The Confidence Kickstart: How we transform inner conflict into positive leadership skills

In this episode, we’re diving into the quiet but powerful inner battles that so many high-potential women face—second-guessing themselves, shrinking their ideas, and waiting for permission to lead. Our guest, Jay DeVorre, creator of the Confidence Kickstart program, shares how she helps women break free from self-doubt and build the kind of inner trust that transforms not only how they show up—but how they lead. Whether you’re stepping into leadership for the first time or navigating imposter syndrome at the highest levels, this conversation is a reminder that your voice, your presence, and your perspective are needed—and it’s time to stop playing small.

Key Takeaways

• High-potential women often experience self-sabotaging behaviors.
• Real leadership begins with building trust in oneself.
• Reprogramming self-belief is simpler than it seems.
• Women frequently struggle with making decisions due to self-doubt.
• The gap between potential and reality can fuel anxiety.
• Confidence is an ongoing process, not a one-time achievement.
• Leadership is about lighting up others, not just titles.
• Burnout can lead to powerful lessons and growth.
• Self-awareness is crucial in overcoming fear and doubt.
• Practicing gratitude can shift focus from scarcity to abundance.

Chapters

• 0:00 Transforming Tension into Transformation
• 0:00 Reprogramming Relationships with Fear and Self-Doubt
• 3:25 Understanding Self-Sabotage in Leadership
• 6:18 The Impact of Confidence on Authentic Leadership
• 9:59 Moving from Competition to Collaboration
• 12:18 Defining Real Leadership Beyond Titles
• 15:22 Reprogramming Relationships with Fear and Self-Doubt
• 18:18 Navigating the Messy Middle of Confidence
• 21:21 The Importance of Inner Trust in Leadership
• 22:27 Final Thoughts on Leadership and Confidence

Transcript

Dr. Nashay Lowe (00:19)
Welcome back to the resolution room where we turn tension into transformation through clarity, connection, and consistency. I'm your host, Dr. Nashay Lowe and this is a space where we explore what's really underneath the moments that challenge us and they can lead to something more honest, more human, and more whole. So let's get into it. In this episode, I'm joined by coach Jay DeVorre, and we're exploring how high potential women often experience success limiting inner conflict that create self-sabotaging behaviors, especially in the early stages of their leadership journeys. So we'll talk about why even brilliant, capable women sometimes play small and how real leadership begins with building trust in yourself. So we'll uncover how reprogramming self-belief is actually simpler than you think. Together, we'll reflect on what it takes to move from doubt to leadership that inspires others from the inside out.

Dr. Nashay Lowe 

So Jay, please just introduce yourself to the people and let us know who you are, what you do.

Jay | ThrivingLife (01:19)
All right, thanks for having me today, Shay. Yes, I am Jay DeVorre and I am a confidence coach and I work with women who are rising in leadership, they're early in their leadership roles. And what we find oftentimes when we are given a great opportunity is a lot of self-imposed ⁓ worry and self-doubt and anxiety can accompany that desire to really perform and to prove everybody right, that we are good enough for that position. so...in the work that I do, I help women who are navigating those anxieties and that self-doubt and they're trying to figure out how to overcome that once and for all really. they can feel truly confident. That's really what they're craving. Yeah.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (02:01)
so I guess in your work, what are some common patterns you see in women who are stepping into leadership but second guessing themselves?

Jay | ThrivingLife (02:08)
It's really common that we'll see that there's a, know, women will struggle with making simple decisions, you know, or even complex ones, of course, but sometimes it's the fact that, you know, they just, they're responsible now for making decisions and they worry about making the wrong decision. And so we'll oftentimes, what we'll see is, you know, analysis paralysis, or we'll see like a little bit less action, you know, than they're entrusted to take.

Jay | ThrivingLife

They're not really sure if they need permission or whose permission they need sometimes. And so there's a lot of what we'll see is kind of just kind of shrinking, you know, playing smaller than they need to be. And what's at the heart of that is really this inner conflict that's going on, you know, and it's really about the conflict between oneself and what they're the voice that they're hearing that's telling them that, you know, you what if you mess up, you know, you're you never really were the right person for this role. You should never have gotten this role. You're really not good enough yet.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (03:03)
And yeah, thank you for explaining that so beautifully, I'm curious, can you just elaborate a little more on what we mean when we say like shrinking or making yourself small? I feel like that's something that gets tossed around a lot nowadays and I don't wanna just have jargon around here, so go ahead and explain.

