Overcoming self-doubt and building the confidence to change career - with Sarah Burrows of Achieving Ambition

#199: Sarah Burrows is an accredited Career and Business Coach who helps women lost in their careers discover a purpose-filled career or business.  She explains how Neuro Linguistic Programming can improve your confidence, the power of language, and how to change the way you view yourself.

What you’ll learn

• [01:42] What Neuro Linguistic Programming is.
• [02:49] The power of the language you use to talk to yourself.
• [03:33] Neuro Linguistic Programming skills that can make you feel confident.
• [04:36] How Sarah became a coach and NLP practitioner. 
• [06:31] What’s happening in our brain when we feel anxious or trapped.
• [07:43] How the brain has evolved to respond to danger.
• [08:46] How lacking confidence stops people from making a career change.
• [10:18] The danger of familiarity.
• [11:30] The most common causes of self-doubt.
• [14:15] Why we shouldn’t take other people's opinions at face value.
• [17:20] Typical thought patterns of people who need to be more self-confident.
• [21:00] How to know if it’s an excuse or a reason.
• [24:22] How and why to challenge your assumptions about a career change.
• [25:32] How to improve your self-confidence.
• [27:36] How to change the way you view yourself.
• [33:00] The self-fulfilling prophecy of self-talk.
• [34:39] How to align your physical sensations with your mindset.
• [37:15] How to reframe fear to excitement.
• [37:57] How support networks can help you build confidence.

Resources mentioned in this episode
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• ChatGPT

For the show notes for this episode, including a full transcript and links to all the resources mentioned, visit:

https://changeworklife.com/overcoming-self-doubt-and-building-the-confidence-to-change-career/

Re-assessing your career?  Know you need a change but don't really know where to start?  Check out these two exercises to start the journey of working out what career is right for you!

Transcript

0:00

You're unhappy at work, really unhappy, but there's something holding you back from doing something about it. Maybe it's uncertainty about what you should do. Maybe it's doubt that any change you make is going to be for the worse, not the better. So, how can you overcome your doubts and create the self-confidence to make something happen? That's what we're going to be talking about in this week's episode. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello and welcome to Change Work Life, the show that's all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach, and in each episode, my guests and I bring you tips, strategies and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. If you're contemplating a change of career, chances are there's a lot of fear and self-doubt going through your mind. How can you be confident that you're taking the right decision and that it's all going to work out? To help us overcome these fears and doubts, I'm joined this week by Sarah Burrows. Sarah is a career and business coach who helps women who are stuck, lost or unfulfilled in their careers discover a purpose filled career or business that makes them happy and excited to go to work. She is accredited by the British Psychological Association and is also a neurolinguistic programming practitioner. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. We'll come on to talk a bit about it later, but for those who are unfamiliar, what is neurolinguistic programming? Yes. This is a very common question. So, neurolinguistic programming, to summarise, is really about your brain and the way it works, accompanied by the language that you use and how to work with both. Often, the difference from coaching is that it can work on a subconscious level. So, it doesn't always require actually talking, but it's there all the time in life in terms of all around you, it's just the practice of programming it and working with our brains to help us, versus sometimes our brains can work not so well for us. And the programming element when you're a neurolinguistic programming practitioner is to have your brain work better for you. Okay. So, this is kind of like, I don't know, practising with positive thoughts, affirmations, that kind of thing, not automatically going to the negative? Sometimes, in some of it, yes. So, we work a lot around the language. For example, when you say, if you're thinking about a career change, 'I just don't know what else to do', your brain will pick up on the word 'I don't know'. So, instead of you looking for what you could do, your brain won't serve you because of the language that you're using. It will focus on things that you can't find, and disregard other information. So, it's partly working with the different language that we use and working out how to maybe change it. There are lots of different elements within NLP. And another one is, when you get a feeling if you hear a certain song that brings back a memory, do you have one, and then you'd hear it, and you get quite a warm feeling, or you feel quite good. That is something called an anchor. And that changing in your, we call, state, how you feel, something that we can do with as a neurolinguistic programming practitioner is help you to access feelings like that at will, so at choice. So, an example of that is where you hear a song, and it makes you feel good. Well, you have moments in your life that you feel confident, self-assured, and something that you can