Grace Beverley

So this brings us on to step three, which is to practice public rejection.

And if there's one thing I've learned from all the guests I've now had on this podcast, it is that confidence doesn't come from waiting until you feel ready.

It very much comes from building evidence that you can survive discomfort.

And if you're not going to take it from me, hear it from Emma Greed.

The only way you can progress is to let yourself be slightly exposed.

This builds a tolerance to hard things, to discomfort and to embarrassment, which ultimately creates a baseline confidence that will carry you through your plans.

There's research around exposure therapy, which I think we've all seen a lot of on TikTok, like rejection exposure therapy, for example, that shows that repeated exposure to feared stimuli reduces anxiety over time because your nervous system recalibrates.

So basically, the first time you feel cringe, it will spike.

The 10th time, it feels manageable.

The 50th time, it's barely going to register.

You can build a tolerance to embarrassment the same way you build a muscle or the same way you build tolerance to rejection.

You should put yourself in the path of things that you are scared of over and over and over again so they feel less scary.

So when you're next thinking of, for example, deleting something that you posted or not sharing something that you've done well at work because you think it's cringe, give yourself a 24-hour rule.

So leave it for 24 hours and if after that you still feel complete dread, then it can go.

But most of the time I bet it won't.

And most of the time I think that you will be surprised about how unembarrassing something feels 24 hours later, particularly when you've got a little validation for it.

And of course it's not all about validation.

Maybe not everyone thinks it's cool, but people see it and it's getting you to where you want to get to.

Like cool is not the only metric in this world.

You start to give yourself permission to do that more and more.