When I say the “secret” of grounded confidence, I mean both that there’s a secret to gaining it (which I’ll be sharing below)… but also, that grounded confidence itself is a secret!
What do I mean?
Well, when you hear the phrase “gain confidence,” what comes to mind?
Maybe you think of some kind of pep-talk, from a mentor, coach, “motivational speaker” or “transformational leader.”
(Those in latter two groups sell expensive seminars where you jump in chairs all weekend, scream in groups, and hear inspiring stories about other people who took the upsell seminar and now live on yachts, etc…)
These forms of “confidence” are like jolts of coffee… good for a few hours, or even days (hey, that’s some strong coffee!) But then the crash comes… and you need the next external fix.
In contrast, grounded confidence is based on:
A back-and-forth dialogue between inner confidence, and improvement in external results.
(The last part–external results–is where the “grounded” part comes in.)
Let me tell you a little story about grounded confidence, and how to gain it.
I’ve always admired comedians, and wanted to be one myself–but was terrified.
Of all the forms of performance art, comedy is in some sense the most “objective”: there’s literally minute-by-minute live feedback from the audience as to whether it’s good or not.
Either they’re laughing, or they’re not. There’s no wiggle room.
For that reason, just the thought of performing comedy terrified me. What if I bombed? Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be, to stand in front of an audience, trying to make them laugh–and hearing a pin drop instead?
Thus, when master comedian Alicia Dattner offered a course on how to develop a solo comedy performance, I knew I had to do it–for the very reason that I was so terrified of doing it.
The beauty of Alicia’s course was that it was a “sandbox” for learning comedy. We could try stuff, and when we failed, we were only failing in front of fellow students (who were also failing in front of us :)
This is how children learn: try something with a little risk, like climbing up a few stairs. Fail. Try again. Fail. Try again. Succeed. Gloat a little. Try something a little riskier, like half the staircase.
About 2-3 weeks into the class, I noticed something: my fellow students were laughing hard at certain spots in the piece I was developing.
You can’t fake laughter (beyond a minor chuckle). People routinely clap out of politeness at the end of a song or theater piece they didn’t particularly care for. But no one laughs with performances out of politeness.
Feedback from the world! I was actually onto something.
In a few weeks, I went from zero confidence in performing comedy, to just a little grounded confidence. Not bravado, not swagger.
And not jumping on the chair shouting “In three years, I am a world-famous comedian performing to rave reviews at Carnegie Hall”!
(As a transformational seminar leader would have you do… Notice the present-tense phrasing of “I am”… without which, they assure us, it will never ever happen!!)
By the time I was in front of an audience of 50 strangers, for our final performance, I actually wasn’t that nervous about presenting my piece.
I had received so many consistent laughs from my fellow students, I knew I would make at least some of the strangers in the room laugh.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next though.
I had a room full of strangers cracking up for 15 minutes straight.
(It’s called “Freudian Kink.” You can watch it on Facebook or YouTube. CONTENT WARNING: it’s by me. Which means, its extremely raunchy and taboo. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
Now, let me tell you how this story doesn’t end.
It doesn’t end with me becoming a famous, professional, full-time comedian. It doesn’t end with me on Netflix, or Saturday Night Live, or performing at Carnegie Hall.
That would be ungrounded confidence.
That would be the kind of confidence that you’d have to pay a motivational coach thousands of dollars to jack you up on, like a line of coke. (Good until you need the next hit–with another $4,997 seminar please!)
But here’s how it does end.
I’m now writing my second comedy piece. It’s going to be 1 hour. And I’m going to rent out a theater in the Bay Area, and fill it with at least 100 people.
And I feel completely confident in my ability to fill that room for a comedy show, and to keep that audience laughing for 4x the time I did before.
And if that goes well, then from that slightly taller hilltop, I’ll see where the next higher, realistic hilltop is after that.
This is not as lofty as “In three years, I will be performing on Saturday Night Live.”
But it’s something I’d be proud to do. And, just as important… it’s something I know I can do.
Not something I’m pretending to imagine I can do in order to feel good about myself for a weekend.
I know I can do it, because I’m basing my attempt on grounded confidence.
In other words, I’m basing this on evidence from the real world that gives me reason to believe I can pull this off.
And that grounded confidence is based on experimenting to find out if I was able to pull off the earlier, smaller goal.
See that word?
“If”
“If’ is the Most Taboo Word in Personal Development…
And Why You Should Use it Frequently
“If’ is the most taboo word in the mainstream personal development world.
It’s as if you have the slightest doubt that you can achieve something, it will never happen.
Which is why, every time you say, “if I can do X,” one of those smarmy personal development coaches interrupts you, and “corrects” you with “when you achieve X.”
Bullshit!
Life is full of risks. You don’t actually know what will happen when you take a risk–that’s what makes it a f*#$ing risk and not a certainty!
