Episode 5: The Secret Tool to Building Confidence
Confidence - it's not just a feeling, but an action that has the power to push us into unfamiliar territories. In a riveting conversation with Megan and Jess, we unravel the intricate facets of confidence, distinguishing it from the domineering shadow of cockiness. We learn that confidence isn't about dominating conversations, but rather it's about fostering a sense of control over our own lives.
Our discussion ventures into the concept of the 'confidence competence loop', an encouraging feedback loop ignited when you dare to do something before feeling ready. The process of acquiring a skill is intricately linked with building confidence. The willingness to try something, to step out of your comfort zone, acts as a prerequisite for gaining confidence. As we gain more competence in a particular area, our confidence naturally increases, creating a positive feedback loop.
Resilience is another critical aspect of confidence. By bolstering our self-confidence, we improve our resilience, our ability to bounce back from challenges and adversities. The role of resilience in our lives can't be underestimated - it enables us to handle life's unexpected hindrances, such as fear and accidents, without allowing them to dent our confidence levels permanently.
Intriguingly, we also spotlight the concept of the 'future self'. This concept encourages us to envision our ideal version of ourselves, acting as a guide on our confidence-building journey. This focus on our future self underlines the importance of focusing on effort rather than results, a cornerstone in building resilience.
Megan beautifully encapsulates the essence of self-belief, emphasizing that no one can motivate you better than yourself. The key to confidence is to start the journey, to take that first step, even if it's into the unknown. It's the willingness to try something new, to push our boundaries, that truly builds our confidence.
As we delve deeper into the realm of confidence, we also address potential derailers. Media, appearance comparisons, and repeated failures can all act as blocks to our confidence. Developing self-awareness around these potential derailers is crucial in maintaining and enhancing our confidence.
Confidence is a skill, and like any other skill, it requires practice, preparation, and a lot of patience. It's a long game, and the journey towards confidence isn't always a smooth one. But with each step we take, with each risk we dare to take, we're getting closer to becoming a more confident version of ourselves. The willingness to try is your first step towards a more confident future.
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Hello, friend, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you'll hear conversations around healthy body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is the podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big, rad life you deserve. Hello, friends, and welcome to episode five of Sturdy Girl. Megan has rejoined us this week. Hello.
Megan: 0:29
Today we're going to talk about confidence.
Jess: 0:31
But first Megan. How was life, how was training, how are things?
Megan: 0:36
I've really just been out riding my bike, walking. My dog cleaned up my house. I did some yard work. It's been great. I did trail work on Saturday. We were out there for four hours just packing berms. It was pretty fun playing on the dirt. But yeah, there's a fairly big showing of some ladies out there, which was really cool to see. That's awesome it was fun.
Jess: 0:55
But what about you? Life got lifey. I have been in dentistry for 16 and a half years and I threw my back out last week at work, came home crying and so I got one and a half lifts in last week and we're recording this on Monday before the release, and I feel like we were just talking about this before hitting record. I know that there is no decrease in skill.
Megan: 1:20
Yeah, but that time on.
Jess: 1:23
My confidence is in question of how well I'll be able to perform the lifts or the weights.
Megan: 1:29
But it'll be fine. It's so funny because it's not even that much time off. No, but it feels like forever yeah.
Jess: 1:36
No, I'm I. My neck and back are feeling better. That's good. It was the scariest thing ever. I came home and went right to bed and had to end up like taking the day off work because it was so like neck and shoulder and like we're so just jacked. I don't know that's the worst.
Megan: 1:57
How long did it take you to start filming?
Jess: 1:58
Normal. That was Tuesday last week. I would say by Friday, but it's still kind of touchy and I still don't have like the full range of motion when I turn my head and part of it is obviously. This podcast is all audio, but there's something in dentistry with your non-dominant hand called chicken wing, so when you're attracting the cheek or something, your elbows very low with your shoulder and that is what kind of triggered it. I think was doing too much of that chicken wing in weird positions when I was working. So I am still working through that and becoming a lot more aware.
