The Automatic Path to Wealth & How to Beat Self-Doubt

We’ve all heard the “rules” about sleep — you need exactly eight hours, falling asleep in front of the TV is bad, and you can make up for lost sleep on the weekend. But how much of that is actually true? This episode begins by separating sleep myths from sleep reality — and the answers may surprise you. https://www.thehealthy.com/sleep/sleep-facts-myths/ When it comes to building wealth, complexity is often the enemy. Many financial experts agree that the simplest strategy — saving automatically before you ever see the money — is also one of the most powerful. But how does it work in practice? How quickly does it add up? And why does automation matter so much? David Bach joins me to explain why this approach has helped millions of people grow wealth quietly and consistently. David is author of ten best-selling books, including The Automatic Millionaire (https://amzn.to/4rjqoow), recently expanded and updated. Self-doubt has a sneaky way of holding us back. It shows up right when opportunities appear, making us hesitate, second-guess, or play it safe — even when we know what we want. Where does that inner voice come from, and how do you turn it down without pretending it doesn’t exist? Shadé Zahrai offers insight into how self-doubt forms and how to build real confidence that lasts. She’s a behavioral researcher, award-winning peak-performance educator, and author of Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence (https://amzn.to/49VY9GV). And finally, no matter how bug-free you think your home is, you’re not alone in it. A surprising number of tiny creatures live alongside us — and in many cases, that’s actually a good thing. We wrap up with who these unseen roommates are and why they’re part of a healthy home ecosystem. https://www.ipm.org/show/amomentofscience/2023-03-28/arthropods-in-your-house PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to https://Quince.dom/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! HIMS: For simple, online access to personalized and affordable care for Hair Loss, ED, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://Hims.com/SOMETHING for your free online visit! SHOPIFY: Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠ DELL: Dell Tech Days are here. Enjoy huge deals on PCs like the Dell 14 Plus with Intel® Core™ Ultra processors. Visit https://Dell.com/deals PLANET VISIONARIES: We love the Planet Visionaries podcast, so listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you're listening to this podcast! In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:42Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:23Mike Carruthers?

  Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Today on Something You Should Know, is it really bad to fall asleep in front of the TV? Then the magic of automatic savings and compound interest. It can make you rich on just $27.40 a day.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  That could add up to over your lifetime with compound interest. $27.40 a day invested, $10,000 a year, in 40 years could be worth over $4,424,000.

• 2:16Mike Carruthers?

  Also, guess how many bugs are in your house right now? And the curse of self-doubt, it holds us back. We worry, what if people don't like me?

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Let's say they don't like me. They disapprove of me. So what? What actually would happen? And when you work through it really pragmatically, often you realize it's nowhere near as big as you've made it in your mind.

• 2:40Mike Carruthers?

  All this today, on Something You Should Know.

• 2:45Mike Carruthers?

  Now here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in ShopCash. But not to one person. A thousand people will each win $1,000 in ShopCash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores,

• 3:29Mike Carruthers?

  find what you're looking for, and track your orders, all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million ShopCash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:23Mike Carruthers?

  If you've ever felt guilty about how you sleep, you know, like falling asleep in front of the TV, or sleeping in on the weekends, you need to hear this first segment. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. I'm Mike Carruthers, your host today. I'm your host every day. So, a lot of conventional advice about sleep turns out to be false, according to sleep researchers. For example, you've probably heard the advice that you should not fall asleep in front of the TV. Well, why not? A lot of people simply can't turn off their brains, and watching TV helps them. If you can put a timer on your TV, so it turns off

• 5:04Mike Carruthers?

  after you fall asleep, well, there's nothing wrong with that. And it's pretty commonly accepted that you need eight hours of sleep, but the latest research shows that the right amount of sleep is very personal. If you feel energized the next day, well, then you've got the right amount of sleep. You can catch up on your sleep on the weekends. Yeah, no, that turns out to be not so true. A Harvard study found that those extra hours don't really improve your reaction times, or your ability to focus. And I know people, and I've actually tended to be one of these people, who really doesn't think that caffeine affects my sleep, but according to research, it does. I can go to sleep pretty easily after drinking

• 5:49Mike Carruthers?

  caffeine, and a lot of other people can too, but apparently, according to the researchers, the caffeine keeps you in a lighter stage of sleep, and that's not good. And that is something you should know.

• 6:05Mike Carruthers?

