June 21, 2026
EP 057 Stop Performing Confidence | Authentic Success Mindset That Works
Stop performing confidence and start building the authentic success mindset that makes you genuinely known. In this episode, Tracy reveals why "faking it till you make it" backfires for entrepreneurs and busy parents, and how real success mindset habits are built through consistency, not performance. Discover the neuroscience of genuine credibility and the specific habits that align your inner reality with your outer reputation. https://YourSuccessDNA.com Tracy argues that social anxiety isn’t a personality flaw but a miscalibrated threat-detection system driven by the amygdala, and that “just be confident” or affirmations don’t work. It explains Bandura’s self-efficacy and how avoidance reinforces anxiety through relief, creating a loop. The script breaks change into key parts: interrupting the anticipatory spike using attention deployment (anchoring to specific present-moment sensory details), using concrete behavioral targets during interactions (e.g., ask three people questions) to create mastery experiences and external focus, and expecting the “extinction burst” where anxiety spikes before fading—treating it as evidence of progress using acceptance and commitment ideas. Finally, it reframes the deeper issue as fear of being truly known, emphasizing that real confidence comes from risking authentic visibility and possible rejection rather than performing for approval.
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Ladies and gentlemen, social
anxiety is not a personality flaw.
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It is a calibrated threat detection
system and, and telling yourself to
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just be confident, it just won't work.
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True confidence comes from specific
actionable behavioral shifts, not
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just reciting positive affirmations
that you have stuck to your mirror or
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stuck to your dashboard of your car.
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Picture this.
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You're, you're sitting
in a conference room.
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Your boss has just asked for your input.
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Twenty people, their gaze all shifted
over to you, and they're all waiting.
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Your throat closes, your hands start
to sweat, and in that frozen moment,
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you realize something that terrifies
you more than the silence itself.
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Everyone can see it happening.
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This is the gap, not between
you and success, but between the
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person you are in private and the
person you need to be in public.
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And here's what no one tells you.
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The gap is not a personality flaw.
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It's a signal system
that's just miscalibrated.
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Most people think social anxiety,
sometimes called social phobia in
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clinical settings, is something that
you're born with, that some brains are
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just wired for shyness, that you're
either a natural extrovert or you're not.
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But neuroscience has actually revealed
something darker and even more useful.
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Your social anxiety isn't about being
broken It's about your brain protecting
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you from a threat it thinks is real, a
threat that, in your case, probably isn't.
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Specifically, your amygdala, uh, that's
your brain's threat detection center,
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has mislabeled social situations as
dangerous environments requiring a
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defensive response, putting your dukes up.
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And once that label is set,
it just runs automatically.
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Let's rewind for a minute.
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Let's go back 40 years ago, a psychologist
named Albert Bandura discovered
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something called self-efficacy.
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It's not confidence exactly.
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It's something more precise.
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It's your belief in your
ability to execute specific
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behaviors in specific situations.
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Bandura identified that one of the most
powerful ways to build self-efficacy is
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through mastery experiences, that small,
repeated wins that prove to your brain
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that you can survive that situation.
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You might be confident at your
kitchen table, but you're a completely
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different person in front of strangers.
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That's not inconsistency.
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That's context-dependent
threat assessment.
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Your brain has labeled social situations
as high-risk environments, and it's
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just running a protection protocol.
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Sounds safe, right?
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Okay.
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But here's where we want to get practical.
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When you avoid a social situation
because of anxiety, something
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happens in your brain that makes
it feel like a win in that moment.
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Your anxiety drops.
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The relief floods into your body.
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But what your nervous system actually
learns is the situation was dangerous,
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and I survived by escaping it.
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So the next time, the threat feels
even more real, the anxiety gets
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stronger, and the avoidance gets easier.
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You're basically caught in a loop, and
the loop has an architecture, and once
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you understand that architecture, you
can begin to dismantle it piece by piece.
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The first piece is what we're g- what
I'm gonna call the anticipatory spike.
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This is the anxiety you feel before
the social interaction even begins.
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Not during, before.
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It's the Sunday night dread before
the Monday morning meetings.
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It's the thirty minutes before
you have to call someone.
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It's the morning of anxiety before a date.
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That spike is usually seventy to eighty
percent of your total suffering, and
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here's what most people do not know.
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It's mostly entirely mental projection.
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Yeah.
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It's your brain running a simulation.
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It's playing out worst-case scenarios
with the detail of a Hollywood thriller.
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You fumble your words.
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People judge you.
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You become a social pariah.
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Those aren't predictions,
those are rehearsals.
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Cognitive behavioral therapists
call these cognitive distortions.
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They're mental projections that your
brain treats as a fact even when the
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evidence does not support those facts.
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And every time you rehearse them,
you're just strengthening the neural
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pathways that make them feel inevitable.
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The first practical step is to interrupt
the rehearsal, not by fighting it.
