The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Eliminate Self-Doubt Forever & Build Unshakeable Confidence
11 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so thrilled about the conversation today because you're going to learn, based on research, a four-part framework to help you build unshakable self-confidence. And you're going to learn it from a globally renowned expert who has flown halfway around the world
to be here in our Boston studios for one reason, to be here for you. And she is going to tell you that based on the research, you want to know how you build unshakable confidence? Well, first, you do that by learning how to identify exactly where self-doubt is holding you back. And here's the thing about self-doubt. It is sneaky.
That's why you need this four-part framework because self-doubt shows up as lots of different things.
Chapter 2: What is the main framework for building unshakeable confidence?
Overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, procrastination, comparison, blame, resentment, replaying conversations, staying awake at night, holding yourself back from things that you want to be doing, saying sorry when you didn't do anything wrong. And even more interesting is depending upon exactly what kind of self-doubt you're dealing with and how it's showing up, you need a different tool.
And that's why you're going to love the conversation today. You're getting a four-part framework that will help you see self-doubt in an entirely new way and give you the tools to finally break it apart and build unshakable self-confidence in its place. I am so excited for you to be a part of this extraordinary conversation. Because aren't you tired of blocking your own momentum?
Aren't you ready to start building trust in yourself? I know you are. That's exactly why you're here and you're in the right place. Because today you're going to get the research, the science, and the tools and support to know exactly how to start showing up like the person you want to be. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
I am so thrilled for the conversation and the fact that you're here. It's just an honor to be together and to spend this time with you. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, I just want to personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.
Today's guest is one of the most sought after experts in the world on confidence, self-doubt, and high performance. Today, you and I are going to learn all about this four-part framework that helps you build unshakable self-confidence with Dr. Sadeh Zarai.
Dr. Sadeh is a behavioral researcher and best-selling author with a PhD in organizational behavior from Monash University in Australia, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. She has built programs and coached leaders inside some of the biggest brands and companies in the world.
And more than 5 million people follow her online because her research-backed frameworks and tools help you succeed at work, build self-confidence, and finally teach you how to stop allowing self-doubt from hijacking the results, the happiness, and the life that you are capable of building. Please help me welcome Dr. Sade Zarai to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
Thank you so much for having me.
I am so excited you're here. Thank you for traveling halfway around the world to be here today. And here's where I want to start. Your research around self-doubt, building confidence, feeling worthy. It is so important. We're going to dig into it. And here's where I'd like to start.
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Chapter 3: How does self-doubt manifest in our lives?
So it's so incredibly important.
And that's why I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Well, I'm excited for you to teach us some of the frameworks in your bestselling book, Big Trust. And in your work, you work with CEOs of Fortune 500, 150 CEOs in terms of who you are coaching, who you are advising.
But the journey to doing all this research began with you having a crisis in your own confidence and feeling like you weren't enough. So let's just start there. How did you begin this?
So my journey with self-doubt is really the driver of why I do what I do, because I have felt the pain over the entire course of my life. I mean, I'm still shedding the doubts that I developed early on. And I think if I really reflect on where it started, it started really early for me. Okay. So I would have been about three, four or five years old.
And I am part of this beautifully supportive family. And every Friday night, we would have dinner at my grandparents' place. And then after dinner, there was this family tradition where the little kids would dance for everybody. So I would hear, which is, is going to dance for us. And, you know, as a young kid, I loved the attention and they put on the music and it made everyone so happy.
What then happened, though, is over the years, as this became just this regular thing that we did every Friday, I started to feel less comfortable doing that, being the center of attention, as I became a little bit more self-conscious about who I was in my body. And, you know, I was maybe 8, 9, maybe 10.
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Chapter 4: What are the four signs of feeling powerless?
But I saw how happy everyone was when I was in this position of performing for them. And I didn't want to let them down. So I didn't know how to say no. And it was around that age that I internalized this belief that I am only of value. I am only worthy when I'm making other people happy, even if I'm not happy.
So for me, that was that early life experience that instilled this sense of lack of enough. And then that just kept becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy when I was at university, when I started working in the legal industry, when I moved into banking and finance. It followed me into every meeting, every conversation, every interaction. I never felt like I was good enough to be there.
But I've also discovered over the last five or so years, as I've really deep dived into this, as I was doing PhD research into this, Almost every single person experiences self-doubt. It is not uncommon at all. And yet those who are able to truly succeed, it's not that they eliminate the doubt, it's that they've found a way to strengthen who they are to move through it.
It brings me to a question, Dr. Shade, what drives self-doubt?
