On Purpose with Jay Shetty
7 Ways to Train Your Brain to Go From Insecurity to Confidence
Fri, 07 Feb 2025
How do you react when you feel insecure? What past experience boosted your confidence? Today, Jay explores how you can break free from insecurity and build lasting confidence using science-backed techniques and practical mindset shifts. Jay opens the episode by addressing the invisible forces that keep us stuck in self-doubt, such as fear of failure, scarcity mindset, and negative self-talk. He explains that our brains are wired for survival, not confidence, which means that many of our insecurities stem from a natural instinct to protect ourselves from perceived threats. Jay introduces seven powerful strategies for retraining the brain for confidence. First, he explains the importance of stopping the brain’s “threat detection system”, which makes us perceive challenges as dangers rather than opportunities. He then highlights unconscious competence, where we often fail to recognize the skills we’ve already mastered. By tapping into this, we can use our existing strengths as a foundation for greater self-assurance. In this episode, you'll learn: How to Overcome the Fear of Being Judged How to Let Go of What No Longer Serves You How to Take Control of Your Confidence How to Shift from Self-Doubt to Self-Belief How to Train Your Brain to Build Lasting Confidence Confidence is not about being perfect; it’s about showing up, learning, and giving yourself the grace to evolve. You have everything within you to shift from doubt to self-trust. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here. What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:09 Why Does One Feel Insecure? 06:55 #1: Learn How to Rate a Threat 10:47 #2: Harness Your Unconscious Competence 16:23 #3: Face Your Fear of Not Being Seen 20:25 #4: Understand the Power of Sunk-Cost Fallacy 22:52 #5: Reclaim Your Control of the Locus of Control 25:05 #6: Utilize The False Consensus Effect 26:11 #7: Break Free from Imposter Syndrome Using Cognitive DissonanceSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What causes feelings of insecurity?
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Questlove, and every year we do special programming for Black History Month. So the team and I compiled some clips from the show that are worth revisiting. In part one of the celebration of Black History Month, we're listening back to moments with Chris Rock.
The greatest comedians in America end to be black. It's because you had to work these two systems in a world that everybody else has to work on.
Listen to Questlove Supreme on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Questlove Supreme and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.
I'm Emi Olea, host of the podcast Crumbs. For years, I had to rely on other people to tell me my story. And what I heard wasn't good. You really f***ed last night. It felt like I lived most of my life in a blackout. I was trapped in addiction. You had to grab the lamp and smash it against the walls. And then I decided I wanted to tell my own story.
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Chapter 2: How can I learn to rate a threat?
Listen to Crumbs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty, and I'm thrilled to announce my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can see my on-purpose podcast live and in person. Join me in a city near you for meaningful, insightful conversations with surprise guests. It could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO or business leader.
We'll dive into experiences designed to inspire growth, spark learning, and build real connections. I can't wait to see you there. Tickets are on sale now. Head to jshetty.me and get yours today. Instead of panicking, you pause, take a breath, and tell yourself, this is not a threat. This is an opportunity. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. I am so glad that we're here together.
Thank you so much for tuning in and trusting me with the next 30 minutes to guide you from insecurity to confidence. I'm sure there's so many of you this year that have so many dreams, so many goals, so many aspirations. There are probably so many things that you want to achieve, learn, conquer, grow, master, or even just experience.
Chapter 3: What is unconscious competence?
And the thing that's standing in your way is your doubt, your insecurity, your scarcity. You might have the doubt. I'm not good enough for that. I'm not ready for that yet. Or you might have the insecurity. I'm sure they'll give it to someone else. I'm sure someone else will beat me to that job, that promotion, whatever it may be. Or you may just have scarcity.
There's not enough for me, and I'm not enough. These feelings can make it harder for us to relate to people in our personal life, to connect with people at work, to actually thrive. And often we see people who may not be as smart, who may not be as talented, but they're just confident.
Have you seen that before where you look at someone and you think, wait a minute, I know for a fact that I might actually know a little more than you. I actually know that I work really, really hard, but for some reason you have confidence and I don't. And you might see that all around you where you look around and you think, wait a minute, how is it that you're moving ahead?
How is it that you made that happen? And I find it's because some people are coming from a place of insecurity, which you can feel energetically from them, right? Have you ever felt insecure internally and everyone in the room could sense that? Or even if they couldn't, you felt they could. And that made you less confident, less courageous, less brave, less bold in that room.
And at the same time, we have people in our life where you can sense
that our ideas are not taken as seriously because we come across as insecure we come across as doubtful whenever you share one of your ideas you'll say something like look this may not be the best idea right as soon as you've said that what's everyone thinking oh well it may not be the best idea or maybe you say something like look i know this might be a stupid question Guess what?
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Chapter 4: How can facing the fear of not being seen help me?