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No, no, okay?
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That's exhausting, and really, it, it
doesn't work, but by redirecting it.
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This is called attention deployment.
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Uh, when you notice the anticipatory
spike beginning, that Sunday night
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dread feeling, that pre-call dread
feeling, don't try to suppress it.
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No.
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Instead, do this.
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Name three specific things that you
can see right now, and I'm not talking
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about generally, like the room.
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No, name them specifically, the coffee
cup, the texture of your keyboard,
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the way the light hits the wall.
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Make it sensory, and make it specific.
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Why does this work, you may ask?
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Well, I'm glad you asked.
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Because anxiety lives in the future.
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Your nervous system is trying
to protect you for something
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that hasn't even happened yet.
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So when you anchor your attention
back into the present moment to things
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you can actually see, smell, hear,
or touch, you're essentially telling
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your brain, "That threat isn't here.
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I'm safe right now." You're
not denying the anxiety.
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You're just refusing to fuel it
with more mental rehearsal, okay?
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Do this every single time
the anticipatory spike hits.
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After about two weeks, something
is gonna start to shift.
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The spike will get quieter.
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It won't go away.
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It's not gone, but it's quieter.
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That's not accidental.
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That's your brain learning
that the simulation, it
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wasn't quite accurate, okay?
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And we're gonna adjust accordingly.
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The second piece is the interaction
itself, and here's where most advice
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that you get is gonna fail you.
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People say, "Just be yourself.
Everyone's too worried about
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themselves to judge you."
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And you know, they're technically true,
and it's completely useless when your
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system is in fight or flight mode,
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okay?
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What actually is gonna work
for you is giving your brain a
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concrete job, not be confident.
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That's far too vague.
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The anxiety will interpret vagueness as
unpredictability, which feels dangerous,
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like I just told you a little bit ago.
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Instead, give yourself a
specific behavioral target.
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Before you walk into the room, I want you
to decide, "I'm going to ask three people
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a question about themselves." That's it.
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That's what you say to yourself.
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Not, "Make a great impression." Not,
"I'm gonna be charis- charismatic." No.
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"I'm gonna ask three people
a question about themselves."
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Three questions.
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Why is this specificity so powerful?
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Because it shifts your focus from
how to be perceived to what am
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I doing, to what you're doing.
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This is called external focus of
attention, and research shows it reduces
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anxiety and actually improves performance.
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When you're focused on executing a
concrete task, you're not running
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that mirror check loop in your head,
that constant internal monitoring
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of how you appear to others, which
is where social anxiety resides.
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You, you feel me?
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Okay.
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So you walk in The first person you see,
"Hey, what brought you here tonight?"
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And then you listen to the answer, and
then you ask one follow-up question
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based on what it is they said, which
means you have to listen to them, right?
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Okay.
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Then you move on to the
next person, same process.
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By the time you have done this three
times, something inside you has happened.
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You have had three successful
interactions, small ones, but real ones.
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Your brain has updated
its threat assessment.
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This is exactly what exposure
therapy does systematically.
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It creates repeated graduated contact
with the feared situation until
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your amygdala revises its threat
assessment, its threat rating, its
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defcon rating begins to go down.
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You're just doing it in real
time, and this is the beginning
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of rebuilding self-efficacy.
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But here's where it gets a little harder
because there's this third piece that no
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one out there seems to want to talk about.
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You know me, I'm willing
to talk about all of it.
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There was the anticipatory spike.
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There was the concrete behavioral target.
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These work, but they work at the
edge of your comfort zone, right?
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Right where the discomfort starts
to live, and discomfort feels like
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danger to an anxious nervous system.
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So there's a moment, usually somewhere in
the middle of the interaction, where your
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anxiety actually increases, not decreases.
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You're flushed.
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Your voice maybe sounds
a little, a little shaky.
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Your mind may even go a little foggy.
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This is what the psychologists
call the extinction burst, and
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it's exactly what it sounds like.
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Right before a learned fear response
dies, it gets super intense.
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It's like your brain is saying,
"Wait, this threat, it used to work.
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Let me turn up the volume and see if that
helps." Most people are gonna interpret
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that sign is that they're doing it
wrong, that the strategy isn't working.
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So what do they do?
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They retreat.
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They retreat back to avoidance and
back into the old comfortable loop.
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The antidote is really, think
about it, counterintuitive.
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You have to expect the extinction
burst to come, and then you have
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to treat it as evidence that
what you're doing is working.
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That it's right.
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Right?
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So before you go into a challenging social
situation, you want to prime yourself.
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Okay, you're gonna say something like, "My
anxiety is probably gonna peak somewhere
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in the middle of this party, this
situation, this concert," whatever it is.
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That's normal.
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That's actually a good sign.
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It means I'm breaking the loop.
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Acknowledge it.
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Then when it happens, and it will
happen, you're not blindsided.