  Money is one of those topics everyone has an opinion about, and almost no one feels like they totally get it right. But when you strip it all down, the basic idea of building wealth isn't that complicated. It mostly comes down to one thing: spending less than you make, and then saving the rest before you ever get your hands on it. Because any money that actually hits your checking account, I mean, let's be honest, it's already in danger of being spent. That's why one of the most powerful ideas in personal finance is making savings automatic. The same way taxes disappear from your paycheck before you ever see them. When savings happens first, and then time and compound interest takes over,

• 6:50Mike Carruthers?

  the results can be phenomenal. And no one has explained this better than David Bach. He's a financial expert and the author of 10 bestselling books, including "The Automatic Millionaire", which first came out 20 years ago, and has just been expanded and updated. Hey David, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Mike, it's my pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much.

• 7:12Mike Carruthers?

  So I would imagine everybody has heard a little bit about this idea of automatic savings, and that there's some magic to it, that it's easier to save money if you never get your hands on it first. But start by talking about the problem that we're addressing by looking at automatic savings.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Well, Mike, in America today, 7 out of 10 Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. And this is a statistic that hasn't changed in 20 years. So when I wrote "The Automatic Millionaire" 20 years ago, we had 6, 7 out of 10 people living paycheck to paycheck. It's actually gotten harder for a lot of Americans. Half of Americans today have less than $1,000 in savings. And at the same standpoint, we've had a whole lot of people become extremely wealthy on ordinary incomes. We have 24 million Americans today that are now millionaires.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  And the question is, what's the difference between these two? Because it's not always income. And what I learned, having been a financial advisor and worked with a lot of ordinary people, people who were teachers and firemen and you know, garbage men and ordinary, hardworking Americans. Some people would even call them blue collar Americans. These people built real financial security on an ordinary income and they were able to retire in their 50s. Or, or early 60s at the latest. And what it came down to was not what most people taught them to do. They didn't budget. Cause they, they basically budgeting doesn't work. It's very hard. It's very complicated.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  They didn't worry about the fact they didn't make a lot of money. They just figured out how to pay themselves first. And they didn't have a lot of discipline. What they did is they made it all automatic. They paid themselves first automatically.

• 9:05Mike Carruthers?

  And so then people will say, I don't have enough money to sock away every month, every week. I don't have, I need to live paycheck to paycheck because I need it. I'm sure you hear that all the time.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  I do. And I, and I hear it now, Mike, more probably than ever, right? You know, 20 years ago, I would, I would talk about this idea that, look, if you could save $5 a day, and I called it the latte factor. And it's a metaphor for how we spend small amounts of money on little things, like literally going to Starbucks and, and having a coffee every morning. You know, that used to cost $3.50. And now if you go to Starbucks, you could easily spend $10 at a quick stop in the morning at Starbucks. And people would say to me, you know, I can't, I can't, I've got a job, but I can't use my 401k plan. I can't afford to pay myself first. And they would literally be telling me this as they're holding a brand new iPhone and they're

• 10:04Speaker 01

  sipping their coffee out of a Starbucks cup of coffee. And I'd say, look, I'm not trying to get you to give everything up. You don't even have to give up your coffee. But what if we could get you to start by saving $5 a day or $10 a day? And I would teach people the miracle of compound interest, which I still do because the miracle of compound interest is small amounts of money can add up to a fortune over your lifetime. A person who starts saving $10 a day and invests it in the stock market in a boring index fund like an S and P 500 fund, over 30 years can have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings. In fact, specifically, over 40 years, they

• 10:45Speaker 01

  can have $948,000 worth of savings in their retirement account. And that got a lot of people to realize, well, look, not everybody wants to give up their coffee, Mike, but a lot of people realized, you know, he's right. I do have five or $10 a day. And today I would tell you like, look, you might even want it to be a little bit more. You might want to be saving $20 a day. I talk about what it takes to blow $10,000 a year, which was my most viral post I've ever put out. What does it take to blow $10,000 a year? And the answer is $27.40 a day. And, you know, I do a lot of speeches and when I'm on stage, I'm like, guys, how many of you know somebody who wastes $27.40 a day on

• 11:27Speaker 01

  nothing? You know, they go out to lunch every day when they're at work versus bringing their lunch to work. They always take Uber. They order Uber Eats, whatever the case may be. They're spending $27.40 a day on nothing. They could just go and have a cocktail after work and spend that amount of money. And if you saved that money instead, if you invested it instead, that could add up to over your lifetime with compound interest, $27.40 a day invested, $10,000 a year, in 40 years could be worth over $4,424,000.

• 12:08Mike Carruthers?

