This is why you need courage, not
confidence, when facing your fears.
Hi, I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com, and this is
Chris Masterjohn Lite,
where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk about why
courage, not confidence, is what you want
when facing your fears.
In the last episode, I talked about how using
100 milligrams of GABA before, in the
60 minutes before you face your fears
can help protect your immune system from
the stress response. And even though this
is a nutrition show, it's good to branch
out into related disciplines every once
in a while, especially in mental health
because although nutrition is very
important to mental health and is often
neglected and really needs to be talked
about, there still is so much more, like your
mindset and emotions, that all play in to
your mental health. So, I'll tell a story.
A few weeks ago, I was snowboarding for
the first time in, well, for the first
time since last year. And I'm pretty
afraid of heights, and so I had a little
anxiety about getting on the chairlift
the first time around. And I was looking
inside myself for the confidence to not
have anxiety about it to confirm that it
was okay to get on the chairlift. And
I was having some doubts about that
because I did have some anxiety
about it, because I am a little afraid of
heights, and because the only way I would
be able to use that approach to have
that confidence, to find that lack of
anxiety, would be to BS myself, and if
I'm BSing myself, then that,
the whole system of how I'm supporting
myself through BS can fall apart as
soon as it becomes obvious to the rest
of my brain that I was BSing myself.
So, then I thought of something that I
had literally just read the night before
that made me hop right on the chairlift
and have a great time. And that was this
excerpt from Tim Ferriss's book "Tribe of
Mentors," which is shown on the screen.
So, the relevant chapter is written by
Deb Millman, who is an influential designer, and
she is the host and founder of the
podcast Design Matters. And here is the
quote that is relevant. Ferriss asks
Millman, "In the last five years, what new
belief, behavior, or habit has most
improved your life?" And Millman responds,
"After a Design Matters interview with
the great writer Dani Shapiro, we
started to talk about the role of
confidence in success." She went on to
state that she felt that confidence was
highly overrated. I was instantly
intrigued. She explained that she felt
that most overly confident people were
really annoying, and the most confident
people were usually arrogant. She felt
that over exuding that amount of
confidence was a sure sign that a person
was compensating for some type of
internal psychological deficit. Instead,
Dani declared that, "Courage was more
important than confidence. When you are
operating out of courage, you are saying
that no matter how you feel about
yourself, or your opportunities, or the
outcome, you were going to take a risk
and take a step toward what you want.
You are not waiting for the confidence to
mysteriously arrive. I now believe that
confidence is achieved through repeated
success at any endeavor. The more you
practice doing something, the better you
will get at it, and your confidence will
grow over time." So, there's a few things
that are in there. There's the importance
of humility, there's the fact that you
build confidence by doing the things
that you're not confident about, but the
big thing that helped me in that instant
was to realize that courage is what you
seek to face your fears because by
definition, if those are your fears, you
are not confident about them. When you're
confident, you're confident of your own
capabilities, and if you don't have that
trust in yourself, then looking for
confidence just is a means of BSing
the confidence. What you want to look for
is the courage because the courage can
be real, because it's the courage that
allows you to face up to the
things that you don't trust that you're
good at, the things that you are afraid of.
And when you do, you just might want
to take 100 milligrams of GABA
60 minutes before.
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All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn
of chrismasterjohnphd.com.
This has been Chris Masterjohn Lite.
And I will see you in the next episode