The Confidence Gap: A Ten-Thousand-Word Deep Dive | Feifan 26

What This Episode Is About

When you are facing a high-stakes situation and feeling nervous or unsure of yourself, have you ever tried to summon a feeling of confidence? Maybe you give yourself a pep talk, pump yourself up, and so on. This temporarily injected, fake confidence makes you feel good about yourself for a while, but the moment you run into an unexpected setback, it bursts like a balloon and vanishes into thin air.

So what kind of confidence can actually last? Based on the well-known psychological approach Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), this book offers a complete action plan. It not only helps you manage fear, anxiety, and self-doubt, but also teaches you to build genuinely resilient confidence through action, creating a positive cycle in which the more you act, the more confident you become.

Feeling unsure of yourself is human instinct. Being able to get things done while still feeling unsure of yourself is a learnable skill. Once you have mastered that skill, you have real confidence.

You Will Hear

• Understand why confidence built on pep talks and pumping yourself up is unreliable
• Learn to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to build resilient confidence
• Learn three steps for building a confidence loop and keeping your confidence going

Quote of the Episode

Our goal is to do the thing well whether or not we feel confident. That is the right principle for building confidence: let confident action come before the feeling of confidence.

The brain is like a fish that is especially easy to hook. It instinctively feels that the anxiety and self-doubt we are experiencing right now are everything, and panics so intensely that we lose our heads.

Confidence is not about believing you are perfect. It is about learning to accept imperfection.

About the Author

Russ Harris　An internationally renowned Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) trainer and stress-management expert.