How to Build Confidence, Master Stress & Squash Self-Doubt. Interview with Ian Robertson - Neuroscientist & Author

Welcome to this episode of the podcast, where I have the privilege of speaking with Professor Ian Robertson, an esteemed psychologist and brain researcher. Ian is a Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Trinity College and was the founding director of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. He is Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a Member of Acadamia Europea.

Ian is a highly-cited researcher on the brain's attention systems, and his most recent book, How Confidence Works: the new science of self-belief, published by Penguin in 2021, is a widely-translated popular science book. In this episode, we delve into a range of topics, exploring the fascinating intricacies of the brain's response to stress and the connection between confidence, attention, and mindset.

Additionally, we explore the concepts of confidence, optimism, and self-esteem, and their relationship to attention and anxiety. We delve into the importance of a growth mindset and discuss how to build confidence effectively.

In this episode, Ian and I explore the questions and issues around the following:

• Why are some people crushed by a problem while others drive?
• Could you explain the relationship between expectations and stress from a brain perspective? 
• What is the relationship between dopamine and nor adrenaline?
• Could you elaborate on the differentiation between the hemispheres and what that means to how we respond to stress?
•  How does our way of responding to stress activate our attentional system?
• Can you explain how our brains sometimes miss interpret our emotions?
• What is the difference between anger in and anger out?
• Can we train ourselves to respond more robust lead to small and large stressors in our life?
• What is confidence? How is it different from optimism or self-esteem?
• Can you describe the relationship between our attention and confidence? You see anxiety is the antithesis of confidence. Could you expand on this?
• What is the importance of fixed mindset and growth mindset?
• How do we go about building confidence?
• What is the difference between an implementable mindset and a deliberative mindset?

RESOURCES:

The Stress Test: How Pressure Can Make You Stronger and Sharper

Hardcover
Paperback

How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief, Why Some People Learn It and Others Don't 

Hardcover
Paperback
Audio book

REFERENCES:

S2 E18:    Learning the Whole Brain Approach to Leadership & Resilience: Interview with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor - New York Times Best Selling Author & Neuroscientist

S2 E21: How to Escape the Addiction of Substances, Behaviours & Mindsets. Interview with Dr. Anne Lembke - Neuroscientist & Author


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Transcript

Transcript

[0:00] Music. 

Introduction to It's an Inside Job Podcast

[0:09] Welcome back to It's an Inside Job podcast. I'm your host, Jason Liem.
Now, this podcast is dedicated to helping you to help yourself and others to become more mentally and emotionally resilient, so you can be better at bouncing back from life'sinevitable setbacks.
Now, on It's an Inside Job, we decode the science and stories of resilience into practical advice, skills, and strategies that you can use to impact your life and those around you.
Now, with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:37] Music. 

Introduction: Focus on Self-Doubt, Self-Confidence, and Pressure

[0:45] Welcome back, folks. Thanks for joining me for another week.
This week, I'd like to focus on three things.
How to squash self-doubt, how to build self-confidence, and how to optimize on stress and pressure.

[0:59] Now, each of these three elements, they're constantly with us at work and sometimes at home. and how we balance that, how we are consciously playing with self-doubt, self-confidence and pressure.
Well, that makes all the difference as to how we show up, how we deal with the challenges and the uncertainties in our life.
And so I could speak volumes on this, but I thought I'd go directly to the source.
And so I've invited a guest who's written volumes, literally volumes on these subjects.
His name is Ian Robertson. Ian is a professor emeritus at Psychology of Trinity College and was the founding director of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience.
Now, Ian is also the co-director of the Global Brain Health Institute, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a member of the Academia Europea.
Ian is also a highly cited researcher on the brain's attentional systems.

[1:55] Now, Ian's wrote a number of popular science books, but two two that really stood out to me and two that I just devoured was the first was the stress test, how pressure can makeyou stronger and sharper.
And his second book, well, that deals with confidence, how confidence works, the new science of self-belief, why some people learn and others don't.
And so this next hour is just filled with insights and skills.
And he shares his knowledge and experience about self-confidence and dealing with pressure and I think all of us could be better at doing this well I hope dear listener that you get asmuch out of this interviews that I did so let's slip into the stream and meet Ian Rogers.

[2:38] Music. 

Finding the Time for a Long-Awaited Chat

[2:48] Job. I've been wanting to have this chat with you for the longest time.
It's been a little back and forth trying to find an hour where both of our calendars sync, but here we are. We found that time.
You know, I came across your book.
I was in Milan on a long weekend with a good Irish friend and I came across your book, The Stress Test, in an English bookstore in the Milan train station And it kind of stood out tome.
And I literally finished the book within three or four days.
There was so much to learn from it. And then I discovered you had your second book, How Confidence Works.
And for me, they were a part one and part two. You know, I'm someone who speaks a lot to these points on this podcast and in my coaching practice.
But I found that your book added so much more dimension and vibrancy to my understanding.
And i wanted to have this conversation with you for the longest time so thank you for being on the show i just wanted to kind of thank you thank you for these kind words thank you iwas wondering to begin with if we could start the first part of the conversation on the stress test what compelled you to write that book that's a great question so i tell you what it wasoriginally the book was because I suggested the book be called The Sweet Spot, and the idea there was that I study the brain's attention systems.

