Hi everyone, Carly Taylor here for this week's My Joe Monday. So today we are going to be talking about a subject which I am very very close to you, so I'm excited to talk to you about this, and that is around building confidence. So confidence is something that I had personally struggled with, and I actually remember being confident as a child, and I would always be the first to, you know, enthusiastically put my hand up to recite a poem in front of the class, or I would audition for the school play. And then slowly, over time the other kids started to be critical of this enthusiasm and I entered into my teenage years and the need to fit in and the awareness of what other people were thinking of me starting to chip away at both that enthusiasm and also the confidence that I had in myself, and I started to shy away from I guess the spotlight being the kind of center of attention, and that memory of feeling confident or being confident, I think really highlights how powerful the teenage years are in shaping us. And I have actually kept journals from when I was seven years old, so I have this documented narrative from my childhood through my teenage years and into adulthood, and I can see how my lack of confidence in different areas of my life played out, particularly in social situations and also in work. But the difference now is that I understand that I don't need to feel confident to do the things that I really want to do. And of course my mind tells me don't do it because it's way too risky. But you actually have to do the thing you're not confident about to gain the confidence. And this is where competence comes in because competent. Being competent is about what you can do. It's your skills and your knowledge. Confidence, on the other hand, is trusting your ability to not only use those skills, but to accept the risk that it may not work out the way you want it to. So the Latin meaning of confidence, so this is really interesting. So the Latin meaning of confidence is with trust. So con is with and fdare is trust. So confidence is with trust. So you think about someone you know who you have confidence in. You trust they are going to do the things they say they're going to do. You have trust that they have the experiences, the training, the expertise, or the good character. So I'll give you an example. So my son had major surgery last year where he had a tumor removed from his peturitory glands, which is at the base of the brain, So pretty major surgery, and we had two surgeons. We had a neurosurgeon and an E and T surgeon, and we had confidence in them because the neurosurgeon had done the same surgery only six months prior, despite this being an incredibly rare disease in children. So we had that hope, that trust in him because of his competency. Along with all the anxiety and the fear and everything that came up in it, we still had confidence in his ability. So how do we then develop the confidence in ourselves? How do we approach ourselves with trust? And how do we do the things that scare us with trust in ourselves? We have to work at our competence. So, for example, if you want to be good at public speaking, you have to put yourself out there and do it. There's no other way to build that confidence, that trust in yourself. The only way to do that is to build your competence. If you're not confidence with say small talk in a social setting, which is such a common thing for people. The only way you're going to trust yourself to experience the small talk is practice it, and then over time the confidence will grow. So the magic happens when confidence and competence work together. So when you tap into that courage, you trust yourself enough to try, and in turn, you are growing. You are developing the skills to grow stronger, and you're training yourself in your confidence. Otherwise, what's the alternative. You live in your comfort zone, which, let's face it, doesn't end up very comfortable, because we know you can only grow from moving through discomfort in the service of what is important to us, our goals, our connections with people, and our experiences. And if that inner voice pipes up, which it no doubt will, what if I'm not good enough? What if I fail? You thank your mind knowing that confidence doesn't come from knowing everything. It doesn't come from everything being perfect. You don't have to have your environment, your situation perfect before you start. You don't have to have complete certainty of the outcome. It grows. Your confidence grows when you take action, when you learn, you train yourself and your competency, and you keep showing up. So I invite you this week to dip your toe outside of your comfort zone. You can start small and choose one task, one task that kind of brings up that inner discomfort, that brings up that inner voice that says, oh, I don't know, you should maybe shouldn't do this, and then prepare yourself as best you can, build that competency, and then do it. And what's important is that you don't celebrate the outcome. You celebrate the effort because you gave it a go, you showed up, and each attempt builds that competency and with it, your confidence will grow. And remember, confidence is a journey, it's not a destination. And you are exactly as you are right now. So now take that next step. So I want to wish everyone a merry Christmas, and I hope you get to have a little break over the Christmas period and I will catch you before the new year. I'll catch you next week. Sia

