Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stay Focused, Ignore the Noise, and Trust Your Timeline with Heather!
14 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What does success look like behind the scenes?
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So many people believe this thing just went up overnight flawlessly and it was this wonderful project. Just the next time you see that person and they're celebrating their weight loss, they're celebrating their promotion, they're celebrating 100,000 books, know that we have no idea what that backstory looks like.
We have no idea from that moment of having that vision and coming up with that commitment to have this goal and go after it, what that work actually looked like. Because I can promise you this, 99.9% of the people that enjoy that park right now have no idea how many years in the making this was. Stay committed to your goals. Stay in your own line of vision, right?
Don't get too caught up in what we see Jane or Jack doing because... Who knows what that real story is? Who knows what that trajectory really looks like? Yes, good things take time, but great things pretty often take a little bit longer. Hang in there. Don't give up. Come on this journey with me.
Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up.
Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week.
Okay, I was reminded about how things are not always the way that they seem very recently. So if you've been with me on this journey, that's a promo to my show, by the way, I just thought that was funny.
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Chapter 2: How can comparison hinder personal progress?
want to go over near this piece of land as it looked a bit scary and truly was somewhat of an eyesore in a really nice neighborhood in Miami Beach. So that hospital sat there for years like that. I'm not being dramatic. I'm being honest. So I don't know. Again, I don't know the behind the scenes on what was happening with the city and who they were fighting with.
But I do know eventually what ended up happening was a very big construction company, you know, condo producing company wanted to purchase that land. They wanted to destroy that hospital, tear it down, which it was truly an eyesore and definitely unsafe. Right. And so.
there was some back and forth that I had heard about this is years ago around the city and residents even people in my building were opposing this new company coming in I mean you cannot believe how much red tape went on here it's crazy I did not get involved in this stuff thankfully I am too busy in my own life that I don't get caught up in these kind of things but
You know, some people who really were interested in making sure the right things happen, which is great, did get involved. And there was countless meetings because I got emails and I had letters sent to my condo from the city and basically to make a long story as short as I can.
there was concern that yet again, another big condo building was going to be put up and they wanted some type of a concession that if we're gonna allow yet again, another big building, PS, this was before Miami blew up. Over the last two years, since the pandemic has hit, Miami has literally become the new New York, right? Everyone from New York moved down here.
I don't even know if it's like a million new people. It's crazy. The traffic isn't saying there's not enough housing anymore. They're saying that the pricing now in Miami for housing is equal to what New York used to be before the pandemic. So it's just crazy what no one could have ever imagined.
I don't think anyone could have ever projected this because most people, myself included, had no idea this was coming. Okay, so this is going back years ago.
There was all this fighting going on between this condo company, construction company, whatever it was, with this vision that they had for this beautiful new big condo going up, but the city was really trying to hold their feet to the fire and a lot of residents in my neighborhood because we would be directly impacted, right? Yes. Will it be nice to have another condo building? It'll be pretty.
However, the concern, I believe, was that residents were concerned. Oh, wait, that's going to drive my property value down. If I live in a building that was constructed 20 years ago and there's a brand new one, people are going to want the brand new one. And now, you know, no one's going to want this one.
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Chapter 3: Why is staying in your own lane important for success?
This is pre-pandemic. And then the pandemic hit and everything stopped. So they were going to break ground. They were going to do this and that. And then everything shut down. And then there were so many issues, you know, in every major city. There was rioting. There was so much craziness going on, right? There was a lot of upset and whatnot. So no construction began during that time, right?
And then cut to, I believe it was probably about a year ago, they started –
breaking ground on this park which at this point in time they had blown up the hospital taken that down right which was great but it was just this big rock pit sitting in our neighborhood and then they broke ground about a year ago and i believe it took about a year for them to build this park and it was funny the last couple months people kept saying when is it going to open what is it going to open
But to the people like myself who've seen this whole thing transpire, it's probably been over six or seven years. This whole thing has happened right from them first trying to make a bid to construct their condominium, which, as I said, just broke ground maybe two months ago. I just had to share with you, yes, the park is done and it's so beautiful and people are finding so much joy.
And I'm so sad that it didn't exist back when I had a young son. You know, my 14 year old does not want to go hang out in the park. However, it would have been cool when he was a little kid, right, to have been able to do that. And I'm so happy for the people that have that now. I see so many families and little kids running around and people walking their dogs.
And it's just it's so it's beautiful. But the moral of the story is this. Things are not necessarily the way they appear. So many people believe this thing just went up overnight flawlessly and it was this wonderful project. That was not the case at all. It's been a huge court battle. It's been a huge fight. It's been one problem after another. And...
it still took a really long time to actually build, right? You know, from pulling that, blowing up, they had to literally blow up that hospital and then remove all that debris and then break ground and then the pandemic and then the riots and then everything stopped and then it started again.
And just the next time you see that person and they're celebrating their weight loss, they're celebrating their promotion, they're celebrating, you know, selling whatever, 100,000 books, know that we have no idea what that backstory looks like.
We have no idea from that moment of having that vision and coming up with that commitment to have this goal and go after it, what that work actually looked like. Because I can promise you this, 99.9% of the people that enjoy that park right now have no idea how many years in the making this was. The blood, sweat, and tears that come with it.
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Chapter 4: How can you stop giving power to negative voices?
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I ask you to try to find your passion.
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Chapter 5: When should you ignore criticism and when should you leverage it?
It's chapter 17 in my book, Overcome Your Villains. And yes, if you didn't know, I narrate it. All right. So here we go. Chapter 17. Don't hide from the haters. The greatest prison that people live in is the fear of what other people think. David Icke. Are you ready for a rude awakening? Some people like to pretend that being a perfectionist means that they are held to a higher standard.
