How To Be CONFIDENT In ANY SITUATION (The Skill Of SELF-CONFIDENCE) | Hilary Billings

So much of our issues with inadequacy and confidence come from us looking at a situation and deciding that it's meant something already. The situation itself actually has no meaning except for what you choose to attach to it. So if you give it a negative meaning, it of course is then going to narrow the possibility of your future. Interestingly enough, and contrariwise, if you give it a positive meaning, it still also limits your future because now you've put in rules on how you have to get somewhere or why something happened the way that it does. But if you give it a neutral meeting, this doesn't have to actually say anything. That's where freedom and peace lie.

Welcome to Stuck to Unstoppable, where we interview the world's foremost thought leaders to break things down in order to help you get past your hurts, habits and hangups and finally level up and move forward. I'm your host, Stephen Scoggins. Now, let's go ahead and get into today's guest and our featured conversation. You're not going to want to miss it. Hey, guys, welcome back to the journey principles. As always, we're here to take you from stuck to unstoppable in any area of your life. And one of those areas of life that I'm most excited about this week happens to be the area of confidence. Now, we've been talking a little bit about how to develop it, how to shape it, how to create it. Well, my special guest today, Hillary Billings, has done nothing short of miracles as it relates to coming alongside some of the most famous people, really, in the marketplace today. She's a former Miss Nevada. She's actually been on podcast. People like Lewis Howes, Michael Hyatt. Right. She shared the stage with William Shatner and a few other like this. This girl has got it going on. And if anyone can teach us how to develop red carpet confidence, it's Hilary Billings. Hillary, welcome to the show, girl. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. How about yourself?

I'm loving life. You know, I've, you know, fortunately, you and I have gotten to know each other through the Vadens and loving life in that way. And then I've had the, had the honor and the, and the, and the, and the really the joy of getting to know you and getting to know your personal brand and everything you stand for. And I know you guys just had a massive move across the country, so you've got a lot going on, but, you know, the audience. We've been talking a lot the last couple weeks about, you know, confidence and how to create that. And to be sure, in order to create confidence, like to share the, to share a red carpet and actually quiz some of the people that are the most notable figures in history. Right? You got to have confidence just to be able to ask that question. So, you know, tell me a little background about how you got into that stuff and then all that kind of thing.

It was a total accident. I never wanted to be in on camera hosting. I never thought that I would be interviewing, you know, Mark Cuban or Ringo Starr or Dolly Parton on the red carpet. That was not the trajectory. I thought actually I was going to become an academic and get my PhD in clinical psychology. I wanted to be a professor. And I came from a production family background and I went to school at unlv, Forest Psychology, was named the number one student of my class. And so I was given this title of outstanding graduate. It was a whole ceremony, like within the ceremony when I graduated. It was very exciting, which was, you know, that that peak was shortly followed by 14 rejection letters from every PhD program that I applied to. So much like we're seeing now with what's happening with COVID and the situation with graduates. I graduated during the Great Recession and so grant funding had been cut across the board. Programs that were accepting 10 to 15 students were taking one or none. And so when you're competing against the same hundred people for slots in these programs across the country, there's just no, there's no way you can do it. So I thought my life was over. And I.

Had one rejection letter that was addressed to somebody else and they had crossed out their name and handwritten and misspelled my name.

I'm serious, crazy. I still have it somewhere. And so you can just imagine how low my confidence was at that point and how much that that end result was tied to my self worth. So I decided to go to Nicaragua for the summer and hide out because nothing, you know, why be here when I could be there? And I started a travel blog.

And I started this blog just so friends and family could see what I was doing and keep in touch and also to kind of just document the demise of my life. I thought, this is the unraveling of Hillary. And then that turned into weirdly a career path. I started meeting amazing people on my journeys and I was having these incredible experiences and just being outside of that perspective and that microcosm and exposing myself to other worlds and other cultures and other people from different backgrounds. You know, I went to the surf retreat and it was the first time That I hadn't been in, like, direct competition with the other women that were around me in years. And that was such a weird feeling to suddenly have this realization of, oh, I can actually have other women that are great at other things around me. I don't have to do it all. And in fact, by leaning on them and their strengths, like when our powers unite, like earth, water, fire, spirit, it can be a whole Captain Planet analogy. So that was kind of the impetus for me getting into content creation and writing. And the blog started to pick up. I had readers in over 100 countries.