Jay | ThrivingLife (03:18)
Yeah, it is. It's the hesitation. It's the holding back when good enough is good enough. It would be perfectly acceptable to go ahead and just make a decision, for example, or to say the thing that you really want to say, but you're worried you might not say it right. That's another thing that we often see with women is that they're so afraid of finding, like, what is the best way to assert myself? I don't want to be too passive, and yet I also don't want to be too aggressive lest I be called, you know, the B word. Common, common concern that I hear.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (03:49)
Yes, I think it's interesting because when we think about making yourself smaller or shrinking, I think we think about a certain type of women, so why do you think even high potential women struggle with imposter feelings?

Jay | ThrivingLife (04:07)
Mm-hmm. You know, it's kind of maybe inherent in the very term high potential, right? It's the sense that, you know, that label carries with it that I'm not already all of these things, right? I have the potential because I'm a high potential. But really what gets the what earns the reward of the position, you know, the promotion or the title is the fact that the evidence has shown that they have, you know, what it takes, right? So women tend to live in that gap. You know, where they're constantly striving and then they're focusing on that gap instead of on all of the evidence that shows that they're already good enough.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (04:45)
And as someone who lives this daily, can you please tell me when it goes away?

Jay | ThrivingLife (04:52)
You know, it really, think it goes away when you stop looking at the gap. You stop focusing on that, you know, because that gap is just filled. That's where the anxiety is. It's in the sense of I'm not already all of these things. And so, yeah, when you really start to resolve the inner conflicts when you start to treat yourself with the uttermost respect and acceptance and cherishing even that you deserve, that every human deserves. What you start to find is that gap just shrinks because you're not really focusing on that. You're really focusing on all of the good that already is. And that's the bucket that's full that you now operate from. But getting there is not really a one and done.

That's something that takes some time.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (05:40)
Right, right.

Jay | ThrivingLife (05:42)
Constantly read you kind of have to repattern yourself in a way but then you also have to read you have to double down on it you have to constantly be reaffirming that until it becomes second nature.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (05:52)
I love re-pattering...

Jay | ThrivingLife (05:54)
Yeah, yeah, it's a behavior pattern. It's a relationship with yourself, just like you would relate to other people in certain ways. It's how you're relating to yourself is where the key is.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (06:03)
Mm-hmm.

Jay | ThrivingLife
And so building on that sort of inner confidence, I think this goes everywhere, but especially amongst women, there's a lot of competition, And so I think in your work, you talk about leadership as being about lighting up others. And so how does confidence or the lack of confidence affect a woman's ability to lead authentically?

Jay | ThrivingLife (06:27)
There's a lot of energy that goes into trying to address that inner voice that's telling you that you're not good enough. And so much energy and so much focus going to that instead of focusing on leaderly behaviors. So when you successfully resolve that and you can kind of operate, like I was saying, from the full bucket, you're free to share.

You know, all of who you are, you're free to really, there's a power in that word free. You're really liberated from that negative inner voice that's holding you back. So you're tapping into what I like to call kind of your inner power is your inner light, And that's what leaders do is they light the path for others, you know?

But you can't really do that if you can't do it for yourself, you can't offer that to others. So it becomes very important to, do your own work and then operate from that place of whole, sense of self, self-trust, self-acceptance, self-compassion. That is where self-confidence comes from.

So when we're operating with a mindset of, you know, that there's competition, there's a scarcity mindset that's at the heart of competition, right? It's the sense that there's just not enough for everybody. And so that puts us into a mindset that's really unproductive in a way. It can be good, in the sense that like maybe it fuels you, it makes you strive for more, but...

That kind of feeling and striving isn't coming from a scarce mindset. That's coming from a whole mindset that says, hey, I can make this even better. But the approach that we would take is not to do things that we would typically see in competitive environments where we're cutting each other down, we're withholding resources, we're talking bad, we're being difficult. Instead, when we've really done our inner work and resolve the inner conflicts that we have, and we become more whole and complete, a sense that there's nothing missing here. We're now free to direct that energy toward positive action. And in that positive action, we're tapping into our inner potential and we can extend that to others. As I was just saying, extending grace, extending trust and support. And that really resonates with the people that you're leading. That's the kind of stuff that everybody who wants and craves from their leaders and their managers, they want to feel entrusted. They want to feel valued. They want to know that if they make a mistake, it's going to be OK. And when they feel safe, then they start to take chances. They start to be a little bit bolder. And they start to behave more confidently. And then if you are a leader of leaders, then that helps the people down there, down below them, to feel the same way. So it's a really moving from kind of a competitive mindset to more of a collaborative mindset, where, hey, we're all going to achieve great things together, is really a leader at their best.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (09:18)
That's beautiful and that actually kind of, while you were talking, I was thinking about, again, when we think about ambitious women, know, we're, against our better judgment, are chasing titles sometimes, right? You're chasing the achievement, and that is defining the success for us. Rather that's coming from, know, peer pressures, societal expectations, family, who knows, right? And so, for high achieving women, I guess, how do you define real leadership beyond the titles or achievements?

