Hey, welcome to Lessons from a Quitter, where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.

Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. If you didn't catch that episode last week, I just want to remind you that I'm gonna open doors for the last time to the Quitter Club as a bittersweet statement for me to say. But I want you to be aware that we are winding down the membership at the end of 2025. And I will be opening the doors one last time in the next like week or so, and it will be a pass for you to be in the club until the end of the year. So for the next seven to eight months, if you want to create a strategy to change your career, if you want to learn all of the mindset work that we talk about on this podcast, if you wanna start taking control of your life and creating a life that you actually love, I want you to join me for this kind of last push.
It's going to be the best eight months in the club. I'm going to share all of my new frameworks and have some special guests and really help you reach your goals. So if you want to be a part of this kind of last run, make sure you get on the wait list so that you are notified when the doors are open so that you can get in before doors close. And that's it. You can join the wait list at quitter club.com/waitlist. Okay, this month in the Quitter Club, our theme is confidence. And I figured since I'm teaching about that in the club and I do a masterclass every month in the club when you join, you have access to all the past master classes. You can watch any month that you want. The month of May in 2025 is all about the confidence code and about how to overcome imposter syndrome.
And it's something that I notice a lot of people struggle with. And so I figured I would bring it to the podcast as well because I think it's something that we all can improve, even if you have, uh, you know, a high level of confidence, which is awesome. I think it's something that when you think about these concepts in a different way, can actually help you improve your confidence. And if you struggle with this, if imposter syndrome is something you struggle with, if you don't have a lot of self-trust, then this is something that definitely is for you. Because here's the thing, I think that a lot of us think that it's just either something you have or something you don't have or something you have because of your natural skills and you have to have it before you can go out and do whatever it is you wanna do.
And that sort of has the equation backwards. I see so many people hold off on taking action, on doing the things that they wanna do, on taking risks, on trying new things because they don't feel confident in producing the outcome they want in getting the result that they want. And so they're waiting until they have that. Maybe they don't realize they're waiting, maybe they don't consciously understand this, but it's thinking that there's a time that they're going to feel confident enough, ready enough in order to start that business to make that jump, change that career, start that relationship, end that relationship. And I want you to realize that it doesn't work that way. That you cannot have confidence until you take action, that it is a result of that action, right? It comes after the action. It doesn't come before. And I, I think that the way that we think about confidence is a disservice to us.
And so I wanna sort of help us reframe it a little bit so that you can really start looking for the evidence of the things in your own life that you can have confidence about and how you can start building that confidence. Okay? So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Here's the thing, I think that first we have to break up how we think about confidence, right? There are multiple different ways of thinking about confidence, but I think it generally falls into two different categories. One is the confidence that you have in the task that you know you can do well, right? That let's say you have done so often or that you have perfected or become an expert in that you now have confidence in that thing. Okay? That's I think, the typical way that we think about confidence. It's like I, you know, play the sport.
I've played the sport for a really long time. I'm confident in my capabilities in playing the sport. Now I don't have to tell you that that kind of confidence can only come from taking action, can only come from doing that thing over and over again. Let's say in your career, you might have a level of confidence now because you've done that job for a long time. If you think about when you started that job when you were first on the job, you likely lacked confidence as you should at that level of confidence can only come from taking action. And so already, you already know that you cannot develop that confidence if you don't take action, right? It has to come afterwards. So if that's the type of confidence you're looking for, it cannot come with things that you're new at. It cannot come with something that you're trying for the first time.
And that's okay, right? There's nothing wrong with that. You just can't wait for it. You can't expect to be confident in something that you haven't done before. If you think back to anything that you learned, when you look at children, you can't be confident in riding a bike if you've never ridden a bike, right? It requires you to do it and fail and fall and do it as many times as you need. Get as many skin knees as it's gonna take until you learn how to balance. And then in the beginning, you're kind of shaking at it, right? You're doing it for a little while. You're still falling over. Every once in a while you still dunno how to stop. You're still kind of like learning the mechanics of it and then you do it enough that you become confident at it. And then we have sayings like, it's like riding a bike.
Because even if you don't ride a bike for 10 years, when you go back to it, you have this confidence, right? You can think about it with even little things that we don't necessarily equate with confidence, but it's just good. As an example, likely most of us have confidence in like pouring a cup of coffee, right? Or driving at this point or putting on your shoes. You get it. Like there's something that you've done. Maybe when you were a kid, you likely didn't have confidence in wearing your shoes. You probably couldn't tie your shoe laces, right? These are all things we sort of take for granted now because we have a level of confidence throughout our lives to go about the day-to-day things that we have to do. Now, anything new falls out of that. Anything that I'm gonna try for the first time or that I don't have an expertise in, I cannot feel that level of confidence.