do as an NLP practitioner is help a client to feel like that as and when they want to, because they felt it before. Okay. So, it's almost like accessing previous states of mind and turning on and off the tap at will. Yes. Fascinating. So, what is your background? How did you get into coaching and NLP practicing? Yeah. So, I studied psychology at university. I have a master's degree in psychology. And straight out of doing that, I worked on a British military rehabilitation programme in Shropshire as a researcher and evaluator. And the work that they did there was rehabilitation, adaptive sports, but also life coaching. And so, I got to see the power of coaching week in and week out with wounded, injured and sick men and women, service personnel. And I watched the transformation that coaching had on them. And a lot of were about to go through quite a significant change, whether they'd had an injury, and they were about to be discharged from the military or stay. And so, I saw the profound impact that life coaching had, and then about four years later decided to retrain as a qualified coach, and then did my neurolinguistic programming afterwards. That's interesting because when I think of life coaching, the military doesn't feel immediately like the first place you would see it show up. No. And it was my first experience of it. I didn't know much about coaching. I mean, this is back in 2015, 2016. I didn't know much about coaching even with my psychology, and it was fascinating to see it and delivered in a way that met those people where they were as well, which I think, like you said, it's not where your mind automatically goes in terms of the recipients of coaching. Let's start to talk about confidence. And when we talk about it, or we talk about a lack of confidence, or we talk about self-doubt, what do you see is actually going on in our brains? Because when you think about it, it's all a bit odd that you've got this internal thought which is somehow inhibiting you from doing something? Yes. So, our brains are wired to keep us safe. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are taught to not step out of the cave because you don't know what's there. So, that level of uncertainty of not knowing what's out there means that our brain says,'Oh, don't do that because, well, you don't know the outcome of that. But you know the outcome of this. So, just stay here, and that's going to take too much time, and you don't know if you could do that.' So, it finds all these wonderful reasons to not push ourselves, because we know that we're safe when we're comfortable, when we're aware, when we know what's happening, even if that doesn't necessarily serve us or make us particularly happy. When we are safe, our brains tell us that's a really good place to be. So, you mentioned this as being an evolutionary thing. So, it makes me think, what's changed? When did this cease to become a useful thing, or to what extent is it still a useful thing? I mean, I suppose we're no longer worried about being eaten by a sabretooth tiger. But, yeah, I'm curious as to your thoughts on how this has evolved or not evolved. Well, it's interestingly evolved in that we see dangers, but the dangers have changed. And like you said, when it's not that fight or flight, and even though that's the response we might have, the fight, flight, freeze response, we can still have that, when you give a presentation, you might have one, and that's something that you're really uncomfortable with. You might have one of those responses. So, to some degree, the physiological response to that can be the same, but then it's not serving us, because the dangers aren't the same as they used to be, and they're not life threatening. And the worst that could happen is that judgment, and we don't want that, but it's not necessarily life or death. So, to some degree, it has evolved. The external world has evolved. Some of the internal world just sees danger in a lot more areas, but those areas have changed, and that has evolved. So, what makes lack of confidence such a barrier when it comes to making some kind of a career change? It's partly what we were just saying there about the fact that your brain's keeping you safe. And so, even if you're unhappy, but you're comfortable, you might stay. And it might impact you so much so that you stay for years in a career that doesn't bring you any joy, that you stay, or you might move in a similar role but multiple times, and still being unhappy in each of those. It might be the same role. It might be marketing in one area, marketing in an agency, marketing somewhere else, and it's still not bringing you any joy. So, confidence can mean that we don't step out of our comfort zone, and we don't prioritise the career change, because our brain can be telling us all the reasons not to, and all the reasons you know, like staying because you've spent so many years, it's what you've trained in, and it can find all of these reasons to stay because you're comfortable. But, really, confidence and self-doubt stops people from starting the process and continuing the process that's required for a career change, because that self-doubt can crop up at every stage. So, it's like the safety in familiarity overcomes any negative feelings that the familiar isn't actually that greater place to be in. Yes. And I see lots of people really thinking that they should leave, but they just also talk about the comfort that they have. And yeah, that's absolutely right. Sometimes the familiarity keeps