I want you to think about something. When was the last time you really took a leap, maybe outside your comfort zone, when you did something that scared you, and then you crushed it? You gave that speech, you started that project, you talked to that person. How did that make you feel? My next guest says experiences like these, where we take a risk and then successfully accomplish something, not only take a bit of confidence, but also help us build even more confidence, and importantly, make us happier.

Confidence is a bridge over uncertainty. The future is always uncertain, but confidence allows you to price in uncertainty, to be able to handle uncertainty and the possibility of failure.

That's Ian Robertson. He's a neuropsychologist. He works with Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, as well as a center for brain health at the University of Texas, Dallas. He is author of How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self Belief. His basic premise is this, Even accomplishing small tasks help us to build confidence, help us to feel successful.

The greatest source of success is success. And success, like confidence, acts like compound interest. It's exponential. A little bit grows steadily because of the mathematics of confidence, if you like, the mathematics of success.

But Ian will acknowledge that getting those wins, building that confidence, it's not always easy. He has been studying psychology in the brain for decades. He's published books and articles. He has a reputation as a renowned neurosci scientist, but he still remembers times when even his confidence was low.

When I started off, I was a working class guy living in what we call council houses in Glasgow, and very, quite low confidence When I was about to speak, I felt very anxious, partly because of a very working class accent. And there was one particular person in the class who had come from Oxford, and I always felt rather intimidated in his presence and all that. And then there was one seminar, and he said something, and I realized that I was as smart as him, and it just changed my belief in what I could contribute intellectually.

Ian says he learned a really important lesson from this, that you can look confident even when you feel differently. And conversely, you can be really good at something and not feel confident about it.

And it turns out this guy was a lovely guy, very nice There was nothing wrong with him. It's just he had all the external trappings of confidence actually inside. He was as uncertain about himself as I was, and it was actually seeing through that and realizing, Oh, actually, I can do that.

Ian does credit a lot of his success to hard work and a chance. But that experience with that classmate, it's so relatable. I mean, who hasn't felt a little intimidated by someone who appeared to be smarter than you, better looking, more skilled or sophisticated indicated, whatever the measure may be? So I wanted to speak to Ian to understand confidence. I wanted to know what its impact on health could be. I wanted to understand what its impact on happiness could be. But I also really I wanted to know this, is confidence innate? Is it fixed? Is it something you are more or less born with? Or how much we could possibly develop it over time? And is there any value in that old saying, Fake it till you make it? I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, and this is Chasing Life.

I have so many questions for you. I've I'm really looking forward to this, but I want to make sure we set the table correctly on this conversation. I thought a lot about confidence going into this discussion with you. I think, for example, in the operating room, I can tell when one of my residents who I'm training in neurosurgery is confident. If I had to dissect why they are confident, like what's giving them that confidence, almost always it is their level of preparation. Whereas Because at the same time, somebody who's not confident, it's almost always I can probe pretty quickly and find out that they did not prepare as well. So I guess that's talking about some of how to get confidence. But I'm curious, even before we get there, how do you define confidence?

Well, confidence is a belief with two strands to it. It's the belief you can do something, and it's the belief that if you do that thing, you will get a reward or get an outcome you desire. And that leads to four states of the mind or brain, can't do, can't happen, which is apathy, where you see lower tonic dopamine activity in people who are apathetic. And that means in that state, your mood is lower, your anxiety is higher, your motivation is low, and your ability to simply initiate is reduced. And then bottom right of this four squares, if you can visualize them as can do, can happen, and that is confidence. Believing you can do something, for instance, some difficult neurosurgery that you maybe haven't done very much before. The belief you can do that, actually your brain treats as if you had done it. So it's anticipating a success generates a response that you would get to an actual success. That increases dopamine activity a little bit in your brain. That lifts your mood, that lowers your anxiety, and therefore, lowers norepinephrine levels, and therefore, you get less likelihood of interference with your dexterity or your performance because of high norepinephrine.

It also makes you better able to initiate, to take action. You're more motivated. And finally, you're a little bit smarter because of the increased dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex. And therefore, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so you actually then do the thing, and you're more likely to succeed.

