas going to be useful and reliable inbattle and who was going to crumbleunder pressure, who was going tofall victim to to shell shock or PTSD.And so it was here for the first timethat the idea of a soldier who wasconfident in himself and confident inhis ability to handle adversityfinally became legitimated.Is that a word? I'm the author here. Idon't know.And from there we get Maslow and Rogersand Norman Vincent Peale and and by thelate 20th century confidence wasnot only seen as a good thing, it it wasseen as a virtue itself. As we discussedin chapter four with the self-esteemmovement, a multi-billion dollar seminarindustry arose teaching confidence tothe masses.Dozens if not hundreds of self-helpbooks were coming out promising thebenefits of confidence.Psychologists and institutions weretrying to implement self-esteempractices into education into society atlarge. Everybody wanted confidence. Itwas seen as a virtue

00:05:00and by virtue Imean it was seen as a inherently goodthing, something that was worth havingin and of itself. But as we coveredearlier in the episode, confidence isnot always a good thing. You don'tnecessarily always want to maximize asmuch confidence as possible. There issuch a thing as overconfidence. There issuch a thing as being confident insomething that you have no businessbeing confident in. There there's a lotof situations in which confidence canbackfire on you. And this seems to havebeen lost in all of the moderndiscourse. Even today in a moreskeptical, critical self-help industryconfidence is by and large seen as auniversally positive thing. I Iguarantee you everybody who has tunedinto this episode and listen this far,they have done so because they want tobe more confident. So, I think it isimportantto point out the fact that confidencehas not always been seen as a positivething. For most of human history,philosophers, religious leaders, peopleat large have looked at confidence withskepticism, with lots of criticism. Andeverything that we've learned up untilthis point has shown us that confidenceis not the input for high performance,it is the side effect or the byproduct

00:06:15of performance. And that if you try togive people confidence without themearning it,what you essentially create is just alittle narcissist. Now, what'sinteresting,and we have not talked about this in atleast four or five episodes, whichmust be a record for Solved, Aristotlegot this right.>> [laughter]>> He returns.For Aristotle, one of his cardinalvirtues was courage. We talked aboutAristotle and his virtues way back onthe values episode over a year ago.And Aristotle defined virtues as agolden mean between two extremes. HeAristotle saw balance as beingthe fundamentally righteous and virtuousway to live.And everything that is good in life is abalance between two extremes that whenover invested in like lead to to badeffects.And so, for Aristotle, the virtue ofcourage exists on a continuum betweencowardice on one end,and confidence on the other end. If youare unwilling to face challenges anddeal with uncertainty,then you will just behave cowardly.Whereas if you run into every situation

00:07:31without any concern or fear for what isgoing to happen to you,you become reckless. You becomeoverconfident. And what Aristotle arguedis that a courageous person or virtuousperson? It's not that they don't feelfear, it's that they feel an appropriateamount of fear and they areproperly able to calibrate their ownabilities in relation to the threatsthat they face. And this sounds familiarbecause we spent pretty much all ofchapter two and three talking about howit's not about being more confident,it's about having an appropriate levelof confidence given your ability andcompetence in that situation. So,everything that has led us up to thispoint has led us to the fact thatconfidence is the output of being ableto act despite uncertainty. And thatacting despite uncertainty, that iscourage. Courage is the input.I'm going to do this thingnot knowing if it's going to go well ornot.And then confidence becomes the output.It's like, "Oh,either that went well, which buildsconfidence, or it didn't go well, but Isurvived it and I learned from it, whichalso builds confidence."So, when we say thatconfidence needs to be earned, courageis the mechanism by which it is earned.

