37 How to Build Your Confidence

Confidence follows action.

In this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable, Becky Hamm walks through the leadership pattern that keeps many accomplished women waiting on a feeling of “ready.” Becky brings data on risk-taking, names the role of the inner critic, and gives you a practical 3-step method you can use this week to build confidence through action.

You will hear:

• Why women report less safe taking risks and making mistakes than their male counterparts 
• How cultural conditioning shapes risk aversion and career decisions
• The confidence cycle: action → information → judgment → self-trust → confidence
• 3 steps to take confident action this week

Work with Becky:
Becky brings a direct, insight-driven coaching approach for women who want sharper decisions, stronger self-trust, and leadership growth that aligns with their values and capacity. Book a discovery call to learn how coaching can support your growth!

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Transcript

0:46

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to succeed without the stress. Whether you are leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. Each week we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically. Even in a world that tells you to hustle harder and prove your worth, you carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter. Okay, my friends, today we are going to debunk one of the biggest myths that hold women back. That myth that you need to wait until you feel ready. What do I mean? Well, I mean, wait to launch the side. Hustle. Wait to apply for that promotion. Wait to start your podcast. You just need to wait. Maybe you need to take a course, maybe you need a certification. Maybe you need to do some more research. Maybe you need to buy an online program to learn all about it. Friends, let me cut to the chase. No, you do not. You tell yourself that because you're afraid. Maybe you're afraid to fail. That's a very normal human reaction. Maybe you're afraid of what people will think or what they might say. Maybe you're scared that things won't work out the way you want them to, and you really want this, whatever this thing is, and so you've just been avoiding it entirely. If you don't take the risk, then you don't have to lose. You don't have to get the bad news. We have been talking about the inner critic a lot lately and, and have you gotten on the wait list for the inner critic mini course? Yeah. Great. No, dude. Get on it. What are you doing? Well, all of those thoughts that tell you that you have to be ready before you can take action. That's just your inner critic, along with like a whole bunch of cultural conditioning that we'll talk about But the point is that your inner critic is telling you an entire lie. Stop falling for it. Let's break it down. And let's start with some data. Most of us already know that study that shows that women only apply for jobs when they feel a hundred percent qualified for the position. Whereas men tend to apply for jobs when they feel like they meet roughly 60% of the qualifications for the position. The consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, in partnership with Lean in.org just released an annual study. They do it every year, but the most recent version of the study just came out, I think it was December, maybe late November. And in that study, they demonstrate that only 62% of women feel safe in the workplace, taking risks and making mistakes compared to 71% of men, there is a real gendered difference. In risk taking between men and women and to really drive the point home that women are a lot less likely to take professional risks than their male counterparts. And here I'm talking about risk taking because if you wanna wait to feel ready before you act, that's risk aversion. If you were waiting until you feel a certain way. As if our feelings were our feeling. Look, I'll tell you, I tell this to my clients all the time. I told it to a client just last week. Your feelings are real. You feel them, right? They are a real embodied experience for you, but your feelings do not represent truth. The feeling of not being ready, the feeling of a fear of failure, the feeling of I'm not good enough, the feeling of I need to do more. That's a feeling. The feeling is not grounded in truth. Your feeling is likely grounded in fear. Maybe some anger, maybe some resentment, maybe some hope or optimism, or your feelings are grounded in other feelings, but they're not grounded in a true objective read of the situation. So feel those feelings, but man, don't give'em that much power over you. And what the data is showing us is that. That women are statistically more risk averse, sometimes up to 40% more risk averse than their male counterparts. And so what's going on here? I mean, culturally, we know that as women, we have to perform at a higher level to be considered on par with average men. And that is even more so true for women of color. The McKinsey Lean in org um, study does a great job of breaking down the gender by different groups, and it is startling if we think that, um, uh, that women in general or risk averse, or that women in general face obstacles to be taken seriously in professional