Oh, wow.

And we were all talking about the same thing, which is what happens when life doesn't work out the way that you thought it was going to. And it was such a great connection.

This never happens, by the way. That only happens every now and again.

No. Yeah, that's just once in a blue moon situation and what to do when that happens and how to balance going after something versus living in the moment. And I didn't realize at the time, but this was again, the beginning of my journey of learning to overcome adversity, learning to build my own confidence, and doing that through widening my perspective. And so I just gotten back from living with the Fire Walkers tribe in Fiji for a month, and I ended up going to a friend's fourth of July party. And once again, my life was. This was. A few years later, my life was derailed. I was hit in the chest with a malfunctioning firework and suffered second and third degree burns to my body.

Oh, my gosh.

And that. That halted everything. That stopped all the travel. I was hiding out. I felt horrible. I didn't feel feminine. I didn't feel beautiful. And again, like, confidence, my self worth, everything just went crashing down. And about six months later, I realized I was still throwing myself this pity party. And I just couldn't do it anymore. I was so tired of the story that I was telling myself, and so I needed to find a way to get out of that headspace. And so I asked myself, like, what could I do to get beyond this? And nothing sounded more terrifying than being on stage in a bikini and having someone judge me based upon my appearance. And so I entered a beauty pageant.

Look at you.

I've never competed before.

That's it, though. That's it. That's the fire.

That's how I became, you know, Miss Nevada, United States.

Yeah.

Oh, we got a. We froze there for a second. We froze. Oh, you're back now. Sorry about that.

So, you know, that's how I became Miss Nevada, United States in 2013. And then from that, like, right after I went to compete at nationals, USA Today, I won some big blogging award. USA Today had heard about me. They reached out, asked if I'd be interested in taking on a six week trial with them as a journalist. Yeah, I said yes, having never done journalism before. So it's like I said yes, and then I freaked out in the corner. And then, of course, two weeks in, they asked me if I'd be interested in going as their reporter for the iHeartradio Music Festival in Vegas in September. And having never done a carpet before, it's like, yeah, sure, I could do that.

It's just a red carpet, right? No big deal. Shiny stuff, shiny people. It's all good.

Yeah, I can wear the sash and crown. It'll fit right in. And my first interview out of the gate was Ryan Seacrest. So no pressure, no pressure at all, the interview of interviewers. But I'm so grateful for that experience with him because, you know, he just really embodied everything about that saying. I think it's a Maya Angelou saying of, like, people don't remember what you say, but they remember how you made them feel. And so having that experience with him was just such a great primer for how I wanted to move forward with every interview. Moving forward. And also, as I started doing these celebrity interviews, I realized, I mean, this sounds so cliche. It's like, oh, they're real people too. It's like they're struggling with inadequacies. They have anxieties, they have nervous tics and these idiosyncrasies, but nobody's talking about those. Like, we're focusing on this aspect. We're not really talking about this part of it. And for me, that was when it kind of clicked of, I want to be an advocate of change to bring forth those stories. Talk about adversity, talk about the vulnerabilities, talk about the insecurities, because we need to, in order to help people build the skills that they need to be able to overcome everything that life throws at us. Look at the world right now.

No one saw that one coming.

No, no. But it's really interesting to see just what's happening even on social media right now with those that have lived through previous traumas and those that have figured out a way to overcome those with like a post traumatic growth mindset, and those that are really struggling right now that either haven't gone through or they haven't yet figured out the skills as to how to get past the adversity. So I mean, I think now more than ever we need to know how to cultivate our own confidence, you know, external, outside of what externally is happening.

Yeah, for sure.

The way that I divine confidence is the self, the belief that you can rely upon something or someone, whether that's yourself, another person or God. So if you have that belief, you know, then it doesn't matter what happens because you have an inner peace that you can deal with it.

Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you this. I mean, so, you know, one of the questions we've been getting a lot of is that, you know, how to develop self confidence. I always like to take it a step further and like to understand the opposite of that, which is the inadequacy piece. You know, what were some of the things that you did? Obviously, I mean, to be sure you stepped on stage for the first time as, you know, to led you to Miss Nevada, you know, to face something that I'm sure that you were fearful of in the moment. You know, what are two or three things that you use in that moment? Prepping to kind of get you past that moment so you could kind of get to the place where you could use it for your benefit.

Yeah. And I do think this is a really important conversation because in my world and how I define insecurity or inadequate, there's actually two ways in which that can show up. So if confidence is the goal, if we're going for that self reliance, you know, we can show up with extreme insecurity or it can show up as arrogance, but they're both rooted. That inadequate feeling or that arrogant feeling are both rooted in the same level of insecurity. And so it just determines how you are presenting it, whether that you have an over importance or an under importance in your world. So those different people will respond differently as you're moving through this. But what I realized as I was going through this and the thing that really started pissing me off as I was looking at what other gurus and people were saying, it wasn't that they were giving wrong information, they were just missing steps. So, you know, people would tell you, oh, if you're feeling inadequate or you're comparing yourself to others, just feel grateful, just be grateful, write out a gratitude list and that'll make you feel better. But as you know, yeah, when you're in that space and you're so low to ask yourself to go from zero to 60, it's like that's, you can't do that. You have to be able to transition, like even in a car, like, we have to go up and be able to change the gears. So we have to come to neutral. There's an intermediary step to getting to those feelings that I think that a lot of the gurus have been missing, which is we have to come back to this neutral place. Right now, if we're living in exaggerated reality, we with exaggerated emotions of I can't do it, I'm not good enough. You know, you're looking to the external world for all of your validation. You're not focusing on cultivating yourself. There's no way that you can then, you know, even if you try to fake it till you make it, you can't sustain that. So we have to find a way to come to this neutral place. So the easiest advice I can give you, and this is part of my assumption analysis tool, is let's just what's the fact? Like, the first step is what actually happened. Because if you pull the emotion out of something, suddenly it's not so bad. Like, so much of our issues with inadequacy and confidence come from us looking at a situation and deciding that it's meant something already. The situation itself actually has no meaning except for what you choose to attach to it. So if you give it a negative meaning, it of course is then going to narrow the possibilities of your future. Interestingly enough, and contrariwise, if you give it a positive meaning, it still also limits your future because now you put in rules to how you have to get somewhere or why something happened the way that it does. But if you give it a neutral meeting that this doesn't have to actually say anything. That's where freedom and peace lie.

That is so good. So good.

So we want to come back to neutral. So I use an example of like, my friend won an award. Let's say she won an award for something that I one day want to win an award for.

My immediate like temperature setting for my inadequacy feelings reaction might be to something, oh my gosh, someone so won that award. That means she's better than me. That means she's going to go farther than me. That means that nobody likes me as much as she like and like. And that just starts to spinning, right?

Yeah, for sure.

To take you further down the inadequacy like continuum, as it were. But if I was to say, okay, what actually happened? Well, she won an award. That's it. That's all that happened.

Yeah.

Then again, like going with the positive and the negative, if I was to do that, let's say I was to say even the positive of, well, if she did it, I could too. But then now that puts limitations on. Well, I'm going to try to follow in her footsteps. Maybe I'll ask her and like, and that's a great path, but it's just one path.

Let me ask you this real fast.

Do you feel like this is an everybody issue or do you feel like certain genders struggle with it more than others?

It's definitely an everybody issue. And actually we even have genes in our bodies that make us predisposed to how much confidence we have, how much resilience we have and how much optimism we have. And all those things play into our confidence over time. However, it's like even somebody that has those confidence genes, as they're called, put into a poor environment will have decreased competence over time and vice versa. So it's definitely a nature and a nurture thing. I think that different genders struggle with different aspects of competence. And I would say that especially when we're looking at business, there's so much research to support that women are less likely to speak up in meetings. They will not apply for jobs unless they're 100% qualified, whereas men will apply if they're only 60% qualified.