00:08:47When you are able to act despite yourfears, when you are able to act despiteuncertainty, when you are able todo something despite the chance offailure,that is what eventually builds thatcoping self-efficacy, that generalizedconfidence across many, many domains.And it grants you the ability to walkinto a room with a some semblance ofself-assurance that, "You know what?Whatever happens, I'm going to be okay.">> Mhm. What's funny, yes, Aristotle got itright, right? What I'm realizing moreand more, too, is that whenever we saythat, Aristotle got it right because hejust noticed something that's alreadykind of within us, right?Um and this has kind of been born out inthe research as well, and this is whatwe see over and over again as well. It'slike we kind of just discover, yeah,Aristotle was right, but that's becausethere's like a fundamental human naturethat he discovered underneath of it,right? For example, Christopher Rateback in the late 2000s, he ran somestudies on Air Force cadets aroundcourage. So, he wanted to know what likehow do people see courage? What do Whatdo people think courage actually is? So,he got all these all these Air Forcecadets together and he starts runningthese different experiments. Came to theconclusion everybody kind of convergedon the same things around this. And thisis what I mean is like it was alreadythere. Everybody would kind of knowsthis. They weren't fed

00:10:02Aristotle oranything like that. Of course. What hefound was people defined courage as oneyou deliberately choose to act. Okay,you it's a deliberate choice that you goout and make. You do it knowing there'sreal risk as well.And you do it for something that isworth the cost. It's it's a worthwhileactivity that you're engaging in.>> Right.>> To you personally, right? If you stripout that last part, the worthy goalpart, that's what Aristotle was talkingabout when it's just recklessness. Ifit's just something you choose to do andit's risky, that's just reckless. If youchoose to do it, it's risky and it'sworthwhile, that's what defines courage.These people these cadets and they'vedone it in other just generalpopulations, too. Everybody kind ofconverges on those things, okay? Noticewhat's missing from that, though. Thereis actually nothing about fear there.You might feel fear in that or you mightnot. You can make a courageous decisionwithout fear. This is the problem withwith people when they try toreally focus on the confidence part.What they're really trying to do is Idon't want to feel fear in this, right?Fear has nothing to do with it.>> And and this is And this is why theappeal fallacy has proliferated so muchbecause really it's just people buy intoit because they just want to stop beingscared.>> want to be scared.>> Yeah. Whereas really it's youfeel the fear and you do it anyway.>> Yeah. Yeah.Um

00:11:17or or fear might not even be there,too. It might not even be a case, butmost people would when they think aboutit, it's a fearful situation, right?What mattered really with though was itwas the choice, the risk, and the worthygoal again, okay?Um there was another set of studies theydid um around people who had uh, phobiasof spiders. So, what they did is theyuh, kind of they have a courage scalethat they gave them and a fear scale andthen a phobia scale all this and thenthey expose them to spiders see whathappens, right? What they found is theircourage scores they took beforehandactually predicted how close they wouldget to these spiders in the lab.Regardless of how scared they werethough, too. Some of them had very veryhigh fear with very very high courage.Some of them had high courage with lowfear. All all the combinations you canthink of. Didn't matter. Couragepredicted it independently of all ofthat, whether they would approach thesespiders or not. You can have the fearthere and still have a lot of courageand still act and and do it in a in apositive way, yeah, right? There waskind of a strange wrinkle with thisthough, too, that uh, they found whichwas they they measured these women's uh,courage scales twice. Once during thelab and then once a couple weeks later.Um, and what they found was that it wasonly the in-the-moment courage that theyhad, kind of the state courage that theyhad that

00:12:32that predicted whether or notcuz maybe 2 weeks later they didn't havea lot of courage and that didn't predictwhether or not theyapproach those spiders in the lab oranything like that, right? Theconclusion they came to, I think was areally interesting one.It's it's not that you can read yourcurve like if you're just sitting thereand there's you're in a safeenvironment, nothing's going on, there'sno opportunity for you to be courageous,you actually don't know how you're goingto be how you're going to act. It's onlyin the moment that you're going to actthat you that you can actually leveragecourage toact in a way that you need to overcomesomething. Like you can't predict itunless you do it.Uh, which I I I I find is kind ofinteresting. You can't just say I'm acourageous person. It's like, well, whatsituation are you courageous in? Whichis really interesting as well.>> We'll be right back. Stick around. Thisepisode is brought to you by Waking Up.There's a voice in your head that showsup right before anything that matters.The interview, the hard conversation,the big pitch meeting, it always saysthe same thing.You're going to blow this. Now, we thinkconfidence is making that voice shut up,but it actually doesn't work that way.See, you can't argue with that voice,[music] and the harder you try to fightit, the louder it becomes. What actuallyhelps is changing your relationship tothe voice. [music] Now, I've meditatedfor over 20 years, and the app that Ikeep coming back to is called [music]Waking Up. It