To pretend that risks can be transformed into absolutely certainties, simply by believing that it will happen, is complete BS.
Actually, it’s not just BS.
It’s a calculated ploy to get you to buy NLP-based positive thinking seminars–because that’s what they’re selling: the fantasy that if you just change your mind about something, anything is possible.
In the real world, outside of fantasy la-la land, things have rewards and risks (not just rewards) and you have to be smart about the risk/reward profile of any way you invest your time, money and energy.
The positive-thinking trainers (i.e., virtually all coaches, personal growth and transformational trainers) want you to minimize or even ignore the risk part.
For a very specific, calculated reason. Because they want you to turn off the part of your mind that might think of any “risk” to taking their $25,000 mastermind they’re trying to upsell you on!
To them, the idea of getting you to think about the risks of things as well as the reward is anathema.
Whereas, the grounded confidence I’m talking about here is based entirely on an evaluation of risks and rewards.
Confidence is Like Fuel to Get You Through Risk
Use it Intelligently…
If you think about it, confidence is like “fuel” that gives you motivation and belief to take risks on something you haven’t done yet.
That fuel is “refilled” every time you take a risk, and then pull it off. You discover that the risk/reward profile you invested in this time worked in your favor. Thus, you’re ready and fueled to take on a little more risk.
Grounded confidence is like having little refueling stations every few months–rather than trying to get one tank of gas to last you through years of risky failure.
Those little fueling stations along the way ultimately allow you to travel much farther, and take on more risk overall, than trying to get to some massive risky goal years in the future based on inflated, ungrounded, puffed-up fantasy-based confidence.
And those little refueling stations are based on evidence from the real world that you’re going in the right direction.
But here’s the key.
You have to go out and create the evidence.
How to Create Evidence For Your Own Success
I wouldn’t have had the slightest confidence that I could fill a room with 100 people and perform my own headline 1-hour solo show for them–the risk I’m taking now–had I not performed for 10 fellow students, and then for 50 strangers in a group showcase.
So I went out and invested a relatively small sum ($495) in Alicia’s course, and I worked hard for 6 weeks, to create the evidence that was grounds for my new grounded confidence that I can achieve a bigger goal. (Not insanely bigger, but bigger enough that I’d be excited by it.)
As I said, grounded confidence is a back-and-forth dialogue between internal confidence and improved external results.
You go out and take some small risks, until you get some external results. That gains you a little more grounded confidence. Use that confidence as fuel to go out and try something a little bigger and a little riskier.
This is the complete opposite of the model that most personal development trainers encourage.
Instead, they encourage you to set “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (BHAGs). These are the “performing at Carnegie Hall in 10 years” type fantasies you see people “promising to their future selves” during the seminars.
The trainers claim that if you don’t operate out of these fantasies, you won’t have the motivation to put in the work to achieve excellence.
I call these “faith-based goals”. They depend on faith in some glorious future in order to keep you motivated to keep going.
In that sense, faith-based goals are not that different from religion.
Think of how dangerous that is.
Would you want your surgeon or pilot to base her confidence on deep-seated faith that one-day she’ll be able to perform surgery or land a plane?!
Or would you rather she base her confidence on the evidence that she’s already able to perform surgery on hearts or land planes?
And if she wants to try something a little risker that she hasn’t done yet in surgery or plane-landing, would you want her to base her confidence in pure faith that she can do it?
Or would you want her to base her confidence on very very strong evidence that she can do it–based on discerning, realistic, grounded guidance and evaluations from mentors, and very careful practice and preparation before it’s game-time?
I believe in evidence-based confidence, rather than faith-based confidence.
Instead of setting fantasy-based “Big Hairy Audacious Goals,” I recommend:
Realistic, Exciting Goals Based on Grounded Confidence
REGOBONGs (not quite a perfect acronym, but close enough…)
In addition to the “realistic” and “grounded” parts, the “exciting” part is important–because it supplies the motivation. (Which is the reason coaches tell you to set BHAGs.)
But I’d argue, it’s actually easier to get excited and motivated about something you have strong reason to believe you can achieve soon (and thus can “taste in your mouth”)… vs. some far-flung fantasy you came up with for 20 years down the road because that’s what all the personal growth books tell you that you need to do.
If I had to choose between two people, one of whom was operating on a faith-based BHAG (one big, “unreasonable” overarching fantasy that they’re trying to reach in 3-20 years) vs. someone operating on a series of stepwise, iterative REGOBONGs, grounded in dialogue with actual risks they’re taking and results they’re achieving in the here-and-now, I’d choose the latter person every time.
In my next dispatch, I’ll discuss how to create Realistic, Exciting Goals Based on Grounded Confidence for yourself, and implement them into your life. .
Stay tuned!
–Michael
