Editor’s note: Season 10 of the Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta podcast explores the science of happiness. You can listen to episodes here.
(CNN) – Everyone has encountered them: people who always seem to know what they are doing. They gladly take control of a situation, express their opinions as if they were proven facts, or dive into a project believing they will succeed – with or without the necessary experience.
What magic powder was sprinkled on your breakfast cereals to give them this superpower?
“Confidence – it’s probably the most important resource in human well-being and performance, I believe,” neuroscientist and psychologist Ian Robertson recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his Chasing Life podcast.
Robertson is professor emeritus of psychology and co-director of the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and the T. Boone Pickens Distinguished Chair of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas.
“Trust is a two-pronged belief,” said Robertson, author of “How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Confidence.”
“It’s the belief that you he can do something, and it is the belief that if you do that thing, you will receive a reward or get the result you want.”
When you feel confident, you’re more likely to succeed because confidence activates brain circuits that produce elevated mood, lower anxiety and sharper thoughts — which increases the chances of success, Robertson said. These are the same brain circuits that activate when you succeed. So whether you have confidence or are successful at even a small task, it leads to success and then even more confidence.
“The greatest source of success is success,” Robertson said. “And success, like confidence, works like compound interest: it is exponential. A little grows steadily.
You can listen to the full episode here.
If confidence is at one end of the spectrum, anxiety is at the other, Robertson said.
“If you don’t have confidence, if you don’t think you can do it, it creates anxiety because of the prospect of failure,” he said. “The biggest source of anxiety is the fear of negative evaluation from other people, and almost all anxiety has to do with other people.”
Furthermore, anxiety activates circuits that disrupt “the fluid synchronization of different brain regions that are critical for elite or high-level performance,” he noted.
Research shows that people who suffer from chronic anxiety do less of everything, Robertson said.
“They do less…socially, they do less at work, they do less in hobbies and interests,” he said. “Why? Because their brains are wired for a threat mindset, where they anticipate and focus their attention on possible negative outcomes and threats. And this inhibits the brain systems that confidently do the opposite.”
For example, Robertson said, consider two 5-year-old girls: They are equally smart and capable, but one has a little more confidence than the other.
“That slight difference in confidence will mean that girl is more likely to try something new. One little thing: ask a question, (be) less afraid of making a mistake,” he said. “And that will probably result in a small success. This means she’s more likely to take the next step. And when these two girls turn 25, there is a huge gap in their performance and well-being because of the exponential nature of the math of confidence.”
All is not lost if you were not born full of confidence. Robertson has five tips for boosting confidence, even in difficult circumstances.
Take action
Taking steps to do something and then doing it (no matter how shaky you feel) will result in a burst of confidence.
“Trust is linked to the brain’s action systems,” Robertson said. “The great Persian poet Rumi said that the path only appears with the first step. And people who lack confidence and have anxiety tend to avoid taking action because they see a ‘threat’.”
Taking action despite anxiety is very important for building confidence, Roberston said.
Choose your focus carefully
What you pay attention to determines your emotional state, so choose wisely, Robertson said.
“If you’re giving a talk to a group of people and there are some people on the phone or frowning, your attention will be on them because… that’s what we do when we feel threatened,” Robertson said.
“However, if you deliberately choose to pay attention to the majority of people, or to one person who seems interested in the front row, who is smiling… you will feed your brain with positive thoughts and images that will help you remember past successes. rather than past failures.”
He said that being intentional in this way will not only reduce your anxiety and lessen the effort you will have to put into the task, but it will also increase your confidence.
Adopt a growth mindset
Your attitude towards yourself and your skills can make a difference.
“You have to believe that change is possible,” Robertson said. People with a “growth” mindset believe that with effort you can learn skills and cultivate talents; on the other hand, those with a “fixed” mindset believe that talents and skills are innate – you either have them or you don’t.
“If you have a fixed mindset – that is, you believe that your abilities or emotions are determined by genetics or inheritance – then you will not engage in… the slowdowns that learning entails,” Robertson said. “You can learn to be more confident – but not if you paralyze yourself with a fixed mindset.”
Fixed theories about you are “always wrong” because the human brain is enormously plastic at all ages, he explained.
Deal with your anxiety
Anxiety is corrosive to confidence, so reframe anxiety as excitement.
“You can manage anxiety by not being afraid of it and not treating it like an alien force coming in, but rather seeing it as a form of energy that you can harness,” Robertson said. “In fact, the bodily and brain symptoms of anxiety are identical to those of arousal.”
Robertson recommends that if you’re faced with a situation that makes you anxious, like a difficult conversation or an interview, adopt a “challenge” mindset.
“You can really change your state of mind to ‘Oh, can I perform here?’ versus ‘Oh, terrible things are going to happen,’” he said. “And you can help do that with the words you say to yourself: ‘I’m excited.’”
Robertson said that doing this doesn’t mean you won’t get nervous, but by using language you are tapping into a form of energy.
Affirm your values
Define yourself and what you stand for, he said.
“Because who you are as a person is based on what you stand for and what’s important to you, what your values are,” Robertson said.
“And if you take just a few seconds to write down what your values are and why they are important to you and what they mean to you, the evidence shows that your brain will then be more resilient and protected against the fear of criticism, of humiliation, of failure.”
In other words, Robertson said, you will be protected from the destructive anxiety that erodes confidence.
We hope these five tips help you boost your confidence. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week on the Chasing Life podcast, when—after the recent presidential debate—we examine what normal aging looks like.
CNN Audio’s Eryn Mathewson contributed to this report.
For more news and newsletters from CNN, create an account at CNN.com