When, you know, even in education, women will internalize. And I think again, this is part of how we're raised and that's starting to shift in that culture. But like if in a math class, for example, a woman comes in and she's struggling, she'll say, well, I can't get it, I don't understand it, I suck at this. Whereas a guy is more likely to say, well, this math problem sucks. This math problem is hard. You know, this is a tricky problem and not allow it to internalize upon himself. But it doesn't mean that those, those inadequacy feelings don't exist for men. It's just a different, a different setting as to what we're looking at up to the locus of the perception. So absolutely, I think both genders and you know, we're all dealing with it now, especially in the social media age. Right? It's like that's, it's so in our face all the time and there's so much research to support that. The more time you spend on social media, the more increases you're going to have in depression and feeling comparison, feeling isolated. Even though we're hyperconnected. It's crazy.

Well, we know with all this hyper connection that is going on, I mean One of the things I like about your formula is it's very internal in nature. It's very. It's a personal thing. And one of the things that I think is it's. I think we get lost because I think it's become like a cat phrase, is personal development and personal. You know what I'm saying? Oh, personal. You know, I like shared it, whatever. I did my thing. I don't think enough people are taking the time to really break it down. And I think, I think that's what you were just mentioning a minute ago. I think there, there are a lot of, well, mean people, some refer to as gurus that are very, very. They've been through experiences, they have the wisdom that got the knowledge, you know, but the one thing that we get, that we hear with the feedback that we get from the audience specifically is no one's really taking it out, taking the time to break it down and break it apart. And I'm really glad you touched on that because I think that's one of the things I love most about your particular formula is the way in which you were taking. You're saying, hey, look, there's an ownership level here. It's a step by step process. You don't have to like go from 0 to 100 like overnight, you know, so let's just start there. Right. So you kind of mentioned the first step. What is, what is the second step in this process of developing your confidence?

Yeah. So again, we want to be focusing on having this neutral perspective, bringing you back to neutral as often as possible when it comes to everything that we're doing. The next thing that I would recommend to you is like, where in your narrative, how are you talking to yourself? How are you talking to others? What are the stories that you're telling? And I realized the importance of this when I was actually competing for Miss Nevada. I was doing an interview prep, like a mock interview with a friend of mine. And you know the age old question, why are you competing? Why are you here today? Why do you want to have this title? And so I started my story of like, well, I'm a burn victim and I was hit with this firework and she stopped me. She's like, no, no, you're not a victim, you're a survivor. And I'm like, what's the difference? Why does it matter? Like, it's just a one single word difference. And she's like, no, because victim implies that this is still affecting you, that this is still hurting you. Whereas being a survivor implies that you're empowered. And now, you know, my whole message was around, you know, you don't have to be flawless to feel beautiful. And I was working with the Byrne Institute and the Byrne Foundation. So in order for me to, you know, effectively communicate that message, I had to come from this position of this thing happened to me. But it no longer affects how I live my life. Like, it's certainly going to shape what's important to me and the message that I serve, but it doesn't internally hurt me. And just that slight shift reminded me of the power of the words that we use and how we talk to ourselves. And again, like coming back to that perspective of what else could this mean? What meaning have we given this and what else could we do with this? So we definitely want to be talking about like again, what's, what's the assumption we've made with the fact what other assumptions can we make and how can we find a neutral perspective? Then I'm going to encourage you to take some small actions and kind of coach yourself like your own star player. So like what does that look like? Well, when you're a star player of a team, when you got to work with others, you've got to manage having a team that needs to be fed and needs your skillset, whereas you have egos and you have a star that you want it to nourish and move forward. But you've also got to understand, okay, at what point do I allow myself to get lost and so what point do I need to start taking action and move forward and just continuing to coach yourself through. And I have a four steps to quick confidence workbook which will help you get ramped up and started in this process. And one of my favorite tenants of that is a service to others. So, so often we feel inadequate because we're so focused on ourselves. We're so in the mirror looking at ourselves. We've got to get out of the mirror and look out the window. It's that simple. Like what's out there? Besides when you start looking to others as to how you can serve them, you immediately feel better because you can feel your value add and it doesn't have to be a big deal. You don't have to go down to a soup kitchen, but just even in your own day to day as you're removing the focus that has been so blatantly placed by our phones and our selfies and social media to focus on us to somebody else and how we can help them, the whole world opens up as far as confidence is concerned. And confidence now is linked, is more correlated with success than competence. This is not a soft skill. I know a lot people think, oh, it's intangible and how do we measure it? No, this is. There is a high correlation between the amount of confidence you feel, that reliance that you have on yourself and where you're going to go and how successful you'll be when you get there. So we do need to focus on this. And those would be the first things that I would try to help move you through. And of course we go deeper into some of these methods in the confidence workbook. But let's go back to neutral. Everything's about coming there as much as possible to get away from these exaggerated responses of inadequacy. So we can move up to actually feeling confident more consistently so we can sustain that over time and actually believe it.

