Brian Johnson (Heroic +1 podcast) discusses building confidence using Dr. Nate Zinsser's framework from The Confident Mind. He defines confidence as a sense of certainty that lets you bypass conscious thought and perform, and introduces the idea of a "psychological bank account"—you make deposits by mining past positive memories, creating present positive moments, and forming a powerful future vision. The episode's foundation principle is accepting that no human or performance is perfect; confident performers don't need perfection. The transcript includes examples (Emerson, Maurice Ashley, Kobe Bryant) and promises deeper dives into each time horizon in future episodes.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last few plus ones we talked about how Emerson and I are having fun cultivating his ability to win or learn by embracing the fact that although losing sucks, it's also when you do it right. Exciting. Thank you chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley and basketball grandmaster Kobe Bryant for the wisdom. Now, right before we took that detour, we were talking about Dr. Nate Zinsser's great book the Confident Mind. As you may recall, we we define confidence as having the certainty that you have what it takes to dominate whatever it is you're about to do. To be precise and to directly quote Dr. Z's operating definition of confidence, one that will actually help you perform well. Is this a sense of certainty about your ability which allows you to bypass conscious thought and execute unconsciously? Of course, that intense trust certainty doesn't guarantee you will crush it in any given situation. But not having the confidence that you can and will crush it does guarantee that you will not show up as your absolute best. You might do fine and even great, but you need to have that intense trust certainty in yourself, AKA confidence if you want to see what you're really capable of doing. Now you could say that we never stop talking about how to forge a confident mind as we took that detour to chat about Emerson's recent chest performance and how we use used it as fuel for his next level growth. And you'd be right. We were forging his and yours and your kids and colleagues confident minds as we did that work. And it's time to get back to some wisdom from Dr. Z's book. He tells us if we want confidence, we need to build our psychological bank account. As he puts it, and I quote, once you understand that every thought and every memory you have about your sport or your profession is affecting your ongoing sense of certainty, you can decide to either take command of how you think or give this command over to the ups and downs, the highs and lows of life. He continues by saying, taking this command over the input into your personal mental bank account will create for yourself an advantage over all those who don't. The ability to do this, to selectively interpret your personal experience so that you mentally retain and benefit from experiences of success, progress and effort while simultaneously mentally releasing or restructuring experiences of setbacks and difficulties is in all of us. It is the primary mental skill upon which the first victory is won. Now, Dr. Z tells us that there are essentially three ways to do that. We need to mine our past for positive memories, create positive moments in the present and create a powerful vision for the future. Each time we do that, we're making deposits into our confidence bank account, such that on game day, whatever that means for each of us, we know we have what it takes to dominate. Enter the confident mind, a sense of certainty about your ability. Now we'll chat about each of those time horizons. The past, the present and the future, and how to make deposits in each in our next few plus ones. Today, I want to talk about the foundation of our bank. You know what it is? It's accepting that there are no perfect human beings and or performances. Along with the fact that you and I won't be the first to achieve that impossible feat. Great, confident performers know that they aren't and don't need to be perfect. Do you.
