257: Confidence Is Not a Trait. It’s a System. (Here’s How to Build It)

The reason you can't sustain confidence isn't because you aren't trying hard enough– it's because belief is an environment problem, not a mindset problem.

If you are a high-achieving woman feeling like an imposter despite your success, you're likely stuck in "white-knuckling" mode. In this episode, I break down why stress physically blocks belief and give you a four-step system to build evidence-based belief that actually sticks.

If you feel like you're constantly fighting your own brain, this episode will show you how to stop fighting and start building unshakeable belief.

In this episode:
00:00 – Welcome
2:50 – The real problem
4:07 – The neuroscience
5:40 – Dopamine & belief
7:38 – Why stress kills
11:00 – How belief is actually built
12:50 – Why this is hard to do alone
13:34 – The one shift your best self needs
16:14 – Better conditions start here

Grab the one-page resource I created to help you build the conditions where your belief becomes inevitable: https://www.andrealiebross.com/energy

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⭐ Learn more about Andrea’s coaching and book her to speak here: https://www.andrealiebross.com/

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Read the transcript 

Today we're talking about something that's been quietly eroding your ability to trust yourself.

Something you probably don't even realize is running in the background.

And here's what it looks like.

You're questioning which direction to go next.

You're exhausted by how hard it all feels.

Every decision, big or small, it feels heavy.

And every move forward comes with a side of second guessing.

And somewhere along the way, you started thinking, I should be better at this by now.

Or my personal favorites, if only I had, or if only I could be.

Let me stop you right there and tell you what's actually happening.

Your brain learned to succeed while stressed, to push through while exhausted, to hold everything together while barely holding yourself together.

So now your brain naturally thinks that's what success requires, more white knuckling it, more pressure.

What if I told you that the momentum, the impact you're craving in this season of your life requires a very different path forward.

One where your belief is unshakable because you've finally designed the environment to support it.

I'm Andrea Libross and welcome back to She Thinks Big.

[Music]

Before we dive in, I just want to say I am so fired up that you're here today.

It is such an honor to spend time with you and to support you wherever you are in your journey.

Now, you're here because somebody shared this with you or because you're a powerhouse woman who's done spinning her wheels and is ready to build the life and business of her dreams on her terms.

And if you're new to She Thinks Big, welcome to the show and to our incredible community.

It would mean a lot to me if you could take a moment to follow the show if you haven't already, or subscribe if you're watching along on YouTube.

This helps that algorithm share my content with other people like you.

Let me start by saying this.

Most women who think big do not lack ability.

You're smart.

You're capable.

I'm willing to bet you've done way harder things before than whatever life's throwing at you right now.

The fact that you've made it this far tells me that much.

What you do struggle with is believing in yourself consistently.

You second guess decisions.

You're fully qualified to make.

You overthink things and find your brain feeling heavier more often than not because of it.

You hesitate, not because you don't know what to do, but because you're afraid of making the wrong choice.

And then you tell yourself you should be more of this, less that, further along, or maybe even on a different track.

But here's what I want you to hear.

This is not a capacity issue.

It's not a motivation issue.

And it's definitely not a discipline issue.

It's a belief issue.

And ready for this?

Belief is not a mindset problem.

It's an environment problem.

Yeah, you heard that right.

This isn't happening because you're doing something wrong.

It's because the environment you're operating in is asking way too much of your brain.

Your brain is not designed to make you confident, successful, or fulfilled.

I know, rude.

Our brains are designed to keep us alive.

And it does that by predicting what's about to happen next.

Neuroscientists call this predictive processing.

I call it your brain running a constant background check on your life.

Every decision you make, your brain is quietly asking, "Hey, based on past experience, is this safe or is this a problem?"

And here's the part that usually blows people's minds.

Your brain does not care how smart you are.

It does not care how capable you are.

It does not care how much potential you have.

It cares about evidence.

Your brain is a courtroom, not a vision board.

It doesn't ask what you want.

It asks what's worked.

Belief is literally your brain saying, "I've seen this before and we survived."

Which means this, if you've been successful while stressed, your brain associates success with pressure.

If you've pushed through exhaustion, your brain thinks exhaustion is par for the course.

If you've overfunctioned to keep things from falling apart, your brain thinks that's the job.

Now, let's talk about dopamine for a second because this is where belief actually forms.

Dopamine is not the reward chemical like we've been told.

It's the learning and motivation chemical.

Let me give you an example.

Let's say you decide you want to start working out consistently.

If you set the goal, I'm going to work out five days a week for an hour and then you only make it three days, your brain logs that as failure, no dopamine spike, no belief building.

But if you say, "I'm going to move my body for minutes today," and you do it, dopamine hits.

Your brain goes, "Ah, that worked. Let's go do it again."

Or let's say you're trying to build your business.

If your goal is, I need to land five new clients this month, and you land two, you feel behind.

Your brain doesn't celebrate the two.

It fixates on the three you didn't get.

But if you track smaller wins, like, I sent ten outreach messages today, or I had two discovery calls, or I followed up with five prospects.