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You're not interpreting it as failure.
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You're recognizing it as what
it is, the price of change.
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And here's what separates people
who build genuine social confidence
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from people who just white-knuckle
their way through social situations.
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They actually lean into the
discomfort moment instead of
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white-knuckling their way through it.
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This is called acceptance and
commitment, a framework designed by
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psychologist Steven Hayes, who argued
that psychological flexibility,
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not the elimination of discomfort,
psychological flexibility is the
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real measure of mental health.
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You're not trying to
make the anxiety go away.
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You're not trying to hide it.
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You're not performing confidence
that you don't really feel.
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You're literally saying, "The feeling is
here. It's uncomfortable, but I'm gonna
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act like a confident person anyway."
The feeling doesn't have to leave.
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You don't have to
believe you're confident.
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You just have to act like
it despite the feeling.
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I, I know, I know it sounds fake.
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It feels fake when you first
start, but here's the magical part.
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That doesn't matter because your brain
doesn't learn from what you believe.
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It learns from what you
actually do and do repeatedly.
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Behaviorists call this
behavior to belief pathway.
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You act confident first, the confidence
follows, not the other way around.
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You don't wait for the confidence so
that you can start to act confident.
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And there's a fourth piece that I've been
building towards, and it requires honesty.
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Some of your social anxiety isn't all
about the social interaction at all.
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Nope, I'm sorry to tell you this.
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Some of it is about a deeper
fear that maybe you haven't
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named, a fear of judgment.
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Yeah, that could be it, but specifically
a fear that if people really knew
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you That they wouldn't like you.
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A fear that there's something
fundamentally unacceptable
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about who you are.
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A fear that confident means exposure,
and exposure means rejection.
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And this is the false floor that I have
been walking you towards this whole
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episode, because the real social anxiety
cure isn't about eliminating anxiety.
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It's about becoming a perfect
conversationalist and learning
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a few psychologic- psychological
tricks along the way.
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It's about deciding that being known
is worth the risk of being rejected.
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Some people will like you.
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Uh, that's just it.
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That's just playing the
numbers, and some people won't.
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00:11:31,281 --> 00:11:33,185
Sorry, you can't⦠Not
everyone's gonna like you.
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00:11:33,289 --> 00:11:36,359
That's all there is to it, and the
people worth knowing are the ones
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00:11:36,359 --> 00:11:40,968
who actually like you, that like you,
not the performed version of you.
234
00:11:41,202 --> 00:11:44,576
And this is where, uh, I dunno, this is
where the work gets a bit existential.
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00:11:44,742 --> 00:11:48,202
Because once you accept that,
your whole relationship to
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00:11:48,202 --> 00:11:50,255
social situations can change.
237
00:11:50,359 --> 00:11:52,394
You're not performing
for approval anymore.
238
00:11:52,394 --> 00:11:54,542
You're not the dancing
monkey up on the stage.
239
00:11:54,620 --> 00:11:57,472
You're not trying to manage
everyone's perception of you.
240
00:11:57,742 --> 00:12:00,516
You're showing up as yourself,
and you're letting the chips fall.
241
00:12:00,716 --> 00:12:01,489
But here's the trap.
242
00:12:01,655 --> 00:12:04,194
Here's what makes this
morally complicated.
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00:12:04,342 --> 00:12:07,507
Most people who build self-confidence
this way don't realize that they're
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00:12:07,507 --> 00:12:08,776
becoming something different.
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00:12:08,820 --> 00:12:10,976
They're becoming selectively vulnerable.
246
00:12:11,229 --> 00:12:15,263
They share just enough to seem authentic,
but not enough to risk rejection.
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00:12:15,420 --> 00:12:19,081
They've learned the performance
of authenticity, and it works.
248
00:12:19,159 --> 00:12:23,089
It gets the job, the relationship, and
it gets the social status in most cases.
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00:12:23,220 --> 00:12:25,733
But they're still not really known yet.
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00:12:25,785 --> 00:12:28,089
They've just gotten better at the game.
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00:12:28,316 --> 00:12:31,533
The real cure requires
actually being known.
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00:12:31,889 --> 00:12:35,576
It requires saying something
true in a room where you might
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00:12:35,576 --> 00:12:37,263
be judged for that truth.
254
00:12:37,307 --> 00:12:39,098
It requires asking for help.
255
00:12:39,255 --> 00:12:43,185
It requires admitting you don't
know something when you don't.
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00:12:43,220 --> 00:12:47,516
It requires being wrong in front of
people and admitting that you were wrong.
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00:12:47,698 --> 00:12:50,733
It requires being visible, truly visible.
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00:12:50,889 --> 00:12:54,637
Most people never take that step
because that is infinitely scarier
259
00:12:54,646 --> 00:12:56,133
than small talk techniques.
260
00:12:56,142 --> 00:12:59,707
Small talk technique's a whole lot
easier, but here's where we are, right?