00:13:47isn't about emptying yourmind or feeling blissed out. It'sactually about seeing your thoughts forwhat they are, thoughts, not facts, notorders. [music] It turns out that's whatconfidence really is, not silencing thedoubts, but knowing that you don't haveto believe a word [music] it says. So,if you want to start changing how youhear those voices inside your mind,>> [music]>> here is your shot. Waking Up is givingSolve listeners 14 days for free, so youcan try it out for yourself. Go towakingup.com/solved. [music]That's wakingup.com/solved.So, go find out what your mind does whenyou stop fighting [music] it. All right,let's get back into it. Can I just pointsomething out really quick, which isreally interesting? So, you listed thosethree factors of courage, right? Like,you deliberately choose to act, you knowthere's a real risk, and you do it forsomething that you perceive as beingworth the cost. Yeah. If we go all theway back to chapter two of like, whatbuilds self-efficacy, like, what whatthat feedback loop actually needs tolook like,those map perfectly onto those samerequirements, right? You deliberatelychoose to act. It's that internal locusof control. You have to believe that youhave control ofyour actions or behaviors in thesituation that you're in. Otherwise, youdon't get that perception of building askill. There needs to be a real risk.You need to be at the edge

00:15:03of yourability. You need to be pushing yourselfin some way. You need to be likestepping outside of your comfort zone.Otherwise, if you're just playing oneasy mode, you're not improvinganything, which means you're notbuilding any confidence.And then you you're doing somethingworth the cost. You're doing somethingthat actually has stakes involved, thatactually matters to you, which again,it's putting yourself on the line. It'sgiving yourself It's It's openingyourself up to that negative feedback ina real way that is necessary to groundthe evidence that you're accumulating intruth. Otherwise, if you're just If it'sstuff that doesn't matter, if it's stuffyou don't care about, it's notmeaningful evidence in any way. So, it'sthe same mechanisms that are present inbuilding that self-efficacy and buildingthat evidence of competence in yourlife, they're essentially rooted inthe process of courage itself.>> And confidence has nothing to do withthis.>> Again, confidence is a side effect.>> be the output of it, right?>> side effect.>> Really, the the conclusions all thesecourage researchers come to couragemeans it's acting when confidence andwhen certainty and when clarity isn'tthere.>> Yeah, this By definition, yes.>> That is the definition of courage. It's[laughter] like it's not that the fearisn't there or anything like that. It'sIt's acting despite all of those things,right?>> Again, it's just anothervariation of the appeal fallacy, right?People think they

00:16:18need to be confidentto be courageous, and then it's like,"No, you have to be courageousto become confident." It's the thecausation arrow is pointed in the wrongdirection in most people's heads.>> Okay, yeah. So, just to drive this pointhome, to beat the dead horse here,that that courage is not like actingwithout fear or anything like that. Theyfound with like paramedics,firefighters, emergency responders,first responders, right? Really, whatthey found with this is that it's notthat they carry more tolerance for likethe chaos or uncertainty or anythinglike that. It's that they've simply beenthrough those things enough times thatthey notice the pattern that even ifeverything goes to hell, like it's thatlike they know what to do. They'veresponded to that enough times>> Right.>> that they can do that. That they're TheyThey have this calm banked experiencethat they have. It's not that likecourage is kind of this accumulateddeposit of priorprior encounters with that uncertainty,is what that is. And they find thisagain like in the first responders andpeople who are in very uncertain,chaotic environments.>> It's the It's the meta self-efficacy.>> It is.>> Right.>> Exactly.>> It's It's the skill of toleratingdiscomfort.>> Right. And the way you build this, whichwe've already mentioned in some ways,right? Is through exposure. So, exposuretherapy is actually