  To what you just said, I would imagine people will often reply, but I like my coffee. I like my drink afterward. I don't want to live a life of being deprived of everything in order to do this. And you say, well, you can keep your coffee, but then give up this. But I don't want to give up all these things to do this, that I want to enjoy my life.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I completely understand wanting to enjoy your life. I do. I also understand this. This is the truth about life. You will work 90,000 hours over your lifetime. And if you don't pay yourself first, something, every day when you make money, and I recommend you pay yourself first, one hour a day of your income. So that whatever you earn an hour, you keep the first hour a day of your income. If you don't do that, you will turn around in your 50s and your 60s and you will not have any money. And that is a really tough place to be. And I will tell you, Mike, when you're in a room of people who are 50, 55, or 60,

• 13:14Speaker 01

  and you ask them, what is the biggest regret they have in life? They will tell you, almost always, they wish they had started saving and investing when they were younger. So you have to decide to put yourself first. Then you can live off all the rest of the money.

• 13:32Mike Carruthers?

  There's something that happens that I'd like you to talk about. That anybody who's even attempted this, where they pay themselves first, where the money is taken before they ever get it, that comes out of their paycheck or whatever. There's something magical that happens, that you don't miss it. And I don't know what that is, because you would think you would. Like if all of a sudden your paycheck got smaller, you would have difficulty adjusting. But generally, people don't. If they never get it, they never need it.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  I mean, what you just said is music to my ears. And what I've explained, because I spent my life as a teacher, basically, teaching these principles. The reason the government takes your taxes from you automatically is they know you won't save that money to pay your taxes. So they take it from you before you can spend it. The reason everyone else takes your money automatically, including your gym membership, right? Everybody takes your money from you automatically because it's the way they know they can get it from you. When you decide to pay yourself first automatically, and not everybody goes from zero to 10% of their income on day one. But if you were

• 14:49Speaker 01

  to start paying yourself first, just 1% of your income a month automatically. So whatever, let's say you make a hundred dollars and you're like, I'm gonna save $1 every time I get paid, $1 out of 100, automatically it's gonna get moved into a retirement account, my 401k plan at work, an IRA account, or even an emergency account. I promise you, you won't notice it. And if you increase it 1% a month for a year, you will be saving three times what the average American saves, because you'll be saving 12% by the end of the year. And the other thing I'll tell you is that most people, if they go from zero to 10% of their gross income, they're not saving anything. And they listen to this podcast, and they go, you know

• 15:34Speaker 01

  what? I hear what he's saying. I'm gonna go do this. I'm gonna pay myself first, one hour day of my income. I'm gonna take 12.5% right off the top, move it in my 401k plan. You will notice it for one or two paychecks. And by the third or fourth paycheck, you won't notice it, and you will adjust your lifestyle to the income that's coming in. Only now you'll start to build wealth.

• 15:56Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about saving money automatically and the magic of compound interest with David Bach. He's author of the book, The Automatic Millionaire.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 17:02Mike Carruthers?

  So David, there are times, and I think this happens, it's happened to me, and I'm sure it happens to a lot of people, where you start this process, and you start putting money away, and you save money, but something happens. You lose your job, something goes wrong, there's some big expense that you now need to dip into that money that you were planning for retirement or later years, and now it's gone. Because when those expenses happen, I would rather use the money I have than put it on a credit card.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  100%. And let me ask you a question, because you just were so gracious to share your situation. You had set aside money in an emergency account, and then you needed to use that money. I bet, I would imagine, were you happy that you had put aside money in an emergency account so that you had it when the emergency came?

• 17:55Mike Carruthers?

  Uh, sure was.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  I mean, because my grandmother used to say to me, you know, David, rainy days come, and you need to have an umbrella or a raincoat when they come. And what she would say to me is, that's called your rainy day money account. You need to put money away for a rainy day because they come. And if you don't have money set aside for a rainy day, the emergency account, when that emergency comes, you will really be in trouble. I've had people come up to me and give me hugs and cry in front of me, saying that, David, I heard what you were saying, and I focused on building an emergency account. And then when COVID came, and I couldn't work, and my business was wiped out, I didn't lose my house, and I had money to eat.

• 18:39Mike Carruthers?

  You mentioned that people think that doing this is complicated, and I think that's certainly right, that, okay, so if I'm going to save money, how do I do that? Because putting it in a typical savings account at a bank is going to earn you zero interest, or almost zero interest. And how do you, so what's the process? What's the simplest? Path to getting this started, so people don't go, "Yeah, I don't know how to do that."