The role of noradrenaline in controlling attention

[4:17] For many years, I was trying to measure people's ability to sustain attention.
To cut a long story short, I discovered that one of the chemical messengers in the brain, noradrenaline or norepinephrine, as it's known in the States, was critically important in thiscontrol of attention.
Attention but in measuring this attention was very difficult because of the upside down u-shaped function that noradrenaline action has in the brain which is also true of certain otherof the chemical messengers like dopamine as well but what happens is too little of this noradrenaline like like when you're very sleepy, you underperform, and too much and youunderperform, and there's this optimal sweet spot of noradrenaline.
And I began to realize that a lot of what was happening when people were feeling stressed was they were.

[5:23] Because noradrenaline is part of the fight-or-flight system, they were producing too much of this stuff.
And that was interfering with their ability to think clearly.

[5:33] And to solve the problems that were stressing them and what's more in a culture where we tend to medicalize our emotional conditions people were kind of frightened of theiranxiety so there was fear of fear and that made the noradrenaline levels even higher so you get this negative cycle so it was actually started off in my study of attention because i dothink attention is It's critical to stress because basically stress arises from a perception that the demands made on you exceed your ability to cope with them.

[6:12] A perception consists of thoughts and images, and thoughts and images are changeable and replaceable and learnable.
And so it should be possible if people properly understand what's going on in their brains and their bodies to actually learn to navigate it and even better to use that stress.
And so I guess the theme of the book was stress is something, is the perception, the energy that comes from that perception can actually be harnessed for good.
And great sportsmen and women, Tiger Woods said, the day I'm not nervous when I go into the course is the day I give up.
And all great sportsmen and women are masters of their own minds.
They understand how to harness the stuff that many people call stress or anxiety.

[7:10] I think the word stress in itself has taken on a negative connotation.
But what I hear you speaking to, Ian, is that stress, depending upon how we see it.
Well, we have two other English words. I'm based in Norway.
So just to sort of parse the English here is that you have distress, which is more of a negative form of stress.
And then you have stress which you speak about where Tiger Woods takes that stress and and uses it to optimize his Performance or his thinking his mindset.
Is that what I understand you're saying?
Yes, absolutely and You know that the thing is you know, I was once at home in a Saturday afternoon and suddenly my heart started to pound and like I, Skin was sweaty and mymouth was dry and my stomach was tight.
So if I ask someone what emotion I was having, they'd probably say anxiety or fear. And I say, no, no, no.

[8:07] Scotland had just beat England at rugby. And so I say to you, how come one emotion, it's so different, excitement, can have exactly the same symptoms as another emotion,anxiety?
Anxiety and the answer is that these are simply symptoms of arousal of the body and brain preparing for action and it doesn't care what that action is whether it's running away orcelebrating and so it only becomes a particular emotion by the words we put on that by the context and we have the power to change these words and to change that context i thinkthink that that was remarkable because what i what i hear you saying is that whether it's anxiety or whether it's excitement how we define it they have the same physiological markersbut what tells the difference is the narrative the story we're telling ourselves about the context and we have the power to shift or redefine the meaning we're giving to the situation to re-attribute to something more positive or constructive for yourself is that what i understand you're saying Yes, precisely, and there's another emotion that has a very similar profile andthat is.

Redefining anger and channeling it for constructive actions

[9:23] And there's a lot of anger about these days.
And, you know, as I think it was Socrates said, you know, anger is a very dangerous emotion.

[9:42] So some people say it burns people, burns the vessel clean. It's a cleansing emotion. motion.
Mark Twain said it does more damage to the vessel holding it and so who's right?
Well Socrates suggested that it's anger is great but it has to be directed at a specific person or group with a specific request of that group and so that you know what you're angry aboutand you know because anger is essentially a negotiation tool.
So non-specific anger, feeling angry about about injustice generally, or about what your life's course generally, is a very dangerous emotion because the symptoms are identical tothose of anxiety.
So what you're doing is you're doubling your distress. When you're angry, you're anxious. And simultaneously, when you're anxious, you're angry.
And the evidence is that people have been in accidents. Their traumatic stress gets worse over time if they feel angry in an untargeted way about the cause of their injury.
And that's one of the interesting things I found in the book.
Again, the book that I bought is dog-eared and underlined.