environments, it is significantly more difficult for women of color. And that is, that is just a sad reality. Right. I, I'll talk about it on the podcast, but there I don't, I don't have any real insight into how we're gonna change the structural conditioning of our society. But my point is, there is a real cultural overlay that tells women not to take risks, and we see it exhibited in women's performance. And it's not just that gendered piece of men take risks, women don't. It is also the case that some of us were raised to have a fixed mindset to equate our worth with our success. And this can also breed risk aversion because any possibility of failure is intolerable. So you're only gonna take the actions where you can guarantee success. And hey I love a guaranteed win. But the problem is that most of life doesn't work that way, right? Most of life includes some element of risk and the potential for failure. And anytime we wanna grow as humans, it requires us to step out of our comfort zone and to do new things for the first time. That's literally the definition of professional development. We develop new skills and abilities that we didn't have before. So by waiting until we feel ready, we're robbing ourselves of the chance to grow. And my sweet friend, we are robbing our teams, our clients, and our communities of the best versions of ourselves. So. What can you do if this idea of taking action before you feel completely ready just leaves you paralyzed and locked up and, and woo, what do you do? Well, you can build your confidence through action. There is this common misperception that we are confident, and then because we're confident we're gonna succeed at whatever it is that we're doing. And yeah, confidence is a great contributor to success. But the reality is confidence is the outcome of your action. You grow more confident by doing the thing, and when you do the thing, whatever that might be, as you learn and you actually can do it, and you get more comfortable doing it, that builds your trust with yourself that you can do it. And confidence is a byproduct of that self trust. So. It is a beautiful reinforcing cycle once you start the cycle, but what I'm gonna say is if you don't feel ready to take action, and if you think you wanna be confident before you take action, well this is how you grow more confident. You take the action. The action gives you information back. It gives your brain and your body feedback about what worked, what didn't work, what felt good, what didn't feel good, where was it Hiccupy, where was it friction, right? You get all of that information back. That information strengthens your judgment, and so now you know better for doing it the next time. How you wanna approach it to reduce the friction, to increase the part that feels good. And that. Judgment, your ability to discern and analyze and make decisions about implementation, about the next time you take the action that builds your trust in yourself. Especially because this is where it's a cycle. You do the thing, you get the information. The information feeds judgment, judgment feeds self-trust. So now you do the thing again, from a position of greater trust, you're gonna get more information. That information is gonna feed even stronger judgment, and that's, that's also gonna feed yourself trust and then you're gonna do it again. Right? That's the good cycle, as opposed to just standing on top of the diving board freaking out because you're scared to jump, right? Yeah. Okay. So knowing that cycle, I'm gonna give you three things that you can do this very week to help build your confidence through action to help kickstart that cycle and to keep momentum through the cycle. And so, action number one. You just wanna pick a decision. Where, where are you standing on the top of the diving board afraid to jump in? Or where are you? Waiting, paralyzed what decision? And so I'm gonna encourage you to pick a decision that feels professionally meaningful to you. Right? Let's pick something, not a nothing burger.'cause you don't build trust if there's no actual growth, right? So pick something that means something to you. I'm gonna say pick something that's aligned with your values and, and that you're gonna, something that you actually want. Something that you got a little skin in the game that matters to you. Pick. It doesn't have to be huge. Do something that you can actually do and, and define what done looks like. Not perfection, completion, not zero flaws, but success. Right? Define success in a reasonable term, in a reasonable way. So that's action One is you just get clear on what that thing is that you wanna do. That you've been afraid to do, get clear on it why it's meaningful to you. Align it with your values and figure out what done what the completed action is gonna be. Okay? Step two, I want you to plan to take the action, but I want you to have like a really narrow planning horizon. What do I mean by that? Well, let's say it is that you wanna go for the promotion or you do wanna launch your side hustle. Whatever it might be like that end, like that completion might be months from now. Great. Okay, great. But you've listened to all of the episodes on goal setting that we've already done this year, and you know that those big vague long-term