Ep 170 – Confidence: How To Believe In Your Word

Giacomo

Hello, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins, Muscles by Brussels radio. My name is Giacomo and I’m and this episode 170.

Dani

Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for coming. It feels so weird to pull the shades down in the middle of the day and then turn on artificial lights.

Giacomo

Why? Who are you kidding? You are more than happy to pull the shade down and work in the dim. I’ve seen it before. You don’t mind the dim, do you?

Giacomo, Dani

I mean, you like natural light but I like natural light.

Dani

It was like the number one thing that we needed in a house that we were buying was loads of natural light, but just because I wear all black all the time doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy colorful things. What it means is, I don’t know how to dress myself.

Giacomo

So, meanwhile I’m over here, I think I’ve done like three outfit changes today. Minimum and it’s only two o’clock. I got problems. I mean, granted I’ve been up since three in the morning, but I don’t think you need to change your clothes three times before the evening.

Dani

I’m not changing my clothes until I go to bed. What I put on first thing in the morning, like, that’s what I’m doing for the day. If that means I’m going to the gym in sweatpants, then I’m going to the gym in sweatpants.

Giacomo

I’m so not looking forward to mowing the lawn right now. It’s growing, it’s getting, but it’s getting nicer outside. Maybe we go on a walk or something like that at some point. Eventually. I don’t know. You get, does anyone else get cabin fever when it’s been winter? And you’re just stuck indoors and all of a sudden you’re, like, just itching to get outside.

Dani

I think everybody gets that. Doesn’t everybody get that?

Giacomo

Yeah. I don’t know.

Dani

But it’s kind of, you ask questions that make me wonder if you have actually lived a human life for 43 years.

Giacomo

I’m an actual robot. Yeah, that’s it.

Dani

Does anybody else hate bad things? Yes, they do.

Giacomo

We just confirmed that we’re coming to Atlanta. I don’t, when was the last time we went there? It’s been a while.

Dani

I haven’t been to Atlanta in like, probably five years.

Giacomo

I don’t think I’ve gone without you. So, it’s probably the same. And I could think of several of the reasons why we’ve gone to Atlanta and I know how much we love that. There’s that one haunted. Yes.

Dani

The Highland Inn, that place is for sure. Haunted. That that inn is for sure. Haunted. It’s very cool. But it’s definitely not, not haunted.

Giacomo

Oh, yeah. And Atlanta kind of has a heart. That place is just so much. It’s so cool. So, I am genuinely looking forward to it.

Dani

We’re going down for the Peachtree Road race, which I guess is the oldest 10-K in the country. So that’s what we’re gonna be doing. Vegan Strong is gonna be there with a booth talking about veganism and how to build muscle on plants and we’ve never seen it before. So we don’t really know what to expect.

Giacomo, Dani

So if you guys do know what to expect, let us know in the comments and maybe we’ll see you there, but that’s not what we’re talking about today, Dani, what are we talking about?

Dani

We’re, we’re talking about confidence today. I think it’s a really important topic in general like for anybody whether like health and fitness is a goal or not. So you could take anything we’re about to say and apply it to literally any area of your life. But you know, I think we’re also going to talk about how it applies to you reaching your physique goals, adhering to your nutrition, doing your training, et cetera.

Giacomo

Yeah, and specifically for us too as to real world examples because as health and fitness coaches, we need to portray confidence no matter what. And I think so. Ok, well, think about it, we want to coach our clients into being confident to reach your goals and everything like that. So, I guess in my opinion, there’s a little bit of a struggle there because you don’t want to, how do I say?

You don’t want to show that you that there? It’s hard to be confident when you have clients and you want them to be confident that they can reach your goals. So they could be a little bit of, it could be tricky because everyone lacks confidence at one point or another. And I know, well, I know I’ve struggled with it. It’s something that I actually have kind of tackled for the past six months or so.

It was like, am I really confident and do I just try to come across as confident? It is definitely one of those skills that take time to develop. But you can also really see where you might be more confident. You actually think that you are just because you’re appearing confident.

Dani

Well, if you did say one thing there that I think is really important, a lot of people think of confidence as like a personality, like a personality that you just have or you don’t or even a feeling. But I actually think that confidence in and of itself is a skill that you can develop over time. I don’t think it’s a personality. I think it’s a skill that requires action in order to develop.

Giacomo

Exactly. And I do feel like the perfect combination is the person who comes across as confident and who actually is confident. But if you’re the type like me where you fake it till you make it and you’re not really confident and then you have to do the work and find a way to be confident. It can be a little hard to combine the two and be like, oh yeah, I am that person who’s been acting like that as, but you wind up seeing a lot of others who they don’t appear confident but on the inside they

actually are and we don’t take them seriously. We’re like, oh, that’s not a confident person and that could be hard to be judged like that, I think. And that there are so many people out there like that because to actually be confident in something you have to tackle what you struggle at and what you need to work on to be like, yeah, I could talk about this thing or I am this thing or whatever interesting.

