
What if confidence isn’t something you’re born with but something you build? In this episode, I explain why most people struggle to believe in themselves and how to change it. You’ll learn how action, not belief, creates confidence, and how keeping small promises to yourself rewires your brain.
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When it comes to creating real, intentional change in your life, your relationships play a big part. Bumble is a dating app where connection starts with clarity and respect so you can build relationships that align with who you are and where you're headed. Ready to meet someone? Great. Start your love story on Bumble. Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob. Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor. Give us a rating review on whatever platform you listen to us on. The more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms actually show this podcast to people who've never listened to it before, which allows us just to simply impact more people's lives. So if you would do that, I would love you forever. Today I'm going to talk to you about how to be confident. Because let's be honest, if somebody followed you around all day, watched what you do, and listened to how you talk to yourself, would they describe you as someone that is worth believing in? For a lot of people, the answer to that is no. And if that's the case, it's not necessarily your fault right now. But it is your responsibility to fix. And confidence isn't about waking up one day and suddenly just feeling powerful and just commanding a room whenever you walk into it. Like people think, confidence is something that you build day in, day out by the actions that you take. It's built by keeping promises, by rewiring your brain and by facing the parts of yourself that you keep avoiding. And so let's talk about exactly how to do that step by step. When you look at confidence, the easiest way to think of confidence is believing in yourself. Someone who really, really believes in themselves is someone who has confidence. Now, I understand some people are like, I want to be confident so I can walk into a room and I can speak differently. I could command the room, and I could walk a certain way and talk a certain way. Which is fine if that's what you actually want, is to walk into a room and command it. But if you really want confidence, what you're saying is, I just want to learn how to believe in myself more. And this is a question that I get asked all the time, like, hey, how do I believe in myself so that I can take action? Like, I don't feel like I have any confidence. How can I believe in myself more so that I can take the action that I need to? And you know, the thing about it that's really interesting is that when you look at it, you have to think about, if you were watching somebody live the life that you have, would you be like, yeah, that person should believe in themselves, but. Or you going, well, based off of everything that they've been doing in the past, I wouldn't believe in them either. Like, how many times, for instance, have you lied to yourself? You know, you tell yourself that you're going to do something and you don't do it. You know, you say you're going to go to the gym and you don't. You say you're going to wake up early and you don't. You say you're going to start your business. And that was five years ago. And so I found when I didn't have confidence, the reason why I didn't have confidence was because I didn't trust myself. Because I was watching everything that I was doing in the back of my own head and I was going, well, yeah, I don't trust myself because how many times I said I'm going to do something and I'm not doing it? Like, how many times I'm just lying to myself over and over and over again. I wouldn't have confidence and trust in myself if I was somebody else. And so really, I sat down and I started thinking about it. It's like, okay, well, I want to trust myself. I want to have confidence in myself. Maybe I should start showing up for myself. There's no book that you can read on confidence. There's no course that you can Go through and you magically have 25% more confidence. Confidence comes from how you show up in your life. Confidence comes from doing the hard things in your life. There's literally a part of your brain called the interior cingulate cortex, which is where they have found confidence. Your willpower lives. And if you're the type of person who hasn't been doing what you say you're going to do, and you haven't been doing the hard things, there's a pretty good chance your interior single cortex is really small compared to somebody else who's been working really hard and pushing themself. Not because they were born differently than you are, but because every time you do something that you don't want to do, you push yourself to do something that is good for you. Your interior cingulate cortex grows. And think about it. When you have to do something and is hard, you really are doing something out of self discipline and self love. Because you know, you don't have to challenge yourself or, you know, have confidence in yourself or believe in yourself in order to eat an entire tub of ice cream, but you have to challenge yourself to go to the gym. You have to believe in yourself to push yourself to do more, to do more hard things. And so when you say you're going to go to the gym 10 times, how many times do you actually go? Two or three. And when you don't go, what do you say to yourself? Oh, you're like most people, it's like, oh, what the fuck are you doing? You're worthless, you look like shit. No wonder why you're still single. And so it's like people say they're gonna go to the gym, they don't go to the gym. And then they mentally beat themselves up over and over again for not going to the gym. And then what's even crazier is some people do go to the gym. And when you do go to the gym, you still beat yourself up. Oh, you're not working hard enough, you're still overweight, you still don't look good in a bathing suit. It's like, it's crazy if you actually think about it. Like I always say, like an aggressive dog. If you see an aggressive dog, that dog wasn't born aggressive. It associates things that walk on two legs with two arms as danger. And so it tries to protect itself every time something like that comes around them. So if you talk down to yourself when you don't go to the gym, and you talk down to yourself when you do go to the Gym, then you have associated the