Yeah, for sure, Absolutely. I mean, it's, I mean what I'm, you know what I mean. One of the things I'm hearing you say, and I would totally agree with this, is there's an objective awareness. There's an awareness that you finally decide, look, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna dig a little, I'm gonna discover, I'm gonna explore, I'm not gonna judge myself. You know, I've learned these things, I've been through these things. There are meanings that we attach to different things, for sure. And then you're right, it goes in that neuro linguistic side of things with what you say matters. Especially when you're talking to yourself, are you believing lies that someone said about you? You know, things that you know, someone spoke over you, Are you taking ownership of that or are you lying to yourself about who you can become? You know, one of the things that I know we share in common is this massive passion for overcoming adversity. Right. Because people are not living their best lives and they easily could be if rather than looking at all the things that are holding them back, they're looking at all their, all the different things that can propel them forward. You know, that's one of the reasons why I think the topic of inadequacy and then self confidence are so powerful because they're so intertwined. Right. In order to become less inadequate and feel there, you've got to start to develop the confidence. Well, in order to develop the confidence, you're gonna have to objectively look at the inadequacy, you know, and that's one of the things I love, love about your brand.

Thank you. And it's, you know, we oscillate, right? Like we might feel confident in certain areas and then something happens and it hits us and we now have new information that we have to take in and we might drop back down that confidence and we have to continue to work to bring it back up. But what we're going for is we just like, if we're looking at confidence as a continuum with inadequacy on one side and confidence on the other, it's like our goal is to take you from here. And like Tony Robbins talks about a 2 millimeter shift. We just want that small incremental progress.

So like it changes the trajectory.

Exactly. So once you come up here and then you slide back down, let's say it's called your temperature setting. Now we're here instead of coming to here. And it's like every time, like my goal is to get you further up. So when you slide back down to that place, it's not as impactful, it's not as hurtful. It doesn't, you know, ruin your day, doesn't, you know, ruin the progress that you're making as much which it very well can. You know, these feelings of inadequacy can isolate us. It can make us more depressed, you know, and we're seeing. And like, this is part of my passion and one of the reasons why I wanted to even get into this to begin with is the increase in teen suicides, especially on young girls, because of social media use. And like, we know that it's because of the comparing. We know it's because of the cyberbullying. We know it's because of the isolation and disconnection that they're feeling. And that all culminates into feeling inadequate and like, they don't belong here. So like my, my big goal is to eradicate that and by doing that, by giving them the tools they need to see. And it's like, you know, I have a Facebook watch page show. It's super light, fun content. We're just utilizing.

I love it, by the way.

Thank you. It's just, it's silly fun stuff, but you wouldn't believe the amount of full grown adults get very angry about, you know, these videos of me making homemade glow sticks or, you know, playing silly.

Out of the highlighter.

Yeah, yeah, like, you know, doing a prank or whatever it is that we're doing that day to just kind of break up the polarizing post that you're seeing on social media. The amount of anger and vitriol that they're, they're throwing at Me, and I'm a full grown adult who has the skills and has a psychology background and all like every time this happens, all I can think of is that, you know, these are, these are full grown people who are obviously very hurt. But then I think about the young girl, the young kid who's still in high school, who's now, you know, living at home, who's now going to school from home, that doesn't have that interaction with their friends and believes everything that they're getting thrown at them, this vitriol, because people have these reactions because they haven't dealt with their own stuff.

You know, the thing that. Because, you know, as you sort of put yourself out there, especially as you start to get traction, you start obviously seeing more and more people that are wanting to tear you down. And one of the things that I've reminded myself is something a good buddy of mine, Chris lacurdo, told me a long time ago, and he picked it up from a different person, different quote. But is that hurt people? Hurt people.

