Is there something at work that you wish you felt more

confident about, that you hold yourself back from doing because you just

feel too nervous or scared about it?

Perhaps you know that rationally it's something you can do, but in the moment of

doing it, your emotions take over and you want to get yourself outta the situation.

Straight away so you can feel better again if that is how you're feeling.

You are not alone.

None of us feels supremely confident about everything, but luckily there are lots of

different confidence building techniques that you can try and I've covered

lots of them on the podcast before, so I'll make sure that I put links to.

All the other episodes that look at confidence in the show notes and

in the YouTube description for you.

But for now, I'm really excited to share a confidence building tip with

you that really helped me last week, even though I've been a bit skeptical

when I first heard about it, because it had seemed like a bit of a weird idea.

In fact, I suppose many confidence building tips feel a bit strange, but they

do often work and I'm hopeful that by me.

Sharing this slightly weird sounding confidence tip with you if you try it

to, that it's gonna help you, like it has helped me, especially in those high

pressure moments where your confidence just isn't where you would like it to be.

If we haven't met before.

Hello, it's wonderful to have you here.

I'm Fay Wallis and I specialize in empowering HR and people professionals to

have successful and fulfilling careers.

Through this HR Coffee time podcast, my inspiring HR leadership program.

And the essential HR planner.

Let's dive into today's confidence building technique.

I first read about it in the absolutely brilliant book Chatter, the voice in

our head, and how to harness it by Dr. Ethan Kross, who is a professor

of Psychology and management.

In the book, he explains a concept called distanced self-talk.

This means that instead of talking to yourself in the first person by using

the word I and saying things like.

I can do this.

I'm going to be fine.

You talk to yourself in the third person, which means you use your own name.

So for me as my name's Fay, it would be something like, Fay, you can do this.

Fay, you're gonna be absolutely fine.

Because Ethan Kross found in his research that using your own

name creates emotional distance.

It makes you feel like you're talking to another person when

you're actually talking to yourself.

And that little bit of distance can be incredibly powerful.

In his research, he looked at things like public speaking, which let's be honest,

terrifies most of us unless it's a skill.

We've really had the opportunity to practice a lot, and he

found that people who use this distance, self-taught technique

felt calmer and performed better.

When I first read about it, I wasn't sure about the idea of talking

to myself in this way, but then I found myself in a situation where my

confidence had completely vanished.

I was starting to feel panicky and it suddenly popped into

my head as something to try.

So I'll tell you all about it, but I should say that my example

of building my confidence using this distant self-talk technique

isn't actually in a work context.

And I normally just talk about work on this show, but I can't wait to

try it out with a work thing next.

And I wanted to share it with you because I found it so incredibly helpful.

The one place where my confidence is at, its.

Absolute lowest is driving on motorways.

I've never been hugely confident about motorway driving.

I'm not really sure why I enjoy regular driving on normal

roads that aren't motorways.

It could be because of the fact that I saw some quite bad accidents

when I used to drive from London to Bristol when I was much younger and

I was first at university, but I'm really not sure what the reason is.

And in recent years, my fear of driving on motorways has got worse and worse

to the point where I almost felt like it was becoming a bit of a phobia.

I tried everything I could think of to feel less scared

and more confident about it.

I even had hypnotherapy, which helped a tiny bit, but not as

much as I'd have liked it to.

I tried having my husband, who I totally trust and who's a very

confident motorway driver sitting next to me in the car, giving me advice,

reassuring and encouraging me while trying to keep me calm while I was on

the motorway, and it was interesting to hear his thoughts about it.

Afterwards he told me that I'm a completely competent driver.

I know what to do, but in the moment of being on the motorway, I seem to lose

all faith in myself and I start to panic.

It gotta the point where I started thinking, you know what, maybe I'll

just stop driving on motorways.

I hate the way I feel whenever I do it.

It's just getting too scary.

But I suddenly remembered what I'd read in the book Chatter, and I thought.

Well, maybe I'll test this distant self talk thing and see how I get on.

What have I got to lose?

So last week I had to drive to Worthing, which is only about an

hour and a quarter away from me.

Claire Cathcart, who you might know of, she has an HR community

called Elevate, had invited me to be a guest on a mini series that

she's creating about careers in hr.

I really wanted to do it, and I knew there were two ways I could get there.

I could drive on the A roads.

Or I could drive on the dreaded motorway.

So I thought, okay, I'm going to try starting off on the motorway and I'm going

to use the distant self-talk technique.

But if I feel myself getting anxious and just not feeling confident, if I

start worrying that I'm going to have an accident or that I can't overtake a L in

the inside lane, which I always get really nervous about, I'll just pull off and I'll

drive on the A roads the rest of the way.

So I had a backup plan that I was pretty happy with.

I started driving and when I came up to a lorry that was going really slowly and

I needed to overtake it, I started using the distance self-talk technique and

talking to myself in the third person.