us where we are, and sometimes what happens is, people get to a stage where they're so unhappy that pain outweighs the comfort, and then they make a change. But often, that's the worse end of the spectrum of, you know, they're really unhappy, they may be in a toxic work environment, they've waited that extra three years to make sure that they're definitely right that it's not the right career. And that's sometimes where it can get to, where that tipping point is, that the situation is so bad, that that is worse than being uncomfortable and stepping into that discomfort of not knowing that you're good enough, but going for it anyway. So, it's almost like the caveman is so hungry that he's got no choice but to leave the cave, rather than stay there and risk starvation, even though there could be lots of nasty things out there which could pose a threat? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Love that analogy. Do you see it as being the most common causes or perhaps sources of doubt? So, do you mean internally in terms of the thoughts? Yeah. I'm not sure what causes self-doubt. Well, there are a couple of things that cause, well, that research says that causes some confidence and some doubt, especially in women. A couple of things, some historic research shows, girls at a very young age are taught to only put your hands up in school when you know the answer and not to take those risks. And again, same when you look at comparative gender studies of children in the playground. Boys are taught to take risks and girls less so. The times that mothers will go over to the children and say, 'Oh, be careful which way you're going.' So, I think from an early stage, confidence we're taught, not necessarily women, especially, and I appreciate the language is very gendered here, but women aren't necessarily taught to take some of those risks. And so, I think some of that self-doubt plays a big part, as well as that safety of what if I can't do that. Some self-doubt comes, and one of the causes of that is that fear of failure, fear that the grass isn't going to be greener on the other side, and they take the leap, and they do the work, and it's worse than where they currently are. And so, there's all these different reasons that help us to stay in that cycle of confidence and self-doubt. And another one is fear of judgment of other people. When people talk about their career changes to loved ones, sometimes loved ones can be really helpful, but also really unhelpful, and that can really interplay with someone's level of self-doubt and confidence and belief in themselves that they can do it. If you're surrounding yourself with people that challenge or question or say, 'Oh, that's a big risk. Oh, I'm not sure I'd do that', that is absolutely their own risk profile, their own beliefs, but actually, that has quite a big impact. Versus if you're sat in a room with someone, and they just say, 'Oh, of course, that's absolutely possible. Go for it. I mean, what do you lose by doing that? I mean, absolutely, you can do that. You'll smash it.' There's very different sensations of confidence that come as a result of both of those conversations. So, I think something that isn't actually often talked about when we think about self-doubt and confidence, and a lot of it's that internal mindset piece, actually, sometimes it is the people that you're surrounding yourself with that can help or hinder how you feel about taking that risk and taking that step out of your comfort zone. That was something that I came across relatively recently, this idea that if somebody else expresses doubt or surprise or fear on your behalf for the course of action you're taking, it's probably a greater reflection on their own thoughts and mindset than it is on yours. Yes. Quite often, especially in the career change sphere, people have what I call different levels of risk profile. So, some people will have a huge risk profile, and others won't. But their advice will always come from a very good place, sometimes, not always, but it's within their own risk profile in mind. So, I've got a client, and her risk profile is quite big, I would say, actually. So, she didn't like her job, so she just decided to hand her notice in, because she looked like she had a good prospect of another one on the pipeline. Her partner had a much lower risk profile, so he was really trying to talk her out of it, because for him, security, financial security was obviously a real big driver. And when I actually coached her, and I talked her through what she wanted, and we reflected on the conversation, she could really see that that was definitely him and his own values in the advice he was giving to her, about how she should live her life, how she should run her career, just from how he felt about his own, not actually how she wanted to. She ended up making the decision to leave, because she knew that she had enough security for her level of risk. She had enough savings in the bank, she had the prospects of work. All of those things meant she actually could remove herself from the situation she was unhappy in. So, you just have to take into consideration that it is all their own proof of what they think is a good idea and what their world is. And I wonder sometimes if there's an element of discomfort on other people as well. So, I might say to someone, 'Oh, I am thinking of having a career change', or something like that, that it starts to almost threaten their own worldview. And so, there's a reaction there, a sort of resistance