[11:00] One of the things is you described that you articulate anger in versus anger out, where anger in is where we kind of suppress and hold it in, and anger out is directed.
Could you explain the difference, how one is healthier than the other?

[11:18] So anger is an energizing emotion.
So whereas anxiety tends to make you pull back and avoid, anger is designed to help you take action to change a situation.
But essentially anger is an interpersonal tool to strengthen your hand in negotiation so if you look at two dogs dogs growl at each other and they growl much more than they ever fightand it's the one that growls the deepest and the hardest that generally results in the other dogs slinking off tail between his leg well anger is a bit like that it's a negotiation tool betweenpeople.

[12:06] But if you feel that the world is unfair or that your lot in life is unfair, that sense of injustice tends to make you feel angry.
But that is an impotent anger because you don't have a particular person or group of people of whom you're making a specific demand to do X or Y or not do X or Y.
So if you can channel anger in that way, so to a specific movement or a specific set of actions, then it is something that kind of makes you feel very good because it has energized youto take action.
So the critical thing here is action. It is very difficult to know what action to take if the anger is general and not specific.
And then then so you feel angry what happens then it all gets because the emotions only exist as a context we place on them you don't know whether you're feeling angry or anxiousand that that doubles the length of time even more than doubles the length of time when you're feeling in an unpleasant state whereas if you know that i want that neighbor not to beusing.

[13:28] His leaf blower at nine o'clock on a sunday morning yeah you have a specific action and the question is not to make that request in an angry way but in a in a an instrumentalway that's going to get the the goal that you want achieved direct and diplomatic that's what i hear you're saying because i think yeah that's really interesting what you're saying whereanger in in is is kind of it's intangible it's abstract it just floats around where anger out is directed action towards something where i take a sense of control and certainty i'm dealingwith the situation and that can move me from you sorry distress to eustress as i understand or positive stress exactly exactly exactly yeah exactly i mean eustress is a nice it's a niceconcept but But it kind of, I mean, stress, yes, stress is a perception.
The emotion, the underlying physiology is a general arousal and preparation for action.
And that action can be avoiding and pulling back, attacking or celebrating.
And it's a question of realizing that you have the capacity capacity to relabel that arousal in a positive way or a negative way or a neutral way indeed.

[14:56] And what I found also very interesting with your book is how you talked about the differentiation between the hemispheres.
Because what also resonated with me, Ian, I don't know if you're familiar with another neuroscientist, Jill Bolte-Taylor.
She wrote a book where her left hemisphere was completely knocked out.
And when I read that... Brilliant book. Yeah, yes.
And I read a lot of connections. And so as I understood from what you've articulated in your book, the left hemisphere is about approach where the neurons or the brain cells are wiredin that hemisphere for approach.
It's about taking action. It's goal oriented. But it's also it's the ability for it to parse and see the difference between things, the ability to categorize and to prioritize where the right, as Iunderstand it, is more towards avoidance.
Now, avoidance is not always a negative thing to withdraw or to shrink back.
But as you said, it's also about self-awareness. It's about creativity.
It's about self-reflection. And so you have the left and the right.

Negative stress and withdrawal leading to anxiety and anger

[16:00] And as I understand from your book, is when we are in a distress or negative stress, or we've given the arousal into a negative, given a negative connotation that we withdrawand that draws up anxiety or anger or frustration, whatever it is.
Is it also because there's an imbalance in the hemispheres and part of finding being more reflected is to equally activate those hemispheres so you have the right and the left you know ii i'm i'm stretching it yes is that what i understand no the no there is there is evidence uh to support that jason um that because the two hemispheres are in competition with each other.So they're mutually inhibitory.
And in a healthy state, the evidence is that most of us are slightly more inclined to the approach system.
So there's a slight imbalance, particularly in men, in favor of approach, which leads to a a certain overconfidence, a likelihood to take action, and a slight rosy over-optimism, youknow.

[17:18] That's the source of all the vast profits of the online gambling industry.
But, you know, so that, but it's a kind of health, it's not an unhealthy, it's a kind of healthy, slight imbalance, but there's still, so there's still the right hemisphere, particularly the rightfrontal lobe, but still...
Capable of self-monitoring, it's still capable of empathy, it's still capable of perceiving risk.

[17:51] So it's only a slight imbalance but if a person becomes hooked on an appetitive stimulus like like power, or money, or sex, or cocaine.

[18:09] Then you get, or gambling, you know, you get this increasing dominance of the left hemisphere approach systems, which tends to inhibit the right hemisphere, fear, empathic,self-awareness, risk, sensitive systems of the brain, and that leads to all sorts of disasters and vice versa.
If someone gets stuck in an avoidant mode, painful self-awareness, everyone's looking looking at me, painful exaggeration of the bad things that are going to happen in the future.

