February 24, 2026 • 32 mins
Have you noticed how the worst people in the world — those with the least character, next to no ethics and the lowest possible bar for human decency — have the most confidence?
They have no issues taking up space, asserting their ideas or taking the lead role.
Meanwhile those of us with huge hearts, a million skills and good intentions sit around questioning our ideas, holding back our gifts and second guessing ourselves after every interaction.
It’s time for this to change. And it starts with us (yes, YOU and me) deciding we have every right to lead, to love and to make a massive contribution.
What if your confidence could shift the world around you?
What if all of us joining together in confidence could shift the world at large?
Visit abookin6months.com to start your writing journey!
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life who put them
back together with the words you write, all the beauty
and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story, you get the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold? It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, Write your story. Hello and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about confidence, and specifically I want to talk about why
there are so many smart, capable, incredible, loving, amazing, talented, creative,
(00:48):
beautiful people in the world who lack the confidence to
bring their skills and their talents and their gifts to
the table. And why there are so many people who
don't have any of those qualities, who lack character, who
lack intelligence, who just lack basic decency, who have the
(01:08):
utmost confidence, and how this dichotomy, this oxymoron of a
world that we're living in, How maybe part of how
we restabilize the balance is for those of us who
know that deep down, like we do care about people,
We want the world to be a better place. We
have good hearts, we have good intentions. Of course we
(01:30):
make mistakes. Of course we're not perfect. Of course we
don't know always you know what the outcome is going
to be or what the best solution is. But those
of us who have good hearts, maybe we ought to
increase our confidence just by deciding we're going to just
by changing our mindsets so that we can recalibrate this
world that we're living in, and so that we can
bring all of the gifts that we have to the
(01:52):
table to share with the community. We're not doing anybody
any favors by questioning ourselves or holding back our artistic abilities,
or holding back our words, or you know, choosing to
hide ourselves or hide our thoughts, or hide our ideas
or hide our art or whatever. Like all the tiptoeing
that we're doing. And maybe I'm just talking to myself here,
(02:13):
but all the tiptoeing that I'm doing is so ridiculous
in light of this world we're living in, where there
are people who are utterly depraved, but like utterly confident
that they have something to offer. What about my confidence
that I have something to offer? What about your confidence
that you have something to offer? And this is just
something that has come up for me again and again
over the course of the past couple of weeks, especially
(02:34):
as I've watched the Epstein files unfold in the media,
and as we've learned the true depravity of some of
the people who are who hold really high positions of
power in our country, and who we have idolized and
put on pedestals, and who have utter like wealth and
power and confidence. These people have utter confidence to do
(02:58):
whatever the frick they want to do in the world.
They move and breathe as if the world just bows
at their feet, and the world does, in many ways
bow at their feet. And when you peel back the
layers of this and realize that under the surface, these
people have no integrity, no character, no sense of right
and wrong, no concern for breaking the law, you know,
(03:20):
no concern for what might be helpful or hurtful for
a person who they come into contact with. It's all
about serving their own purposes and doing what's good for them.
They have no accountability in their life, you know, there
are none of these other factors in place, and yet
they have this insane, brazen confidence. I'm like, maybe the
world could benefit from some of the rest of us
(03:41):
who are playing small right now, just deciding I'm done,
I'm done playing small. Nope, I'm a good I'm you know,
at my core, I'm a good person who wants what's
good for the world. And of course I'm not perfect,
and of course I make mistakes, and of course I
don't always know what's you know, what the right thing
to do is. But at the end of the day,
my intentions are good and because of that, I should
(04:02):
have a lot more confidence than I do. Another example
that I saw of this in the media, and forgive me,
I'm going to do a terrible job of explaining it
because I have not watched the show. I have watched
plenty of reality TV in my day, but I've not
watched this particular show this season. It's a clip that
I saw on social media from the current season of
Love is Blind. And the clip is of a really
(04:25):
just average looking dude talking to the woman who he
was set up with through the experts on the show
Love is Blind. So I believe by the time they're
having this conversation, they're married. I guess they've been married
and they're living together and they're having this conversation where
he says to her, you know, something that I've been
(04:45):
wanting to say to you, but I don't really have
to say it because it's going to make me look
like an a hole, which should have been his first
clue that he shouldn't have said it, but he says
it anyway. Is that all these women that I've dated
before you have all just you know, they've had just
a different I don't know how to say it. They
just have done a lot of CrossFit, they've done a
lot of pilates. And she's like, you're trying to say,
(05:07):
they've had a different body than I've had. And the
way the conversation unfolds was the perfect example of exactly
what I'm talking about. You have this woman who is
strikingly gorgeous, like absolutely drop dead gorgeous, beautiful, who is composed,
(05:27):
who is well spoken, who is interesting, who is you know,
a good conversationalist, who's a doctor, by the way, so
incredibly intelligent. Then you have this man who is you know,
I said, average, looking like nothing nothing interesting about him really,
and who's telling this woman who is way way away
(05:51):
out of his league, like light years out of his league,
that she's not good enough for him because her body
has a different composition than other women he's dated in
the past. It's just absurd, Like I'm like, on what
planet has he gotten here? And I mean, I have
to give her a lot of credit. I think she
brought a ton of confidence to the table in this conversation.
Her composure through the conversation, her ability to just keep
(06:14):
her mouth shut and let him dig his own grave,
was very impressive and inspiring. I was like, I hope to,
you know, hold that kind of composure if anyone ever
attacked me the way that he just attacked her and
tried to make her feel small is really what he
was trying to do. I hope that if I was
in the same situation that I would have her composure.
I don't know that I would, but you could tell
(06:36):
that there was a deep sense of confidence in her
because she didn't have to slap back and react in
that moment, and she just really let him say what
he was going to say and make himself look dumb
what she did. But it was just this other moment
of for me realizing that there are so many people
(06:57):
out there in the world who feel so confident in
who they are and who don't have the character to
back that up, who don't have the skills to back
it up, who don't have the intelligence to back it up,
who haven't put in the work you know another I
almost recorded this episode and maybe I'll do this for
next week. This episode was almost going to be about
(07:19):
the exhaustion that comes from just constant self improvement and
how I think there is something that I'm going to
call toxic self improvement or toxic self help that comes
when no matter how much work you do on yourself,
you always think that you have to do more work.
You always It's interesting because I feel like when I
went through my divorce, one of the things that saved
(07:41):
me was my own willingness to look at myself and say,
how did I contribute to this situation? How did I
contribute to this outcome that I participated in creating? What
was going on on my side of the street, Like
what did I have happening internally that led me to
say yes to this, That led me to, you know,
(08:01):
not set better boundaries and cleaning up what was on
my side of the street was so empowering and motivating
because it helped me to create a different reality and
to reshape my life and to find my agency again,
and it was such an important and pivotal moment in
my life that now I'm in a place where I've
done so much work on myself. I've done so much work.
