17 Dec 2025 · 4 min
Brian Johnson explains true confidence as believing you can succeed while expecting the path to be hard. Research shows people who anticipate challenges perform better: women who expected difficulty lost about 24 pounds more than those who didn't. The practice: pick a goal, list obstacles, plan how you'll handle them.
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Hey guys, what's up? This is Brian. This morning we've got another optimal living 101, how to develop true confidence. How to develop true confidence. We're going to pull some wisdom from one of my favorite teachers, Heidi Grant Halvorson and her great book, Succeed. So we're going to check out the Philosopher's Note. To do that, we're going to go to a big idea called Confidence in Ability and Challenges. So check this out. Heidi tells us women who imagined that the path to weight loss would be easy lost an average of 24 pounds less than those who imagine themselves having a hard time resisting temptation. Odingen and her colleagues have found the same pattern when looking at students in search of high paying jobs after college, at single individuals looking to form lasting romantic relationships, and at seniors recovering from hip replacement surgery. No matter who they are and what they are trying to do, we find that successful people not only have confidence that they will eventually succeed, but they are equally confident that they will have a tough time getting there. That's amazing. So true confidence is confidence in both our ability and in the challenges we're going to face. As Heidi says, successful people not only have confidence that they will eventually succeed, but they are equally confident that they will have a tough time getting there. That's amazing. I don't know about you. I've read a fair number of goal setting and self development books. I haven't seen too much about this, but this is what the science tells us in all domains. Whether you're looking to lose weight, form a relationship, get a great job, you want to have confidence in both your ability to do it and in the challenges. Why is that?
It's because.
Because when you figure out what your number one goal is and you identify what the challenges you will face, you can think about how you will meet those challenges. And you won't give up at the first obstacle you run into. If you've convinced yourself it's going to be easy and then you face all kind of challenges, what are you going to do? You're going to think you're a failure already, you're going to give up and then you're going to create the very failure you're afraid of getting. So we want to have confidence and ability and in the challenges and you put those two together and it's magical. So here we go. What's your number one goal that you want to achieve in your life? Think about that now. Think about the challenges you're going to face. Believe you can achieve that goal. Absolutely believe you can achieve that goal. If it's an authentic, realistic stretch goal for yourself. Awesome. We're going to talk about this a lot more in my Optimal Living 101 class. How to set these goals. We're doing that tonight actually. But then think about the challenges you're going to face. The goal that you want to achieve. You're confident you can achieve it. And then think about the challenges you're going to face. Then think about how will you meet those challenges. That's what you want to spend your time doing. And we talk about in the note vision boarding and all this stuff that you can do with visualization. But you know what? That's a fun part of the process. But this is where the work really gets done is having confidence in your ability and in the challenges. There you go. That's a quick look at one way on how you can develop true confidence.
Hope you dug it.
Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. Here's to setting and achieving our inspiring goals.
See ya. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes.
This is where I take all the.
Ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done, 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, et cetera. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to Brianjohnson me membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.
