Episode Transcript
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Sian (00:00):
How have we ended up here,
by the way?
Andy (00:02):
What.
Sian (00:03):
I'm sorry, rob, very well
you coming here and asking me to
sit here and ask questions.
Welcome to Big Questions.
Short Answers.
I'm Sian.
Andy (00:11):
Hello, I'm Andy Sian's
husband asking the big life
questions.
Sian (00:16):
And possibly adding a
little bit of unsolicited advice
.
Andy (00:20):
This podcast is brought to
you by Sian's value-based
online course.
Visit sianjackeycom to find outmore.
In the last podcast, we werejust talking about confidence,
and I think confidence is areally important thing in this
day and age, more so than well,I suppose, a lot of things, and
you know, we're taught that.
You know confident kids,confident adults.
(00:41):
In the workplace, people arelooking for confidence, but a
lot of us, uh, you know,sometimes there's even the case
of that feeling of impostersyndrome the first thing to do
is to clarify what you mean byself-confidence.
Sian (00:56):
I think that's what we're
talking about.
Yeah, yeah, well,self-confidence this is the
world of cornishan, doesn't makeme right.
Yeah, let's be clear.
I do not have a phd in all thisself-confidence.
What, what I've learned, andwhat I see people do is
self-confidence is when youchoose to have a certain belief
and therefore an attitude.
Yeah, you choose to respond toyour belief about who you are.
(01:19):
That is what self-confidence is.
I have met people who areincredibly self-confident and,
may I say, inappropriately so.
Andy (01:28):
Yes, yeah.
Sian (01:33):
I've met other people who
are lacking in self-confidence
to the point of how, because ofwhat they contribute and because
of who and what they are in theworld, I've worked with them
and I say to them how can younot be self-confident with all
of this evidence of what youhave achieved and what you've
(01:55):
contributed?
So do you see what I'm saying?
It fundamentally comesself-confidence.
Is that nugget of?
What do you believe aboutyourself?
Yeah, now, fundamentally, it'sabout your life experience, your
beliefs, the values you chooseto hold, literally the daily
decisions you choose to make,which all go into a big mixing
(02:21):
bowl with a wooden spoon andthey come out as your
self-confidence.
Yeah, spoon and they come outas your self-confidence.
Yeah, I am astounded, even now,when I meet people who have and
again this is my word adelusional, completely
delusional about who and whatthey are.
(02:41):
In certain situations, theirself--confidence can be quite
destructive because there isn'ta filter of what is the outcome
of you being this self-confidentperson, but without any
evidence, and you create helland desolation consistently.
Equally, there are people thatI meet and I hope at times I can
(03:06):
take a seat in this space thatcan radiate to people, by being
self-confident, that I'm herewith you.
I'm can stand shoulder toshoulder with you.
We've got this.
Let's not spin.
Um, I mean one of the thingsthat I I hope I do in my life.
I don don't even know how tosay this, it just makes me feel
(03:27):
weird saying it.
But I know I have theself-confidence to go into a
challenging situation wheresomebody is emotionally spinning
.
Yeah, and I will use theanalogy of you know you're on a
merry-go-round and that horse isjust going faster and faster
and faster and faster.
And my job is to have theself-confidence to be an oak
(03:49):
tree just to stand still, tocreate a calm and to help you
slowly slow that down.
But it is my confidence in myability to do that and I've
learned how to do it.
I didn't know how to do ityears ago.
I would get as unconfident andfearful as anybody else, but I
learned to do it and I actuallylearned to do it by observing
(04:13):
other people do it.
Andy (04:13):
To be honest, yeah,
because that is one of your
skills.
Sian (04:19):
You have several that
ability to go into quite scary
situations and just to slow thatspinning, as you say down yeah,
but but, andy, let's be clearyes, I can do that in those
situations and, yes, I'm oldenough and wise enough and maybe
I do need to own my space.
(04:39):
I know I have a skill in beingable to do that, but there are
other places that I've got noself-confidence.
This last weekend I wasseriously considering going to
audition for a play, right, youknow me, I love a bit of theatre
, darling, I love a bit of aspotlight, right.