that your change is uncomfortable, and so you're forcing them almost, are they in a place where they might want to be considering a change, or is there just something threatening their own ordered view of the world? Yeah. And especially if there's any form of jealousy that you are doing something they wish they could, but they haven't got the confidence to in themselves, you're really highlighting to them what they're not doing as well. And that can, yeah, really rear its head, and often without any awareness that that's what it is that's showing up for them to have that sense check on what they're saying. Yeah, you're definitely right there, from my perspective anyway, you can quite quickly threaten someone else's security by shifting and showing change. So, going back to one's own self-confidence or lack of it, what are the thoughts that you typically see go through your clients' minds which indicate that it's a lack of self-confidence that's holding them back? Yeah. It's a great question. So, interestingly, this morning, I had a clarity call. So, someone books with me when they want to potentially work with me. And I was trying to assess what coaching they really needed. When they started, and this is something that I see when someone's not fully confident in themselves, there was that unsure about, so they started with, 'I think I want to make sure that the decision is right.' There's that second guessing that they do want to leave, and they keep flitting back to, 'I know I want out, but, actually, it's quite comfortable, but I know I want out.' And so, there's that swinging between wanting to leave and wanting to stay. And actually, when I dug a bit deeper, they're already applying for other jobs, they already know what industry they want to move into. Which shows me that they have clarity that they do want to leave because they started taking action. But that confidence keeps trying to draw them back to their comfort. And so, that indecision of, I'm on the fence, I'm not sure, that can be a real sign that it's just confidence, because you know that you actually want to leave. And if you felt really confident in yourself and about the decision, would you keep coming back to that comfort? Maybe not. A couple of others that I see really is people who look at a job description and think, 'I couldn't do all of that, I couldn't do half of that, I couldn't do a third of that.' And therefore, they don't take any action. So, that feeling of imposter as well, that sense that I want to change, but I don't even have any transferable skills and strengths. So, would I even be any good at that? Could I do that? Would I have to spend three years retraining? It all looks a lot, and I'm not sure I'm capable of actually doing that. And you know what? I haven't really got any time anyway, and I'll just stay for a bit longer. So, a lot of that self-doubt that comes through when you look at the future options, and it feels far too much for you to conquer that you don't believe you could even take the steps to get there. Picking up on that a little bit further, I'm curious about this dividing line between genuine concern and the story we're telling ourselves. So, for example, I might see a job advert for a research biologist of the pharmaceutical company. I know that there is absolutely no point in me applying for that, because I've got absolutely none of the educational background or skills or anything like that. However much I might like the idea of being a research biologist. Now maybe that means there's, I don't know, retraining or whatever research to find out what that could mean. But for me, that is a good reason for me not to apply for that job. A common concern, I think, people feel is around financial aspects. So, particularly those who have got the partner, the kids, the mortgage, all that, the responsibility. And the story there is, well, I can't change job now, and I can't bump myself down to the bottom rung of the ladder, because I've got all these things that I've got to pay for. I just quite simply can't afford to do this. So, I'm sure it could show up in a number of different ways, but I'm curious how you approach that dividing line. You know, what's real reason, versus what's really just a story? When you're talking about what you absolutely couldn't do, and I love the example of research and biology, because it is very niche and specific, usually, how I would pick up on something like that is, I would say, 'Why don't you just do some research?' Because you never know. And you start to see it as a theme of the different kinds of roles. And you can have a conversation with someone, they'll mention 10 roles, and they'll come up with the,'But I couldn't do that because...' after each one. So, I guess it's that, are you disregarding every career option before it's become an option? Therefore, I would probably look at a bit of that confidence and self-doubt. How I would work with that with my clients, I would rephrase it to, you're just doing research. It's not your career forever. Taking a bit of that pressure off and just saying, actually, for now, if you think that being a research biologist actually would be a really good fit for you, why don't you just go and do some research? Because it might be something you want to do enough or could do enough in three or five years' time, if that's where you want to go. And sometimes disregarding a career because you know that it's going to take X amount of years is okay. And it is different, I would say, from people that