Episode 33: Building Confidence Through Action

We’ve been taught to believe that confidence comes first—that we need to feel ready before we take the leap. But the truth? Confidence is built through action, not before it.

In this solo episode, I’m unpacking why waiting for confidence is keeping you stuck—and how small, aligned actions are the real catalysts for growth. You’ll hear real stories from my coaching clients who acted before they felt ready—and how that brave action led to deep self-trust, clarity, and yes, confidence.

Whether you’re navigating a career shift, setting boundaries, or showing up more fully in your life, this episode is here to remind you: You don’t need more confidence to begin—you just need a little courage to move.

Connect with me here -

Laura@thepurposefulmd.com

www.thepurposefulmd.com 

Transcript

0:08

Welcome to the Purposeful MD Podcast. As a physician, you've sacrificed so much of your life for other people, your patients, your family, your friends, and your colleagues. What would it feel like to spend time doing what you enjoy and to live without guilt? I'm your host, Dr. Laura Suttin, a family physician, certified coach, and business owner. If you're a medical professional on a journey towards your most purposeful life, a life with more time and energy, and ultimately more joy, then this is the podcast for you. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Purposeful MD podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you today. This is a solo cast, and I'm gonna be talking about confidence and what are some of the myths around confidence and how we can build confidence. And I'll give you a hint, it's not through what you think it might be. I'm gonna start with a quote from a gentleman named Pete Sheehan that I got to meet recently at an event. He is a professional speaker, a CEO, and an author, and he is a master at what he does. He's been in the speaking business for many, many years. It was really wonderful to watch him in action and learn from him. The event was an event called bootcamp at an organization that I joined recently called ImpactEleven, and I can't speak highly enough of this community. It's a community of amazing humans who are either aspiring professional speakers or already professional speakers and looking to level up their speaking business. It's just an incredible group of people. All in the spirit of learning and generosity, and bootcamp was just such a, a wonderful experience. The quote that he said that I thought was a total mic drop is,"Action precedes clarity"... And I just thought that's so powerful because how often do we wait for this clarity to come to us before we take any action? I know I do a lot of times, and it's actually the other way around. We think we have to have confidence before we take action, but it's the other way around. We build confidence by taking action. So I'll tell you a story that came to mind for me as thinking through this. So when I was a third year med student, so those of you that are clinicians, you know how this works. First two years of medical school are really in the classroom learning, and the the second two years, third and fourth year are, your, in the wards. You're at the hospital, you're in the clinics, you're seeing patients, direct patient care. My very first rotation of third year was surgery, and as part of my rotation, I was assigned what was called at this county hospital, the suture clinic. And it wasn't just suturing, it was kind of minor emergency type stuff, but it wasn't like the crushing chest pain, the trauma, the gunshot wounds, that type of thing. More minor emergency. So I was assigned to this suture clinic and I was assigned to suture this gentleman who had cut his arm. And I'll never forget him asking me as I was getting ready to suture him. Is this your first time? He asked me in Spanish. And I, my Spanish was a lot better back then. It's not so great 20 years later. And I said, yes. Oh my gosh, if there was ever a time for a little white light was right there, cause I'll never forget the look of what am I doing on, on his face, this is her first time. I had practiced, we practiced on pig's feet, so I'd practiced before, but on suturing a live human, this is my first time, so he could clearly tell that I was not confident in my suturing skills. I don't really remember the rest of the interaction. I know I was not completely independent. Of course, I had a resident that was overseeing me and helping me, but I was not confident in my suturing skills at that time. It really isn't learning about suturing or anything. It's not thinking about it, it's not studying it, that helps develop confidence. It's taking action. So it's through repeated practice. So the more I practiced suturing throughout my career, that's where that confidence came from. And so, as I said before, we think we have to have confidence before we take action, but we really don't. And you've probably heard the quote or somebody told you something like start before you're ready. And this is so true. I hear this all the time from my clients, that I'm not ready to take that step. I'm not ready. And I, I might ask them some version of, well, how do you know when you're ready? We don't ever know when we're ready. We just tell ourselves that we're not ready because then that helps to keep us from taking action, right? It's kind of this defense mechanism. Another story that I love is from one of my favorite movies, the Sound of Music. So if you've seen this movie, of course, it's based on a true story of Maria von Trapp. She becomes Maria von Trapp, at the time she's a, a student nun, I'm not quite sure of that title, but she's a, a, a training to be a nun or studying to be a nun, and she's assigned to be a governess for the wealthy von Trapp family, the captain, and then his children. He's a widower, and so he needs a governess for his children. She has no idea what she's doing. And she says this to the, to the Mother Superior who's assigning her to this post, this, this role. She says, I don't know anything about children. I don't know what I'm doing. And, and