261
00:12:59,942 --> 00:13:00,776
Here's where you are.
262
00:13:00,916 --> 00:13:02,759
You can rebuild your self-efficacy.
263
00:13:02,916 --> 00:13:04,968
You can interrupt anticipatory spikes.
264
00:13:05,142 --> 00:13:07,463
You can lean into extinction bursts.
265
00:13:07,602 --> 00:13:11,142
You can ask questions, and you
can execute behavioral targets.
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00:13:11,316 --> 00:13:14,794
You can become a functionally
socially adept person, and
267
00:13:14,794 --> 00:13:16,159
you still might feel lonely.
268
00:13:16,316 --> 00:13:17,750
Or you can go further.
269
00:13:17,889 --> 00:13:20,829
You can use confidence not as a
tool to win social approvalâ¦
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00:13:21,364 --> 00:13:26,269
But as a shield that lets you be
authentically yourself in social spaces.
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00:13:26,295 --> 00:13:29,451
Not performed authenticity,
real authenticity.
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00:13:29,451 --> 00:13:32,695
Real pull the mask down and set
it up on the shelf authenticity.
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00:13:32,729 --> 00:13:35,556
The kind that terrifies you
because rejection actually
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00:13:35,556 --> 00:13:37,564
means something when it happens.
275
00:13:37,721 --> 00:13:40,790
Yeah, when you get rejected,
it's because they saw you and
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00:13:40,790 --> 00:13:41,964
they just didn't like you.
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00:13:42,164 --> 00:13:42,521
Fine.
278
00:13:42,660 --> 00:13:43,173
That's okay.
279
00:13:43,173 --> 00:13:44,442
Let them go about their worlds.
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00:13:44,642 --> 00:13:47,599
How many other people
saw you and did like you?
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00:13:47,921 --> 00:13:52,929
The practical steps work, the behavioral
architecture works, but the real cure is
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00:13:52,929 --> 00:13:58,156
deciding what you want to be known for
and then risking that in front of others.
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00:13:58,182 --> 00:13:59,825
Everything else is just rehearsal.
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00:14:00,069 --> 00:14:01,956
Think successfully and take action.
00:00:00,020 --> 00:00:03,646
Ladies and gentlemen, social
anxiety is not a personality flaw.
2
00:00:03,899 --> 00:00:08,125
It is a calibrated threat detection
system and, and telling yourself to
3
00:00:08,151 --> 00:00:10,438
just be confident, it just won't work.
4
00:00:10,464 --> 00:00:14,968
True confidence comes from specific
actionable behavioral shifts, not
5
00:00:14,968 --> 00:00:18,333
just reciting positive affirmations
that you have stuck to your mirror or
6
00:00:18,333 --> 00:00:19,768
stuck to your dashboard of your car.
7
00:00:19,916 --> 00:00:20,499
Picture this.
8
00:00:20,568 --> 00:00:21,986
You're, you're sitting
in a conference room.
9
00:00:22,090 --> 00:00:24,177
Your boss has just asked for your input.
10
00:00:24,507 --> 00:00:28,333
Twenty people, their gaze all shifted
over to you, and they're all waiting.
11
00:00:28,559 --> 00:00:32,525
Your throat closes, your hands start
to sweat, and in that frozen moment,
12
00:00:32,690 --> 00:00:35,855
you realize something that terrifies
you more than the silence itself.
13
00:00:36,020 --> 00:00:37,281
Everyone can see it happening.
14
00:00:37,481 --> 00:00:40,559
This is the gap, not between
you and success, but between the
15
00:00:40,559 --> 00:00:44,229
person you are in private and the
person you need to be in public.
16
00:00:44,377 --> 00:00:46,020
And here's what no one tells you.
17
00:00:46,090 --> 00:00:47,864
The gap is not a personality flaw.
18
00:00:48,038 --> 00:00:51,003
It's a signal system
that's just miscalibrated.
19
00:01:24,112 --> 00:01:27,807
Most people think social anxiety,
sometimes called social phobia in
20
00:01:27,807 --> 00:01:31,355
clinical settings, is something that
you're born with, that some brains are
21
00:01:31,364 --> 00:01:36,016
just wired for shyness, that you're
either a natural extrovert or you're not.
22
00:01:36,312 --> 00:01:40,068
But neuroscience has actually revealed
something darker and even more useful.
23
00:01:40,173 --> 00:01:44,465
Your social anxiety isn't about being
broken It's about your brain protecting
24
00:01:44,465 --> 00:01:49,421
you from a threat it thinks is real, a
threat that, in your case, probably isn't.
25
00:01:49,508 --> 00:01:53,004
Specifically, your amygdala, uh, that's
your brain's threat detection center,
26
00:01:53,221 --> 00:01:57,647
has mislabeled social situations as
dangerous environments requiring a
27
00:01:57,647 --> 00:01:59,517
defensive response, putting your dukes up.
