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Do you have a dream or a goal? And you're waiting for confidence before you get started? Welcome to the Upside podcast, where we help you get unstuck in life and business by elevating your thinking and pro provoking meaningful change from the inside out. I'm your host, Teresa Flood, and today we're going to talk about confidence. And really, how do we get to a place of being confident in. In that goal or in that dream? Here is the truth. If you are waiting on confidence to start something, you are going to be waiting forever. I hate to tell you, but it's not going to happen. As a matter of fact, confidence is the end result. It's not the starting point. And so I want to give you today a really simple formula for confidence. It's very similar to how John Maxwell teaches it. Um, but I want to give you a similar formula or simple formula for confidence that I believe if you will take hard and start putting it into action, you're going to see your confidence really increase. Here's the formula. Courage plus consistency plus competency equals courage. I'm going to say that one more time. Courage plus consistency plus competency equals courage. So, so often we think that confidence is the starting point. Once I feel confident, then I will. All I need is to muster up some confidence to get started. You're looking for the wrong thing. You're trying to muster up the wrong thing. What we have to dig deep for is courage. It starts with courage. We are doing a contest, if you will. We're calling it DPR Games at my Keller Williams office. And I posted on our internal Facebook group a question. And I said, how many of you know you need to do more video on social media, but you need either more courage or more confidence or more consistency? And we did a little poll and had so many people raising their hands and saying, I need more confidence or I need more consistency. And I phrased it that way on purpose if they need more confidence. But what I know what they actually need is more courage. So we developed a 30 day challenge. I have almost a hundred agents that have signed up to gain confidence through either stepping out, encouraged, doing things that they have literally never done before. Some of these agents have never shown up on social media, especially with their face and voice on video. And then also a handful of them who needed more consistency. They were already doing video, but they just needed to get more consistent and then develop more competency because of that. And we have seen such amazing momentum because we're seeing people get into action before they're comp. They're confident. So courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyways. It's feeling the fear of failure and stepping out anyways. It's feeling the insecurities. It's feeling the fear of rejection or fear of imperfection and saying, I'm going to step out encouraged before I know exactly what the end result will be. But I'm willing to put myself, myself out there encouraged. Anytime you want to start something new, do something different, learn something different, anytime you want to go to the next level, I mean, you could pretty much say going to the next level is being new at that level, you're going to have to start with courage. So the second thing, after we muster the courage to step out, we have to get into consistency. And I like to look at consistency really as commitment on display. Consistency in what we said we were going to do is really just commitment in action. How do we look and see if somebody is committed? Well, we look and see are they consistent? Did they do what they said they were going to do? Did they show up how they said they were going to show up? Did they fulfill the commitment, which is the consistency of their words and their actions matching. So the number one way to increase confidence, and this is straight from Stephen Covey's book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. We've talked about this multiple times on this podcast, is that keeping the promises we make to ourselves increases our confidence, period. We make promises to others that we keep and we make promises daily to ourselves that we break. And over time, it erodes our confidence because we don't know that we can trust others in ourselves, that we don't believe that what we say we are going to do, we're going to actually do. And so if we want to increase our confidence doing what we say we're going to do, whatever that consistent commitment is, it doesn't always necessarily mean daily. It is the consistency that we commit to and increasing the reps. When we do that, we're going to see confidence increase. There is an aspect of the reps that again, we're going to talk about the next thing, which is competency. We don't get good without the reps. Nobody starts good day one. Nobody is perfect. The first time we try it. We have to put in the reps. You know, you hear you get better with time. You don't actually get better with time. You get better with reps, you get better with experience. Experience, you get better with more at bats. So we have to put in the reps to grow our Confidence. So again, it starts with courage. It's followed up with commitment on display, which is consistency. And that's twofold. That's keeping the promises we make to ourselves. And it's getting better because we're putting in the reps. And then the third thing is that we grow our competency. And so often we say, I want to learn, and then I will, as opposed to I want to learn and do. Learning is very experiential. It's not only experiential, though. And so whatever that next level we want to get to, I'm going to encourage you. You've got to go all in. You've got to immerse yourself in learning that over the last year and a half, as I've learned about social media, about video, about branding, about marketing, about podcasting, about keynote speaking, all of these things that I have desired to do and take to the next level. I have listened to hours and hours of podcasts. I have watched people that I admire in this space. I have examined what they do to see how can I do that. I have read books, I have talked to people, I've had my reticular activating system just zeroed in on anything I can learn on this topic. But it only gets better when you're also doing the reps. Because if I was only sitting back and learning, I wouldn't even know the questions to ask. But when you step out, encourage before you know it all, while you're still just green, while you're just a beginner, while you're just a baby, where you don't have it all figured out yet, you step out, encourage, you get really consistent because it's your commitment on display. And then you dive all in and say, okay, now I'm doing the reps. How do I get better? How do I tweak this? How do I make every time I do it better than the last time? How do I increase the excellence as to which I'm performing this? And when you have all three of those things, you're going to see your confidence increase. And here's the thing. Confidence is not either you're competent or you're not. It's something that you create and it's something that you build. So your confidence will grow as your courage grows, as your consistency grows, and as your competency grows. And then you're able to borrow that from one area of your life, you're able to borrow that win and push it into another one. Because, you know, hey, if I can be courageous over here, I realize I can be courageous over there. You know, I, I mentioned this video contest we're doing with a hundred real estate agents. Here's what I know. It's not just about video for a lot of them. For a lot of them, it's about them proving to themselves that they can do something they never thought they can do. And so the next time, when it's about picking up the phone, when it's about handling a rejection, when it's about dealing with a tough situation, all of that, they're going to have courage they didn't have before because they are becoming courageous people. They are becoming consistent people and they are becoming people who are learning based and willing to grow in their competency in whatever area it is. Remember, at the end of the day, it's always about who we're becoming. And so my challenge to you today is where can you step out in courage? Where do you need to increase your consistency? Where does your commitment need to show up? And then thirdly, where do you need to go all in on your compens competency to become the best of the best? As always, when you invest in your personal growth, every single day is going to yield you great returns. Thank you for listening to the outside and if you will subscribe@teresablood.com will be sure to send you extra valuable information each week including a teaching guide so you can use that for self reflection, for your own personal growth journey or also to lead a team or a group. Thank you for being an upsider and we'll see you next week.
Episode: Stop Waiting on Confidence: The 3 Step Formula That Actually Builds It
Host: Theresa Flood
Release Date: May 12, 2026
In this insightful and motivating episode of TheUPside Podcast, host Theresa Flood tackles a common misconception around confidence: the idea that you need to feel confident before starting something new. With her signature directness and compassion, Theresa reveals that confidence is actually the result—not the precursor—of taking action. She introduces her three-step formula for truly building confidence: Courage + Consistency + Competency = Confidence. Drawing from personal experience, practical stories, and leadership wisdom, Theresa encourages listeners to transform their relationship with confidence, take courageous steps, and create lasting personal growth.
With warmth and directness, Theresa Flood dispels the confidence myth and empowers listeners with a clear, actionable approach for building real, lasting self-assurance. By starting with courage, practicing consistency, and committing to skill mastery, anyone can cultivate the confidence needed to succeed—not just in business, but in all areas of life. Her practical examples and encouraging challenges leave listeners inspired to get into action today.
For more content and resources, subscribe at TheresaFlood.com.