00:17:33one of the mostuh effective therapies for all sorts ofdifferent anxiety disorders, whichagain, people who are looking for kindof confidence or trying to mitigateanxiety and fear around things, right?But, exposure therapy uh you know, it'sa front-line therapy for phobias, forpanic disorders, for social anxiety,OCD, even PTSD, right? High Highlyhighly effective at treating that. Umit's difficult. It can be difficult forsome people.>> It's definitely not fun.>> Not fun, but you can you can actuallymitigate a lot of these uhuh these maladies with just a few hoursof work even, too, right? Just exposingpeople tothat fear, that uncertainty, and showingthem that even though that that rampsup, that it's going to be okay, right?Now, for decades and decades of thatwe've known that this has worked for along time. The The mechanism is reallyinteresting though. So, could becausefor a long time, a lot of theseresearchers and and clinicians thought,well, oh, we're we're reducing thatfear. And actually, that's not the case.You're just teaching people how to sitwith that fear and how to deal with thatfear. And actually, what they want youto do, they want you to be keyed up inthese in these situations. They want youto be more fearful in these situationsso you can face higher and higher levelsof fear and see that you're going to beokay.Okay? So, that's kind of a one one ofthe lessons you need to take from thisis like, yeah,

00:18:49when you fear something,turn towards it. Like, engage with it.It ramp it up even, too. So, the realgoal of exposure therapy is like thisexpectancy violation, right? So, it ifyou're somebody who is seeking a lot oflike reassurance in some way, or ifyou're even have one of these disordersthat we're talking about, you have thisexpectation that if I don't do this oror if something wrong happens, thensomething terrible, even more terribleis going to happen, too, right? So, thepoint is to violate that expectationrepeatedly. So, you get into asituation, maybe it's snakes, maybe it'sspiders, maybe it's cleanliness.Maybe it's just um failure in general,right? I don't want to fail. If I fail,then everyone's going to hate me. I'mgoing to die alone. You know, you go tothat. The goal of an exposure therapy,though, is to violate that expectationenough times so you see that it's not nolonger true. And again,Aristotle had this right.>> [laughter]>> Aristotle knew must have known aboutexpectancy theory, you know, 2,500 yearsago because what he said hehe said courage is it's building acourageous character through repeatedbrave acts, right? You only becomecourageous by being courageous, byfacing whatever fear it is, andrealizing that nothing what you yourworst fears almost never come true. Andeven if they do, you can probably

00:20:04handlethem.>> Yeah.>> It took modern psychology, you know, allthese years to figure that out thatagain Aristotle was right.>> There's a related like stoic practicehere, too, you know,called negative visualization.>> Yeah.>> Yeah.>> Which is imagine the worst-case scenarioand then like mentally plan for it aheadof time and realize that it is notnearly as catastrophic as you think itis or that it feels like it's going tobe, right? So, it's you know, you havethis idea of of like, okay, well, I havegot this presentation I have to givetomorrow, and what if I bomb and Iembarrass myself and I just likecompletely make a fool of myself. If youactually in that moment, it feelsterrifying, but if you actually sit downand start kind of writing out like,okay, what does bombing look like? Whatactually happens? Like, what iseverybody in the room actually thinking?Who's paying attention? Whatrepercussions does this actually have onmy career? And you realize you're like,oh, it's actually not nearly as big of adeal as I thought it was going to be.>> Even the worst-case scenario sometimes,right?>> Even the worst-case scenario, you'rejust like, oh, that's not that bad.>> Yeah, I can handle that.>> Yeah, I'd be fine.>> It but it it doesn't feel that way inthe abstract. It was really cool a fewyears ago we did a YouTube video. Umhonestly it was like one of the mostsatisfying things I've ever done in mycareer. So we took