Yep.

Right. And if you're going to come into the space where you're going to be focused on growing yourself, then you're really leaning towards the healed people. So you got to let that stuff go.

Yeah.

And let it bother you. And one of the things that you said a little bit ago that really is still resonating my spirit so, like jumping up like this is, you don't have to be. You don't have to be flawless to feel beautiful. Now do you do. Would you attribute that at all to the fake it till you make it kind of concept? Because it seems like when we get lost in comparison, we're trying to be something we're not. Therefore we're inauthentic. Because we're inauthentic, we're not taking authentic action, which means we're not being ourselves, which means we're faking it till we make it, which then drives more inadequacy.

It seems like, oh, yeah, I have, I have such a big problem with that bigot till you make it concept. Like, nothing angers me more than hearing somebody give that out as advice. Because it's the worst advice. Do not take it. You cannot sustain that. It's. If you even do it and you have success and people like you in that state, whatever that is for you, you're gonna start to question, do they like me for me? Do they like me because I'm acting like this person? Do they like me because I'm pretending? They think that I'm more than I'm not. They think I'm doing more. It never helps. And there's so much research to support, actually, that people who try to fake it till you make it, you know, they've done a lot of studies. Affirmations. If you're over here, if you feel inadequate, it only pushes you further down the scale. Now, if you're closer then the fake it. But again, like, we're talking about a smaller jump. Like, now it's a stepping stone versus you having to try to, you know, traverse this freaking Grand Canyon of emotions, so being very cognizant of where you're at. And I think it goes back to people want to be helpful, they want to give advice. But, you know, there's. There's so much bad advice out there.

There's a ton.

There's a ton. And so I think that, you know, and again, going back to, like, the gurus and what they're telling, oh, just do this. Oh, just do this. Like, this will solve. If you do this. And it's like, you're right. When you reach a certain level, those things that they're telling you are very effective. But we have to get people to that point. And, you know, and I think part of it, too, is, like, they're just so far removed from that place as to what it feels like to be here, whereas I'm not so much so, you know, I get to sit in this middle place and be like, let me help bring you here. Like, we'll bring you here so you can jump to this point. So. I totally agree. The frank it t make it. It just. It makes me crazy. Don't. Don't do that. And, like, we're gonna. We're gonna build sustainable confidence. That's what we're doing. Just like with anything else, we want to make it sustainable.

Yeah. Well, I think one of the ways you build sustainable confidence is you, again, you have to go back to the earlier part or that objective awareness is there. Right. You've got to be okay with being uncomfortable in that. Hey, look, I may not be proud about this thing about myself, but I do this really, really well. Right. This is a strength for me. This is a struggle for me. And then once you become aware of that stuff, you can then position it to operate in your strengths. When you operate in your strengths, you get little wins, which builds confidence.

Absolutely. And that was a big part of not only my Miss Nevada journey, but also going on to coach other girls through the Miss USA and other pageant systems. And even with my journalism and hosting Experience. You know, I never competed in a pageant before and I thought that the judges would like make that a negative towards me. So when I was going in, I knew ahead of time, like I give the same advice for people going in for job interviews. Like if you know ahead of time that there's something that could be a question mark, like have your response prepare practice for that moment for sure. So it's like, okay, what's the benefit here? Well, I've never done a pageant before. Everybody I know is not in the pageant circuit. Which means that if I become your winner, I suddenly can make a number of people aware about this brand and this business and help bring others into the system that previously haven't been exposed. I bring as a young producer and a young on camera host, it's like I don't have the experience that some of these 10 or 15 year vets do. But I'm young blood. I have a new perspective. I understand what the younger generations are looking for in their content who want to hear from and can bring that humor and a different energy to this. So it's like if that's what they're looking for and I can pre answer that for them then it becomes it was a no problem and that and I heard from the judges afterwards and it's like my interview. And this is the funny thing, people think that pageants, it's like, oh, the swimsuit portion and it's so it just objectifies women. Half of your score is talking like your score is more heavily weighted on your ability to have a conversation, put forth a business plan and answer difficult questions than it is anything else. And so I think that there's an important metric there about being able. I can get on my soapbox forever about can be a really good thing. But that's like with anything in life. And what I was really proud of after winning and going, we had triple the number of entries the next year. We had business owners, we had lawyers, we had publicists that because they saw this could be an opportunity. Just like the narrative of like well, beauty queen is just some bubble gum bimbo. It's like, no, I actually used it to be effective in my business. Here's all the things that I did the 300 plus appearances and they saw the value in that and wanted to do it for themselves. So everything is an opportunity for you to find a different perspective on what you're looking at and how to maximize that and maximize your own value and the skills that you bring to the table like stay at home, moms, you have incredible team management skills. You have incredible project management skills. Like, you've had to organize things for the PTA and carpool drop offs and, you know, like, wrangling children's. Like wrangling cats.