Dani

The whole that, that was all very interesting. I think that first of all, I think that everybody probably struggles with confidence at some point in their life or in some area of their life because what I have noticed is I have met people who are incredibly confident in one area of their life, but not confident at all in another area of their life.

And I feel like we do see this a lot with clients or people who come to us, you know, they might be very, very successful at their job, which is like a, you know, top tier, really impressive job. But it’s like they can’t stop eating an entire bag of chips every night. So their level of confidence in their ability to eat well and take care of themselves is like in the toilet, even though they’re super confident in what it is they do for a living.

So I think you kind of have to look at confidence in a bunch of different areas of your life. But also I think probably the most important piece to have is confidence or like self esteem, just the belief in yourself, period like that you are capable of doing things like you are capable of following through on things and you’re a person who will try. Confidence is the willingness to try.

Giacomo

Exactly. And I think you have to cut through the frustration when you’re dealing with other people and you’re dealing with being in a room of people where someone can actually get what they need out of the room or talk to people in a certain way and they’re not really confident but they’re fooling everyone or they’re taken just as seriously and they’re not confident.

And meanwhile, you’re the one sitting there trying to do the work and be like, I can do this. I know what I’m talking about. I know how to deliver my message or whatever it is. But in reality that other person who is just coming across more confident in you is going to be taken more seriously sometimes by a fair amount of people. Right.

Dani

So to me, I think it’s, it’s very easy to confuse confidence and arrogance and confidence is quiet, in my opinion, this is just my opinion. Confidence is quiet. Confidence doesn’t need to proclaim themselves every time they walk into a room, people that boast a lot or like come across as like really super cocky or self assured and they just constantly talk about themselves or name drop or this or that.

They are, in my opinion. Again, just my opinion, they are desperately trying to come across as confident and whenever I see that or hear somebody talking like that to me, that is an immediate immediate notification that they are actually not confident at all.

Giacomo

Well, there’s a good chance of it. It’s a flag, put it that way. It’s a reason to start to be suspicious and be like, does this person really know what they’re talking about or are they worth talking to or they actually practicing what they preach? Do they know anything about whatever it is that they’re trying to come across as they know something about?

Dani

Sometimes when I see people like that, it actually like, triggers empathy in me of just like, oh, this poor person feels like they have to sell themselves to every person in this room when they probably didn’t have to like, it can be a nervous thing, but it’s not confidence. Like it’s a fine line between feeling confident in your ability or competent in your ability to do something versus, and sometimes you got to convince yourself right.

Like I can do this, I can do this, I can do this versus telling other people I can do this. I have done this, like, basically just like almost, almost gassing yourself up for other people. Sometimes I gas myself up in my head before I do something. But I don’t, I don’t know. To me, I think a lot of people think people that are very loud and forward and opinionated and you know, the first

person to talk in a room, people assume. Wow, they have so much confidence and I actually find it’s often some of the quieter people in the room that have more actual confidence.

Giacomo

So what happens when you realize? Oh, crap, whatever it is that I want to be comfortable talking about and I should be talking about and deserve to be talking about because I have something to say what happens when you keep looking into whatever you’re looking into in your life. Oh, I really don’t know. As much as I think that I know and quite frankly, I don’t know a damn thing at all, but I still want to talk about this thing.

I still want to be comfortable talking about it. What the impostor syndrome, for example, or the, the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know, Dunning Kruger stuff like that. What is the question?

Giacomo, Dani

Well, what happens when you put your, when you wind up being in that position and you want to find a way to be confident as, I mean, I, I tend to think that although imposter syndrome is incredibly uncomfortable and I’ve had it and I hate it.

Dani

It doesn’t feel good at all. I think a lot of times it’s a good sign that one you care. And two again, you are in a situation that is challenging you in some way. And that’s really again, th this is how you build confidence. Confidence is not built when everything is going great. That’s not when, that’s when arrogance is built is when everything’s going great, confidence is built. When things are hard, when things are challenging, when you maybe are failing over and over again.

But every time you do, you’re learning and, and also learning that you are the type of person that will fail and try again. And that to me builds a lot of confidence. That doesn’t mean you’re perfect. Being confident, doesn’t mean you think you’re perfect. It means that you know that you’re going to try and even if you fail, you’re going to try again. That to me, imposter syndrome is like, ok, I’m not there yet, but I’m willing, I’m willing to learn how to be right.

Giacomo

But you could wind up landing in a position where sometimes that loop, that constant loop, what loop? Well, put it this way when you, when you think you’re over the hump, but then you realize this type of scenario is gonna repeat itself time and time again. That’s kind of painful.

