61 Aaron Hill: Courage First, Confidence Later: Rewriting Your Success Story

Ever found yourself waiting to feel confident before taking that important step? You're not alone. The myth of confidence keeps countless people stuck in perpetual preparation mode, forever postponing meaningful conversations, career moves, and personal growth.

What I've discovered—both personally and through coaching clients like "Dave"—is that we've been thinking about confidence all wrong. Confidence isn't something we need before taking action; it's what naturally develops after we've shown up consistently. It's not a feeling to chase but a byproduct of courage.

In this episode, I break down the crucial difference between confidence (which is really just competence) and self-confidence (the understanding that outcomes don't define us). Dave's story illustrates how building a body of evidence from past experiences where we've acted despite fear creates a foundation for taking courageous steps in other areas of life.

The key insight? Courage means accepting all emotions—fear, nervousness, uncertainty—without letting them dictate our actions. These feelings don't signal a lack of confidence; they confirm our humanity. By acknowledging them while still moving forward, we discover that confidence emerges naturally through the process.

Whether it's having difficult conversations, sending postponed emails, or launching that podcast you've been planning, remember: confidence isn't the prerequisite for action—it's the reward you get after taking it.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Forging Resilience

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Today we're going to be talking about the myth of confidence. So many times in my own life and in the people that I've worked with, I and we have made the assumption that there's something we need to do, a book we need to read or even a pill we need to take to become confident. What I found really helped myself was understanding the difference between confidence and self-confidence, because for me, confidence is really competence. It comes after a certain amount of repetitions or a result of us doing something a certain amount of times. Then we've got the confidence to know that we're going to be able to do it. But we can't expect to have confidence if we've never done that thing before. And then self-confidence is really a belief in ourselves, and for me, that belief is that whatever the outcome in this situation, it's not going to change who I am. So that might be a conversation with a client, it might be a new, new experience, a launch in a podcast. Whatever happens, I don't have to wait for my feelings of confidence to be there. It's an understanding that this won't change me. It's the beliefs and perceptions we have on ourselves, and beliefs will be a subject for another time, he says as he makes a quick note of a future podcast episode. No joke.

Speaker 1: 1:47

So I was working with a client called dave all my clients are called dave, regardless of sex, nationality or sexual orientation and dave was looking for more confidence. We worked on lots of different areas in his life and the belief that all roads lean to Rome. The desire to have more confidence was related conversations with his boss about his position in the company, his role, why he was brought on and how he believed he could help develop this company. But he felt he was waiting, or he's struggling with confidence and was waiting to feel confident before he had those conversations. What was really interesting about working with Dave is that he never got to have those conversations, but what he did do is build a body of evidence from the things he'd done in the past where he had, in these cases, had that self-belief. He had had the evidence to see where he had stepped into certain situations before he felt ready and was able to take that into his work. The reason until we were working together is he never had those conversations, his boss was avoiding him a stronger sense of self-confidence because of the awareness that he had around himself, awareness around the beliefs that served him and awareness around the beliefs that held him back.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So it's never really confidence that we're seeking, because that is a pre, is not a prerequisite, it's not a requirement that comes afterwards. So something that we can do to help build our self-confidence is taking gentle steps towards those things that we assume we need confidence for. So let's take in this case again the example of Dave and their conversation potentially challenging conversation with a boss. The courage that is needed is the skill, is the key skill in building this.

Speaker 1: 4:21

If we're not going to look at beliefs today, it's courage. Courage is being able to accept everything emotionally that's going on for us. These feelings of fear and nerves doesn't mean we're not confident. It means we're human and that we're anticipating a certain or potential outcome, even if that's story or even if it's real. So a way to practice this is potentially looking at things that we're avoiding, emails that we're sending, conversations we're putting off, and recognize that it will take courage to step into those Once we've had those conversations, once we've sent those emails.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Once we've gently nudged our comfort in whatever area of our personal life, then we start to build that evidence to give us the confidence and, just like with Dave, the interesting thing for him, whilst he didn't get to have that conversation with his boss, as I alluded to, he started to see other areas of his life start to flourish in terms of his relationship and also in his side hustle.

Speaker 1: 5:30

He started to have conversations there because he could really realise that, whilst he didn't feel confident, he could still step in and take those grounded steps and actions that he needed to. Confidence isn't about waiting to feel like you're ready. It's taking action, irregardless of what we're feeling like in terms of confidence or lack of so if you feel like you're waiting, marking time, avoiding looking for anything to to do to help build your podcast, build your confidence, like listening to this podcast, then often it's a conversation, but the first step is within your control and that is gently confronting with courage, which means feeling the fear as well, and having those conversations, taking those actions. Remember, confidence is not a prerequisite, it's a byproduct. It happens afterwards. Thanks for listening.