This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Courage, Confidence & “Just Keep Going” with Lynn Smith | 357

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

We’re talking real-deal confidence—the kind you build while you’re ugly-crying in your car between school drop-off and a board meeting. In this conversation with media pro and author Lynn Smith, we dig into the messy intersection of courage and confidence, why perfectionism and your “brain bully” are killing your clarity, and how to model bravery for your kids (and, TBH, for yourself). Spoiler: brave isn’t something you are; it’s something you do. We get into naming the inner critic, reframing fear, and choosing the next right step—even when quitting is actually the bravest move. Oh, and Lynn wrote the children’s book on this: Just Keep Going—for kids and the grown-ups who love them. What we cover: The fear loop CEOs and six-year-olds share—and how to break it “Brain bully” vs. inner knowing: name it, reframe it, tell it to sit down Perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and the confidence–courage flywheel When to keep going…and when letting go is the most courageous choice Raising confident kids by modeling it (not lecturing it) Simple body-based resets for big feelings (yours and theirs) Because whether you’re running a company or raising tiny humans, confidence isn’t about never feeling fear — it’s about learning to move with it, breathe through it, and just keep going. Thank you to our sponsors! Get 20% off your first order at curehydration.com/WOMANSWORK with code WOMANSWORK — and if you get a post-purchase survey, mention you heard about Cure here to help support the show!  Visit Shopstage.co today to shop or create a registry and use code WORKIT20 for 20% off your first order. That’s Shopstage.co, promo code WORKIT20. Connect with Lynn: Website: https://www.lynnsmith.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com  Book: https://www.lynnsmith.com/author?utm_source=chatgpt.com  Lynn’s Confidence Quiz: https://www.lynnsmith.com/quiz Nicole’s Confidence Derailer Quiz: https://nicolekalil.com/confidencequiz  Related Podcast Episodes Confidence Isn’t Born, It’s Built — Lessons from the Cockpit to Real Life with Michelle “MACE” Curran | 343  How To Build Girls’ Confidence with Cyndi Roy Gonzalez | 308 How To Build Courage with Dr. Margie Warrell | 273 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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5% of every purchase funds research and patient support. And as a listener, you can use code Workit 20 for 20% off your first order. That's shopstage.com promo code Workit 20. Because woman's work is about showing up for yourself and for each other. And with Stage, You don't have to do it alone. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast, where together, we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today with confidence and possibly the occasional meltdown in the car in between all the meetings, errands, drop-offs, and the never-ending weekend. activities. Come on. We've all been there, right? And I promise I'll get back to that in a minute, but first, I need to set the stage. Most weeks on this show, we're digging into topics that are wildly relevant to most of us, but are not my area of expertise. So I read, I research,

I prepare, I do my best to not accidentally turn the episode into my own personal therapy session. But today, oh, friend, today is different. On this episode, we're talking about something that I know quite a bit about. We get to talk about confidence. And I'm so excited I'm practically buzzing. Don't you just love when you meet somebody who's clearly speaking your language, somebody you could talk to or geek out with for days

because they just get it? That's exactly what this conversation is for me. And while we'll be talking about confidence, we're coming from the angle of where courage and bravery intersect with it. Because they're not the same, but they feed each other. They fuel each other.

And I've said this before on episodes where we talk about confidence, but one of the most common questions that I get when I speak on the topic is, how do I raise confident kids? And our guest today literally wrote the book for that, a children's book about reframing fear, building resilience, and choosing courage, all the stuff that confidence is made of. But here's the thing. I'm convinced this isn't just a book for kids,

because every message in it is one as adults we still need to hear. So if you've ever wondered how to keep going when fear feels louder than faith, when rejection stings, when doubt kicks trust out of the driver's seat, when imposter syndrome screams and your inner knowing is only whispering when giving up feels easier than getting up, this episode is for you. We're talking courage, confidence, and how to put one foot in front of the other toward what matters most even when you're scared. Maybe especially when you're scared. We're talking about how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back into action in those moments when you find

yourself crying in the car or wherever it is that you do, you're melting down. So Lynn Smith is an award-winning media and communications expert who spent 15 years in national news as an anchor for NBC, MSNBC, and CNN headline news. Today, she helps leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs communicate with confidence under pressure and show up as their most powerful selves. She's also the host of Stroller Coaster and the author of the new children's book, Just Keep Going, a story that reminds us that brave isn't something that you are. It's something that you do.

