You Become Confident After You Take Action

If you had to choose, who would you trust more: someone with great intentions or someone who consistently keeps their word? We take that same question and point it at the mirror, because self-trust is often the missing piece in personal growth. When we keep telling ourselves “I’ll start,” “I’ll change,” or “I’ll do better,” and then we don’t follow through, we quietly train our mind to doubt us. That doubt shows up later as hesitation, overthinking, and stalled momentum. 

We stay in the reclamation phase of the C2R2E methodology (collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamation, elevation) and get specific about how to rebuild confidence after a setback or a major life transition. I share why transitions don’t just change your circumstances, they can change your relationship with yourself. Then we flip one of the most common myths on its head: confidence doesn’t come before action. Confidence is the result of action, practice, and showing up when it’s uncomfortable. 

From there, we make it practical. Every promise you keep sends a message that you can count on yourself, and those messages compound into identity. Instead of making massive, unrealistic vows, we focus on small commitments you can keep this week and repeat next week. We close with four reflective questions you can use to rebuild self-trust, strengthen accountability, and prepare for the final phase: elevation. 

If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s rebuilding momentum, and leave a review so more people can find The Next Baseline.

Transcript

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Who Do You Really Trust

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Who do you trust more? The person who happens to make promises and they sound good and they sound like they're well-intentioned, or the person who actually follows through with the promises that they've made and they keep to their word. And I think most of us would agree that the person or the individual that we would trust is a person that actually is a person of their word and means what they say and does exactly what they say they're going to do. And here's the thing with respect to trust. Trust is not going to be built upon a foundation where someone just has happens to have good intentions. Versus trust is actually built because actions consistently match the words that a person is professing to make. So here's a harder question that I'm going to pose here. Would you actually trust yourself? So if someone watched only the promises that you have made to yourself over the last year and only you know what they were, in fact, think of this for a moment. What New Year's resolutions did you make to yourself for just a moment? So based off that alone, if someone external to you were watching, would they conclude? Could this be the conclusion they can make about you? That you're someone who actually follows through and does what they say they're going to do? Or are you someone that starts and stops? Are you someone who waits until they feel motivated to get started? Are you someone who gives up when life gets difficult? And here's the thing: those questions are not meant to be easy. They're not meant to be easily answered. But I think they are important questions to ask because for today's episode, we're going to talk about, I think, one of the things that I oftentimes I believe gets overlooked in the journey of personal growth. And that's learning to trust yourself again. So

Why Self-Trust Gets Shaken

SPEAKER_02 2:30

with that, welcome back to another episode of the next baseline. I'm Danny DeHesus, and this podcast is where we explore the one key question that we always ask: what do we build now to reach our next baseline? So last episode, we entered the fourth phase of the C2R2E methodology. And again, if this is your first time coming onto the episode onto an episode of the next baseline, C2R2E simply stands for collapse confrontation, realignment, reclamation, and elevation. In the last episode, we touched on reclamation. We talked about specifically about becoming the author of your next chapter, taking extreme ownership of your reactivity and your response to life and life situations, picking the pen back up to become the author and the writer of your present chapter and the future chapters of your life. And so today I want to stay, I want to continue to stay in reclamation because I think there's another piece to unravel here where we need to understand something that we need to understand before we can move into the final phase that, again, as a reminder, I call elevation. And it's the constant this concept of trust and not trust in other people, but trust in yourself. And so why does self-trust matter? And so I think something I've learned that I want to share that I've learned over the years is that times of major life transition, and life is full of transitions, they just don't change, it doesn't just mark a change in our circumstances. Major life transitions can change our relationships, for example, not just our external relationships, but also the relationship with ourselves. And we often begin questioning our own judgment, especially when something in life doesn't go right. We start asking questions like, how did I not see this coming? Why did I stay? Why did I stay in a situation longer than it longer than it should have persisted? Can I even trust my own decisions? And what if I make another mistake? And sometimes those questions can become or even feel so loud and noisy that we stop moving altogether. It's almost like we become paralyzed, and not because we lack some sort of inability to take action or to make sense

Confidence Comes After Action

SPEAKER_02 5:20

of it. But I think part of it is we lose confidence within ourselves. And so with that, here's something that I've come to believe about confidence. And it's not necessarily a starting point per se.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

And confidence doesn't come before action.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Confidence, in fact, comes because of action. So think about it for a moment. Just follow me here. For those of driving age, for example, and I'll use this anecdote, you weren't confident the first time you drove a car. Or, for example, for those public speakers out there, you weren't confident the first time you gave your first presentation, or you started a new job. However, confidence grew over the span of time because of practice, and practice is the mother of all skill. You know, confidence grows because you show up consistently, because you kept going even when it was hard. And here's the thing: life transitions work the same way. We cannot wait, and we should not wait until we feel confident to be active participants throughout a life transitionary moment. We build confidence only by consistently acting in alignment with who we want to become.