Dani

So you’re literally talking about the done, like when you are learning and you realize, you know, less than you thought you did.

Giacomo

And then you get to a point where you’re like, yes, I can, I’m comfortable talking about this. I feel like I should, I know that I have something to say and that people will eventually listen no matter where they’re at. But then all of a sudden you get past it and, you know, put it this way, I feel like you wind up experiencing imposter syndrome again and again and again, I think it’s possible. Put it that way. Disagree.

Dani

Well, if you’re talking about one topic, yeah, I do disagree because the more you realize you don’t know, the more confident you are in the things that you do know and knowing you don’t know everything. I think that’s actually a good thing. Recognizing, oh, there’s a lot, I don’t know. I mean, the smartest people that I’ve ever even heard of know, there’s a lot that they don’t know, know that stuff is being discovered in the fitness and nutrition field all the time.

It’s changing all the time. I don’t think it makes them less confident to recognize that their opinion on a particular topic could change in the future. I think it takes a very confident person to say, you know, if, if shown the correct evidence, I might change my mind that requires a lot of chutzpah for somebody to say, hey, I think maybe I was wrong.

Giacomo

You know, you’re referring to the person sending the message out, not the person receiving the message. Correct.

Dani

I guess. So, Giacomo is being very vague in the terms that he’s using here. So I’m trying very hard to follow the person that’s doing this, the person like can let’s use some actual examples here.

Giacomo

I think of the examples that I wind up finding myself in often. OK, you’re a person speaking to an audience, there is a speaker and there’s an audience and you’re speaking to the same audience over and over again. Sometimes even the exact same audience in the exact same place.

Dani

Is this meta, are we talking about you guys? What’s happening? OK.

Giacomo, Dani

Go on anyways.

Giacomo

So you’re the speaker, right? And you’re talking about the same topic, but here you are. And there’s another speaker that comes on in and everyone takes that person more seriously, even though they don’t, you can tell that they don’t quite have a grasp on whatever it is that they’re talking about. How do you deal with the frustration, even though you’re already confident with what you have to say and people are just not listening because you not dealing with either an

intelligent enough audience or an open enough audience or whatever or maybe you are not coming across the way that you think that you are, even though on the inside like you’re like, hell, yeah, I, I know what I’m talking about and I am ready to, to put my whatever out there.

Dani

I mean, that’s frustrating, but that doesn’t change my confidence in myself.

Giacomo

Right. But you, but we’re not just talking about how you feel about yourself.

Giacomo, Dani

We’re talking about how others take you in and how you, no, see this is where I’m gonna, I’m gonna hard disagree with you here the way other people perceive you should have nothing to do with your own confidence in yourself. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you there then what are we talking about?

Giacomo

I guess that’s just the idea of how people perceive confidence, put it that way. People are not perceiving you as confident.

Dani

But I don’t care, like, and I don’t think any of you should care either is my point. Like if you are confident in something, you don’t need to convince other people that you’re confident. Again, that’s where I see the kind of more arrogant people. If other people don’t think, you know what you’re talking about and you know, you do know what you’re talking about, they’re lost, I guess.

You know, we see that all the time as just like, as sort of evidence based vegan coaches. Like we see it all the time in the, in the influencer space. There’s a lot of very loud people out there saying a lot of things that don’t even, don’t even come near the realm of something that is true and people are just eating it up left and right. Oh, well, we just come on here, we, we talk about the stuff that we think matters and is helpful to other people and if people listen awesome and if they

don’t, oh, well, fair enough. Ok, fine. You know, we can, we can try to change our message to reach more people to be helpful to more people. Repackage the, the message. But it’s still, I don’t know, at the end of the day, I don’t think it has anything to do with confidence.

Giacomo

Ok. Fine.

Giacomo, Dani

So, aside from getting better at whatever it is that you’re getting better at and knowing that you’re, you’re getting better at it, including so vague, so vague, go on and then, you know, if you’re better and then you’re getting better at the thing you’re bettering.

Dani

What would you do? Like, think that’s what I’m hearing right now.

Giacomo, Dani

Giacomo, you’re killing me and you’re coming for me, which I mean, it’s ok.

Giacomo

That’s all right. It’s, it’s all good. Ok. So I think one way to become more confident in something is to do your homework, right? Do your research. What are some other examples of how to become more confident with something as far as how you feel about something, whatever, like a topic or whatever.

Dani

So give me an example specifically pertaining to health and fitness. Ok, so your confidence in going to the gym, if you are not, somebody who already goes to the gym, the idea of going to the gym can be kind of scary to a lot of people there. What are you afraid of? First of all, they’re afraid of walking in there and looking stupid and not knowing what they’re doing, getting lost, maybe hurting themselves. Those are all perfectly valid fears. Should they stop you from doing it?