gym with mentally beating yourself up when you don't go and even when you do go. So, of course, like the dog that's aggressive is trying to attack somebody that's coming close to it as a way to protect themselves. Your brain has associated pain when you don't go to the gym and when you do go to the gym. So of course you're going to avoid that thing, the gym. It's a protection mechanism. You have to learn to not only push yourself, but when you do something that you said you were going to do to get really good at celebrating yourself. I know it sounds weird, but there's a thing that's called a dopamine reward system. And whenever you celebrate yourself for doing something that's harder or doing something that you said you were going to do and following through on something, your brain releases a little bit of dopamine. And your brain loves dopamine. And when it hits dopamine, guess what? It wants more of dopamine. So it's more likely to do the action that just gave it dopamine the next time that you want to versus beating yourself up. Now you're starting to fall in love with the thing that you want. You know, the way I like to think about it is like, whenever I open a package, bear, my dog, always runs to me because his treats come in a package that makes the same noise. He associates that sound of a package to treats. Our brain subconsciously associates, good or bad, with everything that we do. And so think about that. If I am really nice to myself and I say, I'm proud of you, and I say, you're doing such a good job, every time I go to the gym and I'm getting dopamine for it, I'm probably going to want to start doing it more as well. And so. All right, Rob, well, tell me, how do I start believing in myself and taking action? Here's the deal. Who said that you have to believe in yourself to take action? Who said that it is a prerequisite for that? You have to believe in yourself in order to take some sort of action. The beautiful thing about taking action is that you don't have to believe in yourself one bit in order to take action. Like, if you're a salesperson, right? You don't have to believe that anybody is going to buy. You just have to talk to enough people and follow your script. And guess what? Eventually someone's going to buy. And I understand salespeople. You have to have conviction. And if you have more conviction, you'll have more sales. I get it. But I'm just saying if you just follow the script and you talk to enough people, eventually somebody will buy. You don't even have to believe somebody will buy. You just have to pick up the phone, hit 10 numbers and talk. None of that requires you brainwashing yourself to believing in yourself or having any confidence in that. Now does it help to have belief? Of course it does. Is it required? No. Am I saying don't do affirmations? No, I'm not saying that. I love those. Am I saying, you know, don't speak positively to yourself? No. Believe me, it does help. But what I am saying is that it's not required for you to take action because most people think I want confidence so that I can take action and because in the fact that I'm not taking action right now is because I don't have confidence. And I want to unravel that and make you realize that's complete bs. Sure, having confidence will help you in taking action, but you don't have to have confidence to take any action now. But you do have to take action in order to start getting confidence. Think about that for a second. Do you know what helps you build more confidence more than anything else that helps you believe in yourself more than anything else? Doing what you say you're going to do. Following through and doing things that you didn't want to do. You know, I don't. I don't want to do this. I'm going to do it anyways. It's not even about the end result, which is the crazy part. It's not about success or not success or getting what we want or not getting we want. It's just showing up for yourself. Showing up for yourself is how you build confidence. There's always someone that's watching you and it's you. And we will be right back.
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I know you want to get the results, but the results don't matter. What matters is that you are showing up for yourself, that you're doing what you say you're going to do. If you show up for yourself and you do what you say you're going to do consistently over and over and over again over extended period of time, you will develop confidence. If you get results that are better than you've ever achieved before in the past though too then you'll definitely start believing in yourself more. And if you do it over and over and over again, your belief in yourself, your confidence will continue to rise. So how do you get results? Take action in the direction that you're trying to go. That's it like? Let me give you an example. Like, let's say you want to lose weight. You don't have to believe in yourself in order to show up at the gym. You don't have to believe that you lose weight in order to do an intense workout. You don't have to believe that you'll lose weight in order to cut out your junk food. You don't have to believe in yourself or have confidence in yourself in order to consume more water. You don't have to believe that you're going to lose weight in order for you to get more rest. You don't have to believe in yourself to do any of that. But guess what? If you do all of those things over and over and over again for an extended period of time, guess what's going to happen eventually you're going to jump on the scale and that chunky little butt of yours is going to be smaller. You're going to see a lower weight. And in a few weeks, by just doing the things, it doesn't require any belief in yourself. It doesn't require any confidence, but you just have to do it. But if you do it and you start losing the weight, guess what you're gonna start getting more of? Ah, self belief. And then it's like adding fuel to the fire, right? Do you think you're gonna believe in yourself more and have more confidence in yourself when you see that lower weight and you see yourself showing up and you see yourself pushing yourself and you see yourself making the right decisions and not going for the old bad decisions you used to? Yes. Because you are always watching yourself. That's what you've been trying to get. You know, if you're another example, if you're a salesperson and you know your numbers, right? All salespeople should really know their numbers. And you know that X amount