28
00:01:59,726 --> 00:02:02,934
And once that label is set,
it just runs automatically.
29
00:02:03,091 --> 00:02:04,143
Let's rewind for a minute.
30
00:02:04,369 --> 00:02:08,665
Let's go back 40 years ago, a psychologist
named Albert Bandura discovered
31
00:02:08,665 --> 00:02:10,517
something called self-efficacy.
32
00:02:10,630 --> 00:02:12,456
It's not confidence exactly.
33
00:02:12,534 --> 00:02:14,030
It's something more precise.
34
00:02:14,117 --> 00:02:16,847
It's your belief in your
ability to execute specific
35
00:02:16,847 --> 00:02:18,908
behaviors in specific situations.
36
00:02:18,917 --> 00:02:23,778
Bandura identified that one of the most
powerful ways to build self-efficacy is
37
00:02:23,778 --> 00:02:28,926
through mastery experiences, that small,
repeated wins that prove to your brain
38
00:02:29,143 --> 00:02:31,326
that you can survive that situation.
39
00:02:31,491 --> 00:02:34,508
You might be confident at your
kitchen table, but you're a completely
40
00:02:34,517 --> 00:02:36,308
different person in front of strangers.
41
00:02:36,352 --> 00:02:37,917
That's not inconsistency.
42
00:02:38,073 --> 00:02:40,987
That's context-dependent
threat assessment.
43
00:02:41,108 --> 00:02:45,169
Your brain has labeled social situations
as high-risk environments, and it's
44
00:02:45,169 --> 00:02:46,726
just running a protection protocol.
45
00:02:46,995 --> 00:02:47,908
Sounds safe, right?
46
00:02:47,908 --> 00:02:48,308
Okay.
47
00:02:48,447 --> 00:02:49,891
But here's where we want to get practical.
48
00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:53,778
When you avoid a social situation
because of anxiety, something
49
00:02:53,778 --> 00:02:57,647
happens in your brain that makes
it feel like a win in that moment.
50
00:02:57,778 --> 00:02:58,856
Your anxiety drops.
51
00:02:58,900 --> 00:03:01,039
The relief floods into your body.
52
00:03:01,100 --> 00:03:04,987
But what your nervous system actually
learns is the situation was dangerous,
53
00:03:05,152 --> 00:03:07,108
and I survived by escaping it.
54
00:03:07,247 --> 00:03:11,004
So the next time, the threat feels
even more real, the anxiety gets
55
00:03:11,004 --> 00:03:13,534
stronger, and the avoidance gets easier.
56
00:03:13,787 --> 00:03:18,030
You're basically caught in a loop, and
the loop has an architecture, and once
57
00:03:18,030 --> 00:03:22,691
you understand that architecture, you
can begin to dismantle it piece by piece.
58
00:03:22,760 --> 00:03:26,352
The first piece is what we're g- what
I'm gonna call the anticipatory spike.
59
00:03:26,404 --> 00:03:31,013
This is the anxiety you feel before
the social interaction even begins.
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00:03:31,143 --> 00:03:32,500
Not during, before.
61
00:03:32,621 --> 00:03:35,534
It's the Sunday night dread before
the Monday morning meetings.
62
00:03:35,691 --> 00:03:38,282
It's the thirty minutes before
you have to call someone.
63
00:03:38,473 --> 00:03:41,430
It's the morning of anxiety before a date.
64
00:03:41,543 --> 00:03:46,239
That spike is usually seventy to eighty
percent of your total suffering, and
65
00:03:46,247 --> 00:03:48,047
here's what most people do not know.
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00:03:48,256 --> 00:03:50,987
It's mostly entirely mental projection.
67
00:03:51,082 --> 00:03:51,308
Yeah.
68
00:03:51,517 --> 00:03:53,204
It's your brain running a simulation.
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00:03:53,395 --> 00:03:58,108
It's playing out worst-case scenarios
with the detail of a Hollywood thriller.
70
00:03:58,317 --> 00:03:59,360
You fumble your words.
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00:03:59,395 --> 00:04:00,291
People judge you.
72
00:04:00,447 --> 00:04:01,926
You become a social pariah.
73
00:04:02,263 --> 00:04:04,446
Those aren't predictions,
those are rehearsals.
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00:04:04,593 --> 00:04:08,428
Cognitive behavioral therapists
call these cognitive distortions.
75
00:04:08,524 --> 00:04:11,880
They're mental projections that your
brain treats as a fact even when the
76
00:04:11,880 --> 00:04:14,324
evidence does not support those facts.
77
00:04:14,498 --> 00:04:17,185
And every time you rehearse them,
you're just strengthening the neural
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00:04:17,185 --> 00:04:19,507
pathways that make them feel inevitable.