[18:56] Memory system biased towards remembering past failures, difficult even to remember past successes they don't come to mind, painfully aware of the one person frowning atthem, ignoring the hundred people that are either smiling at them or not paying any attention to them.
So this whole biasing of the system that causes this retreat, and that of course inhibits the left hemisphere approach system, so that the person becomes paralysed, becomes a hugechallenge to take any action, to do anything, because of all the anticipated negative.

[19:39] Music. 

Building Confidence by Shifting Self-Beliefs

[19:46] Second part of our conversation we shift the conversation from dealing with stress and pressure to that of how to build confidence because the more confidence we have thebetter we are at dealing with pressure and stress in part two Ian breaks down confidence into two self-beliefs can do and can happen can do mean that I can do something about it andthen there's can happen that I believe that there will be a positive outcome to my efforts but depending upon this, depending upon the can-do and can-happen self-belief, it can eitherlead to apathy, anger, anxiety, or action.
And so he takes apart the DNA of confidence and explains how we can shift this and how if we adopt an implemental mindset, that means we take action and we focus on things thatwe control and certainty.
If on the other hand, he speaks to the deliberative mindset said, where that opens us up to self-doubt.
Well, I'll let Ian explain the rest of this. Okay, let's take it away.

[20:46] Music. 

Shifting from anger to action for stress relief

[20:54] Because one of the things that really resonated with me, you said, is one way of dealing with stress or shifting from, translated from anger in to anger out, is to find somethingtangible, something that we can invest our effort and action towards.
So if I ask questions, for example, towards a client who's feeling more distress negative stress and i orient and engineer those questions towards certainty control or some sort ofpredictable outcome or actions they can take towards that outcome can that help shift this arousal system to something more constructive, yes it can very much so in fact people talk alot about a lot about cbt and cognitive behavior behavior therapy but the behavior tends to be neglected in the cognitive behavior therapy i trained in the institute of psychiatry inlondon which was a very behaviorist place at the time and the cognitive came later and it was a great addition but you know it's not just a question of.

[21:57] Encouraging me to do something. It's about helping me tangibly plan a feasible, sub goal that will take me a little bit out of my discomfort zone take me a little stretch me alittle bit but you see goals of the sweet spots as well too easy it doesn't cut the mustard because you don't get the success experience too difficult and you you're increased too muchincreasing the chances of failure experiences so you have this sweet spot for goals and the successful people And I mean, emotionally successful people are usually masters andmistresses of structuring their life and setting goals in such a way to produce many success experiences.
And many success experiences are natural, many antidepressants and natural, many anti-anxiety drugs because of the effects on the dopamine system of the brain.
And so in terms of regaining this balance particularly of the domination of anxiety and avoidance it's a the behavior is critical that taking the action in spite of the anxiety.

Taking action in spite of anxiety to build confidence

[23:11] Of not being of realizing that the fact that you're anxious is not is irrelevant to whether or not you take this action and it's about properly crediting yourself with the goalachieved Because too often, particularly perfectionist people, the moment they've achieved a goal, they will negate it because compared to some greater goal, it appears trivial.
So they have to learn cognitive skills of giving themselves full credit.
And of course, we'll be talking about confidence later, but confidence, one of the great sources of confidence is doing stuff in spite of adversity, including the adversity of anxiety.

[23:55] So taking action in spite of anxiety is a great way of learning to master that anxiety and build your confidence to be able to do more stuff.
And I think that's well articulated. You know, when I'm working with people, they're mostly corporate clients now and such.
And let's say it's presentation anxiety or what have they have to speak in front of the board or the executive team.

[24:18] A lot of people have, you know, it could be six weeks and we're talking about theoretically, yeah, I can do it. I'll push through my anxiety.
But as we come closer and closer to the date, there seems to be almost this in what seems to be a little wall of anxiety.
It increases and grows and grows as they approach it becomes this monumental wall in front of them.
But what you know they could just walk through that wall it's just an invisible wall and on the other side is what i hear you saying is once they've mastered the challenge that caninfuse their confidence i was wondering how how do you get someone to to embrace the struggle to face adversity when they are facing anxiety because one thing is to talk about itand logically they understand it but it's another thing for them to emotionally align with that logic and sometimes that emotion is what rules their behavior how do you encouragethrough your practice or working for so many years with people such as this to face adversity to challenge their anxiety because it's just that invisible wall it can't hurt them throughintermediate goals so i i wouldn't i wouldn't leave it until the the big wall appears okay yeah one of my one of my sessions would be them presenting to me.