And I think a lot of us, for whatever reason, think that that's what should stop us. Like, because I don't have this level of confidence. I shouldn't try this thing 'cause I'm gonna fail or I'm, I shouldn't try it because I'm not gonna be good at it. It's gonna be cringey, I'm gonna embarrass myself. But the only way to build that confidence is to actually do that thing over and over and over again until you learn how to do that thing. You shouldn't have confidence in something that you've never done before. It's okay to not have confidence. I think the problem is, is in thinking that you should feel confident is in waiting for that feeling, waiting to feel settled in something that you've never done. And I think a lot of us stop ourselves from trying new things because we're so scared of doing something without that feeling of confidence, without feeling settled of like, I know what I'm doing.
And I want you to just understand that you can never have that with anything new. And if you're gonna limit your life where you're never gonna try anything new until you feel confident, then you will limit yourself only to things that you already know how to do. And that's kind of sad, right? Putting yourself in a box at this age, whatever age it is that you have and never trying anything else because unless you know how to do it well, you can't do it. Limits your possibilities, limits what you can accomplish, limits all the things that you can end up becoming confident in if you just give yourself the ability to not be good at it in the beginning, right? So that's one type of confidence. The confidence that I think we all normally think about. And I want you to just really think about like of course I'm not confident, of course I don't have that expertise 'cause I haven't done this thing enough.
And that comes from repetition, okay? But another type of confidence that I wanna talk about that I think is actually more important is having confidence in yourself. What I mean by that is that it isn't that I'm going to knock it outta the park, that I'm never gonna make a mistake that I'm never gonna have, you know, troubles with this. It's that I know I can figure it out. I have confidence in myself to figure out whatever happens, okay? This is the more powerful type of confidence because it allows you to, to try something new. It allows you to go into arenas that maybe you've never been in. Knowing that like of course I might fail at it, of course I'm not gonna knock it outta the park or have the expertise that someone that's been doing this for a long time, but I know myself and I know that I'm a hard worker or that I'm a fast learner or that I have a lot of perseverance or that I'm really good at figuring things out and I know that I have figured out everything else in my life.
Every other obstacle that's been put in front of me, I have figured out and I will figure this out too. And I will handle whatever feelings I have to handle in order to figure this out. When you have that kind of confidence, you don't need success, quote unquote in order to feel confident. You don't need to be an expert. You don't need to be good at everything. You don't need to have this facade of perfectionism that that's not real in order to feel good about yourself in order to know, hey, I will handle it. Now here's the rub. All of you can feel that level of confidence. Every single one of you that have listened to this have figured out millions of things in your life. You have figured out a lot of things that you likely brush off as not really even counting as figuring it out 'cause it was too easy for you.
'cause it was something that didn't come that wasn't that hard. You just, you know, you figured out school, you got the grades, you went to college, you got the degree, you got the jobs, you have figured out a lot of things in the middle of that. You figured out tons of life things, getting married, having kids, navigating relationships, setting boundaries, going to therapy, taking care of yourself, maintaining friendships, right? There's 1,000,001 things every day that you are likely figuring out. But oftentimes we only focus like we have a negativity bias and we only focus on things that we didn't figure out. So we might think about the one time that we tried that sport and we embarrassed ourselves or we took that job and it didn't work out the way that we want it, or we got in that relationship and that relationship turned out not to be the best fit for us, right?
And we look at that and we think, well see, I can't trust myself or I don't make good decisions or I don't know how to figure things out. Or I get myself into terrible situations or whatnot. And we ignore the 99% of things that we did well, that we did great. And so what I want you to do is simply focus on the fact of all of the things that you have figured out. Look, make a list, sit down and make a list of everything that you have figured out in your life. This list should take you a long time. This shouldn't be like a three, you know, bullet points. You have figured out a lot of things and you can go from big things like your degrees or your grades or whatnot to really little things like when you know my insurance wasn't gonna cover some leak in my house and I had to navigate that through different insurance companies and make sure I held them accountable and they ended up paying it, I figured that out right when I had to buy a car and I had to look between the different kind of options and I had to figure out like what was gonna work best with my finances and where I was gonna get a loan from.