Megan: 2:30
Yeah, Well, I mean, that's a long time too. I feel like dentistry is one of those things I'm like nursing, like you're constantly on your feet.
Jess: 2:38
Yeah, well, it's a lot of repetitive motion. Yeah, I mean, 16 years is a long time to go in a profession and have this really be the first time that I've had any pain? I've had my hands or arms will get tired from long weeks, but in general, like this is.
Megan: 2:52
You've had a pretty long, pretty good going at it, pretty decent career so far, yeah.
Jess: 2:55
Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting back into lifting this week. So, yeah, yeah Sounds like a good sign. Yeah, yeah, it's been good. We'll see how these lifts go this week, but They'll go great. Thank you, okay. Should we talk about confidence? Yes. So one thing I want to ask before we dive into confidence is what would you do differently if you had more confidence? Would your life look different? Would your daily activities look different? Are there things that you would do? Say, try, start thinking about that as we start talking about what confidence is? Okay. So what is confidence? What does it look like? If you look at American Psychological Association defines it as a belief that one is capable of successfully meeting the demands of a task. So kind of like believing in yourself. It's feeling sure of yourself and your abilities. You accept and trust yourself and feel like you have a sense of control in your life.
Megan: 3:48
I love that, a sense of control.
Jess: 3:51
I'm not going to read too much into that, but here's the thing Confidence is not a feeling, it's embodied in action. Mel Robbins defines confidence as the willingness to try, and that is the definition that I identified most with, especially where we're coming at this with a sturdy girl lens, where we're talking resilience and we are looking at confidence as a skill, so embodied in action, the willingness to try. It's like that. Have you seen that social media video going around and I can't remember what the audio is specifically on it, but it was something like my life changed when I started to do the things I said I was going to do, or confidence came when I started doing the things.
Megan: 4:32
I was going to do. Yeah, it was like a trending audio, yeah.
Jess: 4:36
That is partial definition of confidence, and you do the thing.
Megan: 4:39
So yeah, trying the new things that make you uncomfortable, exactly.
Jess: 4:44
And we often think of confidence as kind of that swagger bravado the person who talks the most in the room. But it really has nothing to do with needing to talk the most or prove anything. The most confident person in a room is often not the person who talks the most.
Megan: 5:02
Yeah, I want to get confidence mixed up with like cockiness 100% yeah.
Jess: 5:08
Yeah, but I think that those things, like in the conversations that I had with people earlier, I posted on social media to ask what is confidence to you? What does it mean? How do you develop it? And a number of people were like I know what overconfidence is. Yeah, that was the thing people kept saying. I know what overconfidence is, but I don't know that I know how to define what confidence is.
Megan: 5:27
But no, when you talk about like the overconfidence and like the cockiness, it kind of reminds me of when you see someone who is trying to dominate the room or dominate the conversation or something. You're like wow. Sometimes people might think like, oh, they're so confident.
Jess: 5:40
But it might not even be the case at all. Honey, what are you trying to make up for? Yeah?
Megan: 5:46
Why is your truck so big?
Jess: 5:48
Oh my God, I grew up on the Oregon coast.
Megan: 5:51
You grew up semi like oh yeah, that's right, you grew up in the country. Yeah, horses yeah.
Jess: 5:55
Yeah, when we talk about confidence. I love when you Google how to build confidence and the things that you come across. What does the average person who just puts it into Google machine and what do they see first? Yeah, yeah. And so many of these articles were about the power pose. Did you ever see that? Ted talked from like 2011, 2012,. Amy, what's her name? She talked about Improving confidence. Amy Cuddy yes, improving confidence and power posing. So you power pose for two minutes a day and it's supposed to increase testosterone and decrease cortisol and improve your confidence. And then they did more research and were never able to replicate that. Yeah, and they said that the actual act of stretching your body, sitting up straight, squaring your shoulders, improving your posture, making yourself bigger, physically bigger, take up more space, but that momentarily can improve your confidence in whatever you are doing in that moment.