(08:24):
I've done therapy. I've gone to on site twice, which
is like a week long therapy camp. I've done EMDR,
I've done you know, I go to yoga all the time.
I teach yoga. Now I did this yoga training I
did improv to try to like become a little bit
more free in my expression. I have done just thousands
of hours of trainings and courses and membership sites and
(08:48):
meditations and breath work and everything, like everything that I
can to become the highest version of myself or however
you want to say that. And there just comes a
certain point where it's like, maybe maybe the turn now
is to just accept that you're already great how you are,
(09:08):
that you're already loved how you are, that there's nothing
else that needs to be changed about you, that you're
a beautiful, incredible miracle of a person who's unfolding in
real time, and that you deserve to show up here
fully in all of your messiness and in all of
your grace in all of your mistakes and in all
of your triumphs. You know, I think I'm reaching that
(09:33):
point where I've sort of exhausted the self help stuff,
Like I just don't know how much more I can
improve myself. I think now it's more just about having
the confidence to really bring who I am to the world.
And I do already do that. I mean, I have
this podcast, and I'm on social media, but I notice
that there are ways where I discount myself. I step back,
(09:58):
I put myself underneath people or behind people, or I
assume someone else knows more than I do, or I assume,
you know, they have more expertise than I do, when
what I don't do is own the powerful wisdom that
is within me and the powerful voice that is within me.
And sometimes I shy away from that. And I think
that's what I'm talking about. Maybe sometimes you shy away
(10:19):
from yours too, And maybe you watch other people and
you feel kind of jealous of the success that they
see because they just have this kind of brazen confidence
to move forward in the world. It's like they are
not panicked about maybe making a mistake. They're not panicking
about you know, maybe not knowing the exact right next
step to take. They're just going for it. They're just
(10:40):
shooting their shot, and you kind of watch that and
go like, why don't I have the confidence to do that.
There's a book that I read a long time ago
when I was going through my divorce. Actually, it's called
The Confidence Code. It's by doctor Catty Kay and Clare Shipman,
and it's a book that I probably will revisit. It
talks a lot about out the data and statistics behind
(11:02):
why it's much easier for men to feel confident than
for women. It is not cultured into women to be confident.
We are not even really given permission to exist in
the world in the fullness of ourselves. We just really aren't.
We're conditioned to be quiet to serve others. We're conditioned
(11:25):
to be quiet to serve others, to be sweet, to smile.
I don't know if you saw the clip of the
reporter Caitlyn Collins asking Donald Trump a question at a
press conference about the Epstein survivors, and Trump's response to
her is you know, in all the years that I've
(11:46):
known you and Caitlin, I've never seen you smile. You
need to smile. More, you know you really you have
such a sour look on your face kind of a thing.
And this clip went viral and Caitlyn's response to it
went viral, I think because so many women really resonate
with that feeling of being told like just smile, just
be happy, just look pretty, just be there, don't say much,
(12:08):
don't insert yourself, don't get too big for your birches,
keep your feet on the ground, like, don't be too overconfident.
Women are not allowed to be over confident. Another clip
that I saw, I'm just rattling off clips that I've
seen on social media, but it's it's all proving my point.
Another clip that I saw that really reiterates this point
(12:29):
is a clip of a reporter asking the ski star
Eileen Goo about whether her two silver medals whether she
saw these two silver medals as a win basically like yay,
I got the silver, or as a loss like I
lost the gold. And her response to this reporter was
(12:51):
so unexpected, I think, because we don't expect women to
clap back like this, but it was so perfect and
I just was cheering her on the whole time. She
basically just said to him, like what a ridiculous question
to ask me, I'm so Her response to this reporter is,
I'm the most decorated free skier, female free skier in history.
(13:18):
So her response to this reporter is I'm the most
decorated free skier, female free skier in history. I think
that's an answer in and of itself. How do I
say this? Winning a medal at the Olympics is a
life changing experience for every athlete. Doing it five times
is exponentially harder because every medal is equally hard for me,
but everybody else's expectations rise, right, and so the two
(13:40):
medals last situation. To be quite frank with you, I
think that's kind of a ridiculous perspective to take. I'm
showcasing my best skiing. I'm doing things I quite literally
have never done before, and so I think that is
more than good enough. But thank you, and I love
this response. I was so inspired by her response because again,
I don't think women are given permission to respond with
(14:01):
this much confidence. I don't think that we're definitely not
cultured to have this much confidence, but we're also in
many ways criticized for feeling this sure of ourselves. And
so as a woman in the world. If you want
to be a person of confidence, I think we have
to really fight against the current, fight against the grain
(14:22):
and just decide. It has to be an inside job
where we decide, I have something valuable to offer, I
have something I want to say, I have something I
want to share, and I'm allowed to exist here just
like everyone else. I mean, she Isilindu is the perfect
example of it doesn't matter what a woman does, it
doesn't matter how well she performs, She's still going to
be under scrutiny for something. And I'll tell you, like
(14:44):
in the early years of my career, when I was
traveling and speaking a lot. This was after packing Light
came out, and I was doing a lot of speaking,
and a lot of the speaking was at churches, and
I would get a lot of feedback from the audiences
about the keynotes that I was delivering. Most to the feedback,
like ninety percent of the feedback that I would get
had to do with what I was wearing. So I
(15:05):
would get feedback from churches saying, like, you know, this
is just so insane, but like someone complained that you
could see my underwear line through my pants, like I
was wearing like a pair of tight I guess black jeans,
and you could see my underwear line through the jeans.
Someone complained that you could see my underwear line through
my jeens, and my thought at the time was like, well,
(15:27):
people were underwear, So I don't really understand why. First
of all, like a woman is on stage delivering a
keynote message and you're sitting in the audience and you're
staring at her underwear, and I'm the problem. I got
a feedback once about my shorts being too short, I
got feedback about I don't even remember now all of
the different things, but one of my takeaways from that
(15:49):
was just how it doesn't even matter what's coming out
of your mouth as a woman, the way you look
is really what everybody is going to focus on. Doesn't
matter how brilliant what you're saying is, people are going
to focus on what they see. They're going to focus
on the visuals. And I've really battled with that as
I have wanted to show up fully in all the
(16:10):
different platforms of my life. I've battled with that as
I've thought about showing up on Facebook. When I in
twenty twenty decided to let my natural hair color grow out,
which is gray. I've been going gray since I was
twenty years old. I've been covering it up with die
since then, since the first time that I found a
gray hair. And in the later years of my thirties,
like as I was like thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight,
(16:31):
I was like, you know, fifty maybe percent of my
hair was gray. And because of that, I was having
to go to the salon every three and a half
to four weeks to get it covered because the roots
would just show very quickly. The line of delineation was
very obvious, and so if my roots would grow out
at all, you would see the gray. And I remember
just feeling so ashamed and embarrassed of this gray hair.
