The Confidence Trick Nobody Tells You About with Lewis Howes

6 Sept 2026 · 11 min

11:10

In this interview, Tony Robbins challenges common misconceptions about confidence and success. He argues that problems are essential fuel for growth and that the belief a problem‑free life equals happiness is a delusion. Robbins emphasizes that true fulfillment comes from a sense of mission rather than merely achieving goals, and he warns against the "tyranny of how"—the tendency to focus on methods before clarifying what you want and why. By shifting focus to serving others, he explains that confidence naturally emerges, illustrated through anecdotes about public speaking, practicing like elite athletes, and confronting fear through experiential challenges such as firewalking and skydiving. Robbins critiques social‑media‑driven comparison, noting its negative emotional impact, and he presents identity as a dynamic comfort zone that must be expanded to sustain lasting change. The conversation weaves historical references (Martin Luther King), personal stories, and practical metaphors (muscle growth) to provide a roadmap for building lasting confidence and purpose.

Chapters

The biggest problem people have is they think they're not supposed to have any. And problems are the fuel for growth. It's like, if you don't have any problems, you're either a liar, or you might call them challenges. It feels better. I understand that. But, you know, anybody who doesn't have problems is either totally asleep at the wheel, or they don't have much of any kind of a life. You know, no responsibility, nothing they're building. So I think the first thing is this misnomer that if I have a problem, there's something wrong with me or my life. And I think the second one is this delusion we've sold people on that getting what you want is gonna make you happy. You could call success getting what you want. I, I don't define it that way, but that's how most people do. But then there's fulfillment, and fulfillment is living what you're made for.
Mm-hmm.
I think the biggest challenge people have is they're just thinking about themselves, and it's not that hard to meet your own needs. And it's nobody's fault. I mean, these little things in our pocket, these little mini computers we used to call phones, they're constantly conditioning you to instantly get what you want. And that's not how human relationship works, and that's sure as hell not how you build a business. It's not a straight line. If you go to nature, you will not see a straight line unless a human built it, because everything grows a little up and down like a stalk, but it's a winding process. And so I think the problem is that people don't have something that they're wanting to serve more than themselves. That's where my energy comes from. I don't have to work another day of my life. Why the hell do I do all this crazy stuff? I got 105 companies now, and I got all these different industries because it's so much more interesting to be in the game of life and keep growing and expanding and being challenged. That's what makes you feel alive. And do all other problems with 105 companies, I can promise you. But if I thought my life was supposed to be problem-free, I would be really stressed out. And if I was just doing it for me, I would have stopped a long time ago. I know you've asked me a lot of times about confidence. You just mentioned it again, like, yes, is it a lack of confidence? No, it's a lack of mission. Having that sense of mission. And then I think the next problem is that people think they have to know how. I call it the tyranny of how. You get all excited, I'm gonna do this, and then your brain goes I've never done it before. Oh my God, what do they say? I don't know how to do this. And they tend to focus on how to do it. And when you start with how, you're screwed. Martin Luther King had no idea how when he did his I Have a Dream speech. In fact, his wife was the one that pushed him because he was uncertain, right? You know the real history, it's pretty interesting. But the bottom line is he gets up there and he gives his vision of how it can be done. He talked about what needs to happen and why. If you can figure out what you want and why you want it, and you get strong enough reasons— reasons that'll drive you late at night, it'll get you up early in the morning— and the reasons are different. Some people do it for nitty-gritty reasons. Some people do it for their kid. Some people do it because they like winning, right? It's like, I like winning. I like being the best at what I do, so I'm not going to settle for less than that. Why would I? So you got to find your reasons. But if you know what you want and you get a big enough why, now you'll figure out how to do it. But if you start with how, you know, the small brain, the fear brain, goes, oh shit, I don't know what to do. don't know where to go. I don't know what to do 90% of the time either. I know what and why, and then I try something, doesn't work, I try something else, and I'll do something else. Now I speed it up by learning from the best, but I don't start with the how. I start with the what and the why. And I think that's the mistake most people make. And then how do you get confident? You do stuff. I mean, like, I'll give you an example. Speaking, you know, it's supposedly outside of falling, like the second biggest fear people have, public speaking.
Right.
And, you know, you've trained yourself so you don't feel that challenge. But I don't feel that challenge. And I'm not— I've done it a million times, but I didn't feel it early on. And the reason was, I tried to explain to people, I'm not getting up thinking about how I'm doing. If I did, I'd probably be a horrible critic of myself because I can be brutal in those ways. I'm focused on how do I serve them? What do they need? What do they want? How can I serve? And when you're focused on others and how to serve them, there's no lack of confidence in you because if it's not working, you just change your approach because it's all about serving. People that are scared to speak or thinking constantly, how am I doing? Am I good enough? Am I strong enough? You'll never get confidence. Michael Jordan making 1,000 shots before you take a break every single day, 6 days a week. So you look at Jordan or you look at, you know, LeBron, or you look at anybody who's the best in the world at what they do and you go, aren't they lucky? But if you actually study them, you'll see they're doing things, they're practicing in private things. That make them certain in public and they get rewarded for what they do in public.
Yeah.
And you got to do the same.
