Viv Groskop

There is no consensus as to what confidence really looks like.

If you think about it, it is in the eye of the beholder.

So release yourself from the judgment of having everybody love you and everyone think you're confident by just being who you are.

Thrilled to be here.

It's lovely to be on your show.

Thank you for having me.

I think it's the most fundamental human fear to be afraid of the judgment of others.

It goes way back to the times when we were living in caves and afraid for our lives if we were separated from the tribe.

So there's always this really strong instinct in us to fit in with people, to do the right thing, to use usefully what we call the social editor.

That's the part of us that kicks in any time between the age of three and seven years old where

we learn that we need to behave a certain way, say certain things, be kind, not just do whatever we feel like doing.

When children are very young, they can often say things that are rude or hurtful without meaning to, just because they have no filter.

But then as we get older and we have this social editor that kicks in, we learn that we have to be cautious around other people.

And sometimes we can overdevelop that and it really affects our confidence because then we're thinking too much about what other people think of us and not enough about what we can bring to the world.

So it's about having that very measured confidence that is strong enough in the social editor to show that you care about people, but not so strong that you're always fearing other people's judgment.

Yeah, totally.

I mean, this is the really ironic thing is that when we talk about this, we all recognise it, we all know it.

And everybody would agree with what you've just said.

But at the same time, it's very counterintuitive.

We sort of contradict ourselves in that we know this