(16:54):
It just made me feel a lot older than I was.
And then I'm watching during the pandemic, how there's this
rising trend of women just embracing their natural hair color
and growing their natural hair color out, And I was like, God,
how freeing would that be to just not feel like
I need to raise to the salon every three and
a half weeks. It's for me. It wasn't really about
(17:14):
saving a bunch of money or you know, making some
statement or something like that it was just like, how
freeing would it be if I didn't feel embarrassed of
this thing about myself, if I could just be who
I am. And so I started growing my hair out,
and over the course of the pandemic, I mean, the
grow out process is really frustrating because there's just no
(17:36):
way to make it look good while it's growing out.
I mean, it just I look back on pictures and
I'm like, yeah, it just doesn't look good while it's
growing out. I had so much semi permanent color on
my hair that even the parts of the hair, like
the line of delineation was really clear, but then the
colored part of my hair at the bottom was sort
of like fading bizarrely, and so it was like, you know,
(17:58):
red brown, I don't know, all different kind of shades
of like brown, red, black kind of thing. It never
looked good while it was growing out. But then finally
once the growout was done, you know, I would get
comments from people that would say, like, what do you
think of your hair? Do you like it? And this
always struck me as an odd question to ask, because
it's like, here's the reason why the question is odd.
(18:20):
It's like, what does it matter? Do you ever ask
a person like, do you like your nose? You know,
like it's my nose. So I didn't pick it, Like
I didn't you know, look through a catalog and be like,
that's the nose I want. I'll take that nose. Like
do you ever ask a person like do you like
your eye color? Do you like your ears? Like? No,
(18:40):
these are the features that God gave me, and they're
the features that I have, and I'm choosing to embrace it.
And it's such a affront to so many people for
a woman to embrace her features and just love herself.
And same thing has happened to me with makeup. I
really stopped ing makeup during the pandemic in twenty twenty
when we in shutdown. I was six months pregnant with Nella.
(19:02):
I was working around the clock. I was really stressed.
I wasn't leaving the house, so it was like, why
am I going to put makeup on? And one of
the things that I realized is I stop putting makeup
on is how much I just really didn't like wearing it.
How I felt a lot more free and like myself
when I wasn't wearing it, And even to this day,
sometimes I will put makeup on if I'm going out
somewhere or getting dressed up, and the first thing I
(19:24):
want to do when I come home is take my
makeup off. I just really like the feeling of not
wearing it. I do like wearing it sometimes, but I
would say like ninety nine percent of the time, I
would prefer not to have any makeup on my face.
And it's just an interesting thing how other people respond
to this. People think you're not professional if you're not
wearing makeup. They project their own insecurities onto you. They
(19:48):
feel like, oh, you must not care about yourself if
you're not putting makeup on, or you must not really
like take pride in your appearance. And I just wholeheartedly
reject that. I mean, I feel like more myself than
I have ever felt with my natural hair color grown out.
I really prefer not wearing makeup, like I said, and
it's more about how I feel. I was talking to
some teachers at the yoga study the other day about this.
(20:11):
It's less about how I look and more about how
I feel. And I think that's another flip that's very
hard for many women to make, but that is an
important one for us to make that we are used
to focusing on how we look because how we look
helps us to manage the behavior of other people. This
is so true. Any woman will tell you as you've
(20:32):
moved through the world, you have internalized this feeling like
if I wear the wrong thing, if I dress the
wrong way, if it's too provocative, if I could incite
a man to treat me in a way that I
don't want to be treated. And so women learn to
cover up. This is something that I learned from the
time I was very very young. We learned to cover up.
We learned to dress in a certain way. Cover the booty,
(20:54):
cover the neckline, the chest. We learn to hide so
that we can control the behavior of others. And instead
of learning to dress in a way that feels comfortable
to you, how would you dress if all you had
to think about is what felt good to you in
your body? What kind of makeup would you wear? If
(21:15):
all you had to think about is what feels good
to you? And that may shift and change during different seasons,
like maybe when I don't have young kids, putting makeup
on will become something that I do for fun as
a way, like a part of my artistic expression. I
could definitely see that being a thing, but for now,
taking that off my plate is like, oh, such a relief.
(21:35):
It feels so good to just know that I feel
comfortable in my own skin without makeup on. And this
is what I was talking to my fellow yoga teachers about,
is it's like, yeah, maybe the way that I look
with makeup on, would I pick that look over the
non makeup look sometimes, But the way I feel knowing
that I don't have to put makeup on to feel
good about myself. I don't have to put makeup on
(21:56):
to feel good and to leave the house and to
feel like I'm put together. There are lots of ways
that I can feel like I'm put together and I'm
ready for my day that doesn't involve makeup, and that
feels really really good to me. And I don't think
women are given permission to think through like how I
feel is actually more important than how it looks. So
many of us are moving through the world thinking about
(22:17):
how it looks to others and not about how it feels.
And I was talking about this on Instagram recently, about
how I feel like I've been hiding on Instagram. I
really feel like I'm on this weird fence where the
pendulum could swing either direction. I'm either gonna quit Instagram
and delete it off my phone and never go back
on it again. Or I feel like I need to
(22:40):
show up as I want to say a creator, but
really like show up in my own self expression on Instagram.
I need to do one or the other. I either
need to stop hiding on Instagram and start creating something,
or I need to delete it and get rid of
it for good, because consuming Instagram without creating on Instagram
has not been good for my mental health. But what
(23:02):
I was talking about is how I have avoided showing
up on Instagram because I'm afraid of I think what
I'm trying to do subconsciously is manage the behavior of
other people. I think I'm afraid of being criticized for
the esthetic, for the color of my hair, for not
wearing makeup. I'm afraid of being criticized for something that
(23:24):
I say, if I say something incorrectly, for the content
that I create, whatever art that I put out there,
being criticized for that. I've watched it happen to so
many other people, and I think I'm kind of bracing
for what might happen if I would were were to
really put myself out there and to really show up
in my fullness on Instagram. I have been slowly giving
(23:45):
myself permission to show up in my fullness in my life,
in the safety of my immediate community, and I have
not yet given myself that permission on the broader scale.
And what I was saying on Instagram is I'm going
to just give it a try. I feel like I can't.
I have to get off the fence, the fence sitting
that I'm doing where Instagram is still on my phone
(24:05):
and I'm consuming it. And mostly I mean I'm inspired
by people on Instagram. I find recipes on Instagram. I
find ideas for all kinds of stuff on Instagram. I'm
like so inspired. I'll watch people take pregnancy tests like
endless endless pregnancy tests, strangers on Instagram. I'll get emotionally
(24:28):
involved in their stories, like I really do enjoy checking
out like that. I don't think it's overall good for
me to do that for an hour a day or
whatever I do if I'm not also going to be
making a contribution, right, Because in a community, you don't
just consume you also participate, And so if I'm not
going to be participating then consuming it's just not helpful
(24:51):
for me. So I've got to make a decision. I've
got to either delete it or I've got to participate.
I've got to make a decision. I've got to either
delete it or I've got to participate. And I can
tell there's a lot of fear about participating because I'm
(25:12):
just not sure how people are going to respond. It's
weird because it's not like here on the podcast, I
just come. I don't have a script. I share from
my heart. I talk about what's going on with me.
I share really vulnerable things about what's going on in
my life. I mean, I've talked about trying to get pregnant,
and I've talked about health problems, and I've talked about
money problems, and I've talked about all kinds of stuff.
(25:35):
So it's not like I'm holding back that information from
sharing it in a public sphere at all. It's more
like the platform of Instagram has such instant feedback in
a way that allows for people to say things very
quickly that they might not say to you if they
were in person. And I just don't know that I
(25:57):
want to open myself to that kind of feedback from strangers.
So this is my way. Let's just say this, This
is my way of practicing confidence, because I don't think
you can just go, yeah, I should be more confident.
Let's be more confident. Rah rah. I don't think that works.
I think you have to pick something. Confidence is built
in these moments when there is something that you feel
afraid to do and you choose to do it anyway,
(26:19):
and what you discover about yourself is not that, oh,
there really aren't that many people out there. What you
discover about yourself is I'm actually strong enough, like I
have the inner integrity to withstand criticism from someone that
I don't know. Someone can say something rude to me
on Instagram and I'm going to be fine. And that's
(26:39):
where confidence grows. And so this is my practice for
confidence is getting on Instagram. At first, it was like
every day for thirty days, and then I'm like, I
think that's a little too intense. So I'm basically just
practicing a few times a week getting on Instagram and
saying the thing that I want to say, just saying something,
just showing up, showing my face using my voice, express
(27:00):
seeing myself. The other thing I explained that has helped
me back from posting more on Instagram is that Instagram
used to be this place that really facilitated self expression.
And I know we kind of made fun of this,
but it was like, here's what I'm eating today, or
here's what I'm drinking, or you know, just kind of
showing here's what's going on in my life or here's
what I'm thinking through and the timeline was just chronological,
(27:22):
and you just got to see what your friends were
doing or you know, friends of friends or whatever. And
now the way that Instagram has evolved, it's less conducive
to that. It's more about creating content that you know, uh,
that is educational that entertains people, which is all well
and good, but I think they're just because you're creating
(27:44):
content doesn't mean that you're expressing yourself in an authentic
way or in a way that cultivates courage and confidence.
And I would really like to express myself in a
way on Instagram that cultivates courage and confidence. For me,
that's the whole point, is expressing myself and participating in community.
That is the entire purpose and if Instagram. If I
(28:07):
learn after however long, that Instagram cannot serve that purpose
for me, then so be it, and I will move on.
But that's the purpose that I'm hoping Instagram can serve.
So this is my practice of building my own confidence
is posting on Instagram. For you, it might be something
totally different. You might be like, yeah, no, I'm totally
good without Instagram. Don't need that in my life. That's
(28:30):
how I feel about TikTok. I'm like, yeah, I don't
have the energy or the bandwitz to start a new platform,
but I'm going to do it on Instagram. And maybe
for you it's something totally different. Maybe for you it's
like something more interpersonal, like having a conversation with someone
that you've known you've needed to have for a really
long time, where you're honest about how you're feeling about something.
Maybe it's like asking someone out. Maybe it's Oh, I
(28:52):
did this for a while. I was working with an author,
a really well known author, helping him with the book,
and he he was working on a book about confidence,
and he gave me during that time, because we were
having all these conversations about confidence, he gave me this
challenge to I think it was like five times a
day to walk up to a total stranger and start
(29:14):
up a conversation with them, because through our conversation, I
was telling him like, nothing terrifies me more than being
thrown into a conversation with a stranger, Like if someone
else talks to me, I will reciprocate. But the thought
of like walking up to a group of people that
I don't know and being like, Hey, how are you
guys doing tonight? You know, he was having me do
this at Starbucks. We were doing it like I was
in La at the time, so we were anytime we'd
(29:36):
be out and about, he'd be like, yeah, go up
to that group of people and just introduce yourself and
say hey, and ask him how their day is going.
And oh my gosh, the way that that pushed me
outside of my comfort zone. So you can always tell
when something will build confidence if it's something you really
really really don't want to do, So think about what
that might be for you. It might be something interpersonal,
it might be something else, Like maybe for you it's
like an artistic project. You need to start on that
(29:59):
book that you been putting off forever. You know that
you know that you know that you need to write
this book, and you're terrified to start because you're afraid
it's not going to be any good, or you're afraid
nobody's gonna read it, or whatever. And this is your
this is your cue to start, and we can do
it together. I've decided my motivation for this is that
(30:20):
the longer that I keep myself small and hold back,
the more leeway it gives. Like, think about if there's
I know that this isn't really factually accurate, but imagine
the oxygen in the room being like a finite amount,
and think about, like, if I'm taking up one tiny
percentage of oxygen in the room, then that gives Joshmo
(30:42):
over here, who thinks really highly of himself, the ability
to take up ninety nine percent of the oxygen in
the room. But if I take up fifty percent of
the oxygen in the room, then Joshmo doesn't. He only
has fifty percent to take up, and we'll have to
be in a negotiation for who gets to take up
more or less. And I feel like all these evil
people in the world who feel so confident in themselves,
(31:04):
like we deserve to be at least as confident as
they are. Okay, so this is my call to arms
for you, because I know if you're listening to the show,
and especially if you've made it this long, you're like me.
You're a really good hearted person who has great intentions
and you want what's best for everybody, and you have
beautiful things to offer to the world. You have gifts,
(31:26):
you have skills, you have intelligence, you have a massive,
massive heart, and so stop hiding your heart, stop holding
it back, stop just stop that, stop letting this lack
of confidence get in the way, and jump over this
barrier that tells you like, oh, well, you might be
wrong about that, or other people might know more than
you do, or you know, there's really just so much
(31:49):
that we don't know, like nobody knows the right answer
to these things. Like the fact that you're thinking that
in your head tells me you're an extremely healthy, well
balanced person who deserves to be in a position of
leadership and deserves to make the contribution that you know
that you want to make to the world. So join
me in this endeavor. We're going to just leapfrog over
(32:12):
our lack of confidence, choose to do the thing that
scares the Bejesus out of us, and slowly but surely
we will build the confidence that we deserve to have
and will edge these other mefors out of the picture.