Your brain starts collecting evidence.

Oh, I'm the kind of person who takes action.

Let's keep going.

So, small wins teach your brain that worked. Let's do it again.

Big goals without progress, they overwhelm that nervous system and shut belief down.

You end up in this weird place where you're working on it but never seeing proof.

So, your brain quietly stops believing it's possible.

And affirmations, please.

Your subconscious probably hears one and goes, "Uh, yeah, based on what data?"

So, this is why belief doesn't respond to hype.

It responds to proof.

Now, even if you work well under pressure, I hear that all the time.

I'm so good under pressure.

When you're living in constant stress or pressure, your brain flips into protection mode.

The amygdala, aka the most primal part of your brain known as the lizard brain, takes the wheel.

And the prefrontal cortex, the more sophisticated part of your brain responsible for decision-making, leadership, and vision, cannot make optimal decisions from this place.

The result, you don't think clearly.

You avoid risk.

Or on the flip side, your primal instincts take over.

And whatever belief you started building starts fading.

Your brain is simply doing what it's meant to do.

So let's take one of my clients.

I'm going to call her Ann.

Ann is smart.

She's capable.

She's built for something that's gaining traction, but internally she's the one holding everything together.

She's tracking what needs to be done before anyone else notices.

She's anticipating problems.

She's carrying conversations and decisions in her head long after the meetings have ended and everyone else has moved on.

She's answering messages late at night, replaying meetings, wondering if she said the right thing.

So, from the outside, Ann looks pretty calm.

But from the inside, Ann never fully exhales.

Her business is growing.

Revenue is coming in.

Clients are happy.

Nothing's on fire, so to speak.

Her life, it looks fine, too.

She's got a roof over her head, maybe even a pretty nice one.

And she seems healthy.

She appears on the outside to be doing very well for herself.

But here's the thing.

She may not be falling apart, but she is holding it together at a steep cost.

And Ann is not the exception.

Okay?

Not only do I work with dozens of other women like Ann every day, I have been her.

There was a season where everything in my life looked solid from the outside anyway.

But on the inside, it always felt like I was one or two small steps away from catastrophe.

All these decisions, they took so much more energy than they should have.

And I kept thinking the answer was just to push harder and to get through it until I realized that wasn't the answer.

What I needed was not more motivation or hustle or fight or even really more time.

What I needed was a nervous system that could finally breathe.

Like truly take a deep breath, inhale, exhale without fear that something was wrong.

And this is the part I wish someone had told me sooner.

A stressed brain can't imagine a bigger future.

It's so busy surviving the present.

No amount of positive thinking overrides that.

And this is why rest is not lazy and ease isn't indulgent.

There are neurological requirements for belief.

Belief doesn't come from hype.

It comes from four things.

You ready?

Here we go.

First up, and arguably the most important thing.

Safety.

If your nervous system feels threatened, belief won't grow.

End of story.

Second, small action.

No massive leaps, just tiny doable steps your brain doesn't panic over.

Results that don't require somersaults because then your brain is probably going to go something like, you see, results and success can't come with ease.

Um, false.

But your brain will trick you into believing it's the truth.

Which leads me to the third piece, evidence.

And this is where most women unintentionally fail.

You don't notice what you handle well.

You don't log your wins, which by the way, not your fault because we've been trained to focus on our shortcomings.

And again, our brain does this to help us stay alive.

But this means we keep replaying and focusing on what we could have done better or where we think we "failed" instead of where we went right.

So your brain never gets the important data it needs to file away.

Which leads me to the fourth and final piece, identity.

When you start declaring things like, "I'm the kind of woman who follows through or I'm a confident, courageous leader," you are helping retrain your brain to look for the proof to support that.

And in time, this unshakable belief becomes who you are, not something you're trying to summon or perform.

Humans are wired for co-regulation, which means we calm down and grow faster in the presence of others.

This is why having someone reflect your strengths back to you works.

This is why being seen matters and it's why there is a real power in coaching and having someone walk alongside you.

Sure, in the beginning belief will feel borrowed.

I always tell my clients right now in the beginning I believe in you more than you believe in yourself.

You can borrow that belief but over time with practice that belief it's going to become yours.

And I've seen that happen over and over again.

Most women who think big are operating in environments that quietly erode belief every single day.

But the key to changing that is not going to come from me or anyone for that matter telling you to believe in yourself.

It's going to come from building the conditions where your belief becomes inevitable.

I worked with a woman who said to me, "I don't trust myself anymore."

And that scares me.

In the background of her life, and her business, there was this constant heavy load.

All this internal pressure and self-talk was draining her of her time, her energy, and her gifts that she wanted to share with others.

So, we didn't even start with goals when we had our first conversation.

We started with an honest conversation around what was working and what wasn't, what was running her instead of supporting her.

We started small and eventually ended up doing a full redesign of her environment from the inside out.

Bit by bit, shifts began to happen.

She started seeing evidence.

I handled that.

I made that decision.

That worked.

And this is not because I told her to believe, but because her brain finally had proof.

That's the work, my friends.