But in the audition pack theysaid that I had 15 minutes to
(05:03):
audition.
But it had to be a coldaudition, cold read, which is
when you just.
They would go in there and theywould just hand me the book and
I had to read it straight awayand I bottled out.
Andy (05:11):
Because you're dyslexic.
Sian (05:12):
Because I'm terrified of
being made a fool of because I
can't read properly.
But the thing, there is thestuff I do, right?
I mean, even I have a littlesmile to myself.
You know, if I were inclinedwhich I'm not I've never spent
more than two minutes on mywebsite, but when I do, I look
at it and I think who the hellis that woman?
(05:33):
Right, but I can assure youthis weekend that woman wasn't
to be seen in the room.
So this whole thing aboutself-confidence is it isn't a
thing.
It's a movable feast and itgoes up and down like the
weather and like the temperature, depending on what the
situation is and what yourfundamental beliefs are about
(05:54):
yourself.
Again, you tell me to go in thekitchen and make a birthday
cake.
Right?
Have I made a number of themover the years?
Yes, yes, I have.
But you damn well know Sianwill go in there and give it a
go, but is she confident thatit's going to come out?
No, why?
Because my entire family havetaken the piss out of me about
my breaking all of my life.
(06:15):
I'm trying to give you basicexamples.
Andy (06:18):
But just coming back to
the cold reading, you know,
because you're dyslexic,obviously that's a thing.
But I've seen you cold readscripts and it's fine, you know.
Sian (06:32):
Right, I'm really pleased
that your judgment is that the
point is, andy, and that's whatmost of my life trying to drill
this into your head it's notabout what you think.
It's about what the individualperson thinks.
Yeah, true, not about what youthink.
It's about what the individualperson thinks yeah, true, and
exactly what I'm saying.
There'll be some situationswhere somebody's self-confidence
is absolutely evident, frontand center, fabulous, let's all
(06:55):
applaud, we need it, we want itand it was there in the moment.
And there are other times whenwe can expect people to be
confident or we think they will,because that's their role or
that's how we see them and theydon't deliver at the time.
Can I give you one example leftfield, yeah, right, I remember
talking to somebody about theirself-confidence, about their
(07:18):
ability, intellectually,actually, that's what the
confidence, confidence, thesituation was about, and I can
remember this like it wasyesterday, and they were sitting
there chatting to me andtelling me that when their
parents went to parents day uh,teacher, yeah, and this was a
grown adult I was talking tothey used to get really upset
and angry that their parent,their mother and father, were
(07:40):
not assertive in front of theteachers that they didn't engage
with.
Well, I think you've got my sonand daughter wrong and that
actually they're this, that andthe other and none.
You don't like my child orwhatever.
We learn that ability from ourparents.
If you do not have assertive,confident parents, the chances
(08:02):
of you having assertive,confident child is greatly
reduced.
Now I don't know how far belowthe line you want to go, but I'm
looking at you and I'meyeballing it right.
Um, I had an incrediblyconfident mother who had the
ability, yes, to switch on thatconfident, to switch on that
assertiveness at certain times.
I know I'm kicking my fingersand you're looking at me and
(08:24):
thinking we're recording this.
You silly bitch, you shouldn'tbe doing that she could be a
scary bird.
Well, she was a fault of nature.
Um, however, and it's notcomparing and saying one's right
and wrong, right, please.
That is not what I'm doing, butyou didn't overtly come from a
family that had assertive,confident parents.
No, right.
And if you look at your lifejourney, there are times when
(08:48):
your self-confidence had exitedthe room, pursued by a bear oh,
yeah, yeah, yeah, no question,yeah, no question.
Andy (08:56):
And I haven't got the
resources to pull myself up, so
that was part of ourrelationship, wasn't it?
Sian (09:03):
you know, just like you've
taught me to do things and be
things, yeah, in the moment,because that's what was needed,
right?
One of the roles in myrelationship with you was to be
the custodian, in some ways, ofyour confidence when you were
going through a hard time, tosit there and remind you I mean
from a career point of view.