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so the first thing I would say is, if you have a job, an employer, with a 401k plan, please use it. That would be the first thing. So I would go make sure you're signed up for the 401k plan, and that you're not putting away the minimum. So today, most 401k plans are now automatically enrolling you. This is new. This is a result of the new Secure 2.0 Act. So when you get a job, if the company has a 401k plan, today, they will automatically enroll you, but they will only pull 3% out of your paycheck. So what I would tell you is, go find

• 19:49Speaker 01

  out, does your employer have a 401k plan? Are you using it? And how much are you putting away into the 401k plan? And then the most important decision you will make is, at a minimum, I would tell you right now, that you should put at least 10% of your income in that 401k plan. Ideally, I would tell you to put 14%. And on top of that, your employer will match additional dollars if they have a matching program. If you do this, we know that on average, over 27 years, that's what it takes for the average American to become a millionaire, using a 401k

• 20:29Speaker 01

  plan, if they save 14% of their income. Now, I will add a couple more features to this. And this is data that comes from Fidelity, because Fidelity has the largest 401k plan in the world, or one of the largest 401k plans in the world. And they are, you can go on, you can Google this stuff, you can look at what's called 401k millionaires, and there's over 600,000 of them now. They put 14% of their gross income away, and they're, the way their money is managed in their IRA account, is 75% stock and 25% bonds. So when you sign up for the 401k plan, you want to make sure you're signed up for what's called a target dated mutual fund, and that's

• 21:11Speaker 01

  A one stop solution, completely automated, you don't have to spend any time thinking about this. Where you pick the age you think you want to retire, it could be 25 years from now. You select that fund and it'll all be done for you. And that would be the first thing I would do. Now, if you asked me what would be the second thing I would do, I would go and sign up for a emergency account, and you can't usually do that with your employer. And I would go to a major brokerage firm. Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, or I would use an online company like Acorns. And I would set up an automatic plan to put money every time I got paid into that emergency account. It should be a money market account.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Money market accounts are paying about 4% right now in terms of interest. So you're not going to get rich on that, but your emergency money should be super safe and liquid. You do those two things, having listened to this show today, and you will be in a much better place financially.

• 22:14Mike Carruthers?

  Okay, so we're saving for an emergency account, we're saving for our retirement account. But where are we saving, if you don't own a home, where are we saving to buy a house?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  And so the third bucket is a dream account. And that's usually what people consider their buying a home account, right? They save money in an account for a down payment. Now, do they save all that money in a year? No, some people save that money over five years, six years, seven years, eight years, nine years. And, you know, how do people really buy homes in America? 40% of first time home buyers, their parents help them with the down payment. Now, is that fair? For those who don't have a parent that can help them, it's not really fair. But it is how most young people today who are buying homes, almost one out of two, the parents are helping with some of the down payment.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  And when home prices were an average of $140,000 around America, which is only 20 years ago.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  People believe that home prices had hit their top. People would say to me, "Home prices can't keep going up." And now the average home price across America is over $438,000. Again, it's like an escalator. If you don't figure out how to get on it, it just leaves you behind. And this stuff's just not taught in school. In an ideal world, everything I'm talking about, nobody would even need to listen to this because it would have been taught to you in school before you graduated high school. The challenge is, we don't yet teach, in most schools, financial literacy. It's starting to change, but it's not in most schools and it's not a requirement to graduate. It should be. You should certainly have to learn about money when you go to college because the amount

• 24:00Speaker 01

  of money that people borrow to go to college, the fact that they're not taught about how to borrow safely is just wrong. It's just tragic. It shouldn't be like that.

• 24:10Mike Carruthers?

  You know what's interesting is, people have been talking about, "We should learn about this in high school," for decades and decades and decades. And it never seems to really happen. And I know when I graduated high school and went off to college, I didn't know anything about money, other than a few things my father taught me. So I didn't know. I had no idea. And I think that's true. If you don't know what you're doing, there's only one way to learn, and that's through trial and error. And there's a lot of error and trial when you're playing with money and you make a lot of mistakes. I've never understood that because I don't, I've never heard anyone say, "No, we shouldn't teach it in school."

• 24:54Mike Carruthers?

