In this solo coaching episode, certified coach Rob Anderson defines confidence as a sustainable belief in one’s ability to handle challenges, distinguishing it from arrogance, cockiness, and the absence of fear. He references Albert Bandura’s self‑efficacy theory to frame confidence as a skill that can be developed. Anderson then delivers three actionable strategies: (1) Track small daily wins, leveraging Steven Kramer’s progress principle to build evidence of competence; (2) Choose and reframe self‑talk, citing neuroscience that shows inner dialogue shapes the brain’s threat response, and offering concrete language shifts; (3) Act before feeling ready, drawing on positive‑psychology’s behavioral activation and personal military anecdotes to illustrate taking action despite discomfort. He introduces a “3×3 confidence snapshot” journaling exercise with three prompts to reinforce daily reflection. The episode concludes with a promotion of his “Confidence by Design” workshop and the standsurecoaching.com website, encouraging listeners to engage with guided journaling tools to design confidence over time.
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Hey, welcome back to Stand Sure Coaching. I'm Rob Anderson, a certified coach who helps people move with clarity, courage, and confidence. Today we're diving into a topic that shows up in almost every coaching conversation I have, and it's something that's very near and dear to my heart. And Today we're going to be talking about confidence. Not the fake it till you make it kind, but real sustainable self-belief where you can build and design it over time. So let's talk about what confidence is and what confidence And I'll tell you firsthand, I was a person who for a lot of my life, I struggled with confidence. And there's times that it comes back to haunt me. And I think, you know, I think of the ways as I was building out this podcast, and I've been building out a course specifically on creating more confidence within yourself. But to understand it, we first need to— we have to know what confidence is, what confidence isn't. So first of all, it's not arrogance and it's not cockiness. It's not the absence of fear. It's the belief that you can figure things out, that you have internal resources to handle what's ahead. Positive psychology researchers actually define confidence as a belief in your own effectiveness. There's a guy out there by the name of Dr. Albert Bandura who coined the term self-efficacy, and he found that people with high confidence, they tend to make Or they tend to really, they tend to take more initiative. They persist longer and bounce back faster after the setbacks. So confidence, it's not just a trait. It's actually a skill. And like any skill, you can build it. What I want to do in this podcast is I want to break down 3 practical tips. And by the way, this ties in directly to a workshop that I'm doing on using journaling as a tool to build confidence. But tip 1, you have to track the wins. Confidence is built through evidence. And your brain tends to forget your wins way too quickly. So start by tracking your small wins every single day. I've got a client I'm working with who is up against some tough interviews within the career field that they've already established. They're looking to move up. They're looking to take on more responsibility, get better pay. And while I've been working with that client, it's also been good for me to go in and track the small wins that I've helped to coach them on. Start by tracking. One small win every single day. And what it does, it taps into a concept that's called the progress principle. There's a researcher, Steven Kramer. He found that by making progress on meaningful work, even small progress, it boosts your motivation and confidence. More so than hitting big goals all at once. So write it down. If you get an email, print off that email. Find some way to track it. One win, something that you did well today where you followed through on— maybe you followed through on a workout. Maybe you set a boundary. Maybe you showed up, but track your wins. Tip number 2, choose your self-talk. And this is huge for me. I am so bad, or I have been so bad at negative self-talk. The way you talk to yourself matters. Neuroscience shows us again and again and again that your inner dialogue directly affects your brain's Threat response system. If you're always saying, "I can't do it," "I'm not good enough," "I don't deserve it," "God must be punishing me," whatever it happens to be, your brain begins to believe it. Here's the shift: catch the negative self-talk and replace it with confident reframing. Instead of "I'm terrible at this," try "I'm still learning." And that's okay. I've learned to adapt the word yet. In my coaching business, I'm not making 6 figures yet. If it was about finding that perfect relationship, I haven't found my match Yet. If it's about rebuilding a relationship, my significant and— my significant other and I have not reconciled yet. The shift, catch the negative self-talk and you replace it with confident reframing. I'm still learning. I can figure it out. I'm going to be successful. You're not lying to yourself. You're choosing the voice of growth over the voice of defeat. Tip number 3, act before you're ready. Confidence doesn't come from waiting to feel ready. It comes from taking action. And then realizing that you survived. There's a concept in positive psychology that's called behavioral activation. It means taking action even when you don't feel like it, especially when you're stuck in doubt or fear. When I was in the military, we would be out in the field doing a training exercise. It'd be rainy, it'd be cold, there might be snow. The conditions just weren't there. And you'd have to pull yourself out of your sleeping bag, out of your tent, shelter half, defensive fighting position, whatever it was. You would have to pull yourself out. You're soaking wet and you're cold. You're hungry. But you would have to pursue whatever the plan was for the day. Taking action even when you don't feel like it. Going to the gym, you don't feel like it. Hey, I'm gonna tell you straight up, I've had days where I do not feel like working out. And honestly, the only thing I did was I drove down to the parking lot and I sat in my Jeep. I'm at least building the habit of driving down there. I've had days where I wanted, you know, where I need to do a pool workout, and all I do is I get in the shallow end of the pool and I walk back and forth. I don't do a single stroke. Bill Payne. I hate paying bills, but I have to. So I set aside time to do it. And it comes back to an adage I used to say all the time. You don't have to like it, you just have to do it. You don't need a perfect plan, you need a first step. Send that email that you don't want to send. Pay that bill that you don't want to pay. Have that conversation that you don't really want to have. Speak up in the meeting. What happens is that you allow one action, one action that builds into the next. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a bonus content here, and this is a powerful exercise that I teach In my confidence workshop, and it's called a 3x3 confidence snapshot. What I want you to do is grab your journal. If you don't have a journal, grab one. By the way, if you want to really understand how to journal specifically for confidence, I've got a workshop that I'm dropping here in just the next couple of days. But grab your journal and answer these 3 prompts. The first one, what's one thing I did today that I'm proud of? The second one, what's the one challenge I handled better than I would have 6 months ago? And number 3, where did I speak up, take initiative, or set a boundary today? Answering those on a daily basis helps retrain your brain to look for proof that you're already capable, and that becomes the fuel for even more confident action. I want you to try that for 7 days, and you'll start noticing a shift. Now, by the way, when you take the course, I've got some checks and balances and, and some ways that you can stay up on doing those as part of the course. Confidence isn't built in a day. It's built daily through consistent reflection, reframing your self-talk, and taking small bold actions, you create a new belief system. I really hope that this episode resonated with you today. I want to invite you to check out all my video workshops, especially Confidence by Design. You'll see that coming on the website www.standsurecoaching.com, and it's packed With guided journaling prompts, real tools, and exercises, just like what I talked about here today, and designed to help you build real grounded confidence from the inside out. Remember, you don't have to wait for confidence. You can design it. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. Please like this, share it out with someone. I would love to walk on this journey with you. Thank you so much.