Megan: 6:52
And that makes sense, because you're just changing the way you physically are Can make you feel better for the time being.
Jess: 6:59
But it's not going to make you a more confident person overall. Yeah, it's in that moment.
Megan: 7:05
I think there is something good to be said about having good posture regardless, just like portraying confidence and like if you can portray it on the outside sometimes I think it actually can kind of help you feel it on the inside. But again, in that moment In the moment. Yes, right.
Jess: 7:19
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But another thing when you Google how to build confidence is positive self-talk. That's another big one that comes up. This could be a whole podcast episode on its own, and actually self-talk is going to be a future episode, but in this context they're talking about the look in the mirror. Self affirmations, yes, but the sticky notes on there find the ways to tell yourself how much you love yourself, like along those lines of being able to look in the mirror and say I'm confident.
Megan: 7:47
Yeah, and there was a big phase with that.
Jess: 7:49
I felt like there really was yeah, and there can be value in certain types of affirmations and we'll talk about that more in another episode but for these you're basically lying to yourself, because if you look in the mirror and tell yourself something about you that you don't believe, you're lying. You're getting this level of cognitive dissonance between who you are and who you say you are Like yeah. So that piece of it is hard, because there is a lot of benefit from self-talk that can help with confidence, but it's not the positive, overly effusive, whatever, right. Another thing that they talk about in building confidence are all the other little things that are basically pillars of health. They're not something that actually helps build confidence. So things like self-care, your diet, how you sleep, are you hydrated, are you exercising these are things that go ahead.
Megan: 8:42
No, I was just going to say these are things that we've talked about too, and like they're things that kind of make you feel better, maybe not in a confidence way, but like you know.
Jess: 8:52
Yeah, and that's the thing right. There's importance in nourishing your body so that you don't eat like I don't feel great when I eat dairy I get bloated.
Megan: 9:00
It doesn't make me feel good when.
Jess: 9:02
I put my pants on, so then that could translate into when I don't feel as good in my body. That could change the level of confidence that I'm able to portray right. So I get the connection. Yeah, I get that. When you move your body, when you sleep adequately, god, if you sleep enough, think about how much better your cognitive processing is. Yeah, so you're able to handle and go into situations and be more confident, I get it. But sleeping enough doesn't improve your confidence. No, not in itself. My point is that when you Google and try to figure out how to build confidence, all these things are supportive of confidence, confidence adjacent and they're like the health aspects of confidence.
Megan: 9:46
Yeah, these are all great.
Jess: 9:48
But we already know that those are pillars of health that help us feel better in almost all arenas. So here's the thing Confidence is important to our health and well-being. Research says that it can even help us live a more successful life in relationships, financially. The confidence also exists across different domains. So you've heard us talk about growth mindset before, and you can have a growth mindset in different domains of your life. You can also have confidence in different domains. So you can feel confident in your ability to cook a delicious meal and absolutely not feel confident at all parallel parking your car, mine's the opposite. Oh see, this is me. I don't love parallel parking. I can do it. I am not proficient.
Megan: 10:32
I love parallel parking. All those years in downtown Portland have trained me well. I was like Blake loves it.
Jess: 10:38
And this man gives me such a hard time because I can't execute it with my eyes closed like he can, and so he's like oh yeah, you hate parallel parking, You're not good at it, and I'm like excuse me, how often do I do it?
Megan: 10:51
Yeah, I mean, I lived in an area where I had to do it every single day. Anytime I moved my car, I had inches to work with.
Jess: 10:58
It's insane.
Megan: 10:59
Anyways.
Jess: 11:00
I digress Anyways, self-confidence is a skill, not a feeling, and you have to have. One of the prerequisites to confidence is courage. There's actually a lot of C words in today's episode.