  But it still doesn't seem to be that important that it get into the school curriculum.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  When I went to college, there were three credit card companies that met us, all the kids, in front of our dorm. And when we were handed our student ID, there were three different lines. One was to get a dictionary, back in the day when you had dictionaries. One was to get a sweatshirt, and one was to get a bike lock. And you sign these forms, and then they turned around and they gave you a credit card. And so we were a dorm full of 18-year-old kids that instantly had three credit cards each. And then guess what we did? We went out and used them, right? And so by the time I was a junior, I was thousands of dollars in credit card debt. I came out of college with $12,000 in credit card debt. It was the first real financial hole I started my life in. And I had to learn how to get out of credit card debt.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  And that shouldn't have happened. The credit card companies shouldn't have been allowed on campus. I have a 15 year old son today that I went for a hike with and I was explaining credit card debt to him. And I said, you know, James, the thing that people don't understand when they get credit card debt is that if they make minimum payments, and I was explaining to him what a minimum payment is, because you don't have to pay the whole credit card off, you can just make a minimum payment. If you make a minimum payment, James, I said to him on a credit card, it'll take you somewhere between 14 to 22 years to pay that credit card off. He says, what are you talking about? And so I explained it to him. He said, but that's crazy. How can that be legal? I'm like, it shouldn't be legal. How can credit cards charge you 20, 25%? How can that be legal? But it is.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  How can it be legal to go do payday loans? Right? Like I did a show with Oprah 20 years ago where someone had $12,000 in payday loans and the interest on the payday loans was over 480% annually.

• 26:42Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, God.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  And though, and Mike, there's more payday loan locations than McDonald's in America. The only thing the government did to try to stop how much payday loans were hurting Americans was create rules that would allow, wouldn't allow these payday locations to be too close to military bases. Because it was impacting the actual security of America to have military people so in debt to these payday locations. So these are just things that are just not taught. The system's actually rigged for the average American to be broke.

• 27:23Mike Carruthers?

  Which is why people need to understand how all this works and how to look out for themselves and save for the future. David Bach has been my guest. He is a financial expert. He's author of The Automatic Millionaire. That book came out 20 years ago and it's just come out again in a new expanded and updated version. And there's a link to it at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, David.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Mike, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me on the show.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 28:50Mike Carruthers?

  Self doubt is sneaky. It doesn't usually show up as panic or fear. It shows up as hesitation. You don't raise your hand. You don't send the email. You don't say the things you know you should say. And afterwards, you replay it in your head and wonder why you didn't act. Everyone deals with self doubt at times, but some people seem to be haunted by it, while others move through the world with a level of confidence that feels almost unfair. So where does self doubt actually come from? Why does it hit some people harder than others? And is that critical voice in your head something you're stuck with or something you can actually rewire?

• 29:33Mike Carruthers?

  That's what we're digging into today with Shadé Zorahi. She's a behavioral researcher. She's an award-winning peak performance educator and leading authority on confidence and self doubt. Her TEDx talks and videos have been viewed more than 300 million times. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, CNBC, and Adweek. She's author of a book called Big Trust: Rewire Self Doubt: Find Your Confidence. Shadé, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Hi Mike, it's great to be here.

• 30:05Mike Carruthers?

  So I've always figured that self doubt has to be an acquired trait because when you look at children, they have no self doubt. I mean, they'll do anything, they'll try anything, they'll talk to anybody that... They don't have any hesitation. So we must acquire it along the way. Where does it come from and how does it get acquired?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  So you're so right. When we look at children, they don't tend to have the doubts that we have as adults. I mean, they do have a fear response, which is great. So we know that the brain is wired from a very early age to want to protect, you know, its host or the owner of the brain. And so we know that they have this fear response, but they don't have that level of scrutiny that we do as adults. The fear of failure, the what will people think? And that's why I love kids, because they will just ask the darnedest things, you know? Whatever pops into their heads, they'll ask it. Along the way, what often happens is that as we're going through our lives, especially as young children,

• 31:06Speaker 02

  we start to develop these relationships with the people closest to us, our parents, our caregivers. And what unknowingly happens is, based on the nature of that relationship, it starts to instill in us certain beliefs about ourselves. So let me give you an example here. Let's say that you have a parent who is overly cautious and is constantly saying, "Be careful dear, be careful, don't do this, you're gonna get cold", and highlighting risks in your environment. And you're a four-year-old. You suddenly become very aware of all the risks and because you have this parent figure, who is someone that you look up to, who is concerned about these things, you start to learn that, "Oh, I should be concerned about these things too,

• 31:51Speaker 02

  because clearly I'm not capable enough to handle them."

• 31:56Speaker 02

  And this is not something that you consciously think. It just becomes internalized, conditioned into us. And again, we don't realize just how impactful those early years are. And we shouldn't, we shouldn't hold any grievances towards our parents or our caregivers. They were doing the best that they could with what they knew. And they didn't know they were giving us all sorts of insecurities that we develop as adults. It was just them protecting us. So that was one example. We also see another one when children get a little bit older, where you find that your parents will look at your report card and they'll skip over the As and look at the one C and say, what happened here? Or why can't you be more like your brother?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Or why haven't you done your homework? And again, these little things that they say create these labels that we have, oh, I'm not good enough. A C is not good enough. I am only worthy if I'm getting straight As. Or I must be inferior to my brother or my sibling. And again, these become these internalized ways that we see ourselves. Because how do we learn who we are? It's really through the interactions that we have with the people around us.