Yeah. Multitasking on steroids.

I'm saying it's all just how you present it, really. And then people, you know, you are in control of the narrative, and whether or not people choose to agree is up to them. But, like, you're not in charge of the reactions. You're only in charge of how you put yourself out there.

Yeah, for sure. You know, it's. I love hearing you talk. I love hearing your passion, your excitement. It's clear that this is deeply rooted in your heart. You know, I've had that. I've had the privilege of watching you work with other people and how talented and gifted you are at it and how much they resonate with you because they know you're sincere. Right. And you only get to be sincere when you're authentic in general. Like, you can't get to that place of genuine sincerity without having to travel on your own journey without having to fight through some of the same things that. That you're working with. You know, Rory and I are. All of us agree on one of the things that Rory has told us over and over again. You know, one of the most powerful things you can do is serve the person used to be right. You know, and positioning yourself that way. You know, you're clearly very accomplished. You clearly done a lot. I know you got a huge future. Your. Everything that you're doing, your keynotes are incredible. Your coaching's been incredible. Like, what's next for Hillary? What's on your agenda? What are you most excited about now?

Yeah, I am most excited right now. We're in the process of putting together a book outline, get my proposal together for this content as well as my digital content. So the Hillary show, getting that out there, we're building some traction. It's been a lot of fun. I think we're somewhere between 40 and 50 million views in the past couple months. So it's great to see that people are resonating with the content that they want it, and especially in a time where everything's so serious. And part of overcoming inadequacy is being able to have a sense of humor.

Yeah.

I encourage you to add more humor into your life. Yeah. And so those are the main things, as well as, like, continuing to go get out there and speak. We're doing it, obviously, more in a virtual Capacity these days. Yeah, I've got some killer keynotes that we've been honing and it's just been so fun to see the reactions, even just recently getting a lot of feedback and as we're building more traction online with people that are downloading our workbook and seeing results immediately from sitting down and doing it. So it's just, I'm so excited about this community that's building around this mission of helping everyone get red carpet confidence.

That's right. Amen to that. Well, you know, we've got, you know, let me. I don't want to put you on the spot, but I think I'm going to. And you can, you can slap me later if you want. Okay. All right. Think about that primary 30something woman who's, who's trying to get there, who's trying to, who's trying to create this confidence, who's trying to battle, you know, the environment, the workplace environment where they have to overcome certain things that maybe someone like myself. What?

Right.

They're trying to drive that out, dig that out. What is the one thing that you would say to her? What is the one thing that she needs to know more than anything else right in this very moment?

Gosh. I mean, there's like seven things that immediately come to mind. But again, I think the most important thing and the part that's been so helpful and having been in that journey and in that corporate environment and struggling and having struggled with some of those issues.