No, they should not. But they’re valid fears. Can you do anything about any of them? Yeah, you could, you could go online and look at the gym’s website and try to get a feel for what the layout is. You could make sure that you have some program that you feel like. Ok. Yeah, that’s just dumbbells and a bench. I could probably just do that, walk over to the dumbbells and give that a try by planning and researching.

Giacomo, Dani

You can have some kind of a plan before you get there, which should help you feel a little bit less scared of doing the thing and then the other things that you can do or you can change how you show up when you train and how you interact with other people.

Giacomo

If you’re not a people person in terms of how you, whatever, just start having conversations but you still want to be comfortable around other people, start making eye contact with other people. I don’t mean, like, stare people down. I know, I trust me. I know. You have to know exactly where your head’s going with this. I mean, to not hide from the fact that you’re around other people, even if you’re more of an introverted person or you’re like, I’m gonna get in and get out and I just,

I want to be around gym rats. I don’t want to actually have full blown conversations here, but you don’t want to be uncomfortable around other people. Either people go to the gym and they are uncomfortable around other people. Not necessarily because well, and sometimes other gym members and the way they lift makes people uncomfortable.

But sometimes it’s literally just you and you project that onto the gym floor because you’re training on other people. So rather than just try to like it more knowledgeable or get better at training this or that don’t be afraid to like, again, not like stare people down but to just recognize you’re around other people and it’s, that’s ok, it’s ok to like be uncomfortable with yourself because you’re not where you want to be at, but to not be afraid to be around other people and

acknowledge other people in the gym without actually having to, to engage with them. That’s one example another example is to not be afraid to acknowledge yourself. Like a lot of people will go get into their workout and they didn’t even want to look in the mirror because they just, they feel shame about whether or not yet. Right.

Giacomo, Dani

I don’t know if you’ve ever, I mean, honestly, no, I am deadlocked, stared at myself in the eyes. If there’s a mirror in front of me at the gym, I am glaring into my own eyes while I train, I didn’t know that you see, I, I’m a people person.

Giacomo

I don’t mind talking to perfect strangers in the gym. I also don’t mind looking at the mirror, but there have been times where I have felt somewhat uncomfortable around people at the gym because of my own insecurities. And there have been times where I’ve felt uncomfortable looking in the mirror because of my own security.

So it actually that’s kind of shocking that you haven’t experienced either of those because I feel like that’s just kind of a part of being around others when you are unintentionally projecting whatever it is that you’re wrestling with, that’s wild. I didn’t know that. I’ve definitely experienced both of those.

Dani

When you, when your eyes start wandering around on the mirrors, you end up accidentally mentally staring at other people in the mirror matrix. So that’s one of the reasons that I try not to. First of all, I keep my gaze moving all the time in the gym so I don’t accidentally zone out staring at somebody. but yeah, also the mirror matrix, you can be staring at somebody by accident.

Like I just, no, I want to watch myself. I want to watch my form. Never felt weird about watching myself exercise in the mirror. I would feel weird, like just flexing and posing in the middle of the gym floor but not like staring myself dead in the eyes while I do barbell squats. I don’t know.

Giacomo

I’m, I’m learning something new over here. This, this comes as a shocker to me. That’s the stuff that I think about in this specific example, the stuff that is less about training, getting used to what you’re doing and doing it consistently routinely and feeling like you belong there. It’s like feeling like you belong there because of the environment and the people there. I think that’s part of the struggle as well and working on that.

Dani

Well, I think that the, the practice practice, which, you know, the planning, I guess I should say the planning before you get there is important. But I also think accepting the fact that this is new to you, you might show up and make a fool of yourself. I mean, chances are very good, somebody’s going to help you. But again, you could apply this to anything you could apply it to public speaking, right?

You’re going to prepare for it, you’re going to prepare for it you could get up on stage and bomb. It’s possible you just have to be willing to accept. Hey, I’m going to try, I’m going to do my best, but I might suck at this and then you go back and you do it again and the next day you suck a tiny bit less and the next day you suck a tiny bit less.

Giacomo, Dani

And that to me is what builds confidence, repetition and continuing to try again and again and again,

even with knowing full.

Giacomo

Right.

Giacomo, Dani

Well, that several of the times before you made that next effort and try it again, that you completely and particularly like with challenging things.

Dani

You know, I’m not saying if you’ve, if you’ve never hiked in your life, your goal should be Mount Kilimanjaro at the beginning. But you have to find something that makes you a little bit uncomfortable. It has to be a little bit challenging in order to be kind of effective enough to help you build confidence. You know, I’m a big fan of atomic habits.

