Summary

Russ Harris reframes confidence as an action before it is a feeling: you build it through practice, feedback, values-guided behavior, and repeated exposure outside the comfort zone. The book uses ACT – acceptance and commitment therapy – to develop psychological flexibility through diffusion, expansion, and engagement, helping you act effectively even when fear, self-doubt, and negative thoughts are present.

The core move is to stop treating fear as a problem to eliminate and instead transform your relationship with fear. Confidence comes from accepting thoughts and feelings, choosing a valued direction, taking mindful action, and learning from failure. True success is not fame, wealth, status, or respect – it is living by your values, staying engaged in the process, and trusting yourself to follow through.

"It’s not about whether your thoughts are true or false, it’s whether they’re helpful"

"All you have at any moment is the journey itself"

"This is my body getting me ready for action"

Key Takeaways

Notes

Introduction

• Lack of confidence = fear of failure = performance anxiety = self-doubt
• ACT: acceptance and commitment therapy
• Develop psychological flexibility
• Mindfulness: a mental state of openness, awareness, and focus
• 3 techniques taught:
  • Diffusion: separate from your thoughts - avoiding getting caught up in them, choosing whether to act
  • Expansion: open up + make room for emotions - let them come and go (esp. for fear, anger, anxiety)
  • Engagement: psychologically present - rather than in own head

1: Warming up

1: Why bother

• In a world where you had unlimited confidence, how would you XYZ differently? (sounds a lot like agency)
• Values determine direction, goals
• Confidence: a feeling of certainty or assurance; an act of trust or alliance
• ↑ important distinction
• Feeling vs action

1. The actions of confidence come first and the feelings come later

• 5 reasons we lack confidence:
  1. Excessive expextations
  2. Harsh self judgement
  3. Preoccupation with fear
  4. Lack of experience
  5. Lack of skill
• Literally everything is like riding a bike - practice makes perfect
• The confidence cycle:
  1. Practice the skills
  2. Apply them effectively
  3. Assess the results
  4. Modify as needed
• No such thing as genuine instant confidence - comes from practice

2: The good old days

• You CAN’T avoid / prevent fight or flight when stepping outside comfort zone - don’t try to and inevitably fail
• We’re taught that fear = immaturity or weakness

3: Misbeliefs

• 4 widely held misbeliefs:

1. Fear is a sign of weakness
2. Fear impairs performance
3. Fear holds you back
4. Confidence is the absence of fear

• Fear is not holding you back, it’s your relationship towards it

2: The double-edged sword

4: Thoughts influence but don’t control

• Fear is a private experience
• Private experiences:
  • Emotion
  • Memories
  • Images
  • Thoughts
  • Sensations
• Simply, the human mind has evolved to think negatively
• Like “Mary had a little…” autocompleting to “lamb”, you naturally think “I can’t do it” - but doesn’t mean it’s true
• 3 most common solutions:
  1. Challenge or dispute + look for evidence to disprove
  2. Replace with positive thoughts
  3. Distract yourself
• ↑ doesn’t work because:
  1. Require lots of effort + energy
  2. You’ll just come up with new ones
  3. Won’t help you in genuinely challenging situations
• Thoughts influence but don’t control

5: Unhooking

• Eg. you can lift your arm even when your mind says you can’t
• Can’t wait til your mind stops being negative - must persist thru
• 4 most common forms of reason giving:
  1. Obstacles
  2. Self-judgement
  3. Comparison (to others)
  4. Prediction (of bad outcomes)
• Your mind is like a reason-giving machine
• “It’s not about whether your thoughts are true or false, it’s whether they’re helpful”
• Exercises:
  • Prepend with “I’m having a thought that…”
  • Sing the thought - helps realize true nature
  • Respond to self with “thanks, mind!”
• ↑ purpose: be present and take effective action
• Don’t fight negative thoughts, diffuse them

6: Notice, name, neutralize

• 3 steps to diffusion:
  1. Notice it: open space
  2. Name it
  3. Neutralize it: put into a new context
• Let your mind wander and notice each hook, then reset

7: Self acceptance > self esteem

• Self esteem: prizing, appreciating, and approving of oneself
• ↑ correlates with egotism, narcissism, and arrogance; prejudice + discrimination; self-deception and defensiveness when faced with honest feedback
• Self-acceptance and self-motivation are healthier

8: Meditation

• Confident people are always totally engaged (present)
• Present, open, curious, flexible (narrow, wide; internal, external)
• Mindfulness / meditation*
  • Focus on your breathing
  • When hooked, acknowledge the thought and re-focus
• ↑ builds the ability to sustain focus
• Try: counting, saying “breathing in, breathing out”, imagining a balloon, etc.
• ↑ make practicing focus and presence a routine (2-3x per day, 5-10 mins)

9: Smell the roses

• Mindfulness

10: Overcoming worrying

• Ignoring thoughts often leads to worse rebound
• How to overcome worrying: (engagement + diffusion)
  1. Be clear about what worrying is: avoid fusing with them
  2. Identify the costs of worrying
  3. Unhook from reasons to worry
  4. Distinguish worrying from taking care
  5. Diffuse from worrying itself (notice + name)
• Embrace practicing + learning