That's my hope, at least choosing not to swear because
you may have kids listening in the background, and because
I have to like practice as explicit if I swear.
(32:34):
So I just am so grateful for you. Thank you
for being here, thank you for listening. Go forth and
be confident, and I'll see you back next week on
The Writer Story podcast.
Pick up the pieces of your life who put them
back together with the words you write, all the beauty
and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story, you get the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold? It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, Write your story. Hello and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about confidence, and specifically I want to talk about why
there are so many smart, capable, incredible, loving, amazing, talented, creative,
(00:48):
beautiful people in the world who lack the confidence to
bring their skills and their talents and their gifts to
the table. And why there are so many people who
don't have any of those qualities, who lack character, who
lack intelligence, who just lack basic decency, who have the
(01:08):
utmost confidence, and how this dichotomy, this oxymoron of a
world that we're living in, How maybe part of how
we restabilize the balance is for those of us who
know that deep down, like we do care about people,
We want the world to be a better place. We
have good hearts, we have good intentions. Of course we
(01:30):
make mistakes. Of course we're not perfect. Of course we
don't know always you know what the outcome is going
to be or what the best solution is. But those
of us who have good hearts, maybe we ought to
increase our confidence just by deciding we're going to just
by changing our mindsets so that we can recalibrate this
world that we're living in, and so that we can
bring all of the gifts that we have to the
(01:52):
table to share with the community. We're not doing anybody
any favors by questioning ourselves or holding back our artistic abilities,
or holding back our words, or you know, choosing to
hide ourselves or hide our thoughts, or hide our ideas
or hide our art or whatever. Like all the tiptoeing
that we're doing. And maybe I'm just talking to myself here,
(02:13):
but all the tiptoeing that I'm doing is so ridiculous
in light of this world we're living in, where there
are people who are utterly depraved, but like utterly confident
that they have something to offer. What about my confidence
that I have something to offer? What about your confidence
that you have something to offer? And this is just
something that has come up for me again and again
over the course of the past couple of weeks, especially
(02:34):
as I've watched the Epstein files unfold in the media,
and as we've learned the true depravity of some of
the people who are who hold really high positions of
power in our country, and who we have idolized and
put on pedestals, and who have utter like wealth and
power and confidence. These people have utter confidence to do
(02:58):
whatever the frick they want to do in the world.
They move and breathe as if the world just bows
at their feet, and the world does, in many ways
bow at their feet. And when you peel back the
layers of this and realize that under the surface, these
people have no integrity, no character, no sense of right
and wrong, no concern for breaking the law, you know,
(03:20):
no concern for what might be helpful or hurtful for
a person who they come into contact with. It's all
about serving their own purposes and doing what's good for them.
They have no accountability in their life, you know, there
are none of these other factors in place, and yet
they have this insane, brazen confidence. I'm like, maybe the
world could benefit from some of the rest of us
(03:41):
who are playing small right now, just deciding I'm done,
I'm done playing small. Nope, I'm a good I'm you know,
at my core, I'm a good person who wants what's
good for the world. And of course I'm not perfect,
and of course I make mistakes, and of course I
don't always know what's you know, what the right thing
to do is. But at the end of the day,
my intentions are good and because of that, I should
(04:02):
have a lot more confidence than I do. Another example
that I saw of this in the media, and forgive me,
I'm going to do a terrible job of explaining it
because I have not watched the show. I have watched
plenty of reality TV in my day, but I've not
watched this particular show this season. It's a clip that
I saw on social media from the current season of
Love is Blind. And the clip is of a really
(04:25):
just average looking dude talking to the woman who he
was set up with through the experts on the show
Love is Blind. So I believe by the time they're
having this conversation, they're married. I guess they've been married
and they're living together and they're having this conversation where
he says to her, you know, something that I've been
(04:45):
wanting to say to you, but I don't really have
to say it because it's going to make me look
like an a hole, which should have been his first
clue that he shouldn't have said it, but he says
it anyway. Is that all these women that I've dated
before you have all just you know, they've had just
a different I don't know how to say it. They
just have done a lot of CrossFit, they've done a
lot of pilates. And she's like, you're trying to say,
(05:07):
they've had a different body than I've had. And the
way the conversation unfolds was the perfect example of exactly
what I'm talking about. You have this woman who is
strikingly gorgeous, like absolutely drop dead gorgeous, beautiful, who is composed,
(05:27):
who is well spoken, who is interesting, who is you know,
a good conversationalist, who's a doctor, by the way, so
incredibly intelligent. Then you have this man who is you know,
I said, average, looking like nothing nothing interesting about him really,
and who's telling this woman who is way way away
(05:51):
out of his league, like light years out of his league,
that she's not good enough for him because her body
has a different composition than other women he's dated in
the past. It's just absurd, Like I'm like, on what
planet has he gotten here? And I mean, I have
to give her a lot of credit. I think she
brought a ton of confidence to the table in this conversation.
Her composure through the conversation, her ability to just keep
(06:14):
her mouth shut and let him dig his own grave,
was very impressive and inspiring. I was like, I hope to,
you know, hold that kind of composure if anyone ever
attacked me the way that he just attacked her and
tried to make her feel small is really what he
was trying to do. I hope that if I was
in the same situation that I would have her composure.
I don't know that I would, but you could tell
(06:36):
that there was a deep sense of confidence in her
because she didn't have to slap back and react in
that moment, and she just really let him say what
he was going to say and make himself look dumb
what she did. But it was just this other moment
of for me realizing that there are so many people
(06:57):
out there in the world who feel so confident in
who they are and who don't have the character to
back that up, who don't have the skills to back
it up, who don't have the intelligence to back it up,
who haven't put in the work you know another I
almost recorded this episode and maybe I'll do this for
next week. This episode was almost going to be about
(07:19):
the exhaustion that comes from just constant self improvement and
how I think there is something that I'm going to
call toxic self improvement or toxic self help that comes
when no matter how much work you do on yourself,
you always think that you have to do more work.
You always It's interesting because I feel like when I
went through my divorce, one of the things that saved
(07:41):
me was my own willingness to look at myself and say,
how did I contribute to this situation? How did I
contribute to this outcome that I participated in creating? What
was going on on my side of the street, Like
what did I have happening internally that led me to
say yes to this, That led me to, you know,
(08:01):
not set better boundaries and cleaning up what was on
my side of the street was so empowering and motivating
because it helped me to create a different reality and
to reshape my life and to find my agency again,
and it was such an important and pivotal moment in
my life that now I'm in a place where I've
done so much work on myself. I've done so much work.
(08:24):
I've done therapy. I've gone to on site twice, which
is like a week long therapy camp. I've done EMDR,
I've done you know, I go to yoga all the time.