Because when you stop forcing confidence and results, when you start trusting yourself and building ease into your life, all the good stuff flows.

Now, if this episode feels uncomfortably accurate, good.

That means you're paying attention.

And I want you to know you don't need fixing.

You don't need pushing.

What you need, you need an environment designed, created to help you build unshakable belief.

PS. Listeners, as I was recording this, I kept thinking of two things.

Number one, that belief sign and Ted Lasso in the locker room, the environment of the locker room, it was so good that it was fostering all of this belief.

It's the same kind of thing that we need as women.

We need a locker room that fosters belief.

And then the other thing, and I just have to throw this in there because, you know, I am from Indiana.

Indiana University football team is going to the National College Football Championship and they talk a lot about belief and what happens in their locker room too.

So go IU.

Okay, let's bring this home because I don't want you to just hear this episode.

I want you to use the episode.

Here's what I need you to remember.

You don't need to keep fighting uphill battles every day.

You need smarter conditions.

The type of environment that supports your most empowered self to take root and grow.

And here's what most women don't realize.

You can't build unshakable belief in yourself or anything you're trying to do in an environment that's constantly eroding it.

You need different people around you, different conversations, different energy.

You need to be in rooms where expansion is normalized, not where scarcity is the soundtrack, where possibility is obvious, not where I can't afford it is the default and the message you continuously are exposed to and hear.

You need to be in places where women are building from deep knowing, not hustling from fear.

So, I had a client message me recently and she said something that really stopped me in my tracks and I want to share it with you.

She said, "I'm feeling the weight of being surrounded by peers who aren't in expansion yet.

A lot of my current circle is still deep in scarcity."

The I can't afford it. It's too much. I don't make enough vortex.

And I'm realizing how much that's been holding me in place.

She said, "I'm not trying to manifest more clients right now.

I'm trying to manifest new peers, women who are operating at higher frequencies.

That's the shift I'm talking about.

She doesn't need more confidence.

She doesn't need more clients.

What she needs, she needs better conditions.

She needs to be in a different playground, in a different sandbox.

And so do you.

So here's what I want you to do.

Write this down.

Put it on a sticky note.

Make it your phone wallpaper.

I don't care how you do it, but make sure you can see this each and every single day.

I am ready to build and be in the environment where unshakable belief grows.

Say that out loud right now.

I mean it.

Repeat after me.

I am ready to build and be in the environment where unshakable belief grows.

Because if you're here, you're listening to this, you probably know something needs to change.

You know you need different energy around you.

You know you need to be in spaces where thinking big isn't intimidating.

It's inspiring.

Now, take a moment to think of another woman in your life who you know needs to hear this as well.

Do her a favor and share this episode with her.

And I know what you're thinking.

Okay, Andrea, this all makes sense, but what next?

How do I actually put this into practice?

Ah, I'm so glad you asked because I have a gift for you.

It's a powerful one-page resource I created to help you take that first critical step toward building unshakable belief.

And that's getting honest about what's draining your energy right now.

All you have to do is to go to andreal.com/energy.

That's andrea libross.com.

Download it.

It's my gift to you as a She Thinks Big listener and viewer.

Print it out, fill it out, and even share it with your friends.

So, here's how it works.

You're going to write down nine things that are zapping your energy right now.

Nine energy zappers.

They could be people, situations, unfinished projects, unmet needs, crossed boundaries, that guilt you're still carrying, the clutter in your office, the conversation you keep avoiding, could also be dead plants and Amazon boxes in your car, but anything that is part of your environment, internal or external, whatever it is, get it on paper.

Then you're going to look at that list and you're going to ask yourself, if I could only fix or get rid of one of these, which one would make the biggest difference?

And that that's your one thing.

Then you're going to commit to taking one action.

Something that you can literally do today or in the next day or so to start eliminating that one thing, that one energy zapper.

This truly is the next best thing you can do for yourself to start building unshakable belief.

Because here's the truth.

You can't build unshakable belief in an environment that's constantly depleting you, that's constantly taking energy away from you.

And as you begin to clear the things that drain you, whatever they may be, you're going to free up the energy to do what you really want, to think clearly, to lead powerfully.

This is where the shift begins, not with a massive overhaul, with one honest assessment and one committed action.

Not tomorrow, not next week, right now.

So go to andrea libross.com/energy, download the resource, work through it honestly, and take that first action to start reclaiming your energy so you can build the belief you are ready for.

Thanks for joining me today.

I'll see you next week for a brand new episode.

She Thinks Big is hosted by me, Andrea Libross.

And if you're done white knuckling your way through things and are ready to take the next step in life and business, go explore how we can work together at andrea.com.

And if you want to bring this conversation, practical, real, and human, to your community, team, or organization, you can book me to speak there as well.

To connect with me, follow me on Instagram at andrea.lose.coaching.

And before you go, do me a favor.

Share this episode with just one woman who needs to hear it.

Screenshot it.

Text the link to a friend because the women in your life, I promise you, they're struggling with this, too.

And they need to know they're not broken.

They just need better conditions.

So, see you next week on She Thinks Big.