“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.” Dale Carnegie
Late one night I read Judith Grisel, a neuroscientist and former addict, explain in Never Enough why a high stops coming back.
A drug gives you a good feeling. The brain treats that good feeling as a problem and fights to pull you back to normal.
Take the drug again tomorrow and the brain fights back faster. Do it for a week and the brain fights back harder and holds longer. The good feeling gets weaker each time while the brain gets stronger.
Before long you take the drug just to feel normal. The craving keeps growing even after the good feeling is gone. You end up chasing a good feeling you can no longer reach.
I set the book down because I recognized the pattern. The same rise and fade, running on something with no drug in it. My confidence.
For years I tried to talk my way into more confidence.
- Affirmations
- Hype playlists
- Clever reframes
Each one worked for about an hour. Then the old feeling crept back and set me down in the same spot. A pep talk is that same good feeling. My brain fought it back to normal before lunch.
What moved the baseline was reps. Doing the uncomfortable thing again and again.
I train jiu-jitsu. For months I showed up and got tapped. Choked, swept, pinned, over and over.
The first weeks, panic hit the moment someone passed my guard. Over time the panic came slower. Later I could breathe under the pin and still think.
One roll I caught myself calm in the exact spot that used to wreck me. The reps built that calm over months.
Off the mat, my daily experiments work the same way. Each one is something uncertain or uncomfortable. I act first, get through it and log the rep. The brave feeling shows up weeks later, once the evidence is too thick to argue with.
Tim Ferriss runs comfort challenges: hold a stranger’s eye contact, ask someone for their number, do small uncomfortable things on purpose. You act before you feel ready and the confidence catches up. Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage, as Dale Carnegie put it.
Confidence is a trailing indicator. The feeling follows the evidence. So go make some.
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What’s one thing you could do today to build evidence?