[25:37] I would try and build this, create the circumstances increasingly realistic to the event.
So by the time they come to the big wall, they have actually done most of the behaviors that will be required of them.
And that so so that's um so another another factor here is yes the goals so so for instance you you arrange for a practice session in front of maybe a few friends or maybe a you know infront of a simulated audience maybe just in front of you initially sure and and then you get them to to do the presentation.
But then what you do is you say, okay, your goal is...
One of your goals actually is an internal goal, which is to...

[26:38] Do this in spite of your anxiety. It doesn't matter how well you do it.
It doesn't matter. It's a fact that you have done it in spite of your anxiety.
So it's like someone who's maybe prone to temper outbursts or difficulty responding to provocation or aggression.

[26:57] You know, you can set someone the external goal of speaking coolly and professionally in the face of provocation.
But before that, you can also set them the internal goal of mastering their own responses to that situation, irrespective of how good or bad these responses are.
Are so it's a it's a question of again goal setting and and realizing that um you can become master of your own arousal by getting satisfaction from for instance having performed x inspite of that arousal and i think that whole sense of role playing or in a sense picking the low-hanging fruit that is not threatening, that kind of slowly builds confidence.
And I think how, what I understand from both of your books, how we face stress or face that arousal system in us, and how we define that as either something we can approach andtackle, or we shy away from, well, that leads us to your second book. It's the level of confidence.
If we could just shift the conversation here, just to bridge it, because this is into the part two.

Self-confidence: Can Do and Can Happen

[28:12] I think your definition of confidence was really good.
You broke it down into two self-beliefs. I was wondering if you could just elaborate on self-confidence as you defined it in your book. Yeah.
So confidence is not optimism.
Optimism is the belief that things will turn out.
It's not self-esteem. Self-esteem is a self-evaluation of your qualities in some dimension.
The secret source of confidence is it's linked to action it's your so it's not a general thing self-confidence is self-confidence in a given domain so you can be self-confident academicallybut not self-confident socially for example yeah and there's two two aspects to self-confidence so it's a belief that you can do something, so that has two strands.

[29:11] Can do is the belief that you can actually execute that action and it can happen the belief that if you execute that action then the desired outcome will happen so I believe I canstop smoking smoking, and I believe that if I do stop smoking, my health will improve.
So that gives you these, that can do and can happen gives you four dimensions.
You can have can't do, can't happen is apathy, and that can be visualized in the brain with lower dopamine activity, low mood, apathy.

[29:49] Can do can't happen leads to frustration at least to anger and that activates the noradrenaline system the fight or flight system i i could stop smoking but you know what myfather died of cancer anyway he doesn't matter what i do it's things are going to still turn out negative in a sense i could get that college degree but you know what from where i comefrom it's not going to improve my my outcome and then the bottom left you have can't do can happen you know i can't stop smoking i know if i could i'd be healthier or i can't changemy diet and i know if i could i'd be i'd lose weight so that leads to anxiety so that's also the or adrenaline system and then you have the can do can happen which is the full whammy ofconfidence and that's a self-fulfilling belief why because the brain treats the belief that you can do something and that there will be a good outcome as if the good outcome hashappened and you get a little surge of dopamine activity and it's it's chalked up in the brain as a success experience.

[31:11] And that makes that lifts your mood it lowers your anxiety it makes it more likely you will take the action in question and you will also because of the increased dopamine itwill within limits improve your cognitive functioning your ability to deliver that action well because because of the synchronizing effects of dopamine in the frontal lobes.

[31:32] So it's a sweet combination of self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to, the successful action and the successful outcome which of course because of something called the winnereffect the greatest source of success is success and so you get a the wonderful um like compound compound interest yeah that's right the exponential compound interest of um ofconfidence the way you articulated you know self-confidence it's not just this ethereal feeling but it's it's something concrete you can do it's about shifting our beliefs shifting in thenarratives of can do that this can happen and then as you've articulated in the book it's a bridge to the future and so self-confidence linked back to to the first book the stress test it's itseems to be a very left hemisphere dominant because you're goal-oriented it's it's about um it's about wanting it's about moving in a certain direction having the confidence to do thatand so that triggers obviously the reward system dopamine you know this anticipation that things will be better.
Now, just to backtrack, dopamine is something that's mainly produced in the left hemisphere, and noradrenaline is something that's mainly produced in the right hemisphere?

[32:47] Well, they're produced in the brainstem nuclei, but there's a slightly greater distribution of noradrenaline to the right hemisphere.
And dopamine's effects are are bilateral, but they particularly influence the left frontal cortex when it comes to planning action, so what's called attentional set and anticipating asuccessful goal.
But the other thing about the two hemispheres and these two systems is what it does to attention.
That's where I wanted to go, yeah. So what being focused on a goal and being confident you can deliver on that goal is it narrows your attention.