disregard every career option before they've explored it. So, probably the amount that people disregard is something that I would notice as being self-doubt, not a reason. And then, the way I overcome it is working through some of those challenges and those assumptions that we have about that career in saying, actually, if you did some research, how do you know that to be true? How do you know that being a research biologist would require you to do the things that you're assuming are required to make that career change? And actually doing a research and seeing if there are any jobs that are similar around that as well, that would require less training. The one with money, that's, for me, a bit more of an environmental thing. We work through it, of course, we work through it in career changes. I'm not sure I see that so much with self-doubt. How I usually do work with that very top line is, we work a range out that does work for that person in that moment, because everyone's different, and life changes, of what that would be, and then that impacts the career journey that they build in terms of feasibility of different roles, short, medium, and long term. But what you were saying there about research, I can see how that could also apply to the financial side of things. Oh, I can't afford to change my job to do this. Well, how do you know? When did you last do some budgeting, check your outgoings, check the bank balance, check your savings, all that kind of thing? I mean, if you did do this, what would your runway look like? And so, say you took a pay cut for the first year. Well, what might that actually mean? So, there's this unknown, which I think you can turn into a known in almost any regard, just by doing a bit of research or looking at the situation a bit more closely. Yes. And I think that's the stage when you go through with someone on a career change, building that clarity over all of the reasons that we might stop looking at that career change being a potential option, because we assume, like you were just saying, we assume that I'm going to have to take a pay cut. And actually, one of the challenges that I give there is very similar to what you said, it's how long for and how do you know what your situation is in actually building that band and saying, okay, what do you need to live off? What actually does that number look like? Have you ever even thought about that? Rather than just thinking, oh, I don't want to take a pay cut. Which is understandable, we work really hard in our careers to move up. Sometimes it can feel like a backward step. And so, yeah, challenging those assumptions that we hold is probably the job of a coach, isn't it, in terms of, at every stage it's, well, how do you know you can do that? Something you mentioned earlier was how lack of confidence can prevent people even from starting. So, where can you start if you are suffering from these doubts, this lack of confidence? Where can you just start and make progress? So, the first place I tell anyone to start, and this is usually the piece that people miss, is to look internally. We don't get confidence, and we don't get self-belief from external things in the future. So, if you think that it might be your confidence or your self-doubt that's really impacting you, to start writing a list of your skills and your strengths and what you enjoy. And the thing I always caveat here, especially if you maybe lack self-confidence and self-doubt, is to think about what comes really easily and really naturally to you, because those are often your strengths, but you might not recognise them as your strengths. So, you might be really good with people, but you just assume that everybody can do that because it's so easy. But that's where actually you can see some of your core strengths coming through and actually recognising and owning them as strengths. I think there's a huge amount that I see when I'm working with someone, that their confidence starts to really develop when they've done, and I spend half an hour to an hour with someone on just a strength session, to really pull it out and for them to really connect with what they're good at. Not just doing a strength test where they write five words down, and they forget 24 hours later about what that even came through with, but really actually learning to understand yourself better and what you're strong and you're good at, because then your next role should also align with that. So, it helps in so many ways in the future, as well as building that confidence immediately. It helps with the interview stage. It helps with applying for a job that's more aligned to you, because you should be happier and doing better in a role that does actually align with your strengths. So, it serves a lot of purposes, but it's such a great place to start with that self-doubt. And accompanying that as a kind of bonus thing, and this is something that I learned when I was doing my NLP, is when you label yourself as someone who lacks confidence or lacks self-doubt, you tell yourself that story. So, you potentially become that story. And so, actually, as well as doing the strength to build your self-belief and your confidence is to maybe change the narrative about how you view yourself. Because if you always tell yourself you're not a confident person, why do you expect yourself to turn up to that situation confidently, turn up to that meeting confidently? Because your own narrative, that language that you use about yourself doesn't align to who you want to be. And