I teach yoga. Now I did this yoga training I
did improv to try to like become a little bit
more free in my expression. I have done just thousands
of hours of trainings and courses and membership sites and
(08:48):
meditations and breath work and everything, like everything that I
can to become the highest version of myself or however
you want to say that. And there just comes a
certain point where it's like, maybe maybe the turn now
is to just accept that you're already great how you are,
(09:08):
that you're already loved how you are, that there's nothing
else that needs to be changed about you, that you're
a beautiful, incredible miracle of a person who's unfolding in
real time, and that you deserve to show up here
fully in all of your messiness and in all of
your grace in all of your mistakes and in all
of your triumphs. You know, I think I'm reaching that
(09:33):
point where I've sort of exhausted the self help stuff,
Like I just don't know how much more I can
improve myself. I think now it's more just about having
the confidence to really bring who I am to the world.
And I do already do that. I mean, I have
this podcast, and I'm on social media, but I notice
that there are ways where I discount myself. I step back,
(09:58):
I put myself underneath people or behind people, or I
assume someone else knows more than I do, or I assume,
you know, they have more expertise than I do, when
what I don't do is own the powerful wisdom that
is within me and the powerful voice that is within me.
And sometimes I shy away from that. And I think
that's what I'm talking about. Maybe sometimes you shy away
(10:19):
from yours too, And maybe you watch other people and
you feel kind of jealous of the success that they
see because they just have this kind of brazen confidence
to move forward in the world. It's like they are
not panicked about maybe making a mistake. They're not panicking
about you know, maybe not knowing the exact right next
step to take. They're just going for it. They're just
(10:40):
shooting their shot, and you kind of watch that and
go like, why don't I have the confidence to do that.
There's a book that I read a long time ago
when I was going through my divorce. Actually, it's called
The Confidence Code. It's by doctor Catty Kay and Clare Shipman,
and it's a book that I probably will revisit. It
talks a lot about out the data and statistics behind
(11:02):
why it's much easier for men to feel confident than
for women. It is not cultured into women to be confident.
We are not even really given permission to exist in
the world in the fullness of ourselves. We just really aren't.
We're conditioned to be quiet to serve others. We're conditioned
(11:25):
to be quiet to serve others, to be sweet, to smile.
I don't know if you saw the clip of the
reporter Caitlyn Collins asking Donald Trump a question at a
press conference about the Epstein survivors, and Trump's response to
her is you know, in all the years that I've
(11:46):
known you and Caitlin, I've never seen you smile. You
need to smile. More, you know you really you have
such a sour look on your face kind of a thing.
And this clip went viral and Caitlyn's response to it
went viral, I think because so many women really resonate
with that feeling of being told like just smile, just
be happy, just look pretty, just be there, don't say much,
(12:08):
don't insert yourself, don't get too big for your birches,
keep your feet on the ground, like, don't be too overconfident.
Women are not allowed to be over confident. Another clip
that I saw, I'm just rattling off clips that I've
seen on social media, but it's it's all proving my point.
Another clip that I saw that really reiterates this point
(12:29):
is a clip of a reporter asking the ski star
Eileen Goo about whether her two silver medals whether she
saw these two silver medals as a win basically like yay,
I got the silver, or as a loss like I
lost the gold. And her response to this reporter was
(12:51):
so unexpected, I think, because we don't expect women to
clap back like this, but it was so perfect and
I just was cheering her on the whole time. She
basically just said to him, like what a ridiculous question
to ask me, I'm so Her response to this reporter is,
I'm the most decorated free skier, female free skier in history.
(13:18):
So her response to this reporter is I'm the most
decorated free skier, female free skier in history. I think
that's an answer in and of itself. How do I
say this? Winning a medal at the Olympics is a
life changing experience for every athlete. Doing it five times
is exponentially harder because every medal is equally hard for me,
but everybody else's expectations rise, right, and so the two
(13:40):
medals last situation. To be quite frank with you, I
think that's kind of a ridiculous perspective to take. I'm
showcasing my best skiing. I'm doing things I quite literally
have never done before, and so I think that is
more than good enough. But thank you, and I love
this response. I was so inspired by her response because again,
I don't think women are given permission to respond with
(14:01):
this much confidence. I don't think that we're definitely not
cultured to have this much confidence, but we're also in
many ways criticized for feeling this sure of ourselves. And
so as a woman in the world. If you want
to be a person of confidence, I think we have
to really fight against the current, fight against the grain
(14:22):
and just decide. It has to be an inside job
where we decide, I have something valuable to offer, I
have something I want to say, I have something I
want to share, and I'm allowed to exist here just
like everyone else. I mean, she Isilindu is the perfect
example of it doesn't matter what a woman does, it
doesn't matter how well she performs, She's still going to
be under scrutiny for something. And I'll tell you, like
(14:44):
in the early years of my career, when I was
traveling and speaking a lot. This was after packing Light
came out, and I was doing a lot of speaking,
and a lot of the speaking was at churches, and
I would get a lot of feedback from the audiences
about the keynotes that I was delivering. Most to the feedback,
like ninety percent of the feedback that I would get
had to do with what I was wearing. So I
(15:05):
would get feedback from churches saying, like, you know, this
is just so insane, but like someone complained that you
could see my underwear line through my pants, like I
was wearing like a pair of tight I guess black jeans,
and you could see my underwear line through the jeans.
Someone complained that you could see my underwear line through
my jeens, and my thought at the time was like, well,
(15:27):
people were underwear, So I don't really understand why. First
of all, like a woman is on stage delivering a
keynote message and you're sitting in the audience and you're
staring at her underwear, and I'm the problem. I got
a feedback once about my shorts being too short, I
got feedback about I don't even remember now all of
the different things, but one of my takeaways from that
(15:49):
was just how it doesn't even matter what's coming out
of your mouth as a woman, the way you look
is really what everybody is going to focus on. Doesn't
matter how brilliant what you're saying is, people are going
to focus on what they see. They're going to focus
on the visuals. And I've really battled with that as
I have wanted to show up fully in all the
(16:10):
different platforms of my life. I've battled with that as
I've thought about showing up on Facebook. When I in
twenty twenty decided to let my natural hair color grow out,
which is gray. I've been going gray since I was
twenty years old. I've been covering it up with die
since then, since the first time that I found a
gray hair. And in the later years of my thirties,
like as I was like thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight,
(16:31):
I was like, you know, fifty maybe percent of my
hair was gray. And because of that, I was having
to go to the salon every three and a half
to four weeks to get it covered because the roots
would just show very quickly. The line of delineation was
very obvious, and so if my roots would grow out
at all, you would see the gray. And I remember
just feeling so ashamed and embarrassed of this gray hair.
(16:54):
It just made me feel a lot older than I was.
