You've been told to "just believe in yourself." You've also been told the system is biased. Both are true—and both leave you stuck. Here's what actually builds confidence.

Confidence isn't a feeling you wait for—it's a skill you practice. The research confirms it: Zenger Folkman tracked 11,000+ people and found women who stay in the game long enough become MORE confident than men, not less. The trajectory completely flips by age 40. The question is how to build in your 20s and 30s what typically takes until then.

This episode challenges the two incomplete stories you've been told: "fix your mindset" and "blame the system." Neither works alone. The path forward is building confidence through deliberate action—decision ownership, direct communication, and small stakes repetition—while making sure that confidence is visible to the people who influence your career.

You'll learn why confident people don't feel confident all the time (they've learned to separate feelings from facts), the framework professional poker player Annie Duke uses to own decisions regardless of outcome, and how to shift from tentative language to powerful language without being aggressive.

What you'll learn:

• Why waiting to "feel confident" keeps you stuck (and what to practice instead)
• The research showing women's confidence surpasses men's by 40—and how to accelerate that timeline
• A poker player's framework for owning decisions even when you're wrong
• How your language literally trains your nervous system (and the swaps that shift it)
• Where to practice so the people who matter actually see it

Every Thursday, the Protégé newsletter delivers tactical frameworks for the invisible skills that accelerate your career.

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