so, just self-check, having a sense check on the language that you use to talk about yourself. If you often refer to yourself as, I'm not particularly confident, oh, god, I have imposter syndrome, or I'm not very good at interviews, or I'm just, yeah, like I said, not very confident, or I'm not very good at interviews, turning up and really nailing that interview confidently is going to feel much harder, because there's that disconnect from that story that you're telling yourself in terms of your neurology and the language you use, and then who you want to show up as. So, just checking the language is another very helpful tip to think about confidence and building self-belief. I said we'd go into NLP in a bit more detail, so I'm curious to hear you develop this a little bit more and maybe give some practical tools. So, what can people start to notice about themselves that is reinforcing these beliefs? So, maybe it's, I don't know, someone who's always sighing all the time, and they sound like they've got this sort of world weary attitude to things, or the way your thoughts come up, or I don't know whether there's a physical aspect in the way that you hold yourself. So, yeah, interested to know what practical tips you've got. I would probably build on what I was just saying in terms of the practical side of what to do instead. So, first is, create the awareness, but that only serves you to some point because you're not making any change. The most useful thing that I talk about all the time when I'm delivering group coaching or one-to-one is, change some of the language. So, if you say to yourself, 'I'm not confident, or I'm not a good presenter, I've always been a nervous presenter', and you take the words, 'I'm not a good presenter', what you're doing is reinforcing so that you're going to have that physiological response, because your brain is telling your body that you're not that you are a nervous presenter, or that you're not a good presenter. What you want to do is, A, you've got to create the awareness, because if you don't know it's there, you can't change it. So, if I'm going to deliver a presentation, the first thing I'm going to do is check-in with myself about how I'm talking to myself. Or when I'm talking to my friends, 'I'm really nervous about the presentation, I'm just not a very good presenter', start to pick up on those kinds of phrases that you're using when you're talking both internally, but externally as well. That self-deprecating humbleness might not be serving you. And think about how you're changing it. So, if you're saying, 'I'm NOT a good presenter', all you need to do is change that one word from 'not' to, 'I am a good presenter.' You can change it to the positive, but you can also change it so that it resonates a bit more of, 'I'm growing to be a better presenter. I'm learning to be a confident presenter.' You don't have to flip it, because if it doesn't resonate, then it won't necessarily be effective, because your brain isn't necessarily, you're saying words, but you're not feeling them. Such a state needs to change. But you maybe can lean into, 'I'm growing, I'm changing, and I'm learning.' So, it's having that awareness around that language that you're using to describe yourself, where it's not serving you, finding the negative word in that, so 'I'm not confident', and just taking the word 'not' out, easy just to find that one negative word, because that's what your brain focuses on, and then change that and find something that's more positive. And what you'll start to see is, you can grow into that more confident person, because your brain is also telling your body that you are that more confident person. You're growing. You're leaving that door open, because you're growing to be more confident. You're growing that self-belief. That's easier sometimes for people to resonate with and to associate with, so that they feel it, rather than they don't feel it, because you need to feel that sensation to be able to grow with it and to change it, and for it to be effective and for it to work. If you just said, if you've gone from that unhelpful NLP language of, I'm not confident, to I'm really confident, if you don't associate it, if you don't feel that, it's not necessarily going to work. Create the awareness, change the word, whether it's positive or neutral or growing or learning, and then start to have that phrase, and that will work on your internal state and system to help you to feel more confident. And I like the way you frame this as growing or learning. So, rather than, I'm no good at delivering presentations, it could be, this presentation that I've got coming up is going to help make me a better presenter or something like that. Because that's really hard to argue with, because even if you make a complete hallux of it, you will learn from that experience. And so, it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes. And that's essentially, I guess, if you draw on that, it's the language that we use, it is a source of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell yourself you're an introvert and that you never talk to anyone when you go to an event, you're not going to go and talk to anyone at that event, because that's what you're telling yourself. You are going to live out that. If you tell yourself before you go, an extrovert, and I love chatting to people, you're going to go and live out that behaviour. And it's the same when you talk about self-belief and confidence. You're always going to show up the way that