And then I'm watching during the pandemic, how there's this
rising trend of women just embracing their natural hair color
and growing their natural hair color out, And I was like, God,
how freeing would that be to just not feel like
I need to raise to the salon every three and
a half weeks. It's for me. It wasn't really about
(17:14):
saving a bunch of money or you know, making some
statement or something like that it was just like, how
freeing would it be if I didn't feel embarrassed of
this thing about myself, if I could just be who
I am. And so I started growing my hair out,
and over the course of the pandemic, I mean, the
grow out process is really frustrating because there's just no
(17:36):
way to make it look good while it's growing out.
I mean, it just I look back on pictures and
I'm like, yeah, it just doesn't look good while it's
growing out. I had so much semi permanent color on
my hair that even the parts of the hair, like
the line of delineation was really clear, but then the
colored part of my hair at the bottom was sort
of like fading bizarrely, and so it was like, you know,
(17:58):
red brown, I don't know, all different kind of shades
of like brown, red, black kind of thing. It never
looked good while it was growing out. But then finally
once the growout was done, you know, I would get
comments from people that would say, like, what do you
think of your hair? Do you like it? And this
always struck me as an odd question to ask, because
it's like, here's the reason why the question is odd.
(18:20):
It's like, what does it matter? Do you ever ask
a person like, do you like your nose? You know,
like it's my nose. So I didn't pick it, Like
I didn't you know, look through a catalog and be like,
that's the nose I want. I'll take that nose. Like
do you ever ask a person like do you like
your eye color? Do you like your ears? Like? No,
(18:40):
these are the features that God gave me, and they're
the features that I have, and I'm choosing to embrace it.
And it's such a affront to so many people for
a woman to embrace her features and just love herself.
And same thing has happened to me with makeup. I
really stopped ing makeup during the pandemic in twenty twenty
when we in shutdown. I was six months pregnant with Nella.
(19:02):
I was working around the clock. I was really stressed.
I wasn't leaving the house, so it was like, why
am I going to put makeup on? And one of
the things that I realized is I stop putting makeup
on is how much I just really didn't like wearing it.
How I felt a lot more free and like myself
when I wasn't wearing it, And even to this day,
sometimes I will put makeup on if I'm going out
somewhere or getting dressed up, and the first thing I
(19:24):
want to do when I come home is take my
makeup off. I just really like the feeling of not
wearing it. I do like wearing it sometimes, but I
would say like ninety nine percent of the time, I
would prefer not to have any makeup on my face.
And it's just an interesting thing how other people respond
to this. People think you're not professional if you're not
wearing makeup. They project their own insecurities onto you. They
(19:48):
feel like, oh, you must not care about yourself if
you're not putting makeup on, or you must not really
like take pride in your appearance. And I just wholeheartedly
reject that. I mean, I feel like more myself than
I have ever felt with my natural hair color grown out.
I really prefer not wearing makeup, like I said, and
it's more about how I feel. I was talking to
some teachers at the yoga study the other day about this.
(20:11):
It's less about how I look and more about how
I feel. And I think that's another flip that's very
hard for many women to make, but that is an
important one for us to make that we are used
to focusing on how we look because how we look
helps us to manage the behavior of other people. This
is so true. Any woman will tell you as you've
(20:32):
moved through the world, you have internalized this feeling like
if I wear the wrong thing, if I dress the
wrong way, if it's too provocative, if I could incite
a man to treat me in a way that I
don't want to be treated. And so women learn to
cover up. This is something that I learned from the
time I was very very young. We learned to cover up.
We learned to dress in a certain way. Cover the booty,
(20:54):
cover the neckline, the chest. We learn to hide so
that we can control the behavior of others. And instead
of learning to dress in a way that feels comfortable
to you, how would you dress if all you had
to think about is what felt good to you in
your body? What kind of makeup would you wear? If
(21:15):
all you had to think about is what feels good
to you? And that may shift and change during different seasons,
like maybe when I don't have young kids, putting makeup
on will become something that I do for fun as
a way, like a part of my artistic expression. I
could definitely see that being a thing, but for now,
taking that off my plate is like, oh, such a relief.
(21:35):
It feels so good to just know that I feel
comfortable in my own skin without makeup on. And this
is what I was talking to my fellow yoga teachers about,
is it's like, yeah, maybe the way that I look
with makeup on, would I pick that look over the
non makeup look sometimes, But the way I feel knowing
that I don't have to put makeup on to feel
good about myself. I don't have to put makeup on
(21:56):
to feel good and to leave the house and to
feel like I'm put together. There are lots of ways
that I can feel like I'm put together and I'm
ready for my day that doesn't involve makeup, and that
feels really really good to me. And I don't think
women are given permission to think through like how I
feel is actually more important than how it looks. So
many of us are moving through the world thinking about
(22:17):
how it looks to others and not about how it feels.
And I was talking about this on Instagram recently, about
how I feel like I've been hiding on Instagram. I
really feel like I'm on this weird fence where the
pendulum could swing either direction. I'm either gonna quit Instagram
and delete it off my phone and never go back
on it again. Or I feel like I need to
(22:40):
show up as I want to say a creator, but
really like show up in my own self expression on Instagram.
I need to do one or the other. I either
need to stop hiding on Instagram and start creating something,
or I need to delete it and get rid of
it for good, because consuming Instagram without creating on Instagram
has not been good for my mental health. But what
(23:02):
I was talking about is how I have avoided showing
up on Instagram because I'm afraid of I think what
I'm trying to do subconsciously is manage the behavior of
other people. I think I'm afraid of being criticized for
the esthetic, for the color of my hair, for not
wearing makeup. I'm afraid of being criticized for something that
(23:24):
I say, if I say something incorrectly, for the content
that I create, whatever art that I put out there,
being criticized for that. I've watched it happen to so
many other people, and I think I'm kind of bracing
for what might happen if I would were were to
really put myself out there and to really show up
in my fullness on Instagram. I have been slowly giving
(23:45):
myself permission to show up in my fullness in my life,
in the safety of my immediate community, and I have
not yet given myself that permission on the broader scale.
And what I was saying on Instagram is I'm going
to just give it a try. I feel like I can't.
I have to get off the fence, the fence sitting
that I'm doing where Instagram is still on my phone
(24:05):
and I'm consuming it. And mostly I mean I'm inspired
by people on Instagram. I find recipes on Instagram. I
find ideas for all kinds of stuff on Instagram. I'm
like so inspired. I'll watch people take pregnancy tests like
endless endless pregnancy tests, strangers on Instagram. I'll get emotionally
(24:28):
involved in their stories, like I really do enjoy checking
out like that. I don't think it's overall good for
me to do that for an hour a day or
whatever I do if I'm not also going to be
making a contribution, right, Because in a community, you don't
just consume you also participate, And so if I'm not
going to be participating then consuming it's just not helpful
(24:51):
for me. So I've got to make a decision. I've
got to either delete it or I've got to participate.