Jay | ThrivingLife (09:40)
Impact.

It's really, I mean, I don't think there's a greater impact that a leader can have than to light somebody else up and help somebody else feel confident and to help facilitate someone else's success. You if you think about who are the best bosses I ever worked for, without a doubt, they're the people who probably gave it to you straight. They pushed you a little bit. They challenged you. They knew that you had so much more in you than maybe you were like letting yourself believe.

Or even if you did believe they were making sure that you had a clear path to fulfill your potential. So yeah, think it's absolutely about the impact that you can have. Yeah.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (10:25)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, absolutely. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And so let's talk a little bit about your work and how you help women get to this point, right? So how do you help women reprogram their relationship with fear, self-doubt, and overthinking?

Jay | ThrivingLife (10:46)
Yeah, so it really starts with learning how to pay attention to what's going on inside. So the fear tends to operate in the shadows. We're not aware usually that there's so much fear driving us. And so I see my work as helping women shift from fear to love. Love is where the power is.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (11:09)
I wasn't expecting you to say love, but correlation...

Jay | ThrivingLife (11:12)
I know, I know people kind of think, that's a soft word, that's for the personal realm, but not the professional realm. But like I was just saying, the people that really challenged you and helped you become your best, they were coming from a place of love for you, so to speak. So what I help women do is to learn to tune in and to examine, am I speaking to myself from love or from fear?

And that takes ⁓ a bit of time, for some, right? It can take some time. It's a process. Because what we're really trying to achieve is diffusing this tension between the mind and the heart. The mind is where the fear comes from. And the heart is where the love comes from. And the collaboration between the two of them is where we get optimal results. The fear isn't inherently bad.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (11:42)
Okay.

Jay | ThrivingLife (12:04)
The fear has a really powerful purpose as a matter of fact, you know, and it's there to inform. It's there to guide a little bit, just to let you know, like, Hey, you might want to watch out for this. You might want to watch out for that. But if it is, it can only be beneficial to you. If it's conscious to you, you have to know that it's there. So building that genuine, like self-awareness is always where we start. And then we tend to, from there, you know, we're looking at, okay, what do we need to let go of? You know, where does that come from and how can we let go of it?

Dr. Nashay Lowe (12:14)
Mm-hmm.

Jay | ThrivingLife (12:34)
And that's its own special process of really just coming to acceptance that this has been how we've been operating and that there are other possibilities out there. So once we see other possibilities, it becomes easier to let go of what's holding us back, right? But oftentimes we don't have that training and experience to even entertain other possibilities. We're so conditioned to just focus on the limitations because fear speaks with a lot of conviction.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (12:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jay | ThrivingLife (13:04)
And it's easy to buy into that if you don't realize it's there.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (13:08)
So obviously, fear will push people to feeling maybe stuck or hesitant to move forward in different parts of their career or just their lives in general. ⁓ what's one powerful practice or mindset shift you recommend for women who feel stuck or hesitant?

Jay | ThrivingLife (13:25)
I have a few. One of the most powerful practices that I like to help women learn is it comes from heart math. And it is what's called heart-focused breathing. And it's a technique that helps to create coherence, know, from a physiological basis, not just, working through the psychology of self-doubt and the negative, words that you're telling yourself, the things that you're saying to yourself, but rather it's kind of almost like a biohack in a way.

And that is just learning to breathe into your heart. And so it's, you recognize that you're hijacked, and you might not even know why, don't even bother trying to analyze it and understand it just yet. Just pause and breathe down into your heart and put all of your attention away from your mind and into your heart, your literal heart in your chest. And what this does is it helps to kind of help the vagus nerve to kind of write things between mind and heart, brings everything into coherence so that you can then pause. It gives you something to focus on besides your thoughts. And then from there, you can begin to kind of go into an inquiry, more
of an objective neutral inquiry about what am I saying to myself? Is it helpful or is it hindering me? Do I want to be doing this or do I have a vision of something greater for myself? What do I choose? What do I need to let go of here?