I like tiny little habits stacked on top of each other. But even I can see that, yeah, some atomic habits might be so small that they actually don’t help you build much confidence, you know, putting your running shoes by the door every day, like that might not be enough to make you feel confident enough to start running. The only thing that’s gonna make you confident enough to run is going to be to run, run a short distance, you know, run.

My grandfather used to tell me how he started to run. you know, back in the day before cell phones and gps is he’d run from one telephone pole to the next telephone pole and then he’d walk to the next telephone pole and then he’d run to the next one and then he’d walk to the next one until, like, he would run a marathon on the weekends, which I don’t know if you knew that crazy, but he would.

but you start with something that’s hard but likely doable even if with a few tries and then you build from there. And I, I mean, I really feel like that applies to everything. You know, again, if you try to hike Mount Kilimanjaro on day one, they’re going to fail so badly that you may never do it again. So I don’t think like 180 in everything in your life is a good idea.

I think it’s a terrible idea. But if you want to go vegan, for example, plan, do your research, get ready and then start one food group at a time. If the thought of going vegan overnight is like super overwhelming to you start with just first you cut out beef, then you cut out chicken, then you cut out fish, then you cut out dairy, et cetera, like until, until you’re vegan. But you have to actually do it. You know, if you hate fish already and you never eat fish and you say, well, I’m gonna

stop eating fish on day one. Did you really challenge yourself at all or did you just stop eating something that you already didn’t like eating? Be like if I was like, I’m gonna challenge myself to not eat cilantro, that would not be a challenge because I will never eat cilantro. You have to find something. If I said I’m gonna stop eating cupcakes, which I will never do, that would be a challenge.

So

Giacomo

yeah, or you could be like me and be very good at following a recipe but not necessarily good at creating recipes or improvising if a recipe goes wrong. But you keep showing up and trying.

Dani

That is correct. And he has built confidence in the kitchen by failing many, many times. Right? Babe.

Giacomo

Yes. But there’s still, but I’m also confident enough to know that there is still a lot more work there that I need to do to fully understand how to and I should do a little more homework too on understanding, even if it in it’s intimidating being around someone like you who has spent many years in the restaurant industry, for example, and also just learning how to cook.

So it’s one of those things where like you have to get past your own ego and you’re intimidated by others or intimidated by what you don’t know or this or that. And it’s, it sounds silly but it’s true. It’s like when I was taking singing lessons and it was a totally new thing for me and I, I’m not tone deaf, thankfully I could be, but I’m, I just so happen to not be tone deaf.

So I didn’t have that working against me and it was a brand new thing but because I was not already good at it and I know that you are actually very good at singing. I, I failed at this. I’ll, I think I’ll try again eventually, but like, I couldn’t get past my own. I couldn’t get past myself and being intimidated by other people. You aren’t trying to intimidate me.

Just one of those things where it’s like sometimes you can, but that’s not a reason to not keep trying. But there are, but, but it is possible it is possible to be around someone else that already has what you want and it can get in your own way and then you got to figure out a way to get past it.

Dani

It’s a really good point about speaking about confidence in general is you, if, if you want to become more confident, you have got to stop comparing yourself to other people. I mean, that’s a perfect example. Also weird way to out me on the podcast and it’s bad.

Giacomo

That’s the other thing. Here’s where I feel like it is the hardest thing to do to admit it too as opposed to being prideful about it or Zent. I think that’s, here’s the confident part. Not that I got anywhere with it,

but I literally said it to you. I’m like, look, it’s not you, it’s me and I can’t get past the fact that you’re just so good at this thing that it’s intimidating to me.

I wasn’t blaming you. I wasn’t using as an excuse to give up. I just wasn’t getting, I wasn’t putting it on you or experiencing anything that would make me hate myself, for example, you know what I mean? It’s just a matter of like, ok, well, this, it’s my responsibility to figure out how to do this thing and not mess with someone else because I lack confidence in it. And even though I, I guess we could say I gave up on that. And I don’t think that I don’t think that’s the only reason I know

that one day if I really want it, nothing will stand in my way because even though I’m not confident enough to practice right now, I’ve chosen not to, I know I could do it again because I am in fact a confident person. You see. So I, I’m sorry for being like a little like loopy about explaining it all, but you don’t have to actually have to be good at something to be confident at the idea that you can do it.

Dani

You’re not going to be good at it. Like, if it’s something brand new to you, the chances are higher than 50% that you’re not going to be good at it when you start. I mean, jeez, do you guys remember a couple of years ago when I said I was gonna run a five K and I tr guys, I trained for that five K, like hard. And it’s embarrassing to say because I’m a fitness coach.

Like, I coach top tier athletes. Like I’ve been working out for 15 years consistently through and like guys, I can’t run, I suck at running. That’s why I did it because because I had this story in my head that I suck at running. So therefore I do not run. And what kind of a hypocrite would I be to come on here, say all of this kind of stuff and then not go try and do the things that I suck at.