Come on, you can pinpoint atleast five conversations when
(09:27):
you felt like the world wasfalling apart and I would sit
there and I would say, right,we're going to have a
conversation and we are justgoing to talk through the
journey of who you are, whatyour career is and what you've
achieved.
Because in that moment of alack of self-confidence just
like most people, you know you'dcompletely forgotten None of
(09:50):
that, even had a headspace.
But once we stopped thespinning, stopped the
merry-go-round and said, right,let's just look at the evidence
here.
Right, this isn't me loving youand feeding you with bullshit,
telling you you're fabulous,you're marvellous and they're
all wrong.
Right, it was feeding you withbullshit, telling you you're
fabulous, you're marvellous andthey're all wrong.
Right, it was about sittingthere and looking at the
evidence.
Right, and that could be trueof all situations.
(10:10):
Yeah, if you want to actuallylook at self-confidence or find
it, or at least open the door,you have to look at the evidence
of the journey.
Andy (10:21):
And, to be fair, I don't
want to bring your course in
here.
You know your online course,but that actually steps it
through, doesn't it?
In terms of your all yourvalues are very much part of
that and your life story, sothat you've got that evidence,
not just a cv, but somethingthat is just yeah, the bad and
(10:42):
the indifferent.
Sian (10:43):
Yes, that none of us get
out of life scot-free.
None of us don't make massivemistakes All relevant, or a
relative sorry, to who we areand what lives we lead.
Yeah, but the art of having amature, emotionally balanced
life, says she who doesn'talways get it right right is to
(11:05):
be able to look at those thingsand learn from them.
I did it, yeah.
That's where I'm.
Possibly didn't make the best ofchoices yeah but now,
reflecting back on it, or nowI'm facing a similar situation,
I'm going to address that in adifferent way.
Yeah, and that is how you buildconfidence?
Yes, by having the confidence.
(11:26):
How do you get it?
You look at yourself and youfind little ways of being
positive, right?
Yeah, one of the other thingsyou know, when we're doing this,
you keep saying to me, sean,try and give people something to
think about.
I am now sitting here with myhand on my heart telling you
(11:46):
that there are people literallyall over the world that I have
worked with in the past 20 oddyears who, every night, when
they clean their teeth, look fortwo or three things to reflect
on the day, to tell themselvesthey're proud of what they have
achieved yeah and it doesn'tnecessarily mean solving world
peace, right.
(12:07):
It means I was kind to somebodyat work who you know.
I took the time, I made alovely dinner for the family.
I stopped on the way home andmade an effort to go and buy a
face cream for myself.
You're laughing at me, right,but those are the stuff.
(12:27):
It's not the monument.
Andy (12:30):
It's like if you're buying
yourself a face cream.
I'm sure it's just aboutvaluing yourself.
Sian (12:39):
And, yeah, that end of
every day, day, let's come back
to that.
I have clients that we stillsmile about it.
They're still doing it.
They share that with anybodyand everybody, from children to
people they work with.
Yeah, damn good idea if weevery day took a little bit of
time to reflect on what we'vedone right, instead of beating
the shit out of ourselvestelling us what I should, must,
(13:00):
could have done better, shouldhave done whatever.
That is what is creating aspace for confidence to grow and
be acknowledged.
Andy (13:11):
I like that.
Sian (13:12):
I like that.
Andy (13:14):
Thanks very much.
Go and clean my teeth.
Join us next time on BigQuestions.
Short Answers with Sian Jacquetand me, Andy.
Sian (13:26):
If you have any questions
you want to ask, please send
them via the websitesianjacquetcom.
Andy (13:32):
If you enjoyed this
podcast, please subscribe and
share it with everyone you know.
Sian (13:37):
We really do appreciate
you sharing 15 minutes with us.
Andy (13:41):
And if you want to do a
bit more learning, go on to
Sian's website siansjackaycom.
There's a course on values tocreate the life you truly love.
I did it and it really does dowhat it says on the can.
Sian (13:52):
See you next time.