the, the Mother Superior basically said, you're gonna do this anyway. And she does something really amazing. Of course, she notes that her fear is really, really strong. It's kind of overwhelming her at some point. But on the way to the von Trapp residence, do you remember what she does? Now, it's a musical, right? So there's gonna be singing and dancing, but she starts singing and she's dancing on the way, and the song is called, I Have Confidence. And as she's doing this, she's actually creating her own confidence. Now, I've seen this movie a number of times. If you remember what she does when she finally gets to the von Trapp residence, to the gates and she sees this vast estate in front of her, she stops singing and dancing and she goes, oh, help. So that's a little bit of a, maybe a confidence deflator. But nonetheless, she really pumps herself up with this song and we can do the same thing. I'm sure you've seen or heard of people who do have kind of pumped me up rituals and do things before they step into something fearful. Like maybe professional athletes before they, they take the court or take the field or, that performing artists who are ready to go on stage, they mighty have this pump me up routine. That's how we build confidence in our bodies, and the reality is that confidence doesn't just fall from the sky. It doesn't just fall into our lap. We can't just sit here and wait to have confidence. We have to build it, and we build it by taking action. When we don't take action, we get stuck in this analysis paralysis and keeps us from taking action. So how do we build it up? Again, we have to take action. It doesn't have to be anything big. It can take be very small steps. It can be singing and dancing if that's your thing. It's not really my thing. I like to listen to music, but I'm not much of a singer or dancer, but some people that's really what pumps them up. But action, taking small steps, starting before we're ready. Those small steps over time actually teach our bodies, so we can teach on our bodies and our brains things. We don't have to listen to what our bodies and our brains are telling us. We can teach our bodies and our brains that we're competent and capable, and we're giving evidence to ourselves that we know what we're doing. Again, every time I was suturing somebody, it built up evidence to myself that hey, I can do this. I know what I'm doing. And when we act repeatedly and keep those commitments to ourselves, when we do what we're going to say, when we do what we say we are going to do, it builds self-trust. And my coach is always telling me this, that you become a professional and it's not necessarily like a professional figure skater, or professional anything but you, you dive into professional mode when you do what you say you're going to do, even if it's the small things. And another thing that my coach is always telling me is, how you do anything is how you do everything. So as I'm building my business and becoming a coach and a consultant and a speaker, and I've become an author, I've really had to develop this confidence for myself. And part of that is how do I live my life? What are the things that I, say I'm going to do, am I doing those? So I'm also a runner. If I say I am going to go for a run, do I go for the run? If I say I am going to sign up for this course or, and build my team or do something else to invest in my business, do I keep those commitments to myself? And when I do, I'm developing self trust. I'm developing confidence in myself. I am building up my identity of I'm somebody who does this. I do what I say I'm going to do, and when I have that confidence in myself, then that comes off to my clients as well. We have to think about confidence like a muscle. With any muscle, we have to build it. We have to work at it, or it atrophies over time. So have you ever done anything that maybe you haven't done since you were a kid, like play a certain video game or even riding a bike? That's a metaphor that people like to use. It's like riding a bike, but if you haven't ridden a bike, since you were a little kid, you're a little wobbly. I know I was. I ride pretty regularly now, but I wasn't riding when I was in college, medical school residency. And the first time I got on a bike as an adult, I was shaky. But then it gets easier. Again, our bodies and our brains remember how to do those skills and we just have to, have to remind them that, hey, these neurons actually can work together. So let me tell you a story about a client of mine. So she was a physician and she was very fearful about money. She told me during one of our sessions that she completely avoided looking at any of her financial documents because as what she said was, I don't feel confident about money. And so she was just in complete denial. So the more, she talked about it throughout our session and I was asking her about it. She had this insight that because she was in denial and she, that denial was feeding that fear. Right, and because she wasn't looking at her documents, it fed the fear even more. She was creating more fear for herself by not looking at her statements. So she had this realization that, hey maybe I'll just look at my bank account online, see where it's at, see where the money's going, see how much money's coming in, how much is going out. And I think that's she, she would, she did that in spite of the fear. She knew it was going to be fearful to open up those accounts and take a look at it, but once she did, she felt so much relief because she had just bitten the bullet. She had just done it and taking action in and of itself created a huge amount of confidence in her. So much so that she actually then realized this is good, but I want this to be better. And she researched financial planners, financial advisors, and she sought out one and started meeting with him regularly, somebody that aligns with her beliefs and her goals and her family's goals. She started using online tools and resources, so that she could really optimize her fin, family's financial performance. So it was really just that initial hurdle, getting over that fear. And a