• 33:06Mike Carruthers?

  Right.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  In those early years.

• 33:08Mike Carruthers?

  Right, well, we, we look at how people react to us and talk to us. And then I guess that helps to shape how we think about who we are and what we do and, or shouldn't do, or can do or can't do.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 33:22Mike Carruthers?

  The, so, so is it safe to say that the people who don't have a lot of self doubt just weren't conditioned that way? Or is there something else? Is there a personality style? Is there something else to being this, you know, self confident? I can take on the world kind of person?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  So this is where we get into some really interesting research. Because this was one of my questions too. Are you just born with less self doubt? Are you just born into a family that instills you with less self doubt? What's really going on? And it's a combination of things. When we look at why people, certain people have self doubt. Yes, there are some personality components from a very early age. There's a personality trait called openness to experience. And people or children who tend to be higher on openness to experience, they are more willing to go out and experience the world, to take the risks, to try new things. Whereas other kids who might be much lower on that stay very close to mum and dad. They constantly seek reassurance. So there are these personality components early on.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  But by the time we move into adulthood, we see that there's less variance from that perspective. And what happens is, again, when we look at a lot of the literature, and I've spent the last five years studying what actually holds people back, why some people move forward, succeed and achieve, and then others are staying stuck. And what has been identified over the last fifty years, and my own studies have backed this up. There are really four attributes that determine whether someone experiences self doubt or doesn't.

• 34:55Mike Carruthers?

  And what are those four attributes?

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Okay, so the very first attribute is called acceptance. Acceptance is this trust that you are worthy and enough. You don't internalize failures, you don't need constant validation because you fundamentally accept who you are. That's the first one. The second one is agency. I trust that I have the capability to try to persist to figure things out. The third is autonomy. I trust that I have some degree of control and choice here. And then the fourth is adaptability. I trust that I can handle the emotions that come with this. The stress, the fear, the discomfort. So when these four things are strong, you can see how you're able to then combat self doubt, insecurity, overthinking.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Because you have that trust in yourself. Notice I I use the word trust for all of them. And the reason why I did that, it's intentional. It's not objective. Like if we look at agency, which is about your capability. It's not actually how capable you are, it's how capable you believe yourself to be. Because your trust in yourself is a stronger predictor of your success, your performance, your. Happiness than things like IQ, talent, overall skill. If you do not have the belief, we know from so much research and our own experience that you don't persist, you don't try.

• 36:18Mike Carruthers?

  Do you think self doubt is lack of self confidence? Or self confidence is lack of self doubt? Or it doesn't really, it doesn't really matter?

• 36:28Speaker 02

  I love that you bring up the confidence question. Okay, so Mike, if I were to ask you, what is the opposite of self doubt? What would you say off the top of your head?

• 36:36Mike Carruthers?

  Confidence.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Confidence. And when we are delivering workshops or talks and I ask the group of leaders or professionals that we're speaking with, they will, most of the time, 95% of them, say confidence. When we actually look at confidence and interrogate this idea of confidence, confidence is associated with a feeling and that feeling is associated with a sense of certainty. So when we start to unpack that, what we discover is this feeling of confidence actually doesn't come before you take action, it comes after you take action. Because you have to do the thing to build a certain degree of skill, to gain some competence, which then boosts what's called your self efficacy. And that is when that feeling of confidence shows up.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  So if that feeling that everyone is waiting for of confidence actually comes after you've done something, there is something that comes first. What do you do before you take the action? That's where self trust comes in. So actually, the true opposite of self doubt is not confidence, it's self trust. And then self trust is built on these four core psychological attributes of acceptance, agency, autonomy, adaptability. If any one of them is lacking, you will hold yourself back, you will hesitate, you will second guess yourself, you will overthink. Because there's some part of you that doesn't trust that you are worthy, that you can do

• 38:03Speaker 02

  the thing, that you have any control over the thing, or that you can handle the emotions that come with the thing.

• 38:09Mike Carruthers?