I want to pause here for a second because it's important to spotlight a couple of points. As Ian mentioned, there are four states of the mind connected to confidence. Think of a two by two grid. In the top left is apathy, where we feel like we can't do something. And even if we were to do it, it wouldn't result in our desired outcome outcome anyway. In the bottom right-hand box is confidence. That's the belief we can do something that would actually result in the desired outcome. The other two states include anger. That's the feeling that we can do something, but even if we did it, we would not get our desired outcome. And the last is anxiety, which is what we experience when we can't do something that would lead to our desired outcome. For Ian, probably for most of us, the ideal state is confidence, which at its core is the belief you can do something and that that something is going to get you a desired reward, maybe a new job, a new skill, a new relationship. Now, Ian says that the same brain system is activated both when we have confidence we can do something and when we actually accomplish it.

So both, having the belief and doing the thing, leave us with a lifted mood, lowered anxiety, sharper thinking, all of which it more likely we are going to succeed. It is a self-perpetuating upward cycle.

Confidence is a bridge over uncertainty. The future is always uncertain, but confidence allows you to price in uncertainty, to be able to handle uncertainty and the possibility of failure. But the chances are you will be successful, in which case you get the double whammy of all the brain's responses to actual success, particularly traditionally success in something that was slightly stretching your skills or your abilities. And yes, I can believe you completely, Sanjay, that the more confident of your interns are the ones who have done the preparation. Now, they're still going to be a little bit anxious, but because they've created a goal that's more proximal to their actual abilities, they're more likely to do it successfully.

That is fascinating. The The idea of confidence being something that can be calming, something that can help you initiate the activity so you're not just paralyzed, and can actually, as you say, make you a little bit smarter because you have that dopamine surge potentially as well. That's really interesting. Is it fair to say that if you're lacking confidence, it's the opposite of those things?

Yes, it is. If you lack confidence, if If you don't think you can do that thing, then that will generate anxiety because of the prospect of failure. The greatest source of anxiety is the fear of the negative evaluation of other people, and almost all anxiety has to do with other people. And that increase in our epinephrine disrupts the fluid synchronization of different brain regions that are critical for elite or top performance, and so interferes with them. And so it becomes A self-fulfilling prophecy also, but in reverse. You doubt you can do it, and therefore that makes you less likely to be able to do it. Confidence, it is probably the most important resource in human well-being and human performance, I believe, of course.

Well, you are in a position to be able to say these things, though. Leaving aside the point that we agree on, which is that preparation is probably going to be a criteria for confidence, how much just overall would you say confidence is nature versus nurture?

We can never determine an exact percentage because it depends on the base population we're dealing with it. So my rule of thumb is For most things, let's say it's 50/50. But the thing is, like most of these genetically-determined temperamental differences, they're hugely shaped very early on by the environment by how people respond to them. So even these basic tendencies towards being dominant, for example, or being confident, they can be shaped out of a person very early on depending on the family responses to them. And similarly, someone who's timid and withdrawn can have their confidence shaped and strengthened very much by depending on the family and the environment and the experiences that that child has. So for instance, if you take two five-year-old girls, equally intelligent, equally capable, but one of them is slightly more confident than the other, that slight difference in confidence will mean that that little girl is more likely to try something new. Tiny thing, ask a question, less frightened to make a mistake. And that will result more likely in a small success. That means she's then more likely to do the next step. And by the time these two girls are 25, there's a yarning gap in their achievement and their well-being because of the exponential nature of the mathematics of confidence.

That is really interesting. And I think anybody who's listening that has kids in particular can immediately try to envision that, the benefits of confidence at any age, but certainly at a very young age. To me, confidence seems to be something that you get because of X, Y, Z, because Because you have put in the hours of training, because you have studied harder, because you have practiced harder. Therefore, you can be confident. But it sounds like what you're saying, Professor, is in and of itself, confidence can be a benefit, just to be a confident person.

Yes. Partly because confidence will make you more likely to do these things that you've just alluded to. The confidence that you can learn a musical instrument, for instance, will mean that you will be less likely to give up and say, I'm not musical, when you have the bad practice session where the sounds are awful. The ups and downs of learning. Confidence helps you bridge the downs where you think, I'm just not good at this. These are what I call the big eye thoughts of the fixed mindset, which can sabotage your ability to persist through setbacks and failure. So yes, preparation, practice, putting in the 10,000 hours to build skills, but it's also a set of habits. And it can be learned this belief that you can do this thing and that there will be a benefit from doing this. There's a lot of people who are superficially so confident and you think, how can they possibly be anxious or feel like an imposter? But actually, if you're not sometimes feeling like an imposter, then you're maybe developing an unhealthy relationship to confidence.