11: Values

• Values first, then goals
• Experiential avoidance: we like to stay in our comfort zones
• 59 examples of values*
  • Select top 6

12: Process > outcome

• Success: fame, wealth, status, respect
• 3 big problems with goal-driven life:
  1. May not achieve, may be a long way off → chronic frustration + disappointment
  2. Won’t give you happiness, even if achieved
  3. Will put you under tremendous pressure
• ↑ creates fragile self-esteem
• Success: living by your values
• “All you have at any moment is the journey itself”
• Process > outcome

13: Goals

• 4 segments: love, work, play, health
• Draft short, medium, long-term SMART goals for each of ↑

4: Taming your fear

14: Fear + exposure

• Common methods to avoid:
  • Distraction
  • Opting out
  • Thinking strategies
  • Substance use
• Face your fear via exposure (CBT)

15: Expanding

• Do your best to ignore / not obsess over fear / anxiety
• Performance correlated with capacity for task-focused attention (presence), not stress levels
• Expanding: (NAME)
  1. Notice your feelings: identify them physically
  2. Acknowledge: “here’s fear” to separate from them
  3. Make space: breathe to drop the struggle from it
  4. Expand awareness:
• 5 pitfalls of ↑:
  1. Can’t get rid of fear - only make space for it
  2. The illusion of control: sometimes you will get rid of it, but don’t expect it - risks avoidance mode
  3. Getting hooked
  4. Not tolerance, but allowance
  5. Forgetting the point: must leave comfort zone repeatedly

16: Channel fear

• Lime riding a wild stallion
• How to leverage fear: (ABC)
  1. Allow it
  2. Befriend it
  3. Channel it
• Be pleasant, welcoming, affectionate, trusting, collaborative, helpful with fear
• Talk to your fear
• “This is my body getting me ready for action”
• Fear → reframe as juiced, amped, etc.

5: Playing the game

17: Throw off the bowlines

• Lessons from story* ↓

1. When faced with challenges, if we move forward guided by our values we’ll feel meaning + purpose. When we give up, feels like our life is slipping away
   • Commission > omission
2. Take small actions, even if unconvinced of long-term goal
3. Each and every step counts
4. Moving in a meaningful direction often leads to uncomfortable thoughts etc.
5. When the going gets tough, the tough get mindful
6. At times we will get off track. Up to us to get back on it

• 5 steps to create your own adventure:
  1. Pick a domain of life
  2. Clarify values
  3. Set goals
  4. Specify actions
  5. Get moving
• Remember: actions of confidence come first, feelings come later
• Helpful acronym:
  • A: Accept your thoughts and feelings
  • C: Choose a valued direction
  • T: Take action mindfully

18: What’s stopping you?

• Antidote to fear: DARE
  • Diffusion
  • Acceptance of discomfort: are you willing to make room for them?
  • Realistic goals
  • Embracing values

19: The motivation trap

• Eg. skipping soccer practice: your short-term desire to rest and avoid discomfort is outweighing your long-term desire to get fit and play competitively
• Motivation vs commitment
• Motivation (feeling) → desire / commitment (values)
• Discipline / willpower: consistently commits to acting on their values to achieve their goals, even when they don’t feel like doing it

20: The power of self-acceptance

• 3 ways to transform relationship with failure:
  1. Regularly remind yourself that failure is a fact of life
     • Collect examples + quotes of famous people
  2. Think of failure as nothing more than honest feedback
     1. Ford: “failure provides the opportunity to begin again more intelligently”
  3. True success is living by your values
• 6 steps putting it together
  1. Unhook
  2. Make space
  3. Be kind
  4. Appreciate what worked
  5. Find something useful
  6. Take a stand (values)

21: Getting better

• Most critical values:
  1. Persistence
  2. Self development
• 3 questions to develop self-reflection:
  1. What’d I do that worked?
  2. What’d I do that didn’t work?
  3. What can I do differently next time?

22: Reach the peak

• For each area of life: better to be competent or excel?
• Reflect for at least 5 mins per week

23: It ain’t over til it’s over

• “The greater the emphasis on perfection, the further it recedes”
• Genuine confidence: the ability to trust yourself to follow through
• 10 rules for winning the game or confidence:
  1. Actions of confidence come first, feelings of confidence come later
  2. Genuine confidence is not the absence of fear but rather a transformed relationship with fear
  3. Negative thoughts are normal. Don’t fight them, diffuse them
  4. Self acceptance > self esteem
  5. True success is living by your values
  6. Hold your values lightly, but persue them vigorously
  7. Don’t obsess about the outcome - get passionate about the process
  8. Don’t fight your fear - allow it, befriend it, and channel it
  9. Failure hurts but is a wonderful teacher if you’re willing to learn
  10. The key to peak performance is total engagement in the task