And I mean, I still suck at running just so we’re clear, but I set the goal. I trained for the goal. I achieved the goal and then I realized that not only do I suck at running, but I also just don’t like it, which is probably part of the reason I suck at it. So I made the decision at that point like this is not a priority to me. I proved that I can do it if I want to, I’m not going to do it anymore because I don’t like it. I like hiking. I like walking. I like swimming. I like doing the elliptical.

I like doing anything but running. So, you know, when you say you decided to stop singing, you know, I think when it’s like a conscious decision, like this is not and I don’t know if it was for you based on what you just said. But like when you decide, like, actually cool, I did it but like, I don’t actually care about this that much. So I’m not going to keep pursuing it, but still it adds to the confidence bank that you tried that.

Giacomo, Dani

You did it well, yeah, because then there’s the idea of you set out to do something and you failed at it.

Giacomo

So therefore you weren’t really confident, right? But that’s not necessarily true.

Dani

I did kind of fail. Do you remember? Yeah, I do. I had two goals. One was to finish in under 35 minutes, the five K and the other one was to do the whole thing without needing to walk at all. I did finish it under 35 minutes, but I did end up having to walk a little bit at the end. I started too fast. It was way hillier than I thought. So I did fail part of that goal. But it was still, it was enough for me. It was enough to feel really good about it and make that decision. Sorry, go ahead.

Giacomo

No, no, you’re absolutely Right, I think. But this is an important distinction to make and we, I can’t stress it enough. You can fail at something and still be confident that think you failed, that you can fail at something and choose to not do it again and still be confident with your ability to try to do it again.

And with what you’ve done, it’s a way, it’s a state of mind, it’s a way of being, It’s not necessarily you getting better at something and you researching something and that’s what makes you confident.

Dani

Although that is a part of it, you know, I think of Daisy, our niece Daisy, she is seven and I remember at seven being like pretty aware of what other people thought of me at that point. So I, I know she is, she said some things that make me know she is aware that other people might think things about her. Daisy does not have an innate athletic ability like at all.

She reminds me very much of, of me in that way as a kid. But here’s where she is different than me. She will try over and over and over and over again. We went to a trampoline park. I mentioned it in the last podcast I think and we did the, the like ropes course thing and I’m gonna get like teary thinking about how proud I am of her, but she couldn’t get past the first, the first step, the very first obstacle, which I can’t even remember exactly what it was.

It was like stepping out onto a rope that had knots on it or something. And if you fell, you fell onto a giant pillow, basically. And she must have done it like 30 or 40 times in a row. Not a, not achieved it once. And she had a smile on her face the whole time and this place was packed like other people could see her, other kids were just flying across and she just kept doing it.

And even, I mean, it was just, it was a very, first of all, it made me feel really good as an aunt to see like how confident she is, even though she couldn’t do the thing. But also it was, it was a good lesson to me. Like it’s ok to look, to look stupid to look like you don’t know what you’re doing to just, you know, nobody else was saying anything to her or nobody was side eyeing her or anything.

I think anybody that saw it would have been impressed. This seven year old kid just kept falling and falling and falling and falling and getting up and doing it again over and over and then finally she just

kind of got tired of it, I guess and went on to something else.

Giacomo

But ok, no, that’s unfortunately though, and even as adults you’ll have audiences that are being polite to you. But inside they’re judging you or audience that are audiences. I’m saying audiences. It’s funny, actual real life scenarios where people will either be dismissive towards you rude, mean or be polite.

Giacomo, Dani

But inside, you know, they’re judging you and they’re probably like, this person sucks or whatever, like they, they’re not someone that’s worth your time a day and it has not, that has nothing to do with your confidence when you have built enough confidence, what other people have to say about you or think about you or, you know, if anybody out there is going, like, she couldn’t even run five K without stopping right now.

Dani

Like I don’t care, it doesn’t bother me at all. Like that’s just do, I wish I could run better. Sure. Yeah. If I wanted to, could I Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, your confidence has nothing to do with other people.

Giacomo, Dani

And if you can keep it that way, like if Daisy can keep it that way, for a long time, she’s gonna be in real good shape, but this doesn’t come without effort and it’s not something you can do on your own.

Giacomo

It is something you could ask others. I think that’s also really helpful is to ask others for support with whatever it is that you’re looking to do or however it is that you’re looking to be like that. I think that’s part of it is to know that you can’t do it on your own even though you have that like internal, whatever that

it’s nice to lean on others for support because that’s how you can wind up getting the answers and getting to be confident, whatever else it is that you need to be confident at.

