The First Step to Confidence (Real Work My Coaching Clients Do)

How to build real confidence is one of the most common goals people come to me for, and the truth is that it starts with self-trust, not with the affirmation cards and power poses you find on Google. The real work is excavating your past to find a belief you keep carrying that isn’t true.

I share the story of how my dad spent my childhood telling me my voice was annoying, and how that one belief got so loud in my head that I ignored dozens of podcast invitations for years because I was too ashamed to be heard. I walk you through the day when it finally shifted for me, and the small first action that took me from never appearing on podcasts to guesting on over 50 shows.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Why affirmations, power poses, and feel-good quotes are not the actual work of building confidence
• How growing up emotionally repressed shaped the way I handled, or really didn’t handle, my own mental health
• Why we believe the things our parents tell us about ourselves, even when those things aren’t true
• The real first step to confidence, and it’s not what most of the personal development space sells you
• How shame thrives in the dark and why saying it out loud is one of the best ways to dispel it
• The exact message I’d send to make amends for something I avoided for years
• How to pick a first action that’s big or small enough for wherever you actually are right now
• Why taking that one step becomes the proof you need to take the next one

If your self-esteem has been spiraling and you just want one place to start, this one’s for you.

If you liked this episode, also check out episode 2: How to Build Confidence that Actually Lasts from Oct 30, 2025.

Transcript

Confidence is one of the key areas I help clients with, and it’s interesting because it’s not very well understood in the personal development space, because when I talk to people most of them are looking for a quick win. 

I know why, because if you Google “confidence” you see all this swag, like the cute pillows with quotes on them, the affirmation cards, and articles with advice to stand in front of a mirror and power pose and say things like, I love myself, I am beautiful, I am confident.

I think the stuff exists because it’s supply and demand, right? People like positive reminders, but they’re also looking for a band-aid. 

Truth be told, it is way easier to buy the cute quote vs going to therapy or coaching for 6 months, right?

And I'm not going to lie, these quick hits have their place, because sometimes you really do just need someone to reassure you. Like if I’m about to go on stage, I just want someone to be my hype man, like tell me I’m gonna crush it just like all the other times. Right? This is not the time to drag up my childhood or try to therapize me - no thank you. 

But on the other hand, if we’re taking the long view, where you actually rewire your brain and you stop swinging back and forth emotionally like some fucking pendulum, and you want to stop questioning yourself and comparing yourself to everybody else, then the truth is you're going to have to do the real work.

Now, I know we think it’s going to be hard and emotional and heavy, and maybe we don't feel ready to go there yet. 

I get it, I'm Korean, like most Asians I grew up super duper emotionally repressed and suppressed. I remember my parents were always telling me to put my emotions away, wipe that look off my face. How dare I show that to other people? So I was never taught to be aware of what I was feeling, and that that was ok. So of course I didn’t handle and process any of it in a healthy way.

It’s probably why I had multiple bouts of depression before I was 35. Some of that was because I never getting the support I needed, like not going to therapy. You know, Asian culture, again not a thing. And also not having the right people around me, but I also didn’t understand how stuff like mental health or how confidence works, and that a lot of it is really about self-trust. 

 And I would say that's the major change for me over the last 10 years, because I've come a lot closer to not just feeling random moments of confidence, but actually embodying confidence even during the hard times in my everyday life. 

So if you feel like you've been going around and around in circles, where you spiral and you don't feel good about yourself a lot of the time, and you want to know what's the first step to confidence,  then you are in luck because that's exactly what we're getting into today 

You're listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I'm your host Jule Kim. Let's dive in.

Let me tell you a quick story about me and my dad. Growing up, my dad told me so many times that my voice is annoying. He would literally say, why is your voice so “yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh.” Your voice is so irritating, stop talking.

He said this to me at least a dozen times that I can remember. And I don’t think he knew that he was giving me some kind of complex, but that's basically what happened. Because I took what he said as the gospel truth, like it was the Bible, especially because he kept repeating it.

The funny thing is I didn't even realize my dad’s voice was constantly playing in my head until I got on this app called Clubhouse in 2021.   I don't know if you ever got on it, but I was on there like it was my mother freaking full-time job, okay? 

And it was so cool because it was kind of like the world's largest audio-only conference where you could go into any room and join these events where people were talking about certain topics. 

 So I started going into these rooms, and for the first time in my life ever, I was opening my mouth and contributing my views. I started hosting my own rooms, and I was jumping onto other people's stages. This is where I got my start as a speaker.