of calls will get you, Y amount of people that pick up and Z amount of people that pick up will buy. It means that, okay, I need to make, I do my numbers and I need to make 50 calls per day for the next year and I should make $100,000. You don't have to believe that you'll make $100,000 in your sales job to pick up the phone. You don't have to believe that you'll make $100,000 in your sales job to read the script. You don't have to believe that you'll make $100,000 for you to just read a piece of paper that teach you how to overcome objections. You don't have to believe that you make $100,000 in order to do anything. But if your math is right, and as long as you take the right action and you say the right stuff and you make 50 calls every single day, you overcome objections and you follow up and do what you're supposed to, you will probably make more than $100,000. You didn't have to have any confidence for that. But will you get confidence from doing all of those things? Absolutely. You just had to take action. Most people have it backwards. They think, I need to have confidence to take action. And that's not true. You need to have. You need to take action to give yourself a chance at getting any confidence. You will become more confident when you take action. You will become more confident when you get results. Every time you start to get those results better and better than you've ever gotten, you'll start to believe in yourself more. If you want to write a book, you don't have to believe in yourself to write 500 words today. You don't have to believe in yourself in order to outline your plot. You don't have to believe in yourself in order to set a timer and write for 20 minutes. You don't have to believe in yourself in order to. To, you know, you don't. Anybody will ever read your book in order to edit the first draft, right? And so I just want you to understand, you just have to take the action. And when you take the right action, when you write the book, when you go to the gym and you start doing the things that you know that you need to do, you will start believing in yourself more. You will grow your confidence from doing the things you didn't want to do. When you look in the mirror and you start to visually see the weight off of your body, do you think you're going to start to believe in yourself just a little bit more in week after week? And you look better and you feel better and you're showing up and you can see yourself showing up, and you're talking positively to yourself and you're rewarding yourself by saying, I'm so proud of you doing such a good job. You're doing such a good job. I'm so proud of you. And you're seeing lower weight. Do you think you're going to start having more confidence? Yes. More and more and more. Not because you're trying to brainwash it into yourself, but because you are seeing yourself take the action. When you get your first sale, do you think you're going to believe in yourself? More? Yeah. Your second sale, your third sale, your 40th sale. Do you think you're going to believe in yourself more than your first sale? Absolutely. So what's the key takeaway here? You don't have to believe in yourself in order to take action. You just have to take the right action and the results will come. And when the results come, you will start to believe in yourself more and more. And so confidence comes from action. Most people are like, I need to meditate confidence into myself. I need to read a book on confidence. I need to find some confidence guru to teach it to me. No, you need to get your ass up and do what needs to be done. And one day you're going to wake up and realize that because of all of the action that you took over the past six months or the past year, the past two years, you're going to wake up and be like, wait, I have way more confidence in myself than I ever have. Not because you waited to believe in yourself, but because you took action and you did what you needed to do, you did what you said you were going to do, and you also got some results. A confident person is not born confident. A confident person is built. For me, I was so unconfident as a human. I was so shy, never talked to anybody. I didn't know anything about public speaking, but. But then I was just forced to get into sales and to cold call people and to stand on stage and give speeches and brick by brick by brick by brick by brick, all of those, I ended up building a wall of confidence. Anybody has this option to them. So if you want confidence, if you want to believe in yourself, get your ass off the couch, put your phone down and take some action. Then if you want to add fuel to that fire, take action. And then get really good at positive self talk. If you want to be a superhuman, get really good at taking action and get really good at talking to yourself better than anybody on this earth talks to you. Be your number one fan. And if you do that, then you'll have superhuman confidence. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in Obdial Junior. R O B D I A L J R and if you're out there and you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of just this podcast, I have multiple programs that go all the way from 12 weeks all the way up to 12 months. So if you want to learn more about it, go to coachwithrob.com once again, coachwithrob.com and with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day at Capella University.
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Podcast Summary: The Mindset Mentor
Host: Rob Dial
Episode: "Give Me 15 Minutes and I’ll Make You Dangerously Confident"
Date: November 7, 2025
In this episode, Rob Dial dives deep into the roots of true confidence and dispels myths about what it means to be "dangerously confident." Rather than seeing confidence as a trait you’re born with or something that appears overnight, Rob explains that confidence is built through daily actions, keeping promises to yourself, and changing the way you interact with your own mind. Mixing psychology, neuroscience, and tactical advice, Rob walks listeners through how confidence actually grows and gives practical steps to foster it—regardless of where you’re starting from.
You don't need to become confident before you act. You become confident by acting—over, and over, and over. The more you do what you say you'll do, and the more positively you celebrate those acts (no matter how small), the faster you’ll build dangerous levels of confidence.
"A confident person is not born; a confident person is built." — Rob Dial