79
00:04:19,559 --> 00:04:23,767
The first practical step is to interrupt
the rehearsal, not by fighting it.
80
00:04:23,793 --> 00:04:24,593
No, no, okay?
81
00:04:24,724 --> 00:04:28,793
That's exhausting, and really, it, it
doesn't work, but by redirecting it.
82
00:04:28,933 --> 00:04:30,933
This is called attention deployment.
83
00:04:31,333 --> 00:04:35,307
Uh, when you notice the anticipatory
spike beginning, that Sunday night
84
00:04:35,315 --> 00:04:39,185
dread feeling, that pre-call dread
feeling, don't try to suppress it.
85
00:04:39,333 --> 00:04:39,559
No.
86
00:04:39,759 --> 00:04:40,837
Instead, do this.
87
00:04:41,028 --> 00:04:45,315
Name three specific things that you
can see right now, and I'm not talking
88
00:04:45,315 --> 00:04:46,993
about generally, like the room.
89
00:04:47,002 --> 00:04:51,428
No, name them specifically, the coffee
cup, the texture of your keyboard,
90
00:04:51,741 --> 00:04:53,567
the way the light hits the wall.
91
00:04:53,724 --> 00:04:56,428
Make it sensory, and make it specific.
92
00:04:56,593 --> 00:04:57,802
Why does this work, you may ask?
93
00:04:57,802 --> 00:04:58,846
Well, I'm glad you asked.
94
00:04:58,915 --> 00:05:01,202
Because anxiety lives in the future.
95
00:05:01,333 --> 00:05:03,680
Your nervous system is trying
to protect you for something
96
00:05:03,915 --> 00:05:05,550
that hasn't even happened yet.
97
00:05:05,567 --> 00:05:09,402
So when you anchor your attention
back into the present moment to things
98
00:05:09,402 --> 00:05:13,446
you can actually see, smell, hear,
or touch, you're essentially telling
99
00:05:13,446 --> 00:05:15,228
your brain, "That threat isn't here.
100
00:05:15,289 --> 00:05:18,054
I'm safe right now." You're
not denying the anxiety.
101
00:05:18,211 --> 00:05:22,350
You're just refusing to fuel it
with more mental rehearsal, okay?
102
00:05:22,767 --> 00:05:26,089
Do this every single time
the anticipatory spike hits.
103
00:05:26,176 --> 00:05:29,211
After about two weeks, something
is gonna start to shift.
104
00:05:29,411 --> 00:05:30,376
The spike will get quieter.
105
00:05:30,411 --> 00:05:31,480
It won't go away.
106
00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:33,411
It's not gone, but it's quieter.
107
00:05:33,620 --> 00:05:34,576
That's not accidental.
108
00:05:34,820 --> 00:05:37,541
That's your brain learning
that the simulation, it
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00:05:37,541 --> 00:05:39,046
wasn't quite accurate, okay?
110
00:05:39,080 --> 00:05:40,359
And we're gonna adjust accordingly.
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00:05:40,602 --> 00:05:44,341
The second piece is the interaction
itself, and here's where most advice
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00:05:44,350 --> 00:05:45,472
that you get is gonna fail you.
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00:05:45,602 --> 00:05:48,872
People say, "Just be yourself.
Everyone's too worried about
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00:05:48,872 --> 00:05:50,159
themselves to judge you."
115
00:05:50,740 --> 00:05:54,218
And you know, they're technically true,
and it's completely useless when your
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00:05:54,218 --> 00:05:55,679
system is in fight or flight mode,
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00:06:01,736 --> 00:06:02,119
okay?
118
00:06:02,249 --> 00:06:05,223
What actually is gonna work
for you is giving your brain a
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00:06:05,223 --> 00:06:07,823
concrete job, not be confident.
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00:06:07,971 --> 00:06:09,310
That's far too vague.
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00:06:09,441 --> 00:06:13,919
The anxiety will interpret vagueness as
unpredictability, which feels dangerous,
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00:06:13,928 --> 00:06:15,223
like I just told you a little bit ago.
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00:06:15,449 --> 00:06:19,058
Instead, give yourself a
specific behavioral target.
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00:06:19,197 --> 00:06:23,502
Before you walk into the room, I want you
to decide, "I'm going to ask three people
125
00:06:23,545 --> 00:06:26,015
a question about themselves." That's it.
126
00:06:26,119 --> 00:06:27,571
That's what you say to yourself.
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00:06:27,719 --> 00:06:32,076
Not, "Make a great impression." Not,
"I'm gonna be charis- charismatic." No.
128
00:06:32,180 --> 00:06:34,841
"I'm gonna ask three people
a question about themselves."
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00:06:34,971 --> 00:06:35,762
Three questions.
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00:06:35,884 --> 00:06:37,754
Why is this specificity so powerful?