Now, because people were hearing me on there, they started inviting me to come be a guest on their podcasts, which was really great. 

Unfortunately, this is also the embarrassing part - I never even replied to those messages, because I was so ashamed of my voice. See, I could show up on Clubhouse and speak because those sessions weren't recorded, but omg podcasts were a different beast.

I couldn’t do podcasts because my dad had installed this belief that something was wrong with my voice, and the belief was so strong that even when people messaged me to say how much they loved the sound of my voice, that they found it calm and soothing, I didn’t believe them. I told myself oh, they're just being nice. 

I was SO convinced that my voice was irritating that I wasted dozens of podcast invites.

The turning point came one day about 6 months later when I actually sat down and weighed the evidence. 

I realized that I go out into the world every single day with my face and my voice, to the grocery store, to work, and hanging out with my friends and everybody else I see out there. 

And you know what? Not one of those people has ever said my voice is annoying.

My dad was the only person in my entire life who has ever said that to me. 

But his words held so much power for me because he's my dad, and of course we tend to believe and trust everything our parents tell us.

That is why we have a hard time seeing that sometimes what our parents tell us just isn't true. The reality is they’re just like any other person, where they have a perspective on things, and it’s not always accurate or helpful.

See this is the kind of thing that doesn’t fit on an affirmation card. And the mirror and the power poses and the pretty quotes, like all of this stuff, these are the things that are the cherry on top, they’re not the sundae.  That's the stuff that's there to remind you of the lessons and the work you've already put in as you go through this journey. 

Which means the real first step to confidence is looking in your past, to find the belief or the false story you keep telling yourself, that’s probably not even yours.

So take the time, talk with your friends and family to help you identify these beliefs. This may or may not take a while, depending on how good y’all’s memory is.

 Once you've identified one of these false beliefs or false stories, the next step is to go do one action towards the thing that the false belief has kept you from doing.

For example, in my situation, that meant I had to stop ignoring those podcast invitations, and start saying yes. Or if I didn’t have any podcast invites, then the action would be finding at least some of the people who reached out to me five years ago, and send them a message like this:

Hey, I'm so sorry for never responding. It was about me and the shame that I carried. I just want you to know that it meant so much to me that you reached out and gave me this gift. If the invitation is still open, I would love to take you up on it. If not, that's totally okay too, I understand. I just wanted you to know that the fact that you took even five minutes out of your day to invite me on your podcast was really special. Thank you for that.

And the reason why I would do that is because that’s me taking responsibility for my choices in the past, but also for confronting the shame I felt and the belief I'd been carrying. 

See, shame thrives in darkness, so addressing it head on and being honest about it is one of the best ways to dispel it. 

But let’s say I’m someone where going on a podcast feels like way too much, then I would say start smaller. I would record myself talking and then I would listen to myself, just to get familiar with how my voice sounds like how when other people hear me. 

If I wanted to, I could do something with that, like get feedback from someone I trust, or maybe film a video or audio and post it online.

So with your thing, whatever it is, you get to decide how big or small that first step is. What matters most is that you're taking action against this false narrative, instead of feeding it.

This can look like writing that email to a client or to your coworker to finally have that conversation you’ve been avoiding. Or submitting an application for something you’ve been afraid to, or even reaching out to reconnect with an old friend you haven’t talked to in years.

 It can be anything as long as you take that action. 

And listen, I know it's scary. I've literally sat with clients during coaching sessions so they could write that email or send the text.

So if it helps, maybe think about getting a friend or someone you trust to sit with you and just be there while you take your first step.

You do whatever you have to do so you get it done.

Taking that one small step is what changed me from being a woman who wouldn't even reply to those invitations, to someone who's now guested on over 50 podcasts.

This could be you - you could have your version of this.

The sooner you do the scary, or hard, or challenging thing, the sooner you’ll feel your confidence grow. And the cool part is, from a psychological perspective, you get to use this first step as proof that you can do it again for the next step. 

It’s just like the pedals on a bicycle. 

You push one pedal, it pushes the other. And maybe it’s a little wobbly to start, but as long as you keep pushing the pedals, you’re gonna be cruisin’ along.

So take the first step, because you don’t get the journey without step one.

Alright, that’s it for this week.

If you feel like it, you are more than welcome to share your first step with me by texting the link in the description or sending me a message on LinkedIn. I’m so excited for you.

As always, thank you so much for listening. And remember, I believe in you. See you next time.