[33:40] Whereas what anticipating risk and avoidance does is it broadens your attention.
Now, when your attention is narrowed, say on an anticipated goal, that automatically lowers your anxiety because there are there's no room for distressing thoughts or worryingthoughts because what you know your thoughts determine your emotions and your thoughts are determined by your attention so when you open your mind uh to possible risk thatincreases the risk of anxiety of thinking bad things might happen so that's one of the great things about the confidence is that, and one of the critical therapeutic benefits of action is,when you're implementing something and taking action.

[34:31] By definition, your attention is focused.

[34:35] And that shields you from all the confidence-sapping, self-doubting thoughts.
And that's called the implementation mode.
And women in particular benefit. Their relative lack of overconfidence compared to men is recompensated slightly when they're in an implementation mode.
Mode and that's why action is so important but you can't be stuck in that mode all the time periodically you have to review your goals you have to review your strategy you have toconsider what the risks are so you have to but that's to do with controlling your attention narrowing to goal and then broadening out what is my goal that's called deliberation and inthat stage which is necessary that's where confidence can can can be you can doubt begin to doubt your your ability to deliver on the action because you're considering risks.

[35:30] I think, as you said, you've studied attention, and that's one of the main drivers for writing these books.
Because attention, as I understand it, it's one of the most valuable resources we have.

Attention: The Key to Building Confidence

[35:42] We never run out of it, but we don't. Sometimes it just goes on automatic, and it kind of fixates on the negative or on the things that don't help us.
And so what I hear you saying, Ian, is that in critical situations, when we need to find that confidence to deal with a stressful situation is to be conscious or to be in the here and nowwith our attention and to deliberate where we focus and.

[36:07] Maybe deliberate is not wrong, but maybe not deliberate, but to attend to where we focus, because you've talked about the implementation mindset and the deliberative mindset.
And sometimes by focusing on what we can implement, what we can invest our actions and our efforts, that keeps us on what? What we can control and certainty.
And slowly, as you said, that compound interest builds this confidence as I understand it, because it's very tangible the the way you've explained it.
It's not just this sort of soft, abstract things. No, these are questions.
I mean, these are specific things that we can do to build our confidence, focus on what you can control, focus on how you can build certainty, maybe on your prior knowledge or priorexperience to bring that to the forefront to deal with the situation and to talk about specific actions.
In the final part of our conversation, Ian talks about the attentional system.
Now, this is his area of expertise.
He connects attention to confidence and how we, cognizantly invest our attention, well, that will shift our confidence, how we show up to the game, how we engage with the world orthe challenge or the uncertainty in front of us.
So Ian shares with us a number of skills that he uses, concrete, tangible skills to build confidence, to deal with with stress, to deal with pressure, and to deal with uncertainty, to leadourselves and to lead others. So I hope.

[37:34] Music. 

Importance of Understanding One's Mind and Brain

[37:45] Much individual therapy anymore. I did many years ago.
I'm very much aware of people needing to understand their own minds and brains better.
So for example, you know, and understanding how they need to, understanding it offline, talking with you or me is different from understanding it online in the situation.
So for example, so you can say to them look in the in this presentation you have to give, you have to be aware that your attention, if you're anxious, your attention will be biased.

[38:30] It will be biased towards looking for signals of threat, the person frowning, shaking their head or looking at their phone rather than listening to you.
And even if there's only one person in the room doing that your attention will focus on that person and that will better exaggerate the frequency of that behavior and the implications ofit so you person can understand that offline but but having the mental space to do that online in this in in in the situation in question requires that you have practiced that many timesAnd if nothing else in your mind, maybe even in simulated presentations, to develop the mental habit or meta-cognitive habit of.

[39:23] Thinking about your thinking or attending to your attention.
You have to practice doing that.
And that's, of course, what high-performance sports people, pilots, you know.
Simulations and visualization techniques and such. They have to know.

The Power of Simulated Situations in Developing Habits

[39:40] They understand their own minds. They understand where their attention is.
And they can avoid some of the pitfalls.
So from my point of view, it's a combination of an educational effort.
The abstract knowledge is not enough it has to be then implemented and practiced in simulated situations and I mean one of the best simulated situations is the mind's eye anincredible amount of work can be done in rehearsing in actually and all great sports performers are masters and mistresses of simulating their actual sports performance sitting in theirarmchair and how well they can simulate it in terms of timing.

[40:25] Is highly correlated with their actual performance in real life.
I think that's a very salient point you've made because as I understand habits, whether mental or physical, use the same networks, they use the same sort of infrastructure in our head tobuild that.
And so physically, I might write quite adept with my left, on my right hand, and I'm like a child with my left. but if I practice enough with my left hand over time, I will become alsoadept.
And I think what you're saying is we have one way of thinking, but if we start thinking or focusing in another way over time, whether through visualization, through the mind's eye,through practice, through conversation, that we also develop another habit.
And that could become our default habit. Is that what I understand you're saying? Yeah, absolutely.
And the greatest obstacle to that is, um.

