Chapter 1: Why can a difficult name impact your professional life?
Today on Something You Should Know, why having a name that's tough to pronounce can really hold you back. Then, how to build up your confidence. It can pay off in a big way.
When you become confident, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because that confidence propels you to try things and not to care so much about the result. A lot of times, I believe people who've been through really difficult things often have more confidence than people who don't.
Also, do you talk to yourself out loud? If not, maybe you should. And why do people procrastinate? A lot of procrastinators believe they perform better under pressure.
Chapter 2: How can you build confidence quickly?
There is some truth to that, that a certain group of people does work better under pressure. But by and large, almost everyone who believes that to be true about themselves is wrong. So that is a false assumption that a lot of us are making about ourselves.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Hello, welcome to Something You Should Know. We have a lot to cover today and I want to start by talking about your name, your full name. If your name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, it could hold you back professionally. A study looked at a group of adults and their promotability.
And those with easy-to-pronounce or fluent surnames, like Dunlop or Stevenson, they were 7-8% more likely to be promoted.
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Chapter 3: What role does discomfort play in building confidence?
Those people whose last names were... I couldn't even begin to pronounce or spell some of these last names. They were more likely to be overlooked in the promotion department, just as they're being overlooked here. We don't do it on purpose, but when we're processing names and data, our brains prefer information that's easier to comprehend.
With fluent names, there's less risk of embarrassing ourselves or insulting someone because we mispronounce it. If your name is unusual or difficult to pronounce, you can actually put yourself at an advantage by choosing a nickname. Participants in the study who had a nickname listed on their resume or contact information actually stood out more and were easier to recognize.
And that is something you should know. Who of us couldn't use a little more confidence? Some of us wish we had a lot more confidence, at least in certain situations. So where does confidence come from? How do you get it if you don't have it?
Chapter 4: What is the psychological basis of procrastination?
And how do you make sure you don't lose it? Well, here to discuss this is Lydia Finette.
Chapter 5: How does pressure affect performance in procrastinators?
Lydia is an ambassador for Christie's, you know, the auction people. She herself is an auctioneer, having helped raise over a billion dollars for nonprofits. And she is author of a book called Claim Your Confidence. And she's here to talk about how confidence works and how to get more of it. Hi, Lydia.
Chapter 6: What emotional factors contribute to procrastination?
Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Thank you so much, Mike. I'm delighted to be here.
So where does confidence come from? Are you born with it and then some people lose it or must you acquire it through life experience or how do you become confident?
I believe we're all born with confidence and it's up to us over the course of our life to claim that confidence by putting ourselves outside of the box that we are supposed to be in over the course of our life. So I don't think that playing by anyone else's rules or necessarily being comfortable all the time is what makes you confident. I think it,
oftentimes happens from pushing yourself into the places that make you a little uncomfortable, that you learn how much you're capable of. And it allows you to grow and really grow into the confidence that I believe we all have within us.
Do you know, I don't know if you've done the research or know the research, but how people feel generally about their confidence? Do they wish they had more? Do they think they're fine? Just what's the general sense?
I was on book tour for my first book and the word confidence was something that I heard almost every time I had a question and answer session. So anytime I would get up and say, you know, at the end of a speech, does anyone have any questions? One of the first questions I would get was always, how are you so confident? Or, Where did you become so confident?
Or most often, do you have imposter syndrome? And if so, how did you get rid of it? Or how can I get rid of it? So to answer your question, I think most people don't have it. Or if they did have it when COVID came along, I think a lot of people lost it.
So this is the time that we all have the opportunity to reclaim it and to claim what we might have had once in our lives that we didn't feel like we had anymore.
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Chapter 7: How can you effectively combat procrastination?
And what I learned every single time was that when something happened on stage that went terribly wrong, it was It prepared me for the next time that it happened again, because over the course of a two-decade career where you're on stage over 60, 70, 80 nights a year, things do go wrong pretty much every single time. So we talk a lot about microphones, right?
