Publisher’s Note: Season 10 of the Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta podcast explores the science of happiness. You can listen to episodes here.
(CNN) — Everyone knows them: people who always seem to know what they are doing. They like to take control of a situation, express their opinions as if they were facts or throw themselves into a project with the conviction that they will succeed — with or without the required experience.
What magical substance was sprinkled on their cereal that gave them this superpower?
“Trust is probably the single most important resource for human well-being and performance, I believe,” neuroscientist and psychologist Ian Robertson recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life.
Robertson is professor emeritus of psychology and co-director of the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and the T. Boone Pickens Distinguished Chair at the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas.
“Self-confidence is a two-faceted belief,” says Robertson, author of “How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief.”
“It is the faith that you can doing something, and it is the belief that if you do that, you will get a reward or the result you desire.”
When you feel confident, you’re more likely to succeed because confidence activates brain circuits that produce elevated mood, reduced anxiety, and sharper thinking — all of which increase your chances of success, Robertson says. These are the same brain circuits that are activated when you succeed. So whether you’re confident or successful, even at a small task, it leads to success and then more confidence.
“The greatest source of success is success,” Robertson said. “And success, like confidence, works like compound interest: It’s exponential. A little goes a long way.”
You can listen to the full episode here.
According to Robertson, trust is on one end of the spectrum, while fear is on the other.
“If you don’t have self-confidence, if you don’t think you can do it, then that’s going to generate anxiety because of the prospect of failure,” he said. “The greatest source of anxiety is the fear of negative evaluation from other people, and almost all anxiety has to do with other people.”
In addition, fear activates circuits that disrupt “the smooth synchronization of several brain regions critical for elite or top performance,” he noted.
Research shows that people who are chronically anxious do less of everything, Robertson says.
“They do less … socially, they do less at work, they do less in hobbies and interests,” he said. “Why? Because their brains are primed for a threat mindset, where they anticipate and focus on potential negative outcomes and threats. And that inhibits those brain systems that do the opposite with trust.”
For example, Robertson said, take two 5-year-old girls. They are equally intelligent and capable, but one is a little more confident than the other.
“That small difference in confidence means that little girl is more likely to try something new. A small thing: ask a question, (be) less afraid of making a mistake,” he said. “And that’s more likely to result in a small success. That means she’s more likely to take the next step. And by the time these two girls are 25, there’s a huge gap in their performance and their well-being because of the exponential nature of the mathematics of confidence.”
All is not lost if you are not born with an abundance of self-confidence. Robertson offers five tips for building self-confidence, even under daunting circumstances.
Take action
If you take steps to do something and then actually do it (no matter how insecure you feel), it will give you a boost of confidence.
“Confidence is tied to the brain’s action systems,” Robertson said. “The great Persian poet Rumi said that the path appears in the first step. And people who lack confidence and are anxious often hold back from taking action because they perceive a ‘threat.’”
According to Roberston, taking action, even when you feel anxious, is very important to build self-confidence.
Choose your focus carefully
What you pay attention to determines your emotional state, so choose wisely, says Robertson.
“If you’re giving a talk to a group of people and there are a few people who are on their phones or frowning, your attention is going to be 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 one person sitting in the front row with interest and smiling… you are feeding your brain with positive thoughts and images that will help you remember your past successes instead of past failures.”
He said that doing this deliberately will not only reduce your anxiety and make the task less of an effort, but it will also increase your confidence.
Adopt a growth mindset
Your attitude towards yourself and your possibilities can make the 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 cultivate 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, you believe that your abilities or your emotions are determined by genetics or heredity — then you’re not going to participate in … the slow ups and downs that learning entails,” Robertson said. “You can learn to be more confident — but not if you paralyze yourself with a fixed mindset.”
Fixed theories about yourself are “always wrong” because the human brain is enormously plastic at all ages, he explained.
Deal with your fear
Fear undermines self-confidence, so view fear as excitement.
“It is possible to manage anxiety by not being afraid of it and not treating it as a foreign force that is coming at you, but rather seeing it as a form of energy that you can harness,” Robertson said. “In fact, the physical and brain symptoms of anxiety are identical to those of arousal.”
Robertson advises that when faced with a situation that makes you feel anxious, such as a difficult conversation or job interview, you adopt a “challenge” mindset.
“You can change your state of mind from, ‘Oh, I get to perform here?’ to, ‘Oh, terrible things are going to happen,’” he said. “And you can help yourself do that by the words you say to yourself: ‘I’m excited.’”
According to Robertson, this doesn’t mean you won’t feel nervous anymore, but by using language you create a form 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 and what’s important to you, what your values are,” Robertson said.
“And if you just take a few seconds to write down what your values are and why they’re important to you and what they mean to you, the evidence shows that your brain is more resilient and better protected against the fear of criticism, put-downs and failure.”
In other words, Robertson said, you are protected from the destructive fear that undermines your self-confidence.
We hope these five tips help you build your self-confidence. Listen to the full episode hereAnd next week, tune in to the Chasing Life podcast, where — in the wake of the recent presidential debate — we explore what normal aging looks like.
CNN Audio’s Eryn Mathewson contributed to this report.
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