Editor’s Note: Season 10 of the Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta podcast explores the science of happiness. Listen to episodes Here.
(CNN) — Everyone has encountered them: people who always seem to know what they’re doing. They happily take control of a situation, state their opinions as if they were established facts, or jump into a project with the belief that they can succeed — whether or not they have the experience.
How did the magic powder sprinkled on their breakfast cereal give them this superpower?
“I believe that self-esteem is probably the single most important resource in human well-being and performance,” neuroscientist and psychologist Ian Robertson recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life.
Robertson is professor of psychology and co-director of the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and holds the T. Boone Pickens Distinguished Chair at the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas.
“Self-confidence is a two-legged belief,” says Robertson, author of “How Self-Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief.”
“This is what you believe in to be able to be “Do something, and it’s the belief that if you do it you will get a reward or the result you desire.”
When you’re confident, you’re more likely to succeed because confidence activates brain circuits that produce elevated mood, lower anxiety, and sharper thinking—all of which increase the likelihood of success, Robertson says. These are the same brain circuits that fire when you succeed. So being confident or succeeding, even at a small task, leads to success and, in turn, more confidence.
“The greatest source of success is success,” Robertson said. “And success, like confidence, acts like compound interest: It’s exponential. A little bit grows steadily.”
You can listen to the full episode Here.
Confidence is at one end of the spectrum, and anxiety is at the other, Robertson said.
“If you don’t have confidence in yourself, if you think you can’t do it, then that’s going to create anxiety because of the possibility 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.”
He also noted that anxiety activates circuits that disrupt “the fluid synchronization of different brain regions critical for elite or top-tier performance.”
Robertson said research has shown that people with chronic anxiety do less of everything.
“They do less… 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 potential negative outcomes and threat and focus their attention on those. And that inhibits the systems in the brain that safely do the opposite.”
For example, Robertson says that when he takes two 5-year-old girls, they are both equally bright and talented, but one has a bit more self-confidence than the other.
“That little difference in confidence will mean that little girl is more likely to try something new. A little thing: Ask a question, be less afraid of making mistakes,” she said. “And that will result in a little success. That means she’s more likely to take the next step. And by the time these two girls are 25, there’s going to be a huge gap between their success and their well-being because of the exponential nature of the mathematics of confidence.”
If you weren’t born with confidence, all is not lost. Robertson offers five tips for building confidence, even under challenging circumstances.
Move on
Taking the step to do something and then doing it (no matter how shaken you feel) will result in a surge of confidence.
“Self-confidence is linked to the brain’s action systems,” Robertson said. “The great Persian poet Rumi said that the path is revealed only with the first step. And people who lack self-confidence and are anxious tend to avoid taking action because they see it as ‘threat.'”
Taking action despite feeling anxious is crucial to building self-confidence, Robertson said.
Choose your focus carefully
“What you pay attention to determines your emotional state, so choose wisely,” Robertson says.
“If you’re giving a speech to a group of people and a few people are on their phones or sulking, your attention is locked on them because … that’s what we do when we feel threatened,” Robertson said.
“However, if you consciously choose to pay attention to the majority of people or to a smiling person sitting in the front row who appears interested… you will feed your brain with positive thoughts and images that will help you remember past successes instead of past failures.”
Becoming mindful in this way will not only reduce your anxiety and the effort you need to put into the task, but it will also boost your self-confidence, he said.
Adopt a growth mindset
Your attitude towards yourself and your abilities 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 develop talents; conversely, people 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, if you believe that your abilities or emotions are determined by genetics or heredity—then you won’t engage in the slow roller coaster that learning requires,” Robertson says. “You can learn to be more confident—but you can’t do that if you cripple yourself with a fixed mindset.”
He explained that fixed theories about himself are “always wrong” because the human brain is extremely plastic at all ages.
Deal with your anxiety
Anxiety undermines self-confidence, so reframe anxiety as excitement.
“It’s possible to control anxiety by not being afraid of it and not treating it as an alien force, but instead seeing it as a form of energy that you can control,” Robertson said. “In fact, the physical and mental symptoms of anxiety are the same as the symptoms of excitement.”
When faced with a situation that makes you anxious, such as a difficult conversation or interview, Robertson recommends adopting a “challenge” mindset.
“You can actually change your frame of mind from, ‘Oh, can I perform here?’ to, ‘Oh, something scary is going to happen,'” he said. “And you can do that with the words you tell yourself: ‘I’m excited.'”
Doing this doesn’t mean you won’t feel tense, Robertson says, but by using language you’re harnessing a type 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, what’s important to you, what your values are,” Robertson said.
“And if you can take just a few seconds to write down what your values are, why they are important to you, and what they mean to you, evidence suggests that your brain will be more resilient and protected against criticism, humiliation, and fear of failure.”
In other words, you’ll be protected from the destructive anxiety that eats away at your self-confidence, Robertson says.
We hope these five tips help you boost your confidence. Listen to the full episode HereAnd join us next week on the Chasing Life podcast as we examine what normal aging looks like in the wake of the recent presidential debate.
CNN Audio’s Eryn Mathewson contributed to this report.
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