And when I figured all of that out, right? I figured out, I figured out how to register my kids for school and I've managed to keep them alive and I've figured out a ton of things, I can figure things out. You want to start creating that mindset, that personality, right, of I can figure things out. Because the thing is, is that resilience and resourcefulness don't come from like everything going your way. None of us are gonna start things and have everything go our way. You're never gonna start that business or write that book or become that speaker or take that job or do anything and never have any problems, never have any hiccups, always everything goes right. Like it sounds insane. We know that obviously things are gonna go wrong and the more you get rooted in I am a resilient person, I'm a resourceful person, I will figure it out.
I will meet this obstacle and I will figure out what to do next. The more you will be unafraid to try things, the more you'll be unafraid of those obstacles. When your entire outlook is that I better not encounter a problem. Everything better goes smoothly. I have to plan so much so that nothing ever, there's no hiccup. Then as soon as there is a hiccup, which there will be, you get rocked. You're completely blindsided because you were banking on the fact that you don't have to have any problems and life isn't like that. Unfortunately. You will always have problems, right? And so the more you start accepting that there will be problems, it will not go according. You can, you should have a plan. You should plan. And then you should know that it won't go according to plan. That there will be hiccups in the plan, right?
That things will have to pivot and that you are somebody that can trust yourself to figure that out. You are somebody that is resourceful, that can figure out, okay, well now what? What next? And the more you just, again, it's simply becoming aware of the fact that you already are that person. It's just showing your brain the evidence that you already do that. 'cause I think for a lot of us, we do that in our day-to-day. We just ignore it. We're just constantly like, oh, but look at this one thing I didn't do. Well look at this one decision I make that didn't go well. And we just wanna look at the mountain of evidence of like, look at all the things I have figured out. I am this person. Okay? So that's the first thing that I wanted just you to be aware of, is these different aspects of confidence.
And how you can build it is by simply looking for the evidence of either all the stuff that you have become an expert at or all the things that you have figured out. And knowing that you can trust yourself even if you don't make the right decision in the beginning, even if it doesn't turn out the way that you wanted, that you will learn from it and that you will figured out. The second thing I want you to know is that your brain lies to you about your readiness. Okay? So a lot of us think I'm not ready is just some truth. It's like some truth from the universe that's like, you know what? You're not ready to start a business and when you are, you'll have some divine intervention where you'll just all of a sudden feel ready. You're never gonna feel ready. I hate to break that to you because it is your, the way that your brain will keep you safe.
Your brain does not care about you being happy about you living your best life, about you living in a, you know, your authenticity or whatever. All these buzzwords are on Instagram. Your brain wants to keep you alive. That's it. It wants to suss out any danger and keep you far away from it, okay? And so it is constantly scanning your environment for like what could be dangerous. And typically something new is more dangerous than something that you already know, right? Better the devil. Well, you know, than the devil you don't. And so this is why so many of us stay in relationships where we know they are bad. Uh, stay in jobs where we know we have outgrown it. Stay in, you know, homes, states, lots of different life situations where we are miserable because we're like, at least I know how this works. At least I know I can stay safe.
At least I know I'm alive. If I go out and I end this relationship, I get this job, I, I don't know what's gonna happen. That uncertainty is so scary for us because we're so terrified that it's gonna get worse, that we stay right? We will always choose the familiar over the ha our happiness over possibility, right? And so when your brain tells you you are not ready, it is just a tricky little way of making you feel like, huh, let's just stay where we are. Let's stay safe. A cognitive bias that you have to really be aware of the way that your brain works. I think a lot of us think our brains are like rational and that our brains are on our side. And of course I wanna be happy. But you have to really understand the psychology of how you think and the fact that like our brains are not rational and that there is a lot of shortcuts that it takes in order to keep us alive and in order to, you know, not expend energy and to kind of keep going with the day to day.
And one of the things that we have to really be aware of is that we operate under this loss aversion. Human beings fear more losing something than we value gaining. So they've done tons of studies where the feeling of losing a dollar is worse than winning $10. Okay? So we feel that pain more acutely when we lose something. And because of that, we hold on super tight to what we have with both hands, even if it's not something we want. You've all experienced this, right? You've all seen family and friends experiences where it's like an easy example is relationships. Like you see someone in a toxic, terrible relationship that they're not happy in and yet they are holding on for dear life. And it's counterintuitive. You're just like, I just don't understand. Nobody is happy here. Why are we doing this right? And yet it's because we are so scared to lose what we have.