Right? ⁓ So that's one technique. And if I can share another one, ⁓ I'm also a big fan of practicing self-gratitude. actually even just gratitude by itself can be enough. Sometimes people struggle with self-gratitude if they aren't practiced in that. So if that's too much, then just even practicing gratitude, you know, it takes you away from that scarcity mindset where we're focusing on the gap and it helps you focus on what is like all of the good, all the blessings. It brings a really powerful perspective. So those are two that I really like.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (15:27)
And they're next on my to-do list for today, so thank you for that.

Jay | ThrivingLife (15:31)
I love it!

Dr. Nashay Lowe (15:33)
And so, building on that feeling of stuck or hesitancy, how do you help someone navigate the messy middle where they're no longer stuck but not fully confident yet either?

Jay | ThrivingLife (15:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's always part of the journey. So we start by just acknowledging that confidence is not a one and done deal. You can have a big epiphany and just feel like you're on top of the world and go out and do something very bravely and boldly and feel incredible confidence from that. And then the next thing can come and just kind of sideswipe you and kind of blindside you a little bit. And you can just feel down, down, down in the dumps again.

So that's why it's so important to understand that the process, like those are, those wins are fantastic and we want to keep those in mind, right? Those are great evidence. But we also want to understand that this is an ongoing continuous process where you are perpetually committing to being your highest and best and treating yourself with uttermost love and just reminding yourselves constant. It's a really, it's a, it's a reminding practice that you are always enough already.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (16:46)
And I guess looking at the bigger picture of all this, why is it so important to help women build inner trust early in their leadership journey before burnout or disillusionment sets in?

Jay | ThrivingLife (16:57)
To be honest, think burnout and disillusionment, sometimes they're the greatest motivators. We don't have to stress about trying to avoid them per se. It's not that we're aiming to work ourselves to the bone and burnout or to feel really harsh with ourselves, but sometimes the burnout, the disillusionment are where the powerful lessons are and we learn how much detriment we cause to ourselves and when we're self-judging, if we're heeding, you we're giving too much credence to the imposter inside of us that's telling us we're not enough. That can be something that really actually makes us, you know, it can feel painful enough that we want to, we learn the negative consequence. And so we move forward from there so that we don't repeat it. Yeah.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (17:48)
Exactly, exactly. And then so I guess just reflecting on your work and the transformations you've seen happen in your clients, what happens to a team, company, or a community when women leaders are fully confident and fully present?

Jay | ThrivingLife 
Synergy. Synergy just attracts all the good stuff and it just helps to generate these exponentially positive outcomes. So I see the work that I help women do is very micro level. We go deep into the engineering or the programming, so to speak, and it goes from micro to macro and everybody gets better for it.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (18:09)
Mm-hmm.

Jay | ThrivingLife (18:33)
So it's really, it really does, it's warranted work, you know, to do your inner work. You really want to make an impact, you know, do your work and then yeah, you can really truly help light others up and kind of play your part in lighting up the world.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (18:49)
And if you can send one message to any woman doubting her leadership potential right now, what would you tell her?

Jay | ThrivingLife (18:49)
The path to confidence is a lot simpler than you would think. really, it starts by realizing that you're not an imposter. The imposter is the voice that you're hearing in your head that's telling you that you're not enough. It's lying to you out of fear. Recognize that for what it is and then just go from there. Continue to follow your heart and you'll find your confidence. It's always been there. just waiting for you to remember it.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (19:37)
I love that.

So Jay, before we leave the resolution room, can you let everyone know where to find you and your work?

Jay | ThrivingLife 
Absolutely. I would love for folks to find me at www.thrivinglife.com. If you go onto this website and you can click over to where it says free confidence kickstart, you can get access to a seven day email based challenge where you can get started on your own with really cool, fun, engaging activities and get that confidence up and running. Let's get started.

Dr. Nashay Lowe (19:40)
Well, I'd like to sincerely thank my guest Jay again for this insightful conversation. Today's discussion reminded us that leadership doesn't start when you get a title or reach a milestone. It starts when you trust your own voice. So we explored how self-doubt, overthinking, and shrinking back are not signs of inadequacy. They're signs that deeper support is needed. Real leadership isn't about removing fear. It's about choosing to rise, even while fear is still in the room.

If you're waiting for permission to believe in your own potential, consider this your sign. It's already yours. As always, thank you for joining me today in the resolution room. I'm grateful that you're here doing this work alongside of me. If this episode spoke to you, I'd love for you to share. And until next time, keep building in the quiet. That's what will carry you forward.