It's interesting because public speaking was probably my most terrifying thing. I wasn't even able to speak in front of like 5 people without stuttering and just kind of forgetting what I wanted to say. I couldn't get my message across. So I took a year of public speaking class with Toastmasters just to get reps in a group of people that are, you know, are going to give you positive feedback and in a safe environment so I could just get in front of a room, practice a 5-minute speech, And know that I'm going to make mistakes. It's interesting what you said is 100% true about thinking about serving others, because for I think it was probably seven years, I was I was speaking on stages, and I would still get nervous like a day or two before. It wasn't as bad as the first two years, where it was like a week before. Now it was only like a day or two. And I called my my coach at the time; his name's Chris Lee. And I said, "I don't know why I'm speaking. I've been doing this for long enough now. Shouldn't I be not afraid anymore?" And he said, "You're thinking about." Messing up, missing the joke, forgetting what you're gonna say in the first line, forgetting you're thinking about how you're looking as opposed to serving people. And he said exactly, you know, exactly what you just said. He's like, when you just know you're gonna mess up, it's not gonna be perfect. You're gonna get forget that line that you really wanted to say, but just put all the energy on the audience. Everything starts to change. And so your message speaks to me because I'm an example of that.
And it really speaks to me because obviously you kick ass in that area now. But think about that. You just gave people the truth, right? How do you build confidence? Confidence is action. The biggest mistake— people think they're supposed to walk out and be good at it, and if they're not, they don't want any part of it. I don't want to not look good, not be good, because we live in this social media world where they compare themselves to people that are bullshitting. You know, I got a friend that owns a gym, and we laugh about this all the time. He says, Tony, at least 2 or 3 times— first time he told me, I couldn't believe it. But I saw it happen one time. I went to go pick him up, we were going to lunch, and he goes, look at this. And these people would come out, a woman or a man, they both do it, And lay out all this stuff, take a million pictures of themselves, and then leave! They didn't do any workout whatsoever! That's the bullshit social media one! Filters on pictures, and— so people compare themselves to not other humans, they compare to people with this bullshit story! And that's why so many people get depressed when they— you know, there's— I'm sure you've seen the studies show the more time people spend on social media, usually the greater levels of frustration and anger and certainly depression for a lot of people have. Because you're comparing to a world that doesn't matter. Plus, you're being reinforced by these algorithms in ways that go beyond your conscious awareness.
What happens when we don't lean into our fears, or we just allow our fears to stay inside of us, our insecurities to stay inside of us for years or decades, and we never actually learn to act on them and improve them? What happens to us if we just allow these fears to, to hold us back?
Well, what happens to a muscle if you don't use it? We say you lose it. You don't actually lose it, but It gets weaker and weaker, as you well know, right? And what happens the minute you start making demands on it, especially if you haven't made demands in a while? It doesn't take much to see real muscle growth, right? And so it's like, if you, if you constantly live in fear, your world gets smaller and smaller and it tends to get more fearful. Like, who's more fearful? Someone who's broken 10 bones in their body and healed them as a kid, or someone who never broke a bone? You know the answer is the kids that are overprotected are fearful all the time. But if you've gone out in the street and you know you've gotten in a fight and you know you busted your arm or your hand or finger or you played football or whatever the hell it is or boxed or something, it's like now it's like I'm not afraid of that crap because you've lived it. A belief is a poor substitute for an experience. You think you know what China is, but I take you to China, you have a little different experience. Almost everything I do is give someone an experience. That's the reason, you know, I did the firewalk. I still do, but did for so many years. I did— before that, I used to do skydiving, but it's hard to get 15,000 people above the sky in New York in the middle of the night. So I had to come up with other tools. But the firewalk was again giving you an experience of something that seemed difficult or impossible, and then you get yourself to do it and your brain goes, wait a second, if I could do that, what else could I get myself to do? That psychological shift is the most important shift that people can make. It's a shift in your identity.
Why is identity so important?
So everybody understands what I mean by identity is we all have a way of identifying ourselves. We have a way of labeling ourselves. Most of us came up with our labels based on how we behaved. Most people's identity, their labels for themselves, who they think they are, has been based on their past and often many years ago. And so they don't update it. So the metaphor I'd give for identity is like, it's your comfort zone. It's not your goals. So if you like, if you took a temperature in the room and said 68 degrees is my comfort zone physically, emotionally, financially, I want more in my relationship, I want more physically energy-wise, I want more financially in my career, But this is what I'm used to. And then let's say something happens and you drop down to 62, 61, 60, somewhere around 60 or 59. The heaters kick on and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're a 68-degree-er. What the hell are you doing? We've all experienced that. All of a sudden you go, I'm not going to live like this anymore. I'm not going to be in this relationship. I'm not going to be fat like this. Boom. And you get this drive and you start to change. But what most people don't understand is it happens on the upper end too. Let's say you got momentum, you start crushing it, you start doing even better than you think. You go from 68 to 78 to 88, you're at 98 degrees! And then what happens? You're going to say, hey, hey, hey! Your brain goes, who the hell do you think you are? You're not a 98-degree-er. Get back to 68. And if nothing else, the heaters stop, you lose your drive, and that'll drift you back. And not enough, the air conditioners can kick on, you start to kind of sabotage yourself till you get back to your comfort zone. So unless you expand your identity, change is temporary. It's like when someone says to me, I've stopped smoking, it's been 8 days. I go, why are you counting? And I say, why are you counting? So you can tell people how long you lasted this time? Like if I went to somebody and I said to you, hey, you know, Lewis, you want a cigarette? You're not gonna say, what brand is it? You're gonna go, no!
Right.
I'm not a smoker. Notice how people— I'm not one of those. That's not my identity. Identity is the strongest force in the human personality. Unless you expand your identity, you're gonna basically keep where you are. You might improve a little or not. You might go up and down a bit. But you're going to stay within a realm. If you're going to have an explosive breakthrough to another level physically, mentally, financially, spiritually, then we got to not only give you the tools, we got to shift that internal sense of who you really are and have you find that you are more than anything that's ever happened to you, that you can handle whatever shows up, even if it's incredibly scary or uncomfortable.