In this brief motivational talk recorded in a Bel Air coffee shop, the speaker—author of Confidence Is Overrated—draws a distinction between courage (action despite feelings) and confidence (a feeling based on past success). He warns that early, unearned success can be dangerous because it prevents individuals from learning resilience, persistence, and how to handle failure. Using the example of a college athlete who dominated early but now doubts his ability, he illustrates how a lack of adversity hampers growth. The core message, framed as the listener’s “Moment of Yes,” is to stay focused on process, technique, and consistent behaviors rather than being distracted by positive or negative outcomes. He urges the audience to lock in on these behaviors throughout the week, embracing the learning journey regardless of immediate results.
Chapters
Hey, good morning everyone. Here's your Moment of Yes for Monday, July 27th, back in the coffee shop in Bel Air. So in my book Confidence Is Overrated, obviously I'm a bigger fan of courage than I am of confidence. Courage means regardless of how you feel, you're going to commit to doing what needs to be done or attempting to do what needs to be done. Right, and confidence is a feeling that tends to be based on how successful you've been maybe in the past. Similarly, I would say another dangerous thing that as a human we would love to have it, but it doesn't always set us up for success. And I would say it rarely sets us up for success, and that is having success early. When I say having success early, I just mean Similar, like the last thing you want someone who goes into a casino for the first time is to have success, because now they believe that success is easy or winning is easy. And so they might spend the rest of their life losing a lot because their initial learning was winning is easy. Similarly, I was working with a player recently who is in college. and is now struggling with his confidence and feeling that he has the ability to play at that level. The reality is his childhood up until that point, he's been bigger, faster, stronger than most of the people he's played against. He's had a ton of early success, not a lot of adversity on the field. All that early success was great. It kind of got him to where he is now. But what early success doesn't give us is it doesn't give us what we learn From failure. It doesn't give us the need to be resilient, the need to be persistent, the need to handle losing and how we process losing and how difficult it is to continually problem-solve when you are, quote unquote, at a disadvantage. And so your moment of yes for today is don't get distracted Right? By success. Don't get distracted by outcomes. And whether you're, you know, and it's how funny that when we take on new habits or a new hobby or a new— and all of a sudden we're not good at it and we get mad at ourselves for not being good at something at first. Like, of course, why would we be good at something? We shouldn't be good at it. If we are good at it, we're probably lucky or we have an innate ability in that. But Most likely it's luck. But when we can commit to the process, when we commit to the behaviors of what does it take in order for me to learn and get better and embrace that aspect of the learning, which is where the enjoyment is anyway, whether we have success or not, we're focused on the right things, right? So focusing on process. Focusing on technique, focusing on, you know, the behaviors of what we're doing instead of getting distracted either positively or negatively by the outcomes. Easier said than done, I know. So as you approach the work, as you approach the week this week, think about whatever you're doing. Lock in again on your behaviors, what you're focused on, without letting the potential good or bad outcomes distract you. That's your Moment of Yes for today. Have an awesome week, everyone.