So I started talking to myself out loud and saying things like.

Come on, Fay.

You can do it.

You're doing so well.

Just keep going.

Fay, you're going to be so proud of yourself.

You're doing such a great job, Fay.

It's brilliant that you are even giving it a try.

Just think you're going to get to Claire's and do the interview, and you'll be so

pleased you got that on the most way.

And I found myself feeling calmer than I can.

Ever remember feeling when I'm next to a lorry on a motorway, and I managed to

overtake it, which felt like a huge win.

As soon as I did overtake it, I made sure I carried on talking to myself

with things like, well done, Fay.

You did such a brilliant job, Fay.

That was absolutely brilliant.

Keep going.

I felt a bit ridiculous talking to myself like that out loud,

and I was very grateful.

There was no one else in the car to hear me, but I couldn't believe it.

It was actually working, and it meant that I got.

All the way there on the motorway.

It was the least stressed and worried and most confident I'd felt about

driving on a motorway in about 20 years.

If you are thinking, there's no way you are going to start talking to

yourself out loud, especially if you're in a work setting, then don't worry.

You don't have to.

In the book, Ethan Kross explains that it can be effective when talking to

yourself in your head instead of out loud.

But as there was no one in that car with me, I thought I'd go for it and

that I might find it easier to convince myself I was okay if I said these

things out loud instead of in my head.

So I thought, I've got to share this with you because there are so many things we

worry about or feel stressed or panicky about at work times when we just don't

have full confidence in ourselves.

And I think this distant self-taught technique could be a really great tool

to try to help build your confidence.

In the moment for many of them.

Two things I immediately thought of when trying to decide what examples could

be useful for trying out the distant self-taught technique are if you have

a job interview or when you have to present in a meeting or at a work event.

So if we think about the job interview situation, before you walk into that

interview room, you could stand in the corridor or sit in your car and

talk to yourself in the third person.

For example, if it was me, I could say, Fay, you've prepared really well for this.

You know your stuff.

You are gonna do a brilliant job.

And when you leave the interview, you can carry on with the pep talk

saying things like, well done Fay.

I know you were nervous about that interview, but you did it.

You gave some great answers to the questions.

Fay.

I think this could help stop the confidence spiral that can hit

us straight after we've had an interview when it's easy to start

being overly critical of ourselves.

And I like the idea of this technique.

Complimenting the concept of self-compassion as well, something that

has been shown to really help boost resilience and that you can learn more

about if you'd like to by hopping back to episode 43 of HR coffee time, if you

want to listen to that after this one.

Okay.

Now we've looked at how you could use distance self-talk for a job interview.

Let's take a look at how you could use it if you have a meeting coming

up where you'll be presenting.

You can give yourself a pep talk before you step into the meeting room.

So if I use myself as an example, again, I could try saying things

like, Fay, you know, this material inside out, you've got this.

Just take it one slide at a time.

Or Fay, you're going to do really well, you can do this.

And afterwards I could say things like, well done Fay, you did it.

That went so well, Fay.

Great job.

There are so many other work situations where you may not be

feeling confident, where I think this distant self-talk could be useful.

Things like when you know you are going to have to have a difficult conversation

at work, or if you're going to have to go into a meeting with senior

leaders and you are not used to that.

Or you want to ask for a promotion or talk about a salary rise.

So if you would like to learn more about the technique, then I would highly

recommend reading the book Chatter.

It's one of the best books I've ever read about coping with the negative self-talk

that often pops into our minds, making us feel anxious and denting our confidence.

And if you'd like to feel more confident in yourself as an aspiring or existing

HR leader, building confidence is one of the things that we focus on in

my inspiring HR leadership program, which is an accredited leadership

program that runs over nine sessions.

I'll put the link to the full details in the show notes and

YouTube description for you.

Or you can find them on my website, which is Bright sky hr co uk.

And if you have any questions about it at all, I'm.

Always happy to answer them.

Before I say goodbye, I'd love to know, are you going to give the

distant self-talk technique a try?

Yes.

You might feel a bit ridiculous at first.

I know.

I certainly did, but if it works and the research suggests it does

and my own experience has shown that it can, then who cares?

If you feel a bit silly talking to yourself, pick something

you're worried about at work.

Maybe it's that presentation you've got coming up or that difficult conversation

that you've been putting off, but you know you have to have, or that job

interview you are preparing for, try giving yourself a pep talk, using your

own name, and then afterwards celebrate yourself by talking to yourself in the

third person in a positive way Again.

If you do think you're going to give it a try, please do let me know in the

comments section of the YouTube video or by sending me a message on LinkedIn.

I'm on there all the time.

Just search for me by my name, Fay Wallis.

Thank you so much for listening or watching if you're watching

this on YouTube, and good luck.

I hope this really helps you if you do, decide to give it a try.

I'm looking forward to being back again in two weeks time

with the next episode for you.

I'll see you then.