Megan: 11:13
I know I feel like I'm going to get really tongue-tied. That's OK. You've got this.
Jess: 11:18
And then, lastly, confidence and the willingness to try can improve our resilience, which resilience is the ability to bounce back from challenges or adversities, unless leads us directly into the meat of this episode, talking about confidence being a skill. So we talked about all of those supporting things for confidence the sleep, the exercise, the self-care, the diet. So, with confidence being a skill, there is something called the confidence competence loop. Competence is being able to do something successfully or efficiently. This is a positive feedback loop and it happens when you decide to do something before you think you're ready. So you keep trying at that thing, and every time you do it you're gonna be terrible at it or you're gonna be great at it, but each time you do it you're learning something and you're effectively increasing that competence which, over time, is how you gain confidence. Going back to that definition of confidence is the willingness to try. That starts this positive feedback loop. I am terrified of heights not as much anymore, but I was when I was a kid and we used to go up river every summer and all the kids would jump off the rocks into the river. I was so scared and I finally worked up the courage to try, the willingness to try and I jumped off that freaking rock and I almost peed my pants.
Megan: 12:40
But it wouldn't matter. You're gonna say that the water it's fine. No one would have known.
Jess: 12:44
And then I did it again and again and I built competence. Not that there's a lot of skill in jumping off rocks, but bear with me right, yeah. And they got to the point where I wasn't as afraid. And then you are excited and you have that adrenaline rush. And then next thing you know you're like jumping off the tallest rock possible. But every single time you're trying it you're decreasing the resistance in your brain to do it again.
Megan: 13:08
And it reminds me a lot of jumping. I mean, I know that some people won't understand this, but there's such things as gap jumps when you're biking, and I am terrified of them Can clear a table, no problem. You take away the middle part and it becomes terrifying. So there's like having to practice over and over.
Jess: 13:26
Okay, so there's like a gap, I'm assuming. Oh yeah, but you have to jump it to get over it, correct?
Megan: 13:31
You have to make it to the other side of the how big are these gaps? Oh, you know they're not big, maybe like five feet, but still, yeah, just just baby, you could die. Baby gaps, that's what I call them, baby gaps. Okay, but it did remind me of something, because I felt like and I know that we'll probably talk about this when you lose quote, lose confidence, I feel like I was on a roll where I was getting progressively better and challenging myself and trying and doing the thing and then I crashed real hard into a tree and that knocks that confidence. Oh, 100%.
Jess: 14:05
I mean we talked about this a little bit before hitting record, like for you with confidence in those jumps and your skills. Yeah, when you say it makes you question your confidence, it just meant that you're blocked from that feeling of trying. You're blocked from that feeling because you stopped trying, right. So yeah, you're not knocked down you failed and it might take a little bit to get yourself back up and try again.
Megan: 14:28
Yeah, and then you reestablish that confidence competence loo to keep trying, yeah, and the skill didn't necessarily go away and accidents are gonna. I mean, it's kind of a running joke with bikes, it's not if you're going to crash, it's when. Yeah.
Jess: 14:45
Which is also why I don't think I've gone biking with you just yet I need to up my disability insurance, since I work with my hands.
Megan: 14:54
Yeah, I definitely make sure to get the best insurance I possibly can.
Jess: 15:00
So this is the main point of this whole episode is confidence being a skill and being willing to try, willing to try these things, whatever that skill is? I obviously relate most things to running. So for the purposes of the rest of this episode and as we get into kind of tangible takeaways, let's create a fictional runner who decides that they were gonna run their first marathon. Yeah, they want to gain the confidence as a runner. So the willingness to try is getting the shoes, setting foot outside or on the treadmill or on the trail, doing a few miles, doing the big scary thing yeah, making that first step. And every single time they lace up it's a little less scary. You talk about consistency or frequency. The more frequently you do it and they're not advocating for your run streak, but you get into it and you're running two days a week and then a couple weeks later you add three. That's also increasing that self efficacy, you're increasing your competence and you're increasing your confidence in that skill. Yeah, but, as any runner or anyone who has run or decided to improve their running, improvement comes so slowly? Oh, it does. That is another big point here too. When we're talking about improving skills, it's not saying that next week you're going to be confident at a certain skill.