lot of times another thing we tell ourselves is that we can't feel fear and act at the same time. We feel that fear and confidence are mutually exclusive, but they can actually coexist. And I mean, if you think about a lot of actions that we take, we do them even though we have fear. So thinking about like maybe asking somebody out on a date or approaching a, a colleague and asking them to be a mentor or, talking to somebody about their performance, it's a challenge. I mean, those things all are fearful, but we do those anyway. And I love this quote. It's attributed to Nelson Mandela. Please let me know if, if this is not him. But the quote is,"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the triumph over it". So it's not that we don't have the fear, but we have the fear and we do it anyway. I like to see fear, not as a stop sign telling us, hey don't do that, but more as a signal. Now, again, I'm talking about fears of things that aren't going to kill us, public speaking, asking our boss for a raise. Those types of things. I'm not talking about like feeling fear when you step off a curve and there's a car coming, that's a stop sign. Definitely acknowledge that fear. But the fears that our brains spin up a lot of times, and remember that our brains veer, tend to veer towards the negative because they're scanning the environment to try to keep us alive. Those types of fears a lot of times get in our way. And so when we can create that confidence, and we act in spite of it, then we shrink the fear. But if we avoid it, we feed the fear. That's what my client was doing. She was feeding the fear by avoiding looking at her bank statements, once she took action, that fear just, woof, vanished. So back to my story about that community of people that are professional speakers or aspiring speakers. I saw some of these community members and colleages, and now, friends get up on stage during this bootcamp session and practice their keynote in front of all of us, and in front of people that were really giving them feedback, and experts who were, who were giving them some guidance on what they could do better. And they all admitted that they were nervous, so they were fearful, but they got up there and he, they did it anyway. It takes alot of, it takes a lot of guts, and it takes a lot of courage to speak in front of hundreds of people. Not everybody wants to do it, but the ones that have the most confidence, are the ones that have done it the most. So it's those reps. It's taking action over and over again. A lot of, times also, we can use body practices. We talked about singing and dancing, but some body practices like standing tall, opening your shoulders, broadening your chest. There's a lot of evidence showing that when we can take a particular stance, when we embody that stance of confidence, that it actually, our bodies are telling our brains, hey we got this, not the other way around. There's another quote that I love, and it's attributed to poet, Aaron Hansen, that is,"There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky. And if you ask, what if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?" I love that so much, and I'll tell that to myself quite a bit is, oh, but what if I fly? I just think it's such a beautiful quote and a reminder of, yeah, we, we tend to, again, our brains tend to look at the negative, asking what if I fail? But if we can spin that and ask, what if I fly, it will just open up so many doors for you. As you're going through this process, and I have got a journaling prompt here coming up that I wanna share with you, it's really, really important to create a plan for support. Who are the people that you're gonna turn to and what are the resources that you're gonna turn to? Again, I mentioned this ImpactEleven community. I would love to talk to you about it if you're interested in it. It's a community of people who have been there and done public speaking, and have a ton of knowledge and wisdom, and generosity to share, and then people who are going through it at the same time. So, look to your peers, look to your mentors. Look for people that, that you can turn to for support. Or even if it's just somebody that can be a shoulder to lean on, friends, family, partners, pets, any type of community support or people that you can lean on and that can be there for you and not necessarily in a, in a pump you up and, and sing your praises type of way, but just people that you can turn to when, when the days get rough because they absolutely do. So my takeaway for you, is you're already perfect as you are. You already have everything you need in you to take that next step. Remember, confidence doesn't come from knowing that you'll succeed. It comes from knowing that you'll show up for yourself no matter what. I've got a journaling prompt for you, that can help you as you reflect on this episode and take action. What is one small action I can take this week that will build evidence of who I want to become? What is one small action I can take this week that will build evidence of who I want to become? I would love to hear if this has been helpful for you, I would love to hear how you took action. Feel free to email me at laura@thepurposefulmd.com, that's laura@thepurposefulmd.com. Would love to hear from you. I read every email and I respond to every email. If you love this episode, also please share it with somebody that you know, and then rate and review. That's the best way for other people to find this episode, give us a five star rating, drop a review. We would love to hear from you. Thank you, and I hope this has been helpful for you. While I am a physician, the information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your own healthcare provider before making any significant changes to your lifestyle or routine. By listening to this podcast, you are not creating a physician patient relationship. Thank you for listening to the Purposeful MD Podcast. If you like what you hear, please rate and review the show. Please also visit my website, www the purposeful md.com for free downloads or to discuss working with me as your coach.