  But it seems that anytime you do something new, it doesn't seem like you can trust yourself much to do it well because you've never done it before. So you're not trusting that you'll do it well, you're trusting that you'll get, live through it, or what are you trusting?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  It's a few different things. So if we again, bring it back to those attributes. The first step is that you trust that even if it doesn't work. So this is around worthiness and acceptance. Even if it doesn't work out, that's not a verdict on who you are. You're not going to be prioritizing how other people will see you because that's that validation piece. So you trust that you're enough as you are and you'll give it a go. The importance piece here around performance or quality of performance, which is what you're touching on. That comes under agency. And so you have to trust that you have the capability to do the thing. That doesn't mean that you have blind trust. There's going to be some element of reality there. So if you're doing something you've never done before, of course, you're not going to have

• 39:10Speaker 02

  the trust that you're going to be able to do it perfectly. But you trust that you can figure it out. You can try, you can persist, and then be better next time. So it's the trust in the ability to take the step forward rather than the trust that everything will work out. It will be perfect, you'll succeed, and it will be great.

• 39:29Mike Carruthers?

  So one of the things that I think, well, and it's been my experience too. One of the things that holds people back, that seems to sap your confidence, that seems to make your mind full of thoughts of horror, is what will other people think? Why is it so important that, I mean, I know why, but I mean, it seems like overly important and it seems to be a real stopper for people that I don't want to do this because I'm afraid of what other people will think.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  We have that fear because it's fundamentally linked to social rejection. So if we look at our evolution, we evolved to live in communities. And belonging equaled survival. If we belonged, we had a tribe, we had protection, we had food, we had community. Rejection almost invariably meant death because we don't have the support of the people around us that we need. Our brains operate in very similar ways in the sense that if someone disapproves of us, we see that as social rejection. And researchers have found when they're looking at brain scans of people, social rejection and physical pain are processed in the same areas of the brain.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  So they have a very similar neurological blueprint, if you like. And just as the body and the brain are wired to protect you from physical pain because it hurts, we're also wired to protect ourselves from social pain because it hurts on a neurological level. And one of the functions of the brain is to really keep us safe and functioning and protected. So this obsession that we have about what will people think becomes a protective mechanism so that we don't avoid, rather so that we don't experience the rejection that could come if people then disapprove of us. The next question that's really interesting here comes around agreeableness. So agreeableness is one of the personality traits.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Someone who, you know, if you're speaking to someone and they agree with what you're saying and they agree with the idea and they're just, they're collaborative, they prioritize harmony, they enjoy making people happy. This is what the trait of agreeableness is. It's one of the big five personality traits. Right. And that's a really positive thing. Yeah. When we then ask people, okay, well, what about people pleasing? When someone is so afraid of rejection that they end up becoming a people pleaser, we get other traits or other characteristics like saying yes when you mean no, prioritizing the needs of everyone else and ignoring what you need, bending over backwards to make sure other people are happy and then sacrificing yourself.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  So it's this idea of agreeableness on steroids and it becomes really damaging. It's called sociotropy.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Where we have this compulsive need for people to be okay with us. Because if they like us and accept us, then we can like us and accept ourselves too. And that relates to the first attribute of acceptance. The risk with that is that what we see is people end up living lives not for themselves, but to make everyone else happy. Which means they never get to determine what is it that I truly want? What is it that I truly believe? What kind of life do I want to be leading? And then they end up empty because they're so emotionally burnt out from making sure everyone else is happy and sacrificing their opinions and their desires, that they end up a shell of a person. Not only that, they end up living a very small life.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Because we know that risk-taking requires putting yourself out there and not knowing how things will go. There is always a risk that someone will disapprove, that you won't do well, that you'll fail. And if you are so attached to the approval of other people, you will not take risks. Because what if they say this about me? What will they think? Fascinatingly, when we look at failure, failure is often only feared, not because of the failure itself, but because of what other people will think if I fail. What will they think about me? What will that say about me? And so we internalize what we think other people will say about us,

• 43:50Speaker 02

  even before it's happened, and then we hold ourselves back. So we don't take the risk, which means, of course, we don't fail, but we're stuck and we're shrinking our lives.

• 43:59Mike Carruthers?