00:21:20uh two women, they'dnever met each other. They were bothterrified of driving.And we flew them to Vegas andwithin two days, so one of them uh theirtheir names were Angelica and Nora.Shout out to them if they're if they'rewatching or listening. UmI believe one of them uhshe was she couldn't drive further thanher neighborhood. So even like thefurthest she would drive was to her gym,which was like just a few minutes away.The other one Nora, I think she had onlybeen on a freeway once in her entirelife. Um both like very intensely afraidof of driving.And flew them to Vegas, rented a car,put them in the car.And within two days I had them drive usback to Los Angeles from Vegas, which isa 7 and 1/2 hour drive.Umand it's it is incredible cuz I meanessentially what I put them through itit was m-entertaining at points, but what what Iput them through wasjust very intense exposure therapy,right? We started them in a neighborhoodand then I got them onto a freeway andthen I got them into we went to aracetrack, had them race Ferraris andLamborghinis. Uhand just kept likeblowing up that expectancy

00:22:35over and overagain. Everything we did they would kindof freak out at first and be like, thisis going to be a disaster, you know,I'm in danger.And next thing you know, like they'rethey're driving through LA traffic uhduring rush hour and they're fine.>> a couple days, yeah.>> And the coolest thing about it is um youknow, I I've kept in touch with them alittle bit since. Um they became friendsover the course of the video and um theystill meet up every couple of years todo road trips together.>> Cool.>> Yeah.>> That's really cool.>> Which is like very very awesome, verysatisfying.>> Just a side note, my favorite part ofthat video, you had them do challenges,right?>> Yeah.>> And one of them lost, and they had to gothrough a drive-thru in like a Barbiecar or whatever.>> Yes.>> In a toy a toy Barbie car.>> That was That was good.>> She did it.>> Yeah, she did it.>> yeah.>> Horribly afraid of driving, not afraidof uhof being embarrassed.>> Yeah, right [laughter] right.>> Comes back to domain confidence, right?>> I want to draw a connection back herethat is just likeso massive and obvious.Exposure therapy is a process ofbuilding courage around something.If we go back to Bandura and his seminalstudy with the roomful of snakes andpeople with phobias, you could look atthat study again

00:23:50as what was actuallyhappening was simply exposure therapy,right? Bandura had this whole idea aboutguided mastery and how to buildself-efficacy through like developingcompetence and skill, but in a sense,what was actually happening was thesepeople were confronting a fear. Theywere being courageous,and they werebuilding courage through exposuretherapy. And yes, while they {quote}developed a skill or a competence of, Iguess, handling snakes, what they werereally building, the skill that wasactually being built in that room backin the '60s,was meta self-efficacy. Was therealization of like I can do hardthings. There are things that I amdeathly afraid ofthat I can go do them, and they're notthat bad. And sure enough, Bandura's ownown results showed that those peoplewent into other areas of their lives andsuddenly had more courage. They had moreconfidence. They were able to act moreindependently and accomplish morethings. So, I think in a sense, metaself-efficacyis simply courage. It is building theskill or the virtue of courage over along period of timeand confidence is the output of thatcourage. And so,

00:25:06anybody who's listening to this, whowants to feel confident, who wants tofeelmore comfortable in difficultsituations, pursuing confidence is notthe point. Pursuing confidence,especially if that confidence is notearned, feeling more confident insituations, if you've not built theappropriate evidence of that confidence,it's going to backfire. It's going tolead to narcissism or Dunning-Kruger orimposter syndrome. You're going to bemiscalibrated based on your actualexperiences. What you should be pursuingis courage.Courage is ultimately what matters. Andwhat's crazy, too,is thatthere areactually many examples in the world ofpeople who are incredibly highperformers, and they are not confident.We talked about them in the impostersyndrome section, but I I'm going to goone further and tell you an an even moreincredible story of somebody who was[ __ ] terrified and became definitelythe best in the world during his era athis craft, maybe one of the maybe thebest person ever. So, we are recordingthis is during the NBA finals. I'm a bigbasketball fan. I don't even know if youwatch basketball.>> Hagna, not since the '90s, man.>> Yeah.He's so boring, Drew. I'm a bigbasketball fan and uh