goals are harder to achieve. I want you to win. I want you to pick an action and plan for something that you can do in the next seven days. Okay. And so maybe. That is you make an appointment to talk to your accountant about the tech situation, to file your LLC. Maybe that is, um, that you enroll in the certification program that you need to be eligible for promotion, whatever. I don't know that's not, but lack it in plan for the immediate. It's gonna make it easier for you to do it. And this is, this is a good snowball, right? You start taking those smaller actions now you get the feedback, you get that loop going, and the more you circle around with those pieces, then your loop can get bigger and your actions can get bigger and bolder over time. But you're not gonna start with some big, crazy, bold action if you haven't been willing to take the smaller actions, start where you are and then move from there. So the action. Number one, make the decision, pick the thing, action. Number two, plan what you are gonna do in the next five to seven days to take the step forward. What is your next executable step? And again, the goal here is momentum. It is not perfection. So as you're going through that cycle, as you take the action and you get the information, if some of that information is negative, you do not stop there. You incorporate that information into your judgment, and this is how you grow self-confidence. Self-confidence comes by overcoming the adversity of life, right? If it were always easy, you wouldn't need any confidence in yourself, and so the fact that you might hit a snag or a road bump or get some negative information. All that means is that it's working and you're doing exactly what you need to do. Okay. That leads us into action number three, and that is that you wanna reflect on data, not your judgment, not your feelings. Again, feel your feelings, but they don't tell you what to do. They don't tell you whether you've done a good job or not, because they're not objectively true. They're feelings. So once you take your action. So I want you to, to take a minute and reflect on the lessons on what you've learned. And you do that by just asking yourself some questions. What worked, what didn't work? What do you wanna change for the next time you do it? What would you repeat? Right? So you just do a sustains and improves kind of analysis like you probably do for any of the programs that you manage. So it ain't hard. You just do. You just apply that to yourself and apply the same rational mindset. When you do a strengths, weaknesses, or a sustains, it improves or any, kinda like a SWOT analysis. Anything that you would do in your professional career, you probably are doing that without a lot of emotion. You're just looking at the data and the data tells you what it tells you. The same is true in your own life. Okay, let's bring her home. I'm trying to make these episodes shorter. I want to be crystal clear that there is a causal flow. If you're watching me on YouTube, you're seeing my hand go from one side to the other. Causation or what makes something else happen is clear in this instance, and the causation flows your action. Causes, creates your confidence. It does not work the other way. Your confidence does not create the action. It just doesn't. It might make the action easier, but you create confidence by doing. And so if you wait until you feel ready, you're gonna wait a long, long time, a whole lot longer than you objectively need to. So. If you would like to live your best life, if you would like sustainable success, then getting out of your own way is essential. And taking action before you feel ready is a key part of that. It's a key part of growing your confidence. It's a key part of what makes leadership and just our life in general enjoyable. So. Commit to take your action over the next week. Tag me in a post or reach out in a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn, Facebook. I'm in all the places. Let me know what you're doing and let me know how it goes. I'm really excited for you I can't wait to hear the actions you're taking. And how that helps you grow more confident. Now, I hope you'll join me next week as I share three habits of women who lead for the long haul. Sustainable success is an actual thing, and we're gonna get into it. Now. If this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend who's running on empty. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline. And please don't forget to like and subscribe. And if you could leave a review. I would deeply appreciate it. Building those reviews on Spotify, apple, and YouTube really does help a little podcast like mine to get some traction and to get shown to more women who could benefit from it. Also, you can always grab one of our free resources like Tame Your Inner Critic, the Weekly Reset Routine, and the Mental Load Reset. All of that is available on the Women Lead Well website, and I'll link them in the show notes below. And if you haven't signed up to the wait list for the Inner Critic, mini course girl, get on it. That links in the show notes to remember joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible, and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm and this is Joyfully Unstoppable.