Removing the emotional attachment to the meaning. And it's like coming back to that neutral place. What's happening? Where do I want to go? What do I need to do to get there? It's like the emotional aspect that we spend so much energy, so much energy and so much time lost in this narrative around an emotion that doesn't really exist or it exists, but only to us. And so when you can learn how to come back to this neutral place of what's the fact and what does this say about me in a neutral way? The answer, by the way, like just for the cheat sheet, is probably going to be. It says nothing about you. That's probably going to be the answer for 90% of the time. It's like it actually has nothing to do with me. Oh my God, that's amazing. But we choose to make things say something about us. The reason that we don't take accountability for our actions is because we're afraid if we do, it means that it says that we're a bad person or we did something bad. The reason that we get so stuck in criticism is because we're afraid for that if we actually look to the outside world might not have the value that we think that we do. We get lost in comparison instead of being able to look at what we have because we're so afraid that what we have is so limiting. It's like when you come to this place of what does somebody else post say about me? What is this fight that we have with my, you know, what is this situation with a manager? What does it say about me? What did I do to get myself in the situation? The answer is probably it's got nothing to do with you. And all you can do is focus on your locus and control, focus on what's in your control. And you have to let go of the reactions of the outside world. Focus on your actions and let go of the reactions. Like that's, that's the best advice that I can give you because that will serve you in every situation in your life moving forward and it allow you to be in this place of post traumatic growth so forever and ever. Amen. Whether it's Covid, whether it's the economy collapsing, whether it's rejection letters from grad school or, you know, losing a friend to suicide or losing your house, all these things, by the way, been through, you have a choice as to how you're going to meet it and coming to neutral and then being able to focus on what's in your control and let go of the reactions of others, that's the best way to maximize your time and energy.

That's so good. That is so, so good and so truthful. Oh my gosh. I mean, as you're talking, I'm reflecting on my own journey and the homelessness and the suicide, the attempt and all that stuff and kind of where I'm at today. And, and you're right. I mean, everything that you were saying, everything that you're sharing from your heart and your passion helped and certain people have been able to find some of that. I'm just so happy and thankful that you've taken the stand. You're standing in the gap to help people to realize that and figure that out. I want everyone in the audience to have a chance to engage with you yourself. How do they connect with you? What are some ways in which they can connect with you and kind of follow up with you?

Yes, I love hearing from people so super chatty, Kathy, especially on the Internet. So you can find me the best place to find me. And everything that I'm doing is my website hillarybillings.com that's Hillary with one L. Billings like Billings montana.com there you can get my free four steps to quit confidence workbook when you send that from my newsletter. And it is just so powerfully packed of information. I spent way too much time working on this workbook because I wanted to ensure people got nothing else do to from me that this was going to be the tool that they could use to really start accelerating their confidence levels without me, you know. And so with that, again, if we're defining confidence as the belief that you can rely upon someone or something like this book gives you the four main tools that you're fighting against every day that you can take back within the sphere of your control to be able to work on. So I'm super passionate about it. Yeah, you can go get it on hillarybillings.com my free workbook. Fill it out. And it's so funny. I just had a girl reach out to me this week. She's like, I downloaded your workbook eight months ago and I didn't do it.

Yeah. But then she's like, I just. You sent an email and it reminded me and I've been in such a place of like, struggling with perfectionism and struggle with myself. So I sat down, I did the work, and I already feel incredibly, you know, so much better. And it was, it was so amazing to hear. But, you know, it's just like, go get it. It'll help you. I'm here for you. You can reach out to me there. You can find all my socials there. And let's get connected and stay in touch. I have people that I still talk to for my blogging days back in the early, you know, 2010. So.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Join the journey.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, look, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're incredibly busy. You've got a lot of really awesome things happening.

Good to see you, friend. Yeah, thank you so much.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, we're, you know, we're just, we're two people, a handful of us out here just trying to make a difference. And I know if we keep going, we're going to make big differences and all that good stuff. But thank you again for taking the time to come on the show. I really appreciate it big time. Guys, make sure you head into hillarybillings.com check all of her stuff out. What? First thing you're going to guys are going to notice is our website is absolutely beautiful. Oh my gosh. That thing is so beautiful, you know, but you're going to, you're going to see, yeah, you're going to see a lot of really great content. Definitely get the ebook, if you will, the workbook. I should say if you're trying to develop self confidence, I cannot think of anybody better that's actually walked the journey to help you shape it outside of my friend Hillary. Hillary, thank you for coming on, girl.

Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me. Let's do it again.

Absolutely. All right, well I'll see you later.

Okay, bye.

All right, bye. Now that you know how to create red carpet confidence with Hillary Billings, make sure you take the time to check out this next interview.

What I really came to believe was that if you are looking to get better at leadership, sure there are certain things you need to do but in the end it is to empower you to learn how to make decisions. It is to empower.