Keep Promises To Rebuild Trust

SPEAKER_02 6:48

So, with that, and I think this is a good segue into my next point here, is that every promise you make to yourself matters. And one of the fastest ways to rebuild trust in yourself, I think it's very simple. Keep the promises that you make. Keep the resolutions that you make. Do what you say you're gonna do. If you say you're gonna go for a walk, take a walk. If you say you're going to read 10 pages, then do that. Read 10, read 10 pages. If you say you're going to have that tough conversation, be true to your word and have that tough conversation. And not because any, and here's the thing, you know, I'm not saying any one of these decisions that you're going to make is going to change your life overnight because change in life comes over the span of time, but rather because every promise that you keep to yourself is going to send your mind a message. That, and this is the message that you can count on yourself, that you can be consistent. And over time, those messages, those messages that you're telling yourself is what's going to become your identity.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

So with that, when we you know, I we we go down this path.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

I'm talking about keeping promises to yourself. You know, but but the big thing is we have to start somewhere.

Start Small And Let It Compound

SPEAKER_02 8:31

And sometimes I think we have a habit of starting too big, too big too soon. And I think that's where people often struggle. People struggle with change because they make promises that they're not prepared to keep. I'm I'm going to change everything. Um, you know, and then when it doesn't work out, we say we're never going to do that again. Or, for example, I'm going to completely reinvent reinvent myself. And those promises may feel very inspiring and very good and may very feel good in the moment, but they're often too big. They're too big, too fast, you're not prepared, they're too unrealistic. And then we break a promise to ourselves. And without realizing it, we start to reinforce the belief that we can't trust ourselves, or even from a different perspective, we believe we start to believe that we can't reach that next level. And so we always have to start small. I always encourage start small. And not because your thinking is necessarily small, but when you can build on small steps, it becomes a snowball effect over the span of time. This is where we can get into the compound effect. And life is built on everyday small decisions. So every time your actions, every time you take action, you're going to strengthen trust in yourself. Every time you keep a commitment, you're going to strengthen trust within yourself. Every time you choose discipline over distraction, you're going to strengthen the trust within yourself. And little by little you're going to be to begin embarking on a journey of becoming somebody that you may have not thought you can transform into.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Reclamation is something that's earned.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

And with self-trust, the ability to be confidence, that's an earned attribute. And it's not earned, it's not going to be earned through perfection, but rather it's going to be earned through consistency by showing up again and again, even when it's hard, by showing up the next day and the next day after that. And not because you're trying to prove something to the world, but really it's because the only person you have to prove anything to is yourself. The only person you're competing with is yourself.

Four Questions To Reflect On

SPEAKER_02 11:34

So with that being said, you know, I want I always finish my episodes with some reflective questions. So before we finish today's episode, I have four questions that I'm going to share with you. And here's the first question.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

What promise have you been making to yourself that you keep breaking? That's the first question. Very simple.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

What promise or resolution, even, have you been making to yourself that you keep breaking? The second question is, and I think it's a little deeper, why? Why do you keep breaking that?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

You know, also why do you keep m making promises to yourself that you can't keep? Question three.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

What's one commitment that's small enough that you know you can keep this week? And I'm not asking to solve, you know, how to achieve world peace or anything like that. Just just make it small. What's one small commitment that you can make that you can actually keep? If that's going out for a walk, if that's reading 10 pages in a book, if that's going to the gym, if that's it's if it's having that tough conversation, just figure it out what it is. Start and start there and see where it goes. And then do it again. And and again. Keep showing up every day. And then final question: how would your life change if you became someone who can consistently trust themselves and who can consistently keep the promises to themselves?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

So remember, don't underestimate small promises because small promises is going to compound to big wins, to big transformative wins.

C2R2E Recap And Elevation Tease

SPEAKER_02 13:39

So in closing, we're gonna recap here C2R2E, collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamation, elevation, and we haven't we're not diving into elevation just yet, but up until now, you know, these phases have asked specific things for us to think about.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Collapse, for example, is what isn't working.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Confrontation then asks, what is true? Realignment then asks, what values will guide your next baseline? And then reclamation asks, will you take ownership of your life? And then today's conversation that adds another nuance to reclamation.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I'm gonna give you one more. Can you become a trustworthy person? Can you become accountable to yourself?

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Because here's the thing confidence isn't something that you just sit there and you wait for it to happen. It's something that you have to build with time. You build it by being true to your promises, being true to the decisions that you make, being true to being true to taking one action at a time. So next time, on the next episode, we're we're about to embark and enter the final phase of C2R2E, and that's elevation. The moment where the transformation is no longer just something you survived and journeyed through. But it is, in fact, it's something that fundamentally fundamentally will change the way you live and your perspective on life. So with that, it's been an honor as always and a privilege to have these conversations with you. And with that, I'm Danny De Jesus. And this has been another episode of the Next Baseline. And the links to this, to the whole entire Elobotus ecosystem is going to be in the description below to include all of our social media handles. And so with that, I want to wish you all the peace, love, joy, and happiness in the world. And so until next time, until we meet again and connect again and keep asking, the one key and central question we're always asking on this podcast is, and that is what do we build now to reach our next our our next baseline? So, with that, take care and look forward to connecting with you on our next episode.