I've got to make a decision. I've got to either
delete it or I've got to participate. And I can
tell there's a lot of fear about participating because I'm
(25:12):
just not sure how people are going to respond. It's
weird because it's not like here on the podcast, I
just come. I don't have a script. I share from
my heart. I talk about what's going on with me.
I share really vulnerable things about what's going on in
my life. I mean, I've talked about trying to get pregnant,
and I've talked about health problems, and I've talked about
money problems, and I've talked about all kinds of stuff.
(25:35):
So it's not like I'm holding back that information from
sharing it in a public sphere at all. It's more
like the platform of Instagram has such instant feedback in
a way that allows for people to say things very
quickly that they might not say to you if they
were in person. And I just don't know that I
(25:57):
want to open myself to that kind of feedback from strangers.
So this is my way. Let's just say this, This
is my way of practicing confidence, because I don't think
you can just go, yeah, I should be more confident.
Let's be more confident. Rah rah. I don't think that works.
I think you have to pick something. Confidence is built
in these moments when there is something that you feel
afraid to do and you choose to do it anyway,
(26:19):
and what you discover about yourself is not that, oh,
there really aren't that many people out there. What you
discover about yourself is I'm actually strong enough, like I
have the inner integrity to withstand criticism from someone that
I don't know. Someone can say something rude to me
on Instagram and I'm going to be fine. And that's
(26:39):
where confidence grows. And so this is my practice for
confidence is getting on Instagram. At first, it was like
every day for thirty days, and then I'm like, I
think that's a little too intense. So I'm basically just
practicing a few times a week getting on Instagram and
saying the thing that I want to say, just saying something,
just showing up, showing my face using my voice, express
(27:00):
seeing myself. The other thing I explained that has helped
me back from posting more on Instagram is that Instagram
used to be this place that really facilitated self expression.
And I know we kind of made fun of this,
but it was like, here's what I'm eating today, or
here's what I'm drinking, or you know, just kind of
showing here's what's going on in my life or here's
what I'm thinking through and the timeline was just chronological,
(27:22):
and you just got to see what your friends were
doing or you know, friends of friends or whatever. And
now the way that Instagram has evolved, it's less conducive
to that. It's more about creating content that you know, uh,
that is educational that entertains people, which is all well
and good, but I think they're just because you're creating
(27:44):
content doesn't mean that you're expressing yourself in an authentic
way or in a way that cultivates courage and confidence.
And I would really like to express myself in a
way on Instagram that cultivates courage and confidence. For me,
that's the whole point, is expressing myself and participating in community.
That is the entire purpose and if Instagram. If I
(28:07):
learn after however long, that Instagram cannot serve that purpose
for me, then so be it, and I will move on.
But that's the purpose that I'm hoping Instagram can serve.
So this is my practice of building my own confidence
is posting on Instagram. For you, it might be something
totally different. You might be like, yeah, no, I'm totally
good without Instagram. Don't need that in my life. That's
(28:30):
how I feel about TikTok. I'm like, yeah, I don't
have the energy or the bandwitz to start a new platform,
but I'm going to do it on Instagram. And maybe
for you it's something totally different. Maybe for you it's
like something more interpersonal, like having a conversation with someone
that you've known you've needed to have for a really
long time, where you're honest about how you're feeling about something.
Maybe it's like asking someone out. Maybe it's Oh, I
(28:52):
did this for a while. I was working with an author,
a really well known author, helping him with the book,
and he he was working on a book about confidence,
and he gave me during that time, because we were
having all these conversations about confidence, he gave me this
challenge to I think it was like five times a
day to walk up to a total stranger and start
(29:14):
up a conversation with them, because through our conversation, I
was telling him like, nothing terrifies me more than being
thrown into a conversation with a stranger, Like if someone
else talks to me, I will reciprocate. But the thought
of like walking up to a group of people that
I don't know and being like, Hey, how are you
guys doing tonight? You know, he was having me do
this at Starbucks. We were doing it like I was
in La at the time, so we were anytime we'd
(29:36):
be out and about, he'd be like, yeah, go up
to that group of people and just introduce yourself and
say hey, and ask him how their day is going.
And oh my gosh, the way that that pushed me
outside of my comfort zone. So you can always tell
when something will build confidence if it's something you really
really really don't want to do, So think about what
that might be for you. It might be something interpersonal,
it might be something else, Like maybe for you it's
like an artistic project. You need to start on that
(29:59):
book that you been putting off forever. You know that
you know that you know that you need to write
this book, and you're terrified to start because you're afraid
it's not going to be any good, or you're afraid
nobody's gonna read it, or whatever. And this is your
this is your cue to start, and we can do
it together. I've decided my motivation for this is that
(30:20):
the longer that I keep myself small and hold back,
the more leeway it gives. Like, think about if there's
I know that this isn't really factually accurate, but imagine
the oxygen in the room being like a finite amount,
and think about, like, if I'm taking up one tiny
percentage of oxygen in the room, then that gives Joshmo
(30:42):
over here, who thinks really highly of himself, the ability
to take up ninety nine percent of the oxygen in
the room. But if I take up fifty percent of
the oxygen in the room, then Joshmo doesn't. He only
has fifty percent to take up, and we'll have to
be in a negotiation for who gets to take up
more or less. And I feel like all these evil
people in the world who feel so confident in themselves,
(31:04):
like we deserve to be at least as confident as
they are. Okay, so this is my call to arms
for you, because I know if you're listening to the show,
and especially if you've made it this long, you're like me.
You're a really good hearted person who has great intentions
and you want what's best for everybody, and you have
beautiful things to offer to the world. You have gifts,
(31:26):
you have skills, you have intelligence, you have a massive,
massive heart, and so stop hiding your heart, stop holding
it back, stop just stop that, stop letting this lack
of confidence get in the way, and jump over this
barrier that tells you like, oh, well, you might be
wrong about that, or other people might know more than
you do, or you know, there's really just so much
(31:49):
that we don't know, like nobody knows the right answer
to these things. Like the fact that you're thinking that
in your head tells me you're an extremely healthy, well
balanced person who deserves to be in a position of
leadership and deserves to make the contribution that you know
that you want to make to the world. So join
me in this endeavor. We're going to just leapfrog over
(32:12):
our lack of confidence, choose to do the thing that
scares the Bejesus out of us, and slowly but surely
we will build the confidence that we deserve to have
and will edge these other mefors out of the picture.
That's my hope, at least choosing not to swear because
you may have kids listening in the background, and because
I have to like practice as explicit if I swear.
(32:34):
So I just am so grateful for you. Thank you
for being here, thank you for listening. Go forth and
be confident, and I'll see you back next week on
The Writer Story podcast.
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