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00:06:37,945 --> 00:06:41,815
Because it shifts your focus from
how to be perceived to what am
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00:06:41,815 --> 00:06:43,371
I doing, to what you're doing.
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00:06:43,606 --> 00:06:48,302
This is called external focus of
attention, and research shows it reduces
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00:06:48,302 --> 00:06:50,615
anxiety and actually improves performance.
135
00:06:50,728 --> 00:06:54,189
When you're focused on executing a
concrete task, you're not running
136
00:06:54,189 --> 00:06:57,876
that mirror check loop in your head,
that constant internal monitoring
137
00:06:58,015 --> 00:07:01,876
of how you appear to others, which
is where social anxiety resides.
138
00:07:02,006 --> 00:07:02,789
You, you feel me?
139
00:07:02,858 --> 00:07:03,171
Okay.
140
00:07:03,241 --> 00:07:07,291
So you walk in The first person you see,
"Hey, what brought you here tonight?"
141
00:07:07,448 --> 00:07:11,100
And then you listen to the answer, and
then you ask one follow-up question
142
00:07:11,109 --> 00:07:14,569
based on what it is they said, which
means you have to listen to them, right?
143
00:07:14,761 --> 00:07:15,143
Okay.
144
00:07:15,413 --> 00:07:18,091
Then you move on to the
next person, same process.
145
00:07:18,222 --> 00:07:22,378
By the time you have done this three
times, something inside you has happened.
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00:07:22,578 --> 00:07:27,361
You have had three successful
interactions, small ones, but real ones.
147
00:07:27,456 --> 00:07:29,813
Your brain has updated
its threat assessment.
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00:07:30,100 --> 00:07:33,604
This is exactly what exposure
therapy does systematically.
149
00:07:33,752 --> 00:07:38,648
It creates repeated graduated contact
with the feared situation until
150
00:07:38,648 --> 00:07:42,604
your amygdala revises its threat
assessment, its threat rating, its
151
00:07:42,622 --> 00:07:44,413
defcon rating begins to go down.
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00:07:44,665 --> 00:07:47,796
You're just doing it in real
time, and this is the beginning
153
00:07:47,822 --> 00:07:50,004
of rebuilding self-efficacy.
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00:07:50,222 --> 00:07:54,196
But here's where it gets a little harder
because there's this third piece that no
155
00:07:54,196 --> 00:07:56,091
one out there seems to want to talk about.
156
00:07:56,109 --> 00:07:58,152
You know me, I'm willing
to talk about all of it.
157
00:07:58,378 --> 00:07:59,978
There was the anticipatory spike.
158
00:08:00,065 --> 00:08:02,039
There was the concrete behavioral target.
159
00:08:02,048 --> 00:08:06,135
These work, but they work at the
edge of your comfort zone, right?
160
00:08:06,135 --> 00:08:09,743
Right where the discomfort starts
to live, and discomfort feels like
161
00:08:09,752 --> 00:08:11,856
danger to an anxious nervous system.
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00:08:11,865 --> 00:08:15,126
So there's a moment, usually somewhere in
the middle of the interaction, where your
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00:08:15,126 --> 00:08:18,813
anxiety actually increases, not decreases.
164
00:08:18,935 --> 00:08:19,743
You're flushed.
165
00:08:19,839 --> 00:08:22,422
Your voice maybe sounds
a little, a little shaky.
166
00:08:22,587 --> 00:08:24,378
Your mind may even go a little foggy.
167
00:08:24,448 --> 00:08:27,987
This is what the psychologists
call the extinction burst, and
168
00:08:27,987 --> 00:08:29,361
it's exactly what it sounds like.
169
00:08:29,448 --> 00:08:34,587
Right before a learned fear response
dies, it gets super intense.
170
00:08:34,630 --> 00:08:37,996
It's like your brain is saying,
"Wait, this threat, it used to work.
171
00:08:38,109 --> 00:08:42,656
Let me turn up the volume and see if that
helps." Most people are gonna interpret
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00:08:42,665 --> 00:08:46,274
that sign is that they're doing it
wrong, that the strategy isn't working.
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00:08:46,396 --> 00:08:47,422
So what do they do?
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00:08:47,500 --> 00:08:48,204
They retreat.
175
00:08:48,326 --> 00:08:52,352
They retreat back to avoidance and
back into the old comfortable loop.
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00:08:52,509 --> 00:08:55,761
The antidote is really, think
about it, counterintuitive.
177
00:08:55,952 --> 00:08:59,561
You have to expect the extinction
burst to come, and then you have
178
00:08:59,561 --> 00:09:02,769
to treat it as evidence that
what you're doing is working.
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00:09:02,900 --> 00:09:03,422
That it's right.
180
00:09:03,569 --> 00:09:03,822
Right?
181
00:09:04,039 --> 00:09:08,309
So before you go into a challenging social
situation, you want to prime yourself.