Dani

I have some other like real quick tricks to help with confidence in the moment when you’re like, thinking about doing something. But then you like, think about it for too long and convince yourself

not to do it. Right. So, this isn’t my trick. This is Mel Robin’s trick. It is when you think you want to do something and you start to do that, like, well, so that you can just think to yourself 54321 and then you do the thing, like, you just do the action, whatever the action is, it doesn’t

matter what the action is, the action could be getting out of bed in the morning if you’re like, no, I don’t want to do it. 54321. And you’re up like, it’s such a simple little trick, but it does, it works a lot of the time. Ah, but my favorite tip is to have an alter ego.

Giacomo

Yeah. See, I got that all here and I, I know that’s coming from you and I don’t, I don’t know what that one’s kind of weird to me, but I know like you’re really, I feel like this is a, you thing much more so than a me thing just knowing you. So I’m super curious.

Dani

Well, people have heard me talk about like, think about your future self as a different person. That’s one way to do. This is to think about your future self as someone else. And it’s a friend and you want to do good things for your friend. Right? So then you make good choices.

You want your friend to be a better, better at push ups, you start doing push ups so she can be better at doing push ups. That’s just an example. But the much more fun one is to pretend you are somebody else that is more confident.

Giacomo

Ok. Thanks for bringing me back. Yes, you’ve talked about this before. Go ahead.

Dani

So it doesn’t, I mean, it could be, it could be a celebrity, it could be a character from a book. It could be somebody that you completely made up. You don’t have to tell anybody about it. You don’t have to go full, you know, mental health issues and start going by another name and talking in someone else’s voice. But like if you can imagine that you are Buffy, what would Buffy the Vampire Slayer do in this situation and then do that thing or, you know, I often think of myself as like a

superhero. I mean, I don’t actually think I’m a superhero. I’m not, I’m not that full of myself. But if I’m having a hard time doing something that I know in my heart that I want to do if I have some fear or resistance around doing something, I will just like, pretend I am a vigilante superhero.

Giacomo

And what would that person do in this, this in motion, by the way, she’s bringing me back and this is definitely a her thing and out of me thing I do, I feel like I’ve leaned on that idea from time to time, but it is not innately like it’s just not something I think about, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Right.

Dani

It, it could be anybody. I mean, imagine, you know, what would, what would Arnold Schwarzenegger do in this situation? Like if you want to be doing something, what would Arnold do right now and then you think about it and do that thing. I mean, it could be anybody and it’s, I think it’s a very fun trick and whatever. If you guys try it, let me know. I know I’ve put this in other videos so it’s not new.

Giacomo

Who are your favorite alter egos? And if you don’t have one who is going to be your alter ego after listening to this episode, I want to know, oh, I thought you were asking me.

Dani

I was like I just said, so, no, I would love to hear that. Who, who would you like to emulate in those moments where you feel like you’re lacking confidence. Let’s see. Oh, ok. This next one is like a harder way. I think it’s a harder way to be more confident. But I have noticed it in very confident people versus people who deal with more insecurities is they are a lot more honest with themselves about the hard stuff about the shortcomings about where they are falling short of the goal or

what they said they were going to do or if they’re in a crummy situation, but as kind of like of their own making, but they, you like instinctively want to blame it on someone else or something else because that doesn’t hurt as much as realizing like you put yourself in that shitty situation. Being honest with yourself is something confident people do when they mess up when they are wrong, when they change their mind, they say it, you know, and it can be public like this or it could be,

this could be in your head. This could just be a sit, you know, if you are sitting there very out of shape, struggling with, you know, eating how you’re ordering pizza every single night, you can sit there and be like, well, I’m so tired from work. How am I gonna get the energy to go to the gym? And it’s just so much easier to order pizza. I didn’t have time to go to the grocery store and like, listen, I get it. I have thought all of those things. So no shame there. But also can you go a layer

deeper than that and realize that if, if this was something that you really wanted to do, you would Reprioritize some of the things in your day to try to make some of those things happen. Like, what can you do to move the needle on that? Can you, or if you’re gonna order out, could you order something healthier than a pizza? Right. Like it’s as an example, but you are not going to do any of those things until you look at yourself seriously. You know.

Giacomo

Well, that’s hard because you have so much else going on outside of yourself that it’s easy to unintentionally blame or to look outwardly at others because you can’t see yourself. You don’t want to see yourself. You don’t want to take that kind of level of accountability and responsibility for whatever it is that you might have caused. For example. I mean, but you are the only thing standing in the way of yourself. You really are.

Dani

I mean, not, not 100% of the time. I, I don’t think, I don’t think it’s 100% of the time. I really do think there are some situations where people are just stuck in a rock and a hard place. I don’t want to overlook that.