Now everyone thinks you're going to ask a stupid question. And maybe people even reply to you by saying, look, there's no such thing as a stupid question, but now everyone's thinking it. You were going to ask a really great question. Chances are everyone in that room was thinking about the question you were going to ask.
But because of your precursor, you've now set people up to doubt you, to feel differently about you. Maybe you say something like, Look, I've been thinking about this. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking about it. Now, I'm not saying that you want to lie and say you're sure about something and it's the best idea ever.
But what if you let the thoughts, the analysis, the assessment of what you're about to share happen live and in real time? Before you give a disclaimer, as soon as you've given the disclaimer, you've put the doubt, you've put the insecurity into other people's minds, which came from you because you had an insecurity about what you were going to say.
And chances are you were about to have a great idea. Chances are you were about to say something that's actually really helpful, useful, and something everyone needed to hear. and I've seen this time and time again, that when we add disclaimers, when we add precursors, we're the ones who end up losing out. because we're the ones planting the seed of doubt in our own idea.
Chapter 5: What is the sunk-cost fallacy and how does it affect me?
So today, I want to give you seven steps that are going to help you grow from insecurity to confidence. This isn't about faking it. It's not about lying. It's not about manipulating. It's about having enough trust in yourself that the experience that you've garnered
the experience you've lived in life, the amount of meetings you've sat in, the amount of conversations you've had, I want you to learn to trust that you have a level of intelligence which grants you a seat at the table. You do not need to feel that you're crawling under the table. You do not need to feel that you've been given a seat at the table. You have a seat at the table.
Chapter 6: How do I regain control of my locus of control?
Because you've earned it. You're in that room because you've earned it. You're in that meeting because you've earned it. You belong in that room. There is a seat with your name on it for a reason. But when you're the person yourself who's kind of sitting away from the table, putting the seat aside and acting as if you don't belong, it creates distance. It creates a fracture in that communication.
So what if I told you the reason you're insecure isn't because you lack confidence, but because your brain is stuck in survival mode. Insecurity isn't about being weak. It's your body's response to risk. But here's the secret. You can retrain your brain to stop feeling threatened all the time. I'm sure you're ready to learn how. Let's dive in with step one.
Train your brain to stop seeing life as a threat. We have to turn off our threat detection system. See, in the past, it made sense. Our brains are hardwired to protect us from danger. This is part of an ancient survival mechanism. When we feel insecure, it's often because our brain is perceiving a situation as a potential threat. So we think that there's a lion in the bushes.
Chapter 7: What is the false consensus effect?
There's a snake in the grass. There's a hunter coming from a nearby village, whatever it may be. And here's the plot twist. Your brain is often overreacting. Your brain is overreacting. There isn't a lion in the bush. There isn't a snake in the grass. So what we need to do is we need to learn to recognize how to rate behavior. threats.
Chapter 8: How can I overcome imposter syndrome?
And we have to learn how to rate threats when we're not in the threat. What I mean by that is, if I ask you to rate a threat on a scale of zero to 10, when you're about to experience it, it will always feel like a 10, right? In the moment that you stub your toe or trap your finger into a door hinge, right? Even thought of that, you're like, that's a 10.
But let's be honest, it's not a 10 in the pains of life, right? There's things that are far more painful than both of those. But in the moment, you'd give it a 10. So we have to rate things outside of the moment. So let's look at rating, the idea of sharing something at work that you might think will be seen or perceived as a bad idea. Let's rate it when we're not in that position.
What's the worst that could happen if you shared something and people didn't get it or didn't understand it? Maybe a three, a four, five. Or maybe you're listening to me right now and going, Jay, that's a nine for me, right? I'm so scared by that. So now let's reframe.
Instead of letting your brain trigger fear in situations that don't actually put you at risk, let's use mindfulness to recognize and reframe these reactions. By simply observing the thought,
I feel anxious because of this meeting or this conversation, you can activate your prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls rational thinking and override the amygdala, which controls the fight or flight response. So let me give you an example. You're preparing for a meeting. Your brain immediately starts firing off signals of danger, even though the meeting is not life-threatening.
And instead of panicking, you pause, take a breath and tell yourself, this is not a threat. This is an opportunity. You've trained your brain to stop seeing every challenge as a risk. And now you can actually use that energy that's often wasted. in threat management into growth management.
You can now actually switch from worrying about that moment to actually saying to yourself, well, now we can get ready. Now we can actually get it right. Now I can actually communicate in a way that will resonate with people where I'm not giving disclaimers and precursors and that will actually connect. Try it out for me and let me know how it goes. Tell me in your stories.
Tell me in the comment section on one of our Instagram posts. Post about it. Let me know how that worked for you. Stop and turn off that threat detection system. Set a rating and be clear about it. I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special with all you tea lovers out there.
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