Okay, so I have been fascinated by this question for over a decade. Even before I did my PhD research, I was seeing self-doubt in action in the workplace at every single level. Because I genuinely believed once you become a leader, once you achieve a certain thing, you don't have self-doubt.
But I actually found that sometimes those at the more senior levels, sometimes those who have achieved a lot, They have even more self-doubt because they feel like there's even more opportunity for them to fall, more reputational damage if something doesn't go well. So I thought, what is actually driving this? And that's when I started looking into the research.
What do the most esteemed minds have to say about this? And I want to share with you one particular study, which I have never forgotten from the moment that I came across it. It's from the late 70s, early 80s. So a psychology professor by the name of Robert Kleck at Dartmouth He conducted this fascinating experiment, which really reveals how self-doubt works and where it comes from.
He brought people together, and with one group, he drew a scar on their face, on the right side of their face between their ear and their mouth. This really noticeable, visible disfigurement. He let them see themselves in a mirror, so they can go, okay, I have this scar on my face. And then he sent everyone out into conversations with strangers.
Now, after the conversations, he then asked everybody, how did you feel the conversation went? The group without the scar felt like it was a fine conversation. The group with the scar reported feeling judged. They felt like it was tense. Their conversation partner was cold. And they felt like they were treated differently because of that scar.
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Chapter 5: How can we worry less using technology?
Okay. Now, I want to narrate this because the majority of you listen, and I don't want you to miss a thing. So Dr. Sade is sitting here at the table for the podcast. She has two... to the brim, bright neon yellow, glasses full of yellow water sitting on a tray. And in one hand, you have a ping pong ball? I have a ping pong ball. And on the other hand, she has a bright yellow golf ball. Okay.
Now, if I were to take the ping pong ball. And what does the ping pong ball represent? The ping pong ball represents self-doubt. In fact, both balls represent self-doubt. Oh, they do. And what's going to happen in the cups is it's going to help us understand different approaches to self-doubt.
Okay. All right, great. So self-doubt might be, let's just take one we can all relate to. We've all had those mornings where you look in the mirror and you just go, ugh. And because you've shared the scar example, let's just go with this perception that how we look has something to do with our value to the world.
And so the form of self-doubt that the ping pong ball or the golf ball might represent is just this belief that because you look ugly today or your acne's on fire or maybe what's happening for me, I constantly notice the jowls that seem to be forming and I don't like them. And I feel a little bit of judgment and weight. And I doubt myself, am I looking older?
Are people going to judge me for that? And so is that what these represent? Yes. Okay, so we got a ping pong ball and a golf ball.
So if I were to take the ping pong ball and place it on one of the glasses of water, what would happen to it?
Uh, I think it would float because a ping pong ball is like, you know, kind of- Light? Yeah, light. Airy. Airy. So if we try that, what's that? Oh, it's just floating there. So this is this thing that maybe you feel a little doubt about and it's just kind of floating on top. What happened to the water? The water stayed the same. What does the water represent?
The water represents how we see ourselves, our self-image. Oh. And so when we're talking about how doubt should be, because the goal, again, is not to eliminate the self-critical thoughts. That's too high a standard we're setting for ourselves.
We can't.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of the scar experiment in understanding self-doubt?
It's there. You haven't said you can't have the thought, but it's not sinking into your soul. and dragging you down like an emotional weighted vest that then impacts every aspect of your day.
The other thing that I want to point out is that on the left, you know, the heaviness of the self-judgment, I got some acne, I'm short, my hair sucks today, whatever it may be, I got fired from that job, therefore I am not worthy of a job. You can see how it's just sitting there at the bottom of the glass. And then even more sad, Dr. Sade, is the spilled yellow water all over the place.
Because what you get the sense of is as self-doubt weighs you down, you lose a bit of yourself to make room for carrying that doubt with you day in and day out.
And then what's even more worrying is even if you go through the process of working on yourself.
Okay, now hold on. She's taking a spoon and she is now digging in and spilling more water out and she is getting the golf ball out of there, right? She's getting it out of there, okay? So maybe our skin has cleared up. Maybe we have a better hairstyle. Maybe we have moved on from the job or the breakup and now we are out there interviewing again. So we took care of the thing, right?
Or so we thought. Or so we thought.
But has that water miraculously refilled itself to the brim? No. No. There's a piece missing. And so what self-doubt does is it strips you of who you truly are because you're internalizing it. You lose a part of yourself. And even if you do the work, you enter what's called the void. So now, okay, the golf ball is out. Maybe you are seeing that ping pong ball floating above.