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00:09:08,439 --> 00:09:12,152
Okay, you're gonna say something like, "My
anxiety is probably gonna peak somewhere
183
00:09:12,152 --> 00:09:15,404
in the middle of this party, this
situation, this concert," whatever it is.
184
00:09:15,691 --> 00:09:16,465
That's normal.
185
00:09:16,745 --> 00:09:18,302
That's actually a good sign.
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It means I'm breaking the loop.
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Acknowledge it.
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Then when it happens, and it will
happen, you're not blindsided.
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You're not interpreting it as failure.
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You're recognizing it as what
it is, the price of change.
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And here's what separates people
who build genuine social confidence
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from people who just white-knuckle
their way through social situations.
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They actually lean into the
discomfort moment instead of
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white-knuckling their way through it.
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This is called acceptance and
commitment, a framework designed by
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psychologist Steven Hayes, who argued
that psychological flexibility,
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not the elimination of discomfort,
psychological flexibility is the
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real measure of mental health.
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You're not trying to
make the anxiety go away.
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You're not trying to hide it.
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You're not performing confidence
that you don't really feel.
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You're literally saying, "The feeling is
here. It's uncomfortable, but I'm gonna
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act like a confident person anyway."
The feeling doesn't have to leave.
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You don't have to
believe you're confident.
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You just have to act like
it despite the feeling.
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I, I know, I know it sounds fake.
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It feels fake when you first
start, but here's the magical part.
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That doesn't matter because your brain
doesn't learn from what you believe.
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It learns from what you
actually do and do repeatedly.
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Behaviorists call this
behavior to belief pathway.
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You act confident first, the confidence
follows, not the other way around.
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You don't wait for the confidence so
that you can start to act confident.
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And there's a fourth piece that I've been
building towards, and it requires honesty.
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Some of your social anxiety isn't all
about the social interaction at all.
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Nope, I'm sorry to tell you this.
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Some of it is about a deeper
fear that maybe you haven't
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named, a fear of judgment.
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Yeah, that could be it, but specifically
a fear that if people really knew
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you That they wouldn't like you.
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A fear that there's something
fundamentally unacceptable
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about who you are.
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A fear that confident means exposure,
and exposure means rejection.
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And this is the false floor that I have
been walking you towards this whole
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episode, because the real social anxiety
cure isn't about eliminating anxiety.
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It's about becoming a perfect
conversationalist and learning
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a few psychologic- psychological
tricks along the way.
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It's about deciding that being known
is worth the risk of being rejected.
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Some people will like you.
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Uh, that's just it.
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That's just playing the
numbers, and some people won't.
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Sorry, you can't⦠Not
everyone's gonna like you.
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That's all there is to it, and the
people worth knowing are the ones
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who actually like you, that like you,
not the performed version of you.
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And this is where, uh, I dunno, this is
where the work gets a bit existential.
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Because once you accept that,
your whole relationship to
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social situations can change.
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You're not performing
for approval anymore.
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You're not the dancing
monkey up on the stage.
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You're not trying to manage
everyone's perception of you.
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You're showing up as yourself,
and you're letting the chips fall.
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But here's the trap.
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Here's what makes this
morally complicated.
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Most people who build self-confidence
this way don't realize that they're
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becoming something different.
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They're becoming selectively vulnerable.
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They share just enough to seem authentic,
but not enough to risk rejection.
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They've learned the performance
of authenticity, and it works.
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It gets the job, the relationship, and
it gets the social status in most cases.
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But they're still not really known yet.
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They've just gotten better at the game.
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The real cure requires
actually being known.
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It requires saying something
true in a room where you might
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be judged for that truth.
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It requires asking for help.
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It requires admitting you don't
know something when you don't.
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It requires being wrong in front of
people and admitting that you were wrong.
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It requires being visible, truly visible.
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Most people never take that step
because that is infinitely scarier
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than small talk techniques.
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Small talk technique's a whole lot
easier, but here's where we are, right?
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Here's where you are.
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You can rebuild your self-efficacy.
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You can interrupt anticipatory spikes.
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You can lean into extinction bursts.
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You can ask questions, and you
can execute behavioral targets.
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You can become a functionally
socially adept person, and
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you still might feel lonely.
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Or you can go further.
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You can use confidence not as a
tool to win social approvalâ¦
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But as a shield that lets you be
authentically yourself in social spaces.
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Not performed authenticity,
real authenticity.
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Real pull the mask down and set
it up on the shelf authenticity.
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The kind that terrifies you
because rejection actually
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means something when it happens.
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Yeah, when you get rejected,
it's because they saw you and
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they just didn't like you.
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Fine.
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That's okay.
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Let them go about their worlds.
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How many other people
saw you and did like you?
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The practical steps work, the behavioral
architecture works, but the real cure is
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deciding what you want to be known for
and then risking that in front of others.
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Everything else is just rehearsal.
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Think successfully and take action.