00:26:21you know, thesedays there's a big goat debate of likeMichael Jordan and LeBron James.Everybody forgets Bill Russell. BillRussell was the original OG goat. Hiswinning track record is like comical.I'm going to read off his resume andyou're going to be like,"That's [ __ ] fiction. That doesn'texist.">> Okay.>> So, Bill Russell, he won 11championships in 13 years. He won anOlympic gold medal. He won five leagueMVPs. He was the first black head coachof any major US sport.Uh he coached his own team to two morechampionships while he was still playingon that team. In elimination games andtournaments, he was 22 and 0. He playedhigh school basketball for 3 years andwon champ- national championships, twoof them. He played college basketballfor 3 years and won nationalchampionships for two of them.Basically, of every year of BillRussell's life that he playedbasketball,he won a national championship or aninternational championship in 85% ofthose years.>> That's How have I I Yeah, how is he notin the conversation?>> Yeah, he is>> That's insane.>> the most winning athleteI have ever heard of anywhere.So, people who know sports have probablyheard of him and they probably know alot of the

00:27:36things that I just said. Thething that it most people don't knowis that hevomited before every single game.>> Just locker room barfing, just>> That is not an exaggeration. Every Notthe big games, not the championship>> game.>> Every single game. He puked before everysingle It was so routine that histeammates described it uh they they saidthat it became part of their pre-gameroutine. There was There's one storythat they were they were in the NBAplayoffs. I think they're in the likethe semi-finals.And it was time to take the court andBill Russell had not vomited yet. Andso, the coach called all of the playersback into the locker room and told themthat they weren't leaving until Billpuke.>> This time, too, they're they're stillplaying 80 games or whatever a year, 60to 80 games a year. So, he's he's puking60 to 80 times a year.>> like every three nights he's pukingbefore a game cuz he's he's just like sooverwhelmed with anxiety. I mean, it'sinteresting because interviews with himand interviews with some of histeammates like they all say the samething. They say it mattered so much tohim. Like he wanted to win so badlythat he like drove himself to tobecoming sick before each game. Andit comes back to that point about right?It needs to matter to you.Like there has to be

00:28:51stakes involved. Ithas to feel something that is worthwhileto you.>> Like the point I'm making with this isthatI don't think there's any world that youwould look at that. Like if if if I toldyou I said there's a basketball playerand he becomes so overwhelmed withanxiety before every time he playshe vomits in the locker room.Would you call that a confident person?>> No, I would say he's probably a terriblebasketball player.>> Yeah, right. But he's he's the mostwinning American [laughter] athlete inthe history of US sports.Confidence is not the point. It's notthe point. Courage is the point. BillRussell had courage. It was somethingthat mattered so much to them that hedidn't care about the anxiety. Like yousaid, he developed he habituated himselfto the fear and the anxiety. He tooksomething that that mattered so much tohimthat he was willing to puke before everysingle game.And so I guess afterfour plus hours of you and Ipontificating and sharing researchI think this might be the the firstsolved episode wherethe final conclusion isyou should not really be thinking aboutthe topic of this solved episode.>> [laughter]>> I mean you you kind of joked

00:30:06at at thetop of the show of like I've neverreally thought much about confidence. Ijust did things. And I kind of joked oflikethat might be the>> point. Like that that we might just endthe episode right there because that iskind of the point.You should kind of just do things.Obviously don't do things without anythought put into them. Don't do thingsfor no reason, right? Like don't bereckless.Don't be cowardly. Don't don't bestupid. Like pay attention to the thingsyou care about. Push up against the edgeof your own abilities. Find things thatmatter. Find things that have stakes.And do things in a way that you getrealistic feedback from them.And yes, having confidence in variousdomains, it is nice. Once you've donesomething a thousand times, and you'vedone it well, yeah, you will startfeeling confident around that thing.And it will be nice. And that confidencewillmodestly help you perform better in thefuture.But that issuch a side effect. That is such afootnote to like the larger story here,which is that the skill you should begetting good at is courage. Because thatcourage will allow you to toleratefailure, to tolerate uncertainty,