Giacomo, Dani

But I do think in every situation, like you just said, there’s probably something, there’s probably something that you could change or improve to move towards the thing that you want to do, the person you want to be, that, that there is some part of it where you can take ownership.

Giacomo

So that even though you can be in a rock and a hard place and it isn’t only you that there is some piece of whatever that you can keep and be like, OK, well, I can, I can change my own narrative. I can change my own character. I cannot control my environment, I cannot control people. I cannot control how this affected me and what I did in the past, but I can control how I think about this and change and be better for the future.

Dani

Like do, it’s not even just thinking like because again, confidence to me is an action. You have to take an action to build the confidence, thinking is great change your thinking patterns, but also you have to do something.

Giacomo

They have to exactly there. They got to be one and the same. You have to meet it with action and sometimes that action is awkward, uncomfortable and you have to literally force yourself to take that action because it’s for the sake of not only on Saturday, it’s because you want to be a better person. You want to be a good person to yourself because that’s how hopefully that’s how you’ll find yourself in better situations in

the future and in better healthier, happier, more confident environments that will be there for you even when like, you’re whatever and like why does any of this matter?

Dani

Why does confidence even matter? The reason that this matters to me is because I am not naturally a confident person. Giacomo can attest to this. He brought up a video of me in first grade where I come across as very confident, but I’ve always been very confident in school outside of that. I’ve struggled with confidence in pretty much every way my whole life. So every single thing that I’ve ever done or achieved, I was terrified to do, like, terrified going to the gym for the first

time. Getting into that, terrified literally stood in the corner on the elliptical for like six months before I ventured out of that room. going vegan, I guess I wasn’t terrified of going vegan, but I was terrified of dealing with what other people thought about me going vegan. I hid it from people for a long time.

Giacomo

It’s a real pain. Honestly, even someone at the gym was just trying to joke with me. I’m like, oh, no, no, he’s using logic. He’s cracking jokes, I have nothing else to say. But there was some truth to that humor too. It was like, ok, who’s going to sit here and mock the vegan or make fun of the vegan just to be social and funny like, ha ha ha, I get

it. I’ve been dealing with it for almost 20 years now. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a tricky one. That’s a sticky one, I think for a lot of us because you don’t want, sorry, go ahead.

Dani

But no, that’s fine. But I mean, I was also 16 now. I don’t care what other people say about it. I’m very confident in my decision. Probably more confident in that decision than many others. I’ve made the decision to compete. I mean, you remember, I was a former obese kid who decided to step on a bodybuilding stage. Like that was terrifying. Moving across the country to Oregon, terrifying, starting a business, terrifying, quitting my day job to work in said business full time.

Both of us terrifying. Like I did not feel confident doing any of those things, none of those things, all the public speaking that we’ve done since then, like I could go on and on and on. But but if you were to ask somebody like is confident, I think most people that know me would say yes, like hard, yes. But I know what I felt when I was doing those things and it was scared and nervous and unsure and doubting myself. But taking the actions and many of them very imperfectly, I might

add, a lot of them went real sideways before they started getting better. That is what has made me more confident. And I say I’m not a naturally confident person because it took a lot of work to get here. But I would say that I am confident now. You know, there’s still areas of my life that I don’t feel super confident in. But most, I mean, most of them, I do more of the story.

Giacomo

Give it time. That’s what I’m thinking. Give it time.

Giacomo, Dani

Let it play out, be scared and do it anyway.

Dani

You’re gonna be scared, you’re going to be nervous, you’re going to be afraid to fail, you’re going to fail like do it anyway. This is it, this is the one shot guys.

Giacomo

It’s true. There’s no dress rehearsal for this. You have to live it.

Dani

This is it like we’re approaching middle age, we’re getting to the point where more of our life is about to be behind us than in front of us. You know, like I don’t want to get there to the end and be like, oh, I wish I wasn’t too scared to do blank. Like I don’t want to feel that way. Regret probably scares me more than anything else. So anyway, wow, this, this topic went differently than I expected it to you. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Giacomo, Dani

I mean, sometimes if we come up with these topics and they’re kind of amorphous blobs or I have an idea of the direction we want to go in the end up getting into like some sort of like actual legit conversation about it, which is where I feel like this one went.

Giacomo

Yeah.

Dani

And let me tell you after being together for 15 years. Sometimes it’s hard to almost like manufacture a conversation for a podcast between a husband and wife of over 15 years.

Giacomo

170.

Dani

Nonetheless, I don’t know how our camera just died, but what we were saying is 100 and 70 episodes and we have no intention of stopping any time soon. So once again, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. If you’re interested in any kind of one on one coaching head over to Vegan proteins.com and fill out a coaching application, or you can

shoot us an email coach at Vegan proteins.com and you’ll hear back from one of us within the day. Once again, my name is Dani Giacomo is not here and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.