It makes them somehow better than you and me. I call BS on that. Perfectionists are just like you or me. They're scared. Scared they will be judged. Scared of making a mistake. Scared their work or ideas won't be accepted or praised. When you strip perfectionism down, you are left with fear. Here's a question to ask yourself.
Would you rather have published an imperfect book with just three errors, or would you rather be lying on your deathbed someday, telling your son or daughter that you had the perfect book in your mind, but you were never able to write it? Done will always be better than perfect. Yes, my first book, Confidence Creator, has three mistakes, and I am so proud of them.
Would I rather have no book and no mistakes? Hell no! See fear as a green light that means go and go faster. And that rings true for the video you want to create, the email you're hesitant to write, or the question you want to ask in your next meeting. Done will always be better than perfect, and doing it will build momentum for you.
The more I have thought about fear and perfectionism, and the more I have stepped into my fear, the more I realize that so much of this fear is rooted in fear of haters, the villains in your life, and their judgment. When you begin to shine your light, the haters will come for you. They love nothing more than trying to bring you down.
It reminds me of turning on a light when you're outside and the bugs start swarming around, stinging, biting, leaving behind painful welts. I think of this every time I do something different and the haters come for me. I imagine the light and the bugs and it makes me smile. Yes, gross analogy, but you get the point. The haters don't come for you if you don't turn on your light.
If you decide to play your life small without your light shining, no one will come for you. But then, guess what? You are left in the dark. We were not put on this earth to hide in the dark. In fact, we are here to make the world a brighter, better place. And that means shining the light you were given. One of the first big experiences I had with this was when my first book came out.
I knew the haters would be coming for me for sure because I did something different, something unique. I was prepared to celebrate the haters until one hit me pretty hard. Now, pump the brakes before you detach here and say, this is exactly why I won't write a book or do something that calls attention to myself. Here's the sad truth. I also had haters when I got my first promotion at work.
when I got fired, when my son ran for class president and won, and when he lost. My point is you don't have to write a book to deal with haters. Haters will be there no matter what you do.
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Chapter 6: What is the backstory behind perceived overnight successes?
No matter if you are succeeding or failing, they're coming. When you launch a book, people can review your work on many different sites. Knowing that we live in a review and rating world, I knew it would be important to gather great reviews of my book. But I didn't think about how much a negative one could hurt. Here's some perspective.
When you have hundreds of decent reviews, one negative review gets lost in the pile. No biggie. But when you launch and have only a few reviews, one bad one can be a game changer. That's what happened to me. And that can happen to anyone when asking for reviews of your work. When I launched Confidence Creator, I steered everyone I knew to Amazon to leave rating and reviews.
What I didn't know, as a first-time author, was that the book review site Goodreads is also very important. It had a couple of good reviews of my book already, and then someone created a ghost account and left a one-star review. I wouldn't have even known about it if a friend of mine hadn't seen it for herself and reached out to me.
She sent me a text and a screenshot of what the faceless ghost account had left. One star. That crushed my overall rating on Goodreads, taking it from a 4.5 to a 2.5 rating. I was livid. I knew my book was not perfect. Three errors. But I also knew that my book was really good and it absolutely did not warrant a one star review.
That the review was submitted under a ghost account that had just been created strongly suggested that this was an attack by a hater. Sadly, probably someone I knew. Get ready for the irony. Here it comes. Remember the woman, my villain, who thought she had fired me from my executive position when I actually had fired her? Her birth name is Barbara. And guess what?
The name on the ghost account was Barbara. No photo, no history of reviewing anything else, no information at all. Just a one-star review for Confidence Creator. Once I put those pieces together, my anger started rising. I thought, if this lady was actually my villain hiding behind a ghost account, I need to call her out on it. So that's exactly what I did.
I decided to go to social media and post this. When you decide to shine your light and be your authentic self, know that the haters will come. Taking the risk to create and innovate will anger those that haven't or leave them jealous or uncomfortable. And none of that has anything to do with you. On Goodreads, someone has posted a one-star review of my book.
It's a new ghost account named Barbara. No information, no history, no picture, and no reviews other than to review Confidence Creator with a one-star rating. A fan messaged Barbara on the review. What was it that you did not like about this book? Shockingly, no reply. When I shine my light, I've been confronted with haters.
And ironically, Confidence Creator is about owning your voice and being confident in who you are. So for Barbara, I hope you actually read Confidence Creator today and begin to create confidence for yourself so you can own your one star rating or anything else for that matter, because it's yours and you should be confident in your opinions, even when they aren't with the crowd.
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Chapter 7: How can you use criticism to fuel your journey?
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Last year, I had the chance to go on Gary Vee's podcast, and one of the topics we dove into was haters. Here's how Gary handles them. Judge the judgers, is what he said. That really had an impact on me. Instead of being judged and then judging ourselves, why don't we look to the person pointing the finger and wonder why they're pointing it? What's their real motivation?
The reality is they are probably struggling, angry or jealous of something. When we can try to find empathy and understanding for those people, we can make the world a better place. I have never been attacked by those who are incredibly happy in their life. And I try to remember that. Sometimes I put the haters to work for me. Sometimes I ignore them. And sometimes I feel badly for them.
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Chapter 8: What are the final thoughts on overcoming adversity and achieving goals?
It would mean the world to me. Go ahead and post on your socials. When you do that, that tells me you liked the episode and I create more content for you. If you've got questions, you want me to answer them live on air, go ahead and send me a DM. Go to my website, heathermonahan.com. I got you. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be.
I'm on this journey with me.