And so you have to understand that with respect to like taking new risks, doing new things, your brain is very terrified of losing what it is that you have. And so it will constantly come up with really brilliant ways to protect you, to make you feel like, hey, let's not give this up. We don't know what's gonna happen in that big, bad, scary world out there. So let's hold onto this. And one of the biggest tricks it tells you is that you are not ready. I want you to really think about like a really easy example of this is imposter syndrome. Like truly think about what imposter syndrome is. It's not when you know, a lot of people say like if, like we just talked about like if you don't have the expertise in something, you likely shouldn't feel confidence. That's like being rational, right?
Like you don't feel confident in something 'cause you haven't done it. But that's not what imposter syndrome is. Imposter syndrome is when you have the accolades, you have the expertise, you have been doing this thing, you got the degree, whatever it is, you've put in the time to learn whatever it is that you need to learn. And yet you keep telling yourself, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm a fraud, I'm not good enough, I'm not ready, right? And I see this day and day out, I coach so many, especially women who have been sort of conditioned to constantly downplay what they have done to downplay their knowledge, to downplay their expertise, to downplay what they know and to constantly reinforce just this thought of, I still don't know what I'm doing. I'm not good enough. No, that was just a fluke. Somebody else helped me.
That was easy. I didn't really do anything. I can't tell you how many people I coach who will tell me I have no idea what I'm doing. And they've been in their jobs for 10 years, 15 years, they've made partner at like this law firm. And they'll tell me, I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm like, that is an impossibility. It is impossible for you to have fooled that many people for that many years where they keep paying you this very high salary. The more logical explanation is that you just keep telling yourself you don't know what you're doing. When you actually do, when you're actually pretty good at your job, you keep getting good at reviews, right? You keep getting yearly reviews, you keep getting promoted, you keep getting a raise, they keep you on. This isn't a charity. They're not keeping you on because they like you.
Like they just like feel sorry for you. They're keeping you on because you do good work. And yet you're doing this work and then you're telling yourself you're not good at it, or you don't know what you're doing or that you're not like you're a fraud or you're not ready. And I feel like this is just like such a stark example of this idea of not being ready is that you think that that thought is just something that is like an objective critique of where you're at when it's just a practiced thought. It's just a habit you've just developed to tell yourself you're not ready. So then your brain keeps saying it like, yeah, see, we're not ready. We're not ready. And we pick up on little things to be like, see, you know, I stumbled in that presentation because I'm not ready. I drew a blank when I was talking to that client.
That means I'm not ready. And we focus on that and then we discount everything else. And so I want you to like really beyond yourself when your brain is telling you I'm not ready, I want you to hear it and realize it. It's slightly lying. I am ready. I'm just scared and my brain is scared and it wants to keep me safe. And that's okay. Being ready is simply a decision. That's all it is. You decide that you are ready, not because you feel confident, not because you don't feel fear. Anytime you're trying something new, anytime you're doing something that you haven't done, it's going to feel scary. And so if you're waiting for those feelings to go away and for you to feel assured and grounded and confident, you will never feel ready. If that's what you're equating to feeling ready, you'll never feel ready.
And so you have to realize there's no feeling of readiness. It's just a decision. And you simply decide that you're ready. And I want you to again, look at all of the things that you have accomplished when you thought maybe you weren't ready to show yourself that. Like maybe your brain's a liar and maybe you are ready. And maybe this idea that you're not is simply a way of trying to protect yourself. And that's, you know, we can thank our brain for trying to protect us and know that we don't need it, right? And know that like, yes, I can go out and do this scary thing. And again, I will figure it out. Okay, the last thing that I will say, which is kind of like a piggyback onto this readiness thing, is that I just want you to think about as a reframe.
You don't need confidence to do things. You need courage. And I think oftentimes we get tripped up because we think we're missing something. We think that we need that confidence to start. But you don't. It's never a prerequisite to starting something. And I think that when you start realizing that all you need is like 10 seconds of bravery to get started, that's it. You need to feel the fear and do it anyway. And I think a lot of times people think even courage. They think that it feels good. Like it sounds like such a beautiful, you know, thing that we all wanna feel, but it feels like crap because it's on the back of fear. Like you don't have to feel courageous if you're not scared. The only time you need courage and bravery is when you're deathly afraid. And so I want you to think about that feeling of fear.
