Begin Again with Davina McCall - Begin Again Moments: The Secret to Confidence | Susie Moore & Eleanor Mills

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

In this episode of Begin Again Moments, we bring together two powerful conversations about confidence, self-belief and finding the courage to become who you truly are. Confidence expert Susie Moore shares the secrets to building inner confidence and explains why self-belief is something we can create, rather than something we are simply born with. Eleanor Mills reflects on her own journey of rediscovering confidence in midlife, sharing how letting go of expectations and embracing who she really is helped her step into a new chapter of life. Together, these moments explore what it takes to trust yourself, find your voice and build the confidence to begin again. To hear the full conversations, watch the complete episodes on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Garnier - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n8Fs9bGs2UGD7dNLM0WU0Pan7l4X7hhY/view?usp=drive_link Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. When people are afraid of telling their opinion because it might upset someone, what's that about and how can you stop doing that? How can you be more, I'm just going to say how I feel and how you deal with it is up to you.

But it's easy to say that for me to say that. I find it incredibly hard to be strongly assertive against an idea or say something that I mean to say that might hurt someone's feelings without, I don't know. So I have an opinion you do. disagree. I'm scared to tell you because you won't like it, essentially. When we hold back, sometimes we lie, right? Sometimes we just completely abandon ourselves, right, in pursuit of just the peace of this relationship. Sometimes we actually even will abandon an idea or we won't go for it because this person won't like it or this person says that's bad. You see people do this in, like, in so many different ways. When we behave or think or speak a certain way,

to keep the peace, or because I don't want to disappoint that person, we're actually not treating that person with any respect. Because we're thinking, you're weak, you can't handle it, I'm strong, so I'll just do what I have to do, because I can't trust you to be okay. We can let people be disappointed. We can let people not like our decisions. And that is actually an equal relationship,

the same way they can do it to us. And what happens if, say, because I know a couple of people who also get very, they hate the idea that someone won't like them. Well, what is that, right? What is that? So, okay, number one, this is so, it's so funny. Imagine if you go and you speak in front of 1,000 people.

There are a thousand opinions of you, right? There is. Something like, you're the best ever. Someone else is like, that was so boring. Same with a movie, same with a restaurant. Someone's like, best. And I'm like, total crap. So number one, this is back to controlling.

Like, you can't make anyone love you. No matter how much you play up to them, that can take a while to learn in life. But if I'm just super sweet, but if I'm extra smart, but if I'm funnier, oh, but if I'm thinner, you can't make anybody love you. And if your focus is, will she like me, will he like me, whether it's an intimate relationship or social media or maybe you have a certain level of influence in the world, oh boy, I mean, it's almost funny that we think that there is any modicum of control that we have over someone's response or someone's warmth towards us or the opposite.

So when we are in our integrity, and I use this word a lot because, I mean, it sounds like formal and legal almost, like it's not ethics. It's really the origin of the world of the word integrity just means to be whole. Your inside and your outside. It's really just to be whole, to be the real you. Then when you know that you're just doing that, peacefully not proving anything, I think the need to be like just kind of diminishes on its own.

Your intentions are good. You're living your life your way. I mean, look at it. How many ways can you live your life? Think about all the places you can live, the careers you can. There's never going to people, I mean, in some parts of the world, if you're homosexual, you'll be killed. I mean, the world isn't this place where this is the way to be liked.

Yes. It doesn't even make any sense. So I think if I'm trying to make someone like me in a particular moment, I think that I just need a bit more self-love that day, or I need to speak more kindly to myself, or I need a good old dose of perspective. Yeah, so what you're saying is self-love, because if you are trying to make someone like you,

you're not going to be yourself, and then you're not going to like yourself because you're not being true to your... Yeah, congratulations. You're all these girls like you now, And it's not really you. Yeah, they like someone else. Exactly.

And then that's you for the rest of your relationship with, yeah, awesome. Well done. Enjoy yourselves. Yeah. You know, it's, and I think that when we pause and think about it, but most people, we don't pause and think about it. We just think, oh, this is the way to survive or this is the way to be cool or this is the way to make money. There are plenty. There are lots of paths.

And when we abandon ourselves, even if it looks good on the outside, like, you know, it's, it's choosing between almost authenticity or belonging. I mean, this is a brilliant one for school. Yes. You know, at school when you're just trying to be in with the cool kids. Oh, yes. You know, you change everything about yourself, but you end up thinking, who am I?