you're telling yourself you are, and that's the self-fulfilling prophecy piece of it. And you talk not just about saying it, but feeling it. And so, I'm interested about this intersection between, if you like, mind and body. A previous guest of mine when we were talking about imposter syndrome said that doing all of the mindset work only helps if the body then agrees. Because if you're saying in your mind, 'I'm a confident person, I'm a confident person', but your body is screaming, 'I'm not a confident person', and it's got the butterflies going on or whatever, it's really, really hard to persuade your brain when the body is telling you something else. So, how do you almost reinforce or align the two when you're trying to shift the thought patterns between these two states? That's such a good one, because if I was working with a client, there's other techniques I would use to help change that state to match the mindset. It's as we talked about at the beginning, where it's that feeling of feeling confident that you can access. So, you compliment them both. So, that's what I would do if I was working one to one with someone. More generally, that's why I think the words growing and learning, because you can feel growth, you can feel that you can, and that it's available to you, and then you don't have that two opposing, feeling versus words. If you can say to yourself, 'It's that opportunity, and I will get better, this is a learning phase', it doesn't then disregard the feelings, but it can help to shift them. Rather than having that, oh, I'm telling myself this complete lie, and therefore you don't even access the ability to change that feeling, because you just don't agree with it. Whereas if you create that statement that's open, of I'm learning to be more confident, then it gives space for that current state, that current nervousness, the butterflies in your stomach, but it allows you to still grow and to change. Then, the idea is that the more you practice, because you also have to build confidence with practical steps as well as mindset, you change it each time a little bit, a little bit, and you open that change of mindset, and then you can grow. And then, ideally, the physiological response lowers as you change that mindset whilst practicing it. Sometimes I just find acknowledging it can be helpful. So, I go, you know, I recognise the butterflies in the tummy or the tightness in the chest, and I kind of go, 'Okay, I've got this coming up, and my body is feeling like that, yeah, that's perfectly understandable. Of course, it is. I'm a bit nervous about what's coming up, and that's all absolutely fine. But it's not going to get in my way.' And I think that's it, isn't it? It's giving it space and recognising it and saying, 'I'm still going to do it anyway.' And you build confidence by doing something repeatedly, and it's where it's okay if you maybe don't have as much confidence, as long as you still take the action that serves you, and it doesn't hold you back, and giving yourself that space to allow those feelings and recognise them. And also, being scared and being excited is actually the same physiological response. You can reframe it by saying, we associate it positively and negatively, logically, but adrenaline, butterflies in your stomach, sweating, those things happen when you're in that state, whether it's excitement or feeling scared. So, actually, you can also use that as a reframe of, actually, maybe I'm excited to do this, rather than nervous from a negative perspective. We talked a little bit earlier on about the role other people can play and whether that's a positive role or, as we were talking about, maybe a negative role. Can you talk a little bit about the role of support and the role of the right kind of support in building confidence? I'm guessing that not just trying to do it all by yourself is not going to run into far too many negatives, but you're probably better off getting some help, rather than just trying to do it all by yourself. Yeah. So, support networks can look very different, and everyone will have a different preference. I think you're noticing who's around you and the way they talk about it, having accountability, committing to stepping out of your comfort zone, to taking the next steps and telling somebody so that they can check-in with you, and you're more likely to take the action. Therefore, your confidence isn't winning as much because you've got someone else checking in, which is going to increase your likelihood of achieving it. Coaching is also another phenomenal tool for building confidence, whether it's coaching, CBT, NLP. They can all be really helpful for you to work on both the mindset, but also take the actions. And knowing that you're coming back to a coach, my clients always let me know that they're doing the work quite quickly before the session. And it is that accountability that means that your confidence doesn't win because you've committed to this. So, yeah, there's two, and the first one is that noticing people who make you feel really good, and noticing people that maybe don't, and the things that they say. I really notice when having a chat with one person, and they're like, 'Oh, don't do that', and they kind of snarl, versus other people that are like,'Oh, yeah, of course you can do that. Yeah. Great. Go for it.' And just start to notice how other people, what their energy does for you. And then, the accountability and coaching as well, I think, is the most effective thing for building confidence