00:31:22to actin the face of obstacles and challenges.And that skill will bleed out into everyarea of your life.And will just make it more likely thatconfidenceresults as part of the process. So, if Icould summarize everything we've talkedabout in just a sentence or two, it'sthat confidence is not the inputthat results in high performance. Thatis the appeal fallacy. You don't need tofeel confident about yourself. You don'tneed to believe that you're good atsomething to perform highly.Confidence is the output or the sideeffectof the courage to do somethingand do it well.And so, if you are trying to improveyour life, and if you want moreconfidence in your life, you should notfocus on confidence. You should focus oncourage.It isin many ways analogous to the episode wedid on happiness,where we pointed out thatif you pursue happiness, you are likelygoing to remove yourself from it.Happiness is the output or the sideeffectof doing things that are purposeful ormeaningful.It is the same thing with confidence.Confidence is not the thing you shouldpursue. It is the output or thebyproductof practicing courage.

00:32:38>> Well said.So to wrap up,you know, we always do an 80/20. I feellike this is going to be a very short80/20. What would you say is the 80/20of confidence?>> Stop chasing it. Yeah. It's one of thoseYou made the parallels with happiness. Iwould argue though that happiness youyou do want happiness, right? It's justyou got to go about it kind of thebackwards way. With confidence, I don'teven think you need it almost. Like it'sjust You know, it's not like happinesswhere it's like it is a it's a it's agood good thing to have.>> I know for me anyway, okay? The wholeuncertainty thing was really kind ofeye-opening for me. I think I I knew it,but what I've seen I I think in my lifewhenit when I don't feel confident aboutsomething, there's a hugeproblem I have with uncertainty aroundwhatever it is. Whether that's in, youknow,anything I'm trying to doprofessionally, in relationships,whatever. I notice that as soon as I amuncertain about something I and I getanxious about that uncertainty, I startgrasping.I do a lot of grasping. It's thatexternal I'm looking for external thingsto grasp onto for some security, right?If it's in a relationship, it's like,"Mhm, I need I need reassurance from youor I need some sort of commitment fromyou, external commitment from you."Um

00:33:53or some sort of just reassurance thatI'm okay in this and that you canprovide that for me. And that ends upbackfiring a lot, right?>> Yeah.>> I just finished up with like a publicspeaking course that I was doing to tofor this This was part of a masteryexperience that I'm trying to do, too.This is what I realized, you know, isthat I wasn't super confident when westarted doing this and um instead ofjust trying to be confident andget in here and puff my chest up andwhatever. No, go find the skills>> Yeah.>> that I need to do.>> Be competent.>> To be competent first.>> [laughter]>> But what's interesting, there's anotherlittle little layer in that, littleinception in that, too, is that in thiscourse, they a lot of it was just likejust start speaking. You will find yourway. Yeah. Right? Like there's it's notabout confidence, it's just that it'salready there. Yes. It's already therefor you. It's just a matter of accessingthat. And you don't need to over preparea whole bunch of things. You don't needthese external structures to grasp ontothat I'm always grasping onto them like,"Well, there's a framework here orthere's a there's a method that I needto be using." No, it's just it's there.We all kind of have it, you know? It isIt's really just courage and courage andtrusting in yourself that you're goingto be okay and not some external source.Yeah. So, that whole uncertainty thingfor me anyway was really, like

00:35:08I said,it was really eye-opening and kind ofjust a new way for me to That'ssomething I really do have to work on, Ithink, becauseI don't think about confidenceconfidence a lot, no, but I also don'tsit very well with uncertainty in a lotof situations. So, I'm really learninghow to sit with the uncertainty ofthings and just be okay with it and bemore accepting, like you were saying.Like, whatever happens happens.>> Come what may.>> Yeah.>> I'm trying to think what my takeaway. Imean, I I I definitely think the 80/20of this episode is very It's basically[ __ ] maxing. It's like,just do the thing. Stop thinking aboutit.>> [laughter]>> Just do the [ __ ] thing.>> for that, but>> Yeah, okay.>> [gasps]>> Just doing the thing You're rightthough. It's like, it really is. I mean,it isIt's one of those concepts inpsychology. It's like, it's so braindead simple, but it is not pleasant. So,people make it complicated so that theycan avoid it.And this happens with so many things,but I I think particularly with aroundcourage, anxiety, confidence, like thatpeoplepeople really do this a lot. Like, itfeels difficult, so they they assume itmust be difficult, therefore it must becomplicated, therefore I must understandall these like frameworks and flowchartsand all this stuff to just get off myass and try a thing.