So very confident people who don't have an unhealthy relationship with confidence may, at times, suffer from imposter syndrome.

Well, put it this way, I don't want to have anyone leading me who doesn't sometimes feel like an imposter because that's evidence that you're not taking yourself 100% too seriously. You're not overvaluing your own ego and your own abilities, attributing everything to some special special quality of yourself, as opposed to realizing who we are and what we achieve is a result of many factors. Many of them we don't have a lot of control over. And successful business people know that failures are a stepping stone to success often, and you have to be able to ride these failures and accept them and not take all the credit for the successes you have because there's a huge amount of luck in that.

How would you describe the connection between confidence and happiness?

Very, very strong. To take a slight sidebar, we know there's a very inexorable relationship between socioeconomic status and well-being and happiness. The wealthier you tend to be, the happier you tend to be. There are limits to that at the upper ends, but it goes quite far up. And so that means if you're poor and low down the socioeconomic scale, and you can see changes in the brain associated with that, you tend to be sicker, you have lower well-being. However, there's one fascinating factor that almost gets rid of that relationship, and that is having a sense of control. So people, no matter socioeconomic status, if people have a high sense of personal control over their own immediate lives, a feeling the opposite of apathy, then you don't get that same linear relationship between socioeconomic status and well-being and happiness. And that's because control gives you agency. And agency is linked to confidence. That is the most amazing antidote against the corrosion of of poverty and of misfortune and of trauma. So that's why control and confidence are really critical in happiness.

After the break, Ian is going to explain the science behind faking it till we make it and why he thinks most of us are a little overconfident. We'll be right back.

This may surprise you I'm not sure, but I'm in my mid-fifties now, and I feel that as you learn more in life, I feel you also are becoming acutely aware of how much you still don't know. The more you know, the more you realize you don't. That's not directly related to confidence, but I think there is some connective tissue there. I think I'm a pretty confident person. I think you have to be to do the work, probably, that you do and that I But I also, I think in some ways there's a humility that has grown. I don't know that humility is the opposite of confidence, but I think I'm more humble and maybe less confident, more willing to espouse other points of view now, maybe even than I was when I was younger.

Sanjay, I'd call that mature confidence. It's what, as we get older, we should aspire to. We should become less attached to our egos as we get older. We're not more attached. It becomes less of a threat to our self-concept if we make a mistake or we don't know something. And no human being, particularly now with the rise of artificial intelligence, no human being can know a fraction of what is known. We don't have to engage in this struggle to feel as if we are the great person who is the originator of everything, which is the real trap of too much success. Because confidence is so powerful an agent, and that is because confidence makes you persuasive. And if you can persuade other people, then you will achieve great successes because you get people to do things for you. And the persuasive quality of confidence can often not be backed up by real abilities, because in many areas of life, for example, in And neurosurgery, you have to be confident, but your surgery either succeeds or fails. There's a tangible objective evidence of that. So it's much less easy to benefit, if you like, from this swaggerer of over confidence in neurosurgery or in mathematics than it is in many domains of life, from politics to salesmanship, to all sorts of domains of areas where Where the fact that you're confident makes people listen to you and more likely to do what you ask, and it gives you status.

And even if your lack of knowledge is subsequently revealed, it doesn't take away from the status. It sticks. That's what the research shows.

So even, again, aside from mathematics or certain scientific disciplines where there's clearly right versus wrong, it sounds like in most places in our society, Being a confident person is going to be an attribute regardless.

Absolutely. And if you're not depressed, we're all slightly overconfident. That is, we slightly overestimate our chances of winning the lottery, for example. So the whole gambling industry is based on the fact that most people are slightly overconfident. And we're overconfident in our ability to be free from diseases and things like that. And that's not a bad thing unless it becomes too great. But what it does, it gets us up in the morning. I mean, no person would start a new startup company if they weren't overconfident, because most startups fail. Financially, it's always better to be employed than to engage in the absolute terrible difficulties of starting up a company. Yet people do it, and they have great successes, some of them. So overconfidence is a valuable resource. And it's this two-edged sword, however, because I would say that all confidence starts off as false.

Interesting.

I'm trying to imagine the first time you cut into someone's brain, Sanjay. I cannot imagine what that's like to do that. And I can't Can you imagine that there wasn't a part of you saying, Oh, my goodness, am I really doing this? Can I do this? I don't know. You tell me.

Well, in that particular scenario, it's interesting, Professor, because I think you've trained for a long time. So in some ways, the similarities are maybe more similar to athletics than it is to some huge intellectual pursuit. It's just so much muscle memory and so many things that you've just done over and over again. I do think the second part of it is that there is this humility to it in the sense that if you start to ponder all the ramifications of what you're doing, it can start to feel very overwhelming. So instead, you compartmentalize. I'm making a cut in the skin. After that, I will grab a drill. I'll make two bur holes. I will connect those bur holes with an oscillating saw. Then I'll open up the outer layer of the brain known as the dura. I know here the blood vessels lie, I'm going to cut three centimeters to the left of that. I'm going to open it up. It just everything is procedural in this way. So maybe more similar to athletics, I think, in this regard.

But what about the first time you did it, Sam? The very first time Yeah, it's a fair question, but there's so many facets to our training.

The first time I did it, I also had professors standing right over my left shoulder. There's this sense of having a safety net there. I think then your question being, what about the first time you did it where there is no safety net? And yeah, that was... I tell you, I felt confident, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some anxiety around that as well.

And the fact that you did that, and it was a success, was a critical part of building the subsequent confidence in your skills. But there are people who they have too much anxiety or they focus their attention too much on the possible negative outcome, or they maybe have other things going on in their minds, so there's too much norepinephrine, and so they fumble a little bit and they make a mistake. We know from the research, Sanjay, that across the world, people who are chronically anxious do less of everything. They do less in socially, they do less in work, they do less in hobbies and interests. Why? Because their brains are primed into a threat mindset where they're anticipating and focusing their attention on potential negative outcomes and threat. And that inhibits those systems of the brain that do the opposite with confidence.

Quick note here. Ian says there is a difference between chronic anxiety and moderate anxiety. The former can lead us to experience higher levels of stress and other health issues. Moderate anxiety, on the other hand, is manageable and could actually be used for our benefit.

If you don't feel anxiety, then you're not properly appraising the situation because you're doing something new that's stretching you. And that's what confidence does. And it makes us do things in spite of anxiety. And so therefore, the feeling of, God, I'm an imposter here. Am I really speaking to all these people who are listening to what I'm saying? Have they all got better things to do? These are healthy healthy thoughts. But what you have to do is you have to stand tall, speak clearly, talk as if you were not nervous, even though you're a jelly inside. And that is all faking it. And it's only once you've done it, a simple behavior takes 50, 60, 70 repetitions for it to become a habit. And habits don't require confidence. But to build All the habits, you need to fake it. And you need to avoid the confidence-sapping habits of maybe speaking too quickly, speaking too quietly, making yourself small, not looking at people. There's so There are so many peripheral habits of confidence that can sap it.

Let's say no one gets the exact confidence ratio right, not perfect, anyways. Would you rather err on the side of being a little bit overly confident or a little under-confident?

For my children and grandchildren, Sanjay, I wish them slight overconfidence. In the same way as I wish them nice houses and a good salary.

Because you think it helps set them up for greater success, just confidence as a character trait in and of itself?

Yes. I just know that if they lose their job or if they get sick, if they've learned the habits of confidence, they know that they know things like as Rumi, the Persian poet said, the road only appears with the first step. They know that you just have to keep doing things even though you're not getting any reward from it. You have to just keep on going sometimes because you know you've learned that if you keep moving, something new will turn up.

Some of these concepts you're talking about, does this change throughout an individual's life? I feel like in some ways, I was maybe more confident than I am now, even 10 years ago. Maybe I'm less likely to speak up, whereas in the past, I had an opinion on everything. Now I'm more of a listener. I want to hear what other people have to say more. Does it change as we age?

Well, yes, it does change, particularly if one internalizes aging stereotypes. That will sabotage your confidence. People turn 65 or 70, and they have to retire. And many of them, many people, suffer this loss of confidence. Why? Because they're torn away from agency in the domain and the rewards that come from that. But also they internalize the ageist stereotypes about what older people can and cannot do. People lose their looks. People lose the finely-honed bodies they had when they were younger. And if your once physical appearance was strong part of what was important to a person, then the loss of these things can really mean that they lose confidence in their ability to interact in the world. So the quiet mature confidence, where the ego is less important and where you're less inclined to pursue the success, the hamster wheel of success. That's a very desirable... That's wisdom.

How much confidence is enough? I mean, is more always better? I mean, can you get the benefits of ambition and achievement without being reckless, or is there a limit?