That is what it feels like. Overcoming that, like standing at the edge of the cliff and still jumping. That is what courage feels like. It doesn't feel great, it feels very scary. And yet if you can engage in these small acts of courage, you don't have to actually jump off a cliff, but you do have to take small steps when you feel unready, when you feel scared, when you don't know what you're doing, that is how you start building your confidence, right? When you take these micro actions over time, you build that confidence, not again, not because you all of a sudden become an expert at things, but because you start showing yourself that you can figure it out, that you are courageous enough to do it, that you will take that step, that you'll take the next one and the next and the next.
And that starts building that self-trust and that confidence in yourself to do the things right? And so I want you to really stop expecting that confidence is even a prerequisite or will even be a factor in you start trying something, especially if you wanna start something new. Especially if you wanna go out there and you wanna experiment and you wanna expand your horizons and you want to see new possibilities and you wanna put yourself out there, you have to be yet ready for the fact that like you won't feel confident, you're not supposed to. And that's okay. Instead of tapping into like, I don't feel ready yet, I don't feel confident enough is can I feel courageous for just a little bit? What would courage feel like right now? What would bravery be like right now? What would I have to do in order to take this step?
Despite the fear, one of the things that neuroscience has proven is that the more that you act despite fear, you rewire your brain to reduce that fear response over time, which is really important. 'cause our fear response has sort of gotten out of hand. Like, yes, there should be fear when you're standing on the edge of a cliff or when you're gonna jump out of a plane or whatnot. I think that a lot of us, you know, that evolutionary wired fear to like keep us alive is important. But in our day-to-day lives in sending an email in, you know, like reaching out to someone to ask them how they started some company, to putting something out on Instagram that shouldn't evoke a fear response. Like you're being chased by a tiger, right? That doesn't require the same level of fear that you have. And when you start taking these actions, you start realizing like you do it and you're like, huh, I didn't die.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it was. And that starts rewiring that response over time so that you aren't as afraid all the time of everything. I hear this all the time with the people that I coach. Like they will have this huge, unbelievable fear about doing something like quitting the job or taking a leave of absence or you know, asking for a promotion or whatnot. And then they do it and they're like, that was actually easy, that wasn't that bad. And they got what they wanted. Then the next time they're not as scared. 'cause they realize like that thing that I had built up in my head for months and months and I obsessed about and I, you know, couldn't go to sleep at night and I thought I was gonna die and I thought the world was gonna swallow me whole. I did it and I lived and it actually worked out and nobody bit my head off and it was fine.
And so part of this, when you reframe like what you need from confidence to courage and you start taking these little steps, you start reducing the fear and you start building up your confidence and it becomes easier and easier to go after the things that you want. Okay? So as a recap, confidence is built after you take action, not before. Okay? The confidence that you want is the confidence in yourself to figure it out. Not a confidence that you're gonna be great at everything at the first go. You're not gonna go and hit it outta the park at the first go. It is the confidence that is built by trying, failing, figuring it out, trying, failing, figuring it out. Your brain will always tell you that you are not ready. It is a liar. Do not listen. And that you only need 10 seconds of courage to get what going.
That's it. That can fundamentally shift your life. 10 seconds of courage to take the next step. I want you to realize that confidence isn't found, it's forged. Okay? You are stronger than you know you can do so much more. You have done so much more. The evidence is there and I want you to look for it. So today I want you to just do two things. I want you to look for the things that you've already done, that you've figured out, okay? And I want you to think about one small step, not a huge one. Doesn't have to be off a cliff. One small step that you can must drop some courage to take. So you can start building that courage. You can start building that confidence. You can start reducing that fear response, and you can start going after your dream. If you want help with this, I want you to join me in the last run of the Quitter Club.
This is the work that we are doing together. The month of May, we are doing all work on confidence, but this is the stuff that you can bring into coaching so that I can help you actually implement it. What does it look like? What are the small steps you wanna take? How can you have that courage? How do you push yourself even when the cell sounds great, but when you're standing at that cliff and you wanna take the jump, you just can't get yourself to do it. I get that. That's super normal and that's what I wanna help you with. And this is the last eight months that we're gonna be doing this work together in this container. So if you're ready to do it, do not waste any more time. This will be your final opportunity. You can go to quitter club.com/waitlist to get on that wait list and join me in this final access pass. All right, my friends, go out there, take some bold action, have some courage, build that confidence. I cannot wait to see what you create. Hey, if you are
Looking for more in depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club.

It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessons from ac quitter.com/quitter club and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.