  And yet, and I remember hearing somebody say this, and I love this. You know what other people think? Nothing. They're not thinking about you. They're thinking about them. They're thinking about being rejected themselves. And that we imagine that what people might think, but it almost never happens. And yet, we don't learn from that, that, you know, it's probably okay that even if people don't like you, it's not the end of the world.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  It is not. I love what you just shared.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  You don't know what people are thinking. You know, there was this study, this classic study that was done many years ago, where they gave people a very obnoxious looking shirt, T-shirt. And they asked them to go and walk around in public. And then they came back and reported how they felt. And many of them reported feeling judged, they felt insecure, they felt like people were staring at them. But then when they actually went and interviewed these other people, no one even noticed. So it's called the spotlight effect. We feel like other people are paying a lot more attention to us than they actually are. But they're all caught up in their own lives and their own challenges and their own inner critics and their own self-criticism and fear of failure and... People are complex and have a lot going on.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  And so when you remind yourself that, hey, people actually don't care about you as much as you care about yourself, they're worrying about their own things. The other thing which I think is really empowering is to ask yourself, okay, well, let's say they don't like me, they disapprove of me, they disagree with something. So what? So what? What actually would happen? And when you work through it really pragmatically and you ask yourself, okay, well, what is the worst thing that can happen? Often you realize it's nowhere near as big as you've made it in your mind. We are catastrophizing, it will be the end of the world. When actually, okay, so-and-so doesn't like me, oh, well, I'll get on with my life.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  When you can break it down and just be really rational and logical and pragmatic, you realize we're creating all of these problems for ourselves and we don't need to be.

• 46:11Mike Carruthers?

  I would imagine that how well you are able to deal with self-doubt has a lot to do with the people around you, whether they're supportive and encouraging or they're critical and give you reason to doubt yourself.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  I think it was Jim Rohn who famously said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I don't think there's scientific validation around the number five, but there is very solid evidence that who you spend time with fundamentally changes how you believe in yourself, your value, your capability, and whether you rise to what you're capable of. If you're around people who want you to play small, you shrink to meet their expectations. It's called the Gollum effect. And then when you're around people who believe in you, you are more likely to believe in yourself and live up to their expectations.

• 47:02Mike Carruthers?

  Something that seems very related to this is the imposter syndrome, that sense of when you do succeed, that you feel like you've somehow faked it, that you don't belong here, that you don't deserve a chair at the table. And how does that work into this?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  When you're in a position where you've had a strong, you have a strong track record of success, you have achievements, you've performed well, and you feel like it was a fluke, or it was undeserving, that is what that feeling of an imposter is. Some studies have found that 82% of people have felt like that at some point. So it's actually not uncommon at all. The vast majority of people have experienced that. One great way to think about it is perhaps it's just growth with integrity. Maybe you are growing and you are in positions that are stretching you and are new, and you acknowledge, maybe I don't have all the skills or the credentials to be here, but I'm here. So how am I going to make it count? How can I learn? How can I grow?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  What skills do I need to fill my gaps? And I've got this fantastic little reframe, because we know the power of thoughts and how thoughts shape your brain and your nervous system and how you feel and then what you do. The moment you start to think, I feel like a fraud, like I don't belong, like an imposter, instantly shifts to, well, I'm here, so what an amazing opportunity I have to learn and grow.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  It's so simple, and yet you're hijacking that negative thought, re-engaging your prefrontal cortex, and reminding yourself, whatever the reason, you're here now, might as well make it count.

• 48:42Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you know, I think everyone can take something from what you've said, because no one gets very far in life without experiencing self-doubt and experiencing just the things you've been talking about. I've been talking with Shadé Zarahe. She is a behavioral researcher and peak performance educator, and she's author of the book Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Shadé, thanks so much for sharing this.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Fantastic. Thank you so much. That was great.

• 49:16Mike Carruthers?

  You probably like to think that your home is relatively bug-free, but, boy, are you wrong. Researchers surveyed 50 American homes and discovered a total of 579 species of spiders, beetles, mites, flies, and ants, all lurking in the shadows. Every home had at least 100 species living in it, and the investigators only examined visible surfaces that could easily be accessed, like behind furniture, and on ceilings, shelves, and baseboards. Now, the survey was done in homes in North Carolina, but it turns out it's very typical, no matter where you live or how clean you keep your home. We all have lots of non-human roommates.

• 50:01Mike Carruthers?

  And although some of them are unwelcome guests that accidentally just stumble into your house, a lot of them move in because they need humans to survive. And it turns out a lot of these insects can be good house guests as they clean up after themselves and us. The carpet beetles and book lice search for dead insects, moles, and algae, and eat them. And they clean up after humans by finishing off food crumbs left behind, as well as eating hair and dead skin. So, yeah, it's pretty gross. But there's nothing you can do about it. And that is something you should know. I would love it if you would please tell someone else about this podcast so they could give it a listen and help us grow our audience. It's easy to do.

• 50:45Mike Carruthers?

  Just use that share feature on the player you're listening to right now. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:56Speaker 04

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• 51:24Speaker 05

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