Megan: 16:17
Yeah, and you're going to have setbacks. Yeah, it's inevitable. You can't run a marathon in a week. I mean you could, it would be real hard.
Jess: 16:25
Yeah, zero to marathon in one week. Maybe that's my new promotion. Another big piece of building confidence is also self acceptance and self awareness, and they won't go too deep into this, but we're talking about playing the long game. Then we're also talking about like, let's say, you have the willingness to try something new and you try it, and you try it and you just don't like it. You can stop. You have the self awareness to say this isn't for me, it's not my fun activity. Yeah. Or you try something over and over again and the skills not improving and it's self awareness to say, wow, either this is a really slow improving skill, or maybe I can find a coach or someone to help me, or maybe there's a different approach I can take. You have that self awareness or the self acceptance to say, oh my God, I am really bad at this.
Megan: 17:17
And that's OK.
Jess: 17:18
But how hard is that as an adult to say how hard is that as an adult, to go start a new hobby. Oh, it's so fun. I got rollerblades last summer. Oh, my goodness. Oh, ok, so not summer 2023, summer 2022. Ok, I got rollerblades. Yeah, I have not been on any kind of skates since middle school. We used to go to Skate Wave on Thursday or Friday night. Oh, yeah, I remember, but I had quad skates and yeah, they're way different. And I could skate backwards and do all sorts of crazy shit. I cannot do that anymore.
Megan: 17:52
No, so when I bought my rollerblades.
Jess: 17:55
I had the self awareness to know that I needed knee pads. I would have to add wrist pads and let me tell you, I am still not good at rollerblading. I can do it. I can do it, nothing fancy.
Megan: 18:07
So, like the building, the point of view.
Jess: 18:09
I was kind of terrified to put those rollerblades on because I'm like I'm going to suck at this. I'm being an adult and sucking at something.
Megan: 18:16
It's very, very hard.
Jess: 18:18
It's so humbling, yeah, and as adults, we think that we need to be good at everything that we start doing. Mm, hmm, I think that's part of our willingness to try. Yeah, is not there when it comes to that. Ok, I think we said a pretty good base for confidence as a skill. Mm, hmm, what are some things that derail our confidence?
Megan: 18:35
I think we know the big one here.
Jess: 18:38
It's like, oh God, big fat, evil media Always. But it made me think about body image disruptions, on the things that derail our confidence. Yeah, media scrolling, comparison, even repeated failure, right when we talked about you crashing on your bike. You crash and know it's a part of the process, but it's still muscles in the brain, it's still like a distraction yeah. But to the point of this scrolling and media and that comparison piece, so much of our self doubt, the opposite of confidence.
Megan: 19:10
Mm, hmm.
Jess: 19:11
Comes from spending too much time on things that don't fucking matter. Yeah. No, I do you think about like I do it too and I'm not saying this to be blameless at all. Yeah, all. In fact, I was doing notes for this episode and caught myself all of a sudden how many of I'm in scrolling.
Megan: 19:26
Oh, what am I? When did I even open Instagram?
Jess: 19:30
So can you catch yourself Because that's one piece of this self-awareness in your daily actions? Can you be curious and catch yourself when you're making appearance comparisons, when you're on that hard scroll, and think about what you neglect to consider when objectifying others, because you're seeing our highlight real or what they choose to share, mm-hmm? And actually I had an interview with another mindset nutrition coach and we were chatting earlier about how we have done a really good job of curating our social medias to support the people we want to surround ourselves with. So I don't see as much of this, but I I start to see the comparison stuff come up when it's like, oh my god, they're on another vacation. I wish I could be on a vacation. Oh yeah, people that show videos of their homes. I'm like we're in our 30s and I start seeing that comparison and I'm like what am I neglecting to consider about this person? Mm-hmm, that they're not sharing that they're sharing. It's maybe they are sharing their home because they worked their ass off for years to earn this and I'm sitting there going. I wish I had a kitchen that would like that.