That's an important part of your interview process. You want to make sure that it's great. I've been on stage nine times over the course of my career where people have either forgotten to get a microphone or the microphone just didn't work. And so I've had to learn what to do when I get on stage and that happens. And now if there's no microphone, no problem.
I know exactly what to do because it's happened to me so many times. But the first time it happened to me, I was not competent and it was a disaster. I cried for the entire evening afterwards. After I left, I sort of crawled out of there with nothing but shame. But the bottom line is I didn't die. I survived and I went back and did it again. And again and again.
And that's where that competency piece, as you said, is such a huge part of confidence because you've learned how to do something. You've spent the time learning how to do it. And it gives you the confidence to try more and to take more on.
Our topic on the table today is confidence. And I'm speaking with Lydia Finette. She's author of a book called Claim Your Confidence. So Lydia, you talk about how action leads to action. And I've always found that one of the ways to never get anywhere is to never do anything and to just sit and think about it.
And there is something very powerful about doing almost anything in the direction of what you're trying to do because it starts the momentum. It makes you feel like you're doing something which makes you do more things, it seems to me.
Yes, I completely agree with that on every level. And I think that anytime you have a business, for people out there who own their own business, I give this amazing example in my book of a friend of mine during COVID who was an artist and was so paralyzed with fear about money during COVID as many people were. She was thinking to herself, my art is not in these galleries anymore.
What am I going to do? She was still creating art by the hand. Picture after picture after picture, I think it was her outlet during COVID. But what she'd lost was that confidence in being able to sell it. And from the outside looking in, nothing had changed for her. In fact, people were at home for the first time in their lives where they were just staring at walls.
So art was something everybody wanted. It was just a question of her reminding people that she was out there. And we had a long conversation one day, and I used that same phrase, action leads to action. And I was like, Kate, you have to go out there and get those clients. It's not their responsibility to come to you. You have to remind them what you're doing.
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Chapter 8: What strategies can help you manage procrastination better?
It's going to be part of it. It happens to all of us. But be confident that that does not define you. That's just part of your journey. So embrace it. And remember, nine no's, one yes. And then if two people say yes out of 10, you're incredibly excited.
Talk about the imposter syndrome, because I think that's a big problem for a lot of people. I think more people than care to admit it.
Absolutely. And going back to what I said, it's something that I hear at almost every Q&A. It doesn't matter, man, woman, age, it has no boundaries, really. So imposter syndrome is that feeling you get when you walk into a room and you think you shouldn't be there because everyone around you is much smarter or better or has a better opinion than you do. And
Sometimes you might be right, but you're not helping yourself by thinking that about yourself. So what I say, because I'm an auctioneer, I use acronyms that have gavel related moments. So I say to slam it down. And that can be summed up in four letters, S-L-A-M, slam. So the first slam. Stop counting yourself out before you've even had the chance to get in the room.
I'm sure you've heard this, Mike. I've heard this from so many accomplished friends over the course of my life. When someone puts them up for something, an award or a promotion, they're the first one to back out of it. No, no, no, I could never do that. I don't even really know how. No, I...
there's a reason someone's put your name forward step into that role you will learn it step into that moment you will take it don't be the person who counts yourself out before you even have a chance to get in the room The L is for listen. Listen to what someone is saying, not what you think they're saying.
So the next time you find yourself going into a negative spiral because someone has said something that you perceive as negative, instead of putting a tail on the end of it that's negative, turn it into a positive spin. So... In my own experience, I had three children in four years. So I was on maternity leaves three out of four years.
And as you can imagine, it becomes a very uncomfortable thing because you just assume that everyone around you is thinking that you're not good at your job anymore. You're not doing it. Plus, you have this incredible child, children at home where you're trying to balance everything. And it's a lot of work, especially those very early years.
And I remember going back to work and someone said to me as I was walking through the office, hey, it's so good to see you back here again. And I remember thinking, oh my God, they must be thinking that they haven't seen me and that's why they said that. And then I just went into this negative spiral about how I'd had three children so quick.
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