Hi everyone, Carly Taylor here for this week's My Joe Monday. So today we are going to be talking about a subject which I am very very close to you, so I'm excited to talk to you about this, and that is around building confidence. So confidence is something that I had personally struggled with, and I actually remember being confident as a child, and I would always be the first to, you know, enthusiastically put my hand up to recite a poem in front of the class, or I would audition for the school play. And then slowly, over time the other kids started to be critical of this enthusiasm and I entered into my teenage years and the need to fit in and the awareness of what other people were thinking of me starting to chip away at both that enthusiasm and also the confidence that I had in myself, and I started to shy away from I guess the spotlight being the kind of center of attention, and that memory of feeling confident or being confident, I think really highlights how powerful the teenage years are in shaping us. And I have actually kept journals from when I was seven years old, so I have this documented narrative from my childhood through my teenage years and into adulthood, and I can see how my lack of confidence in different areas of my life played out, particularly in social situations and also in work. But the difference now is that I understand that I don't need to feel confident to do the things that I really want to do. And of course my mind tells me don't do it because it's way too risky. But you actually have to do the thing you're not confident about to gain the confidence. And this is where competence comes in because competent. Being competent is about what you can do. It's your skills and your knowledge. Confidence, on the other hand, is trusting your ability to not only use those skills, but to accept the risk that it may not work out the way you want it to. So the Latin meaning of confidence, so this is really interesting. So the Latin meaning of confidence is with trust. So con is with and fdare is trust. So confidence is with trust. So you think about someone you know who you have confidence in. You trust they are going to do the things they say they're going to do. You have trust that they have the experiences, the training, the expertise, or the good character. So I'll give you an example. So my son had major surgery last year where he had a tumor removed from his peturitory glands, which is at the base of the brain, So pretty major surgery, and we had two surgeons. We had a neurosurgeon and an E and T surgeon, and we had confidence in them because the neurosurgeon had done the same surgery only six months prior, despite this being an incredibly rare disease in children. So we had that hope, that trust in him because of his competency. Along with all the anxiety and the fear and everything that came up in it, we still had confidence in his ability. So how do we then develop the confidence in ourselves? How do we approach ourselves with trust? And how do we do the things that scare us with trust in ourselves? We have to work at our competence. So, for example, if you want to be good at public speaking, you have to put yourself out there and do it. There's no other way to build that confidence, that trust in yourself. The only way to do that is to build your competence. If you're not confidence with say small talk in a social setting, which is such a common thing for people. The only way you're going to trust yourself to experience the small talk is practice it, and then over time the confidence will grow. So the magic happens when confidence and competence work together. So when you tap into that courage, you trust yourself enough to try, and in turn, you are growing. You are developing the skills to grow stronger, and you're training yourself in your confidence. Otherwise, what's the alternative. You live in your comfort zone, which, let's face it, doesn't end up very comfortable, because we know you can only grow from moving through discomfort in the service of what is important to us, our goals, our connections with people, and our experiences. And if that inner voice pipes up, which it no doubt will, what if I'm not good enough? What if I fail? You thank your mind knowing that confidence doesn't come from knowing everything. It doesn't come from everything being perfect. You don't have to have your environment, your situation perfect before you start. You don't have to have complete certainty of the outcome. It grows. Your confidence grows when you take action, when you learn, you train yourself and your competency, and you keep showing up. So I invite you this week to dip your toe outside of your comfort zone. You can start small and choose one task, one task that kind of brings up that inner discomfort, that brings up that inner voice that says, oh, I don't know, you should maybe shouldn't do this, and then prepare yourself as best you can, build that competency, and then do it. And what's important is that you don't celebrate the outcome. You celebrate the effort because you gave it a go, you showed up, and each attempt builds that competency and with it, your confidence will grow. And remember, confidence is a journey, it's not a destination. And you are exactly as you are right now. So now take that next step. So I want to wish everyone a merry Christmas, and I hope you get to have a little break over the Christmas period and I will catch you before the new year. I'll catch you next week. Sia