[41:18] Having what Carl Dweck famously called a fixed mindset about your emotions or about your abilities, a kind of fatalism, a lack of faith in your ability to learn or relearn, andfeeling trapped by the negative habit that you don't want.
And the trouble with that fixed mindset of saying, oh, my mother was like this, I am just like this, trouble with that fatalism.
We know the learning is slow and up and down.
It takes 60 or 70 repetitions of even a simple, single behavioral response, like eating a piece of fruit every day.
It takes 60 or 70 times doing that before it becomes automatic and effortless.
That you don't have to think about it well imagine how many more repetitions you require of a lifetime ingrained cognitive or emotional habit it takes thousands of repetitions and inmany of these practices you will some days it will feel you're doing you're back to square one and that's when the fatalism kicks in saying ah what's the point you know i can't do thisSo you have to have a number of meta beliefs about realizing, yeah, OK.

Setting Goals and Encouragement for Personal Growth

[42:45] And you've got to record your, you've got to have some sense of progress, you know, and that, so you have to gauge your goals very, very carefully and finely.
And some of these goals are internal. Some of them are external.

[42:58] And I think sometimes, you know, when people pick up books like yourself, that can be a sense of encouragement because it's very nuts and bolts.
It's talking about the neurobiology of how we are.
And just understanding is that, you know what, my brain is an organ like my heart. My heart pumps blood.
My brain pumps survival. But I can use this mind to step back and I can re-engineer the story I'm telling myself to move from whatever anxiety to excitement or from anger in to angerout, from dealing with the abstract to more tangible, concrete things to slowly build my confidence.
And so what I hear you saying, Ian, is between fixed and growth mindset, fixed is a sense of belief that this is the way I was born, this is the way I'm raised, I can't change, everythingis going to fix. And it's like, no. No.

[43:41] And back to what you were talking about, CBT, cognitive behavioral.
Sometimes we can't use the brain to get out of the brain, but sometimes we can do behaviors.
We can try to execute on an action and execute on that action brings a new experience.
And then that experience can actually add more color or vibrancy to our very gray or negative beliefs.
It's like, oh, I can actually do that and so again this comes back to i love your book that can do and can happen if you can show them through behavior they can do well that's a it canbe a low-hanging fruit but that's a an early win and as you said so saliently is that if i compound these small little actions slowly my confidence can build and so does this suggest thatwe can move from a fixed mindset even though even though that's a belief we believe for ages, to a growth mindset.

[44:33] Yeah, I mean, the evidence is quite strong that you can actually...

[44:40] Change people's uh fixed to growth mindset not to i mean it's been done with big studies in the states with um particularly kids from you know lower socioeconomicbackgrounds who maybe feel, stereotyped and you know and stigmatized and um by just explaining to them the basic neuroscience of the brain's plasticity how nothing is set in stoneand and it's all up for for for a huge amount is up for grabs, but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy if you believe that your abilities are fixed and not changeable.
Sometimes, but then you need the tangible evidence of that.

[45:23] That's a critical obstacle to critical building blocks to put in place is the high, the metacognitive belief that change is possible.
Without that, then people give up at the first step back and lose faith in the arduous business of relearning and changing habits.

[45:42] You know, and back to the idea, you know, people can pick up books like yours and that will give them that sense of empowerment that they are not just their brains, that theyhave this ability to step back, become the bystander, the observer, and to change things.
And what you speak of, neuroplasticity, just for those who don't know, is that the brain will actually morph and change and evolve based upon our dominant way of thinking so if weshift our thinking over time and we try to be conscious of what we as again as you said where we place our attention we can literally re-engineer our brains to a specific certain level iwas wondering you are sort of you know very adept and skilled and knowledgeable in this area but i guess you're human you are part of the a human condition and sometimes you hita wall, you hit a place of frustration or anxiety.
May I ask, what do you specifically do to when you're kind of going down to the valley to get yourself back up on the hill to move forward when you feel yourself withdrawing orretracting from whatever situation? Yeah.

[46:54] So, you know, there's some very simple habits.

[47:01] So, I mean, I do a regular, you know, mindfulness app, you know, which many people do, which I find incredibly helpful.
I'll often, if I wake up in the morning, say anxious about something, I'll often consciously smile.

[47:21] That's a good thing. just deliberately smile and I will also because there's a hundred little habits to do with confidence, and they're habits of emotional expression but also habitsof posture of just standing tall.