Megan: 20:33
Oh, I, yeah, I do that all the time.
Jess: 20:34
Social media is a tool and you get to choose how you use it, but it's developing that self-awareness around how you're using it and not getting sucked into those pieces of comparison or doom-scrolling or those things that could effectively block that feeling of confidence. Mm-hmm, that's case in point. So those are kind of the main things that derail confidence. Yeah, we asked us at the beginning of the episode and I want to ask it again what would you do if you had more confidence and you can decide in what area? How is confidence going to help your life look different or better? Would you take more risks, say notice something or say yes, would you set better boundaries as a conversation you'd have that you've been avoiding. What would more confidence in your life allow you to do that you're not already doing? These are the questions ask yourself because, like we talked, talked about, confidence is a skill and it's the willingness to try. So when you envision these things, they are within your reach. So it's figuring out. You have this willingness to try. What is the first small action towards those things? Taking those small actions is how you build Competency. That builds confidence. I feel like I'm going off in a tangent here and Megan's over here just nodding along.
Megan: 21:44
You probably want to hear drop your mic moment. One thing that really stood out and I love it is setting better boundaries. I feel like so many people struggle with that, but when you think of like self-confidence, it wasn't something I thought of immediately.
Jess: 22:00
Just thinking no. It is one of those things like if you don't have the confidence in yourself to say no, yeah, I won't take on all this extra work. It's setting boundaries. It's being able to say no or say yes where you need to. It's a big part, right, and then you can talk about the other side of dreaming of what your life would look like and all of those pieces being willing to embrace that risk Stepping outside of your comfort zone. As I was reading for this episode, I was like man, this isn't the fluffy, nice puzzle, self-talk, fuzzy things that make you feel like, oh, I'm gonna take action. That's feels so good. I feel good in my body. I'm saying nice things in my brain. I'm gonna go forward. I'm like, no, get out of your comfort zone.
Megan: 22:46
This is the only way to build Kind of sucks, guys, I'm sorry, take risk Take risk do the hard things comfortable being uncomfortable, but there is something so important in that I feel like get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Jess: 23:02
Yeah, and if there's, there's something that you have said, your sights on building confidence and, let's say, becoming a public speaker Mm-hmm, there's preparation that has to go into that. Mm-hmm, and join toast masters to improve your public speaking skills and just go pull this pull speech out of your butt in the moment. That's called improv. That's not what they do. You would prepare, you would take the time to put something together and so saying take the risk, make the jump, start taking action. There's also preparation. There's practice. There's things that go into that, because the more you practice, the more competent, the more confident you are. So, now that you are envisioning what you do if you had more confidence, I want to introduce something called future self. I want you to think about this Do you like the person you're spending your entire life with? Do you like you? Do you like the relationship that you have with yourself?
Megan: 23:53
And that kind of goes back to what you've been saying this whole time and all your episodes. Your relationship with yourself is the most important. It is in the longest it really is. It's the longest Intimate relationship you ever have?