00:36:24Um whereas it it isin many cases brain dead simple. Youknow, Alex Hormozi talks about thisthing that that I like a lot, which youknow, I've seen him when he gets askedabout confidence. He His answer is justdo so much volume that it would beirrational for you to not be confident,right? Likeand he uses the example of publicspeaking.Yeah, he says likeif you practice a talk a thousand times.All right, yeah. If you're afraid ofsomething, practice it so many timesthat it would be irrational to be afraidof it. If you're still afraid of it,that means you haven't practiced enough.Which is in a nutshell likeself-efficacy. It's like it's like okay,don't pursue confidence, pursuecompetence, because the competence willspit off confidence as a side effect.I think the fear thing is important. Thefear and uncertainty thing is ultimatelylike kind of the philosophical bedrockof this topic. Um it's interesting. Youknow, we we talked in the last episodeabout personality and like I'm generallyoff the charts in openness to newexperiences. I think becauseI am so open to new experiences andnovelty,I'm generally

00:37:39very comfortable withuncertainty, which is generally like Ithink made it easier for me to just trythings and not really worry about ifthey go well or not. What I have noticedthroughout my life is thatthe people around me have a perceptionthat I am extremely confident about mostthings and my internal experience isthat I am like [ __ ] white knucklingit and like screaming half the time.>> But [laughter] you have a tolerance forthat white knuckling.>> But it's exactly, but it's like that isnormal. Like that is that is home basefor me. So>> That's that's very interesting.>> Yeah,that it comes up a lot, you know.>> I won't say I go analyze it too much,but yeah.>> [laughter]>> Um so it has been interesting and I andI do think uh a side effect of that isthat I have kind of bled into somenarcissistic overconfidenceat times in my life.But, it is at the end of the day it isit is justit is simple. It is justdoing hard things, showing likerepeatedly building evidence that youare capable of doing hard things.>> Mhm. That mastery experience, yeah.>> And and what I do like that came up inthis episode and I I>> think it was in in the section youtalked about arounduncertainty intolerance

00:38:55is how there does seem to be a couplelike fundamental core categories thathave just massive exponential or outsideof outsized effects on other areas ofyour life. Umthe ability to deal with fear anddiscomfort or uncertainty and discomfortis one of them, clearly. Relationshipsis another one of them.Um and then learning. The ability tolearn and grow,like learn from mistakes, acceptnegative feedback is is another one ofthem. Andto me those just feel like very corefoundationalskills. That if you build confidencearound those skills, if you buildconfidence in your relationships, buildconfidence in your ability to learn frommistakes, and build confidence in yourability to face fear,you're probably doing really, reallywell.>> Yeah. Yeah, those meta skills like that,yeah.>> Yeah. Just bleed over into everything.>> Yeah.>> Yeah.Um any final takeaways for you?>> Hmm, I think that's all I got, Mark. Ithink that's all I got. Yeah, man.>> You just want to get the [ __ ] out ofhere.>> No.>> Go eat some sushi.>> Mark Street?>> Yeah, yeah.Easy for you to say.>> [laughter]>> Hey everybody, thank you for watching.This chapter is part

00:40:10of a much largerepisode. You can get that entire episoderight now on Spotify. Check it outthere. And if you want to consume itchapter by chapter here on YouTube, werelease them every few days. And if youwant to get a full PDF guide with all ofour citations, resources, and fullsummary of the entire episode, you cango to solvepodcast.com/confidence

00:40:32and get it there. Check it out. I'll seeyou again soon.