Yep, you're detaching from it. But then you enter that weird middle stage where you actually don't know who you are without the doubt. Because for so long, it has driven your behaviors and your thinking and your actions and the way that you show up in the world. You've been acting to prove yourself to others or to seek their validation. And suddenly...
you don't know what your true instincts are and who you are in the world. And so there's that really interesting little space where you need to discover who that is again. But it starts with changing how we see ourselves. So when we talk about rewire self-doubt, it's actually not necessarily about the doubt at all.
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Chapter 7: How do our first jobs influence our self-perception?
You know what I mean? And I'm just going to stay with the physical because every one of us has the example of And when we start to get into psychological, I don't like myself because of X, Y, Z that has happened or these things that I did, it can get more complicated.
And I want all of us to just stay right here and be listening for ourselves and listening for the people in your life who struggle with a lot of self-doubt. So if you do look in the mirror and you're like, yeah, and I don't want to accept that.
So there are two things that I'd recommend you do. Okay. The first, well, actually, there's three. The first one is that you need to acknowledge that until you accept yourself, nothing will change. If you are someone who is saying, I don't believe it. Yes.
In that case, what you want to do is use other strategies and tools that allow you to strengthen the self-acceptance in other ways that naturally will help you recognize that you are valuable enough. in spite of not believing that initially. Okay, so the very, very first tool is very simple. We call it the careless list.
What you're going to do is grab a sheet of paper, divide it into two columns. On the left, I want you to write down all the things you want to care less about. I want to care less about my physical appearance. I want to care less about what people in the street think of me when I walk by. I want to care less about what my family keeps saying about my acne or my weight or how I look.
Actually acknowledge it. Give it a physical outlet. A lot of people don't actually want to acknowledge their fears because they're afraid that they'll make them real. But I'm a proponent and a lot of evidence suggests that if you can just make them real, it gives you something to work with. You're not hiding from it.
So you write down everything you actually want to care less about, put it in the left, and then just reflect on how you feel when you look at that. It's simple. So that's our care less list. We've identified all the things that we want to care less about. The next step is, okay, what do I want to care more about? What do I actually want to shift my attention to?
Because attention is such a superpower. If we're not aware of it, we're going to be stuck in patterns that keep us stuck. But if we can become more aware of it, be a bit more curious about how we're thinking, this is called metacognition. It's the ability to think about your thoughts.
And it is a fundamental superpower because the moment you start thinking about your thoughts, you're no longer in your thoughts. So consciously write down, what do I want to care more about? Well, I want to care more about... being a value in my life. I want to care more about having the kind of courage that allows me to take the step, even if I've got the acne or I look a certain way.
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Chapter 8: What are the four attributes of the framework to combat self-doubt?
And then step three is, I will get back to you by X time, right? Thanks for thinking of me. Let me check. I'll get back to you. And then you reflect on whether you actually want to do this thing. Now, then the next part comes, how do you actually say no if you want to decline?
When we just think about the saying no, it can feel very selfish if you are a people pleaser, if you struggle with approval and acceptance. So what you want to be thinking about is, okay, how do I make this not a no, but a yes to myself? Oh. If I can make this a yes to myself, I don't have to say to the other person I'm saying yes to myself, but it makes the process so much easier.
So give me an example. So an example would be, okay, I don't want to spend the whole weekend saying, helping someone move in because I'm going to say yes to the fact that I need recovery this weekend. Yes. So then when you go and give the decline, it's not just a no because I'm selfish. It's actually, again, thank you for thinking of me this weekend.
I'm focusing on rest and recovery, but let me know how you go.
I'd love to see it when you're all set up. Right. Or this weekend I had plans to go to the museum or this weekend I already had something else going on and can't help you out. So simple. Yes. So simple.
So that's the second tool. I want to share just two more. Really quick ones. The third one is a really counterintuitive one. If you want to accept yourself more, go and get a hobby. Why? Because people who struggle with self-acceptance tend to identify with their jobs. So if you're watching or listening right now and you're resonating with this, you probably identify with the work that you do.
Which means if things are going really well at work, you feel fantastic. If things are not going well, you're going to feel terrible because you're internalizing it. Does that resonate?
I feel called out. I'm just going to say it right there. Yes, given that I was crying yesterday morning. And objectively, things are going amazing.
When you do something outside of your day job, outside of your business, outside of whatever title you've attached to yourself, it reminds you that you are so much more than what you're doing in that business, at work. Now, we also need to acknowledge sometimes this is to do with your role as a parent. You might identify so closely with being a parent if you are a full-time carer.
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