and self-belief. The accountability piece, that definitely resonates with me. When you've got someone telling you to do something, and they're expecting it back from you, you kind of get on with it, even if you don't think you can do it. It's phenomenally effective. Yeah. And people always say that's what they like about work in terms of the deadlines. You know you've got that deadline, and you're going to work to that deadline. Well, create those deadlines for your personal growth as well, and then you'll excel in both your career and your personal world as well. Just lifting one methodology from a space that we're very used to it, to a space that we maybe haven't experienced it before. So, someone who wants either to find out more or maybe practice some of the techniques, what tools or resources can you suggest they might want to look into? ChatGPT is something I'm using quite at the moment, quite recently, for clients who struggle to understand their transferable skills, maybe for an interview, and they're lacking a bit of that confidence. And a tip I was giving to a client the other day, as I said, if you put in the job description for the job that you're looking at, and you put in your CV, you can ask it to find the transferable skills that you have that align with that job. It's not a 100% accurate, and ChatGPT has many, many flaws. But with that being said, sometimes what it can do is help with that objectivity of different strengths you might not have seen whilst linking it to another role. And that can be really powerful for a lot of people in terms of recognising their strengths, which is what I came back to earlier saying, learning your strengths and knowing your strengths can really help you feel confident. This is another level of specifically going for an interview, for example, of pulling out some of your transferable strengths that would be needed for the job. I don't think ChatGPT is quite yet going to replace career coaches, but I think it definitely can help. There's so much that it can do, and I think we've only just scratched the surface on that in terms of helping people with mindset careers. I recently used it as a role-playing thing. So, I was doing some informational interviews, and I basically asked ChatGPT to play the role of the person that I wanted to speak to. And it was really, really helpful. It was brilliant. Where should people go if they want to find you? So, I'm on Instagram. My handle is achievingambition_. I'm on LinkedIn at Sarah Burrows Coaching. And my website is achievingambition.com, which has all the information of getting in touch, hearing me on different podcasts, reading the blogs, being my newsletter, whatever it is that they want to access, it is all on the website, and then I'm active on both Instagram and LinkedIn. As always, links in the show notes. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a very interesting discussion. So, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's been great. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Sarah Burrows. Sarah talked in this conversation about only putting your hand up when you know the answer. She mentioned how she sees this in particular with women. I think it probably applies to a lot of people. Most jobs just don't allow you the opportunity to get curious, to experiment, to get things wrong. And I think that's one of the things which holds people back when it comes to exploring career change. We're so scared of not already knowing the right answer, of getting it wrong, that it seems to stop us just taking even those small initial steps, even those low-risk steps like doing a bit of research, having a conversation with someone in a different profession. And I really liked the idea of what Sarah and I were discussing, of trying to adopt the mindset that whatever happens, taking this action is in some small way going to improve me. I might not get it right. In fact, I might make a complete and utter mess of it. But I'll learn from the experience, and it will make me better in some small respect going forwards. Confidence is something which quite regularly comes up in coaching. So, if you're in that position, if you're unhappy, but there is something holding you back from exploring a change, set up a call with me, and we can explore what it is that you need to have the confidence to move forward. Anyone who wants to can book a complimentary 30-minute coaching session with me, and you can do that by going to changeworklife.com/coaching. That's changeworklife.com/coaching. Show notes for this episode are at changeworklife.com/199, that's changeworklife.com/199. And yes, that means that in two weeks' time it is going to be episode 200. Now I'm recording this quite far in advance, so I'm not entirely sure yet what I'm going to be doing for episode 200, but I suspect that it's going to be more around me and what I've been doing over the past 12 months or so, since I left my corporate job to go full time with coaching. I think there's going to be lots of insights, and you'll be able to learn not from the things that I've done right, but the things I've done wrong, because there's been quite a few things that I have done wrong over the past year. And so, if I can share those mistakes with you and help you to avoid them in the future, well, hopefully, that'll be pretty valuable. So, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast, so episode 200 automatically gets downloaded into your feed, and I can't wait to see you in two weeks' time. Cheers. Bye.