Like, I don't know what's going on. But you belong. Yeah. Or maybe you belong. Oh, whoop you do. Yeah. But for how long? Yeah.

And being who and wearing what and saying what and laughing at jokes. It's exhausting, too. Yeah. I mean, who can keep it up for long. So when you can choose this authenticity, I think, slowly, it can happen one. like degree at a time. One small, it's not like, today I'm going to be myself. It's just small, it's saying no when you mean now, lovingly, you know, saying yes to the things that really

ignites some curiosity in you. This segment was sponsored by Garnier. Oh, lady over there. Hi, what's your name? Shoshana. Shoshana. We've got a colleague at work, Emma, who wants to have her hair coloured. I'm trying to find somebody to come with me to come and color her hair with some Garnia. Neutrice at work. Yeah, why not? Would you really? Follow me, follow me. So this is the Begin Again studio.

And this is Emma! Shana seemed really confident. She has coloured her friend's hair and stuff before. We've got to put this one into here and shake to activate the colour. Shake it like a Polaroid picture. It's already the colour's lovely. The shade that we are doing on Emma is Mokka Brown,

which is my shade. Mine, I own this. I don't. There are actually 35 shades to choose from. It's got fruit oils in it. They are what nourishes it. Emma, you're very lucky. You have no grey hairs.

But Garnier Nutris, the permanent colour's got 100% grey coverage. I can vouch for that. That is it. Oh wow. Easier to do it yourself. Do you see what you mean? Is that easier than you thought? Very easy.

Just like putting hair oil in. Yeah. It's like so easy. Time to go. Go Emma! Oh my god, it looks great. Oh my God, I'm not being fine. Not being funny, you've done a great job.

Look at that, can we just discuss the shine? That's amazing, are you pleased with it? Do you like it? Love, love, love, love. How confident are you now out of 10? Oh, 10 out of 10. That was a lot simpler than I thought of thing. I'm so pleased.

We did a thing. Thank you. Thank you. You're trusting us. Yeah, thank you. You guys have done amazing. And thank you, Gagne and you Trees. Love you.

One of the big things I say in the book is about saying yes to joy. And so one of the things I did, but I wasn't having to slug into like the Sunday Times all the time, is I started swimming every day in the Hampstead Ladies Pond all the way through the winter. And just doing lots of things that made me feel good. And through that, and what I say to, and I now run lots of circles for my queen ages. I saw that, but on with noon. With noon.

If you go on to, yeah. If you go on to, yeah. So you can find a circle near you. We started doing it just. in Soho, I started sending out this Queenager newsletter. And you know, it's like to begin with, you know, you have a few hundred, then you have a few thousand. And then it really kind of gathered pace. And I started just doing it in this flat in Soho that I borrowed. And it got too big for that. And now we've got chapters all over the place,

which is really exciting. I love that. Chapters like Hell's Angels. Yeah, like Hell's Angels. Hells Queen Ages. You're going to have to get some leather jackets or something made up. We've got some tape bags. Same join the Queen Angel Revolution. And what you see, what's so amazing about the Newn Circle is just the sense of that we're all in this. And one of the things we say in the New Circle is the say yes to joy. And I think that actually following your joy, following doing the things that you love, it are the stepping stones. You were saying, how did you set up this business? Well, I think following those pebbles of the things that really make you happy are the root to a kind of a successful life, a truly successful life, a resonant life, a life that matches on the outside,

how you feel on the inside. And I think for a lot of women, that's not the case. It's one of the things I talk about in the book. In fact, when I was, after I left the Sunday, after I was made redundant, I went to Jamaica with my friend Decker. And I was lying in and I was feeling really terrible. It was in the really early bit.

And we went and we swam out around this boat in the bay. And a woman popped her head over the top of the boat and was like, you know, oh, who are you? Come aboard. So we were sitting there. It was about 11 in the morning. We were sitting there with a beer. and Nancy told us her story

and she was sailing around the Caribbean on kind of quite a funny, grotesy little boat which she'd bought with her friend. They'd got it for 20,000 bucks from some marina in Puerto Rico. And she talked about living a resonant life and how the life that she'd had as a kind of suburban woman in Chicago

had really not been her. But this adventurous life living like a pirate kind of from day to day, sailing around the Caribbean. She was in her late 50s. She suddenly felt who, she was really supposed to be. And that really lit a spark in me.

I was like, wow. And that was the first time that I actually spoke aloud my kind of plan for Nene and this kind of how we could create a community that would help other women to live a resonant life with their truthiest kind of truth on show.