[47:45] Obviously physical exercise going for a run or go for a swim get you can change your brain chemistry hugely that way um just just set a task you know just finally tidy thatdrawer whatever it is do something that you get a sense well i've done that uh reward yourself so reward myself okay if i do that i'm going to have an ice cream bun or whatever it isand they're all so simple um not not allowing myself to say self-deprecating things like you know this is probably rubbish but you know just say it let me speak it out in the meeting ithink that and not try and ward off potential criticism by self-deprecation um so habits of of verbal habits of reassurance.
So I'm just realizing that actually it's critical to all of this is setting goals that stretch you a bit where you get a mini sense of achievement and these goals can be in any domain of life.

[48:56] You've shared a lot of skills. You've shared a lot of knowledge today.
And I think when you said, not talk self-deprecating, sort of negative mind talk or negative self-talk to ourselves.
And I think part of it understanding is that sometimes a lot of people have these motions, although categorized as negative and positive.
But what I like to tell people is that we have this spectrum of emotions.
They're not negative or positive, but every emotion serves as a function.
It's a signal, a chemical messenger from our physiology to our psychology.
That something's going on, Jason, deal with it. And as what you were saying, and it was so sailing in your book that sometimes our brains misread those signals instead of, no, it's notanxiety.
It's actually kind of excitement because you're watching a football game right now, for example, that sometimes what I've tried to do in my practice is to tell people, look, whateveremotion you're feeling, it's okay, but notice the emotion.
Don't say I am angry or I I am frustrated. I notice I am.
And that allows you to kind of step back from what you were saying when it comes to shifting to a growth mindset.
So we don't feel, oh, here I go again. I'm frustrated. It's just me. No. Yeah, yeah.

[50:04] So that's, yeah, that not identifying with your emotions, realizing you are neither your emotions nor are you your thoughts.
And the human brain and its complexity has this capacity to watch itself watching and think about itself thinking and think about itself feeling and that the moment you the momentyou adopt that slightly detached version it can take the sting out of a you know that rage you feel of the person who's just offended you if you if you can have managed to mentallystep back a little bit and watch yourself being so enraged it suddenly it can lose its power to um and and um you know some some sometimes a very some people do a kind of runningcommentary on themselves a third person description oh there you go oh there he goes there he is he's getting all low feel these you know excited yeah and that sometimes that's youknow that kind of you know commentator.

[51:09] Role in your head can can some can be one way of getting that's really good advice i mean you can almost say oh there goes jason again he's he's going all limbic he's going allyou know mushroom cut over his head right yeah and that that gives you perspective that's that's a very good technique well uh ian it's coming close to the hour i really appreciate yourtime i was wondering was there any last advice you i mean we covered a lot so maybe there isn't but is there any last advice or suggestion you could give to our audience when itcomes to dealing with stress in a constructive way and maybe building confidence?

[51:46] Uh values get values values and our self-esteem rests on our values, basically we all try to feel good about ourselves even criminals in prison um rate themselves as morally onaverage better than people who are not in prison and um so we all have this struggle to maintain a good image of ourselves and that basically boils down to our values, and affirmingour values and kind of taking time to say well what are my values what is it.

[52:24] I stand for and it could be family it could be integrity it could be persistence it could be you know ambition you know it doesn't contribution it could be any number and it's justJust bringing your values to mind can be a huge antidote to confidence undermining anxious thoughts or criticisms or self-criticism from other people.
Because values are eternal values aren't unlike us transitory candles of consciousness in the universe values will exist after we have died and so there's a certain grounding of self-esteem um which which which which can really although self-esteem is not confidence if you feel secure in your evaluation of yourself you'll be less defensive about criticism lessmore more inclined to do the right thing as you see it as opposed to try and please someone or try and avoid you know try and react to someone yeah so that'd be my main tip wellthank you very much for that ian i really appreciate your time and i know you're a busy man so i i appreciate the generosity that you've spent here with me today so thanks for that.

[53:47] Music. 

Ian Robertson's Books on Stress and Confidence

[53:54] Folks, that was Ian Robertson, professor emeritus in psychology at Trinity College in Dublin, neuroscientist and author.
And so the two books that we talked about today was The Stress Test, How Pressure Can Make You Stronger and Sharper.
And his second one, How Confidence Works, The New Science of Self-Belief, Why Some People Learn It and Others Don't.
So you'll be able to find the links in the show notes as well as all of Ian's contact information.
Information so again ian thank you very much for the generosity of sharing your time your knowledge and your experience and your wisdom with us today well folks that brings us toan end of another episode as usual if you can go on to whatever podcast platform you enjoy listening to this show on and rate give me a score that you think is reflective of the qualityand the content of this this podcast.
Also, if you wish to receive a weekly newsletter, it's just a short email that I send out every Wednesday morning.
It will just update you on the upcoming episode. And I also share a weekly article with you that does a deeper dive into one of the subjects that we cover on this podcast.
And you can find all that information in the show notes again.
Anyways, folks, wow, Wow. Another episode in the box, in the can.
We are done. Well, until next week, keep well.