Real Confidence

Has this ever happened to you?

You sign up for a workshop, seminar or conference that promises to help you feel more confident, productive or otherwise improve an aspect of your life or yourself. 

The speaker is inspiring, the content is lighting up your brain and you’re feeling ready to take on the world … until you’re not. 

Instead of feeling motivated to put what you’re learning into practice, you’re discouraged. You may even feel worse about your situation than before you signed up and think you suck, you’ll never get to the “after” in your story or that transformation is for “other people”. 

Why does this happen and what can we do about it? 

In this episode of Real Confidence, I take the mystery out of this phenomenon and offer practical tips on how to keep our confidence in check when these doubts creep in. 

Listen in as I talk about:  

Get ready to giggle! This week’s guest is someone who came into my life when she became an ACI certified confidence coach and every time I talk to her, I feel so blessed. 

Not only is she a stellar human being and one of the funniest people on the planet, but Brooklyn Dicent created a career as Chief Happiness Officer by bringing comedy to the workplace to make it more fun and fulfilling. 

Sounds counter-intuitive, right? Work is supposed to be serious business! But imagine just for a second how awesome it would be to deck the halls with boughs of happy? You’re welcome - I’m giving you the gift of Brooklyn!

Listen in to my conversation with Brooklyn where we talk about:

You might just walk away from this episode ready, willing and able to become the Chief Happiness Officer of your own life.

Learn more about Brooklyn at brooklynhappiness.com.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You send an email or text to a friend, loved one or colleague and don’t hear back. A few more days pass and nothing. They’re ghosting you – or so you think. Or maybe you do hear back, but the answer feels cold and clipped.

You then start wondering if you said or did something wrong, go back and re-read the email you sent and replay your last interactions dozens of times.

Pretty soon you’re telling yourself a story about what you might have done wrong and thinking of a way to apologize.

Not so fast.

What if it’s not about YOU at all?

In this episode of Real Confidence, I’m going to introduce you to a concept I only recently learned about myself: NET NEUTRAL and why it’s good news for all of us.

Tune in as we dig into:

How many people do you know – including yourself – who are terrified of giving presentations? We obsess over what people will think of us. We fear we might sound stupid or look unprepared in front our bosses, our peers and our direct reports. 

In this episode of Real Confidence, I talk to Karen Donaldson, a celebrity communication body language and confidence coach who also happens to be an ACI certified coach. 

Highlights from our conversation include: 

You can learn more about Karen’s work at at karendonaldsoninc.com

I hate it when... 

Whether it’s a friend who always cancels plans last minute, a partner who makes a hobby out of interrupting you or a boss who is consistently late for your 1:1s, these micro-disses don’t just annoy us, they can downright piss us off. 

What happens next? Our bodies and brains tell us something not’s right in the world and we usually harbor quiet resentment or we lash out. 

Neither is good.

But what is good is when we use pet peeves productively as signals when other people transgress our values.

In this episode of Real Confidence, I’m taking you behind the scenes into one of our most-loved training exercises. You’ll learn how to: 

Confidently supporting gender identity & change 

What’s the right way to support someone who is questioning or already in the process of changing their gender identity? 

How do you best support their family? Their friends? Your own family and friends? Maybe you also need some help to understand and know how to move ahead comfortably?

In this episode of Real Confidence, I talk to John Grosshandler about his own experience as a father of a transgender child that also led him to co-found The GenderCool Project that shares the perspectives of transgender and non-binary youth who are thriving.

Find out the right actions that can help everyone feel more confident.

Key takeaways from our conversation:

You can learn more about John, his family, and the work he does at GenderCool.org

So you’re ready for a career change…

Maybe you’ve had it with that useless boss of yours. 

Maybe you’re done languishing in a position that’s not giving back to you. 

Or maybe you’re just plain bored. 

Whatever the reason, just the thought of “changing stripes” can be a real challenge to one’s confidence. 

For most people, it opens up a host of tough questions, like: 

“What do I want more of in my life and in my career right now?” 

“What's missing?” 

“What am I really hungry for?” 

In this episode, we’re talking to Cat Breet, host of “Planet Work”, about the steps a person should have take the moment they realize they're no longer thrilled with their current occupation. Change is usually scary – but you can use that fear as fuel to find a job that you’ll wish you had sooner.

Listen in as we discuss why:

Want more Cat Breet? Check out Planet Work or visit catbreet.com.

Why Everyone Could Use A Little Rejection Here And There….  

No kidding - life happens. 

For all the planning and preparing we do, circumstances beyond our control are bound to impact us for better and worse. 

If you’ve ever taken a tough loss, you know how hard that pill can be to swallow. 

Whether it’s dealing with let downs in your professional career, or platonic or romantic relationship rejections, the after effects of disappointments can rattle around in our brains for years. 

They keep us up at night – and sometimes wake us up early the next day. Sometimes they even seem to physically hurt. 

Left unchecked, they can completely rob us of motivation and reduce physical resilience.

But disappointment isn’t all bad. 

It's part of what we have to do, like it or not, to learn, grow, and become our best selves. The trick is to learn to use disappointment in a way that's more productive. That's where our confidence has a chance to get stronger, more resilient and quicker to recover.

In this episode, we’re talking easy ways you can reframe even major losses into major learnings. Learn three habits to help you: 

I get asked to speak on a variety of topics. 

Most of them are on very similar topics: confidence in the workplace, confidence to give presentations, confidence to participate in meetings, psychological safety, etc. 

But every so often, I get a request that surprises me. One request in particular happened when I was asked to give a keynote for the second year in a row at a nursing conference. 

“Would you come talk to us about how to handle bullies?

Turns out, it was a discussion the nursing world needed to have – and it’s a topic ALL us Confidence Crusaders need to understand. 

“Bullying” is much more than that thing your boss loves to do. 

Whether you realize it or not, you’re under constant bombardment from subtle (and not-so-subtle) bullies – on Zoom calls, in the supermarket, on social media, at family events, at the dog park – you name it. 

And chances are, you’ve given them full license to drain your confidence. 

In this episode of Real Confidence  “How To Deal With Grown-Up Bullies”, we talk about how to: 

Is It Too Much of A Good Thing, Or Too Little of the Real Thing? 

You probably know someone who considers themselves “very confident.”

They wear their, *ahem*, “overconfidence” on their sleeves. Often to the detriment of other people. 

But is it real confidence? Or do they belong to a group we at ACI like to call “confidence imposters?” 

This week, we’re taking some time to break down the causes of cockiness, arrogance, and all the different kinds of “confidence villains.”  

Why confidence villains? 

Because while these behaviors look like signs of confidence on the surface, they’re actually diametrically opposed to real confidence – and often, a cry for help. 

So if you’ve found yourself in scenarios like...

...dealing with a boss who unfairly questions your contribution in the workplace….

...putting up with a coworker who never misses an opportunity to publicly correct you...  

...or stifling an eye-roll when you hear words like “What do you mean you haven’t read X?”...  

...then this episode of Real Confidence is a must-listen! 

Get actionable tips to not only manage your confidence around these villains, but also identify and even handle other people’s! 

You’ll also hear: