Nov. 15, 2024
Freedom Friday: Confidence Does NOT Require Certainty
Confidence isn’t about knowing everything—it's about pushing forward even when you don’t. This idea transformed my journey as a musician, where I discovered that the true essence of confidence lies in embracing uncertainty and acting with intention. Join me, Ruth Abigail, as I share personal stories about the invaluable lessons I learned from mentors on maintaining momentum and the importance of appearing intentional, even when mistakes happen.
Leave a comment to let us know your thoughts about the episode!
Chapters
00:09 - Moving Forward With Confidence
11:54 - Continuing the Unlearned Podcast Journey
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hello everybody and welcome once again to the Unlearned Podcast.
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I'm your host, ruth Abigail, aka RA, and this is Freedom Friday, where I come and share something that I've unlearned recently and how it's made me, and hopefully you, just a little bit more free.
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So excuse me, all right.
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So, um, I uh, for those of you that don't know, I'm a musician.
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I play piano.
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I grew up doing that and I've taken lessons since I was about six years old Uh, when I was younger and all throughout a lot of my lesson years I had to do recitals and they were terrifying.
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If anybody out there has ever done recital, has ever had to play in front of a crowd of people, it's terrifying, like it's not a fun experience.
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At least it wasn't for me when I was six, seven, eight, 12, 14, 16, it was just.
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It was never easy.
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One of the things that every single teacher and I had several growing up told me was when you are playing, when you are performing in front of a crowd, whenever you are kind of on stage solo doing your thing, or whenever you are in performance mode, even if it's with a group, then the one thing that is the most important is, even when you mess up.
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You need to keep going.
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You mess up.
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You need to keep going.
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Never pause, never stop, always keep going.
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That was the first thing that was consistent.
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Every teacher always taught me that.
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The second thing was if you mess up, act as though it was on purpose.
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If you mess up, you should do it with so much confidence that people think it's actually the right thing, even though you know it's the wrong thing, right?
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So if you mess up, make sure everything you do is on purpose.
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You didn't mess up, even if you did mess up, and that was something that my teachers also taught me.
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What that has helped me over in time to unlearn is that confident people are not always certain.
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Certainty is not a requirement for confidence.
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Sometimes.
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You just have to accept that you won't always.
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A lot of times you won't get things right or you will be uncertain or unsure.
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But whatever you do, do it on purpose, do it intentionally, and you don't need to be certain.
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There were plenty of times where I was, when you're practicing a lot and they call it muscle memory right and so a lot of times you're just reliant on the fact that you've done it so much that it's automatic.
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So your brain really isn't really calculating and being meticulous about every note and every phrase and all of that.
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It's not doing that.
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Once you have practiced over and over and over again, really your fingers just start to go.
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There are songs I haven't looked at or played in years, but because I practice it so much, I can sit down and play it.
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That's muscle memory.
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When I do that, I'm not always certain it's going to be right.
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I'm not always certain I'm going to hit the right note.
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I'm not always certain I'm going to remember what it is, but I sit down and I'll do it with confidence and no matter what comes out, at least I did it intentionally.
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So something that I think is important for us to unlearn is confidence.
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A certainty is not a requirement for confidence.
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Three things about confidence, right.
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Confident people are not always certain.
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The only thing that they are certain about is that they're not going to allow uncertainty to let them deter from forward movement.
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If I if I as a performer allow uncertainty to deter me from from moving forward, then every time I get nervous that I forgot something or I feel like my brain isn't really calculating what needs to come next.
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I'll stop, I'll pause, I'll start over.
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The audience will know exactly what's going on and I'll never get through the piece.
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And it's really the same way right in life.
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If, every time it's time to move forward, there's a hesitancy or I'm unsure and I don't move with confidence, then I'll just stay stagnant.
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I won't go anywhere.
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And so sometimes we have to move with uncertainty, but move intentionally.
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Moving with confidence is simply moving intentionally.
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So confident people are not always certain.
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Even though it may feel like they are, they're not always certain.
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The only thing that they're certain of is that uncertainty isn't gonna prevent them from moving forward.
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The second thing is that confident people don't wait to be certain to move.
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They don't wait to be certain to move.
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They don't wait to be certain to move.
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A lot of times we want to have all the answers, we wanna know everything.
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We wanna know that we know everything.
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We want other people to know that we know everything before we decide to make a move.
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And again, that will keep you stagnant.
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You can't move forward because you never know everything, and so it's important to go ahead and begin moving when you have done all that you know to do.
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There were moments when I was coming up playing, where I had auditions, and at some point it just has to be enough.
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At some point, all the practicing and the learning and the practicing and the learning and the practicing and the practicing and the practicing and the practicing have to be enough.
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At some point you just have to go for it.
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And so I had to learn.
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I wasn't always going to be certain that I was going to get every note right, that I was going to do everything that wasn't going to make the mistake that I had been making.
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In practice, I wasn't always certain that it was going to come out exactly where I wanted.
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But at some point it's time to pull the trigger.
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At some point you just have to go for it, right.
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And so when audition time came, I just had to go for it.
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And I have to remember confidence whatever you do do intentionally, I can't miss the audition, I can't miss the moment, I can't give up the opportunity because I'm uncertain.
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And the thing about the biggest thing about that is, when we do that, most of the times, those things and those moments rarely come back around.
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And so when the time is there, you have to move on it.
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You have to move on it.
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You don't have to be certain, but you need to be confident enough to move so that you don't miss the moment.
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Too often, I think, we find ourselves missing moments that we shouldn't have missed.
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The only reason we missed it is because we just weren't certain enough.
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We weren't sure enough, we didn't have all the answers that we wanted.
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We wanted to ask more questions, we were waiting on more signs and really it's just time to move.
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And if you don't move now, you'll miss it and who knows when another opportunity is going to come back.
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So confident people don't wait to be certain to move.
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And the last thing confident people don't do is they don't allow fear to stop them moving in the face of uncertainty.
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The reason we don't move, the reason we want to ask more questions, the reason we're looking for more information, is ultimately, a lot of times, because we're afraid.
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We're afraid.
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What are we afraid of?
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We're afraid of failure.
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We might be afraid of embarrassment.
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We might be afraid of letting people down, right, not meeting expectations.
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You might be afraid that what it is you really believe is true about yourself, right.
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You might be afraid of what other people might think, might say, how they may react.
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There's a million reasons why you might be afraid.
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There's a million reasons why you are continuing to look for more certainty.
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You might be afraid of rejection.
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You might be afraid of acceptance Maybe that's scary for you.
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You might be afraid of success.
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You might be afraid that you can't repeat what it is that you're trying to do now, that if you do it the first time and it goes well, you couldn't do it again.
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So I don't move and I need to ask more questions because, even though I know enough for the first step, I might not know enough for the second step, and I don't want to get caught not being able to keep going.
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So I'm just not going to start at all.
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I don't know if anybody has felt that way.
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I have certainly.
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So there's a lot of reasons, there's a lot of fears that we might have when it comes to moving forward, when it comes to progressing in something, when it comes to growth.
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It comes to growth.
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But those, those fears are ultimately um are are those fears are rooted in something deeper that needs to be healed.
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So that fear doesn't stop you from moving forward, fear doesn't require you, so that you don't, so that you don't use fear as a crutch um to make sure that you are more certain about things I don't think I said that right so that you don't use uncertainty as a crutch is what I, what I'm, what I'm trying to say.
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So you don't use uncertainty as a crutch in the midst of fear and not address the fear, so that you have confidence to move forward, even though you're not always certain of what's gonna happen.
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We can't let uncertainty keep us from moving.
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Confidence is necessary for movement.
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Certainty is not, and confident people do not always need to be certain in order to move.
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Unlearn that.
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And if you are a person who is obsessed with needing to know, I challenge you to look at where you are in your life and think about where you want to be, and imagine what would happen if you required everything to know where you're going to be.
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Would you get there?
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Do you think you will get there?
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And what happens if you don't get there?
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How are you if you don't get there?
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And then, if you can answer that question and really begin to understand, is it more scary to not get there than to take a step in confidence, even though I might not be certain?
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Which one are you more afraid of the step forward or not getting there at all, and I think answering that question will help you to determine how you meet your fears and allow confidence to take over and not certainty.
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All right, that is it.
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Once again, thanks for listening to the Unlearned Podcast and we will see you next week.
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Let us keep unlearning together so that we can experience more freedom, peace.
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Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast.
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We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode.
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Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think.
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We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom.
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See you then.
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