Yes, there is a limit. I mean, we've seen many big business people crash and burn. We've seen military leaders, we've seen political leaders crash and burn, overreach. Because confidence is so powerful an agent in the world, it's too easy for it to to mushroom of control, and you get a narcissistic over-evaluation of your ability. But how much confidence is enough? It's enough to make you, particularly when things are tough, when you've just failed, when maybe a relationship has failed, a business has failed, you've lost a job, you've suffered an illness, you're having to pick yourself up again. Enough confidence is gritting your teeth and being able to do that in spite of the doubt, in spite of the uncertainty and the unknown.

You spoke about your kids and your grandkids and that you wished for them confidence. I have kids that are going off to college now. We have an election coming up. People are advocating for change, whatever it may be. If they listen to this podcast and they say, I'd like to strengthen my confidence, how would you tell them to do it?

First of all, set goals for yourself. It's very important to stretch yourself. Second thing is what you pay attention to. The first lecture I gave after my PhD, there was one person I had a senior Oxford professor, frowning in the front row, and I couldn't keep my eyes off her. And I gave up terrible lecture because my not epinephrine levels were so high, I couldn't speak clearly. And I thought my career was finished before the end. But it turns out there was lots of other people looking moderately interested, but I didn't know then that if I controlled my attention, I could control my emotions and therefore control my performance. If I'd known then, I would have deliberately not looked at her and sought out someone who was looking interested. And there was quite a few of them. So controlling your attention, what you pay attention to, what you allow yourself to think about. The third thing is your attitude to yourself. The human brain is incredibly plastic at all ages, and that plus You can learn new things no matter what your current state is. But that belief is fundamental. If you don't have it, you're not going to engage in the learning, the faking it, the faking it until it feels natural.

The fourth thing is anxiety. Anxiety has the same psychophysiological pattern as excitement. And they're both just the body's preparation for action. So you must not make anxiety your friend because it's not a pleasant thing, but you can make it your ally. You can harness it by saying to yourself, Okay, I don't know if I can do this. I have to have this difficult conversation with a friend. I'm dreading it, but I'm going to set myself a goal of seeing if I can perform this without losing my temper or without crying or whatever. And you set a goal for yourself, but you then get a success experience if you do it, even though you may not have a good outcome from the conversation. It's all about what the goals you set for yourself. The last thing is affirming your values. And if we affirm our values, take a minute or two to say, what do I stand for? What are my values? Why do I hold them? What do they mean to me? Your amygdala will respond less strongly to criticism, you will be less likely to engage in ego-protecting activities which can cause chaos in people around you.

So that's why affirmation of your values is a huge source of confidence. It grounds you. Values Our values are eternal. The humans are not.

When I grew up, confidence was not always seen as a good thing. Sometimes it seemed too close to arrogance or maybe thinking too highly of yourself. I was taught to just be really good at whatever you were doing and to stay humble. But a lot of what Ian shared really does resonate with me. I like the idea that confidence in and of itself can be a fuel for action. It can help us accomplish goals despite uncertainty or adversity. And no matter what our circumstances are, I think most of us could benefit from that. I do think that building confidence might feel like a never-ending journey at problems, especially for people who struggle with anxiety or just feel like they can never catch a break. But Ian's prescription for building confidence, it makes sense. You set goals, you be intentional about what you pay attention to, you know that you can learn new things at any age, and that these steps may not always feel easy, but you can understand why they would be effective. It's like Ian says, Having confidence doesn't guarantee accomplishing a goal, but it does give you the willingness to initiate, to try, which is something that you can control.

On that note, I wanted to share a voicemail from a listener about how she is chasing life. This week, Mohita shared her journey with confidence.

I was in IT for almost 25 years, and I always loved acting, so I became an actor. Of course, I'm getting very small roles, but I feel so fulfilled. I came out of my comfort zone to be more confident, and being on set really made me feel alive.

Thank you, Mohita. Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio, Our podcast is produced by Erin Matheison, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, and Jessie Remedios. Our Senior Producer and Showrunner is Felicia Patinkin. Andrea Cain is our medical writer. Dan Dizula is our Technical Director, and the Executive Producer of CNN Audio is Steve Ligtot. With support from Jameis Andrest, John Dianora, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasari, Robert Mathers, Lanie Steinhart, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namarot. Special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Sealy, and Nadia Konang of CNN Health, and Katie Hinman.