Jess: 24:07
yeah there's a study that shows that if you create a vision of a future you, it can give you distance from the you who's never done Whatever it is that you are, you know, creating this vision towards what you want to do. It gives you a certain sense of Objectivity so that you can often make more future-oriented big picture choices. So if you look at who do you want your future self to be when you sit and actually envision and maybe we give this as homework but that future self, what do they act like? What do they do? What is your favorite version of you look like? And I noticed I didn't say what is the best version of you look like, because you could decide. Your best version of you looks one certain way. Now Like the best is subjective, but what is your favorite version of you? What kind of qualities do they display? What kind of values do they have? How do they act? Because if you can take the time to really assess that out, that's going to help you decide what areas of your life you want to build confidence in. I wanted to talk about goals in this section and I wanted to talk about setting goals and how that helps build your confidence. But there's a lot to be said about just taking the time to think about how you want your future self to look. That is often more valuable than setting specific goals, and this is coming from the person who I love goals, sits down and loves to take a goal and break it down into tangible, day by day steps. But there's something to be said for taking the time to dream a little bit and think about who you want to be, because oftentimes we get so focused on achievement, on the achievement of those goals. It's like who do you want to become in the process? Yeah, do you want to become as you get there? Because does that person look like they're confident? What are they confident in? What are they confident doing? You know, we could talk about that person that wants to run their first marathon. If they're looking at their future self, that future self is a marathoner who set themselves up to maybe run two marathons a year and a marathon on all 50 states. I don't know. Yeah, but that person is a confident runner. Then you break that down into what does that feel like? What are their daily actions look like? When does that person feel comfortable saying I am a runner?
Megan: 26:36
Asking yourself those questions.
Jess: 26:37
What is your favorite version of you look like? Because right now that favorite version looks like a marathon runner. But what does that?
Megan: 26:44
mean to you.
Jess: 26:45
Exactly, and you get to decide that. That's what I like about this exercise of mapping your favorite future self. Yeah, there's no right or wrong answer. Yeah, and it can change, but if you are letting your values drive this, you're not going to go wrong. Yeah, I love it In all of this. When we talk about your relationship with yourself, you have to focus on you. No one's coming, no one's going to do this for you, no one's going to be able to motivate you. No one's going to be more excited about the future version of you than you are. There's no one to give you the pep talk. I mean, maybe you have a good coach and they're going to help you with the pep talks and guidance and those things, but you need a good relationship with you. You need to focus on cultivating that growth mindset and the willingness to try and try and try again.
Megan: 27:33
Yeah, that's that perseverance, yeah.
Jess: 27:36
Exactly. The big thing about this is, too you're measuring yourself by effort and not results. I think that was another part where I'm like we talk about goals. But if we talk about that future version of yourself we're talking about, are we still trying? Are we still getting out there and trying?
Megan: 27:49
Yeah, well, and I think that when you see people that are constantly trying new things or putting the effort out there, a lot of times you look at them and you're like they must be really confident.
Jess: 27:59
Yeah, I think that when I see people out there doing things that might seem scary to me, yeah, and it's also that piece of I wish I remember what it's called but the acceptance of failure as part of the process. Yeah, because I feel like so much of our society gets insulated from that. Yeah, that we're not used to trying shit and failing. And maybe it's a physical thing, like falling off your freaking bike and hurting yourself, like I did this weekend, right, trying something like launching a podcast and being like, oh my God, what is going to happen? Yeah, what's going to happen is you're going to spend a lot of time figuring out all kinds of crazy tech stuff and you spend more time editing audio than you do recording, and it's fine.
Megan: 28:42
And shaking your dog out of all of it.
Jess: 28:43
Oh my gosh, exactly, it's a skill. Yeah, and that is that is the whole episode, right there. Confidence is a skill. Get out of your comfort zone, try the damn thing. I'm sorry, it's not soft and fluffy, it's work. But fun work, willingness to try yeah, competence leads to confidence. Those are tools in your tool belt for building confidence, mic drop. And we're done. Okay, as a listener, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our banter and our fun conversation on confidence. I would love to hear from you what area of your life are you going to work on building confidence in? Send us a DM sturdygirl underscore on Instagram. I want to know what does your future self look like? What are your values? This is the stuff that I get so excited by. Thank you again for listening and we will talk to you next week.
Megan: 29:43
Goodbye.
Jess: 29:45
If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please feel free to follow, subscribe, like whatever the heck you do with podcasts. As always, stay sturdy, friends, and we'll talk to you next week. Goodbye.