Okay, Lynn, I'm clearly very excited about this conversation. What an intro, Nicole. I'm excited. Yeah, I've definitely spent far too much time figuring out where to start. So I want to ask first this sort of intersection or correlation between a children's book and what's happening with adults. You say that the same fears that are stopping CEOs are the same fears that are stopping and showing up for kids. So what do you mean by that? Let's talk about how this is a lot of the same stuff. Well, I get hired by these Fortune 500 CEOs.

that are like, make me a great communicator because I stumble or I say, um, a lot. So when I first went into it, I was giving them the tactical. Here's how you talk in sound bites. Here's how you drill things down. But I found I wasn't getting the results I was looking for. And it's because I was treating their symptom,

which was their communication, not the disease, which was their fears. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I forget everything and freeze? And that's what was causing them to not be clear, concise and confident. So I began treating the fears, and we started getting the results, magnetic communication. And I realized this idea of perfectionism for adults, which is paralyzing in many cases, starts when we're young. Because think about what do we teach kids? Be best at your sport. Get first place. Get great grades. Behave. All of these things. We are literally breeding

perfectionists. And so is it any wonder when they get to the boardroom, they're paralyzed by their fears. So why don't we start when we're young, understanding that fear is natural, that we can do something in spite of it, there are physical techniques like taking those deep breaths or jumping up and down, which happens in the scenes with mouse and his friends, and putting one foot in front of the other. So imagine if we got this at six and not myself at 46 realizing these lessons along with my CEOs who are realizing it in the boardroom. Let's start in the classroom. Yeah.

Okay. So there are a handful of things. First, just a loving reminder that we all are facing these fears, right? It doesn't go away. I think sometimes we think that when you achieve a certain thing or make a certain level of income or, you know, get the promotion or have the perfectly behaved children or something is going to come along and make all those fears go away. And it just doesn't work that way.

We all are facing fears. It doesn't go away. So that's one thing that jumped out. The other thing is I identify what I call confidence derailers. There are five things that are chipping away at our confidence. Perfectionism is number one. The second is what I call head trash and you call brain bully. Brain bully.

Yeah. So I'm curious what you're telling people about their brain bully. How do you quiet that voice? How do you address it? We all have it. But let's talk about what you're telling people. We have it because we're wired that way. We're wired to beware of threats.

It's just that we don't know that our keynote is not a threat. So our instinct is to think of and catastrophize all the things that could happen. I'm the most guilty of it. I share with people the story of the keynote that I bombed because everybody thinks, of course I'd be great at public speaking because I was this news anchor, but I was paralyzed by imposter syndrome in public speaking. It's not my area of expertise. I look out at the sea of people and they're all like looking down at their phones and

my brain bully is saying things like, they hate this. I'm not good at this. And it then feeds my mind the information that I'm in a threatening situation. So it does all the things that it would do to protect me, like give me shaky hands, sweaty palms. It is literally doing its job to protect me. When I realized that, I decided I wanted to create a method so I could, overcome my brain bully? And then when it worked for me, I was like, okay, I now can public speak

because I follow this method. Let me see if it works for my executives. It worked for all of them. And I said, there's something here, which is, let's name what it is. Let's give it a name, externalize it from our own brain and say, this is not reality. This is just us feeding our brain thoughts that we have decided are true. Then let's reframe that thought and see if we get a different result. So Bob is my brain bully when I named it, because my son got a fish for Christmas and named him Bob, and I thought that was hysterical. So every time that voice comes in that says, Lynn, you're going to have a bad keynote again, I stop and I say, Bob, and I reframe the thought to I know and I've seen how this helps people. And then I say, Bob, sit down, watch this. And it's

this shift in power. And it worked so well for me. It has worked for my executives. And I realized it's because our brain can be adjusted if we adjust the thought. And we know this through manifestation. We know this through all neuroscience now. But it's so powerful in order to push yourself to take that next step. And so I hope anyone that's listening to this, what's your brain bully? What's your brain bully's name? Name it today. And whenever it comes in, reframe the thought and tell it to sit down and watch this. You know, it's funny. So name it is the first step that I talk about when I talk about head trash.

And I've had a few other people who've come on neuroscience. This is sounds maybe a little silly, but it's so important. I think because it helps to distinguish the voice from what we think it is, which is like our inner knowing or truth or fact or, you know, I think calling it what it is, is so important because we interact with it differently at that point. So I call it head trash. And even sometimes that, this is my head trash. That's just distinguishing it from my inner knowing or, you know, anything else. But I call mine Dick short for Richard for obvious reasons. I always love hearing people's brain bully names. They're so creative. It's fun. Okay. Your book just keep going

is technically a children's book, but I do think that adults need it as much as anyone. I want to start by asking what lessons from the book do you think that we most need to hear or that we've forgotten as grown-ups? So I was going through a really hard time in my life in my early 30s, and I had a great friend from college that just texted me, just keep going.

It wasn't, you're going to be okay. It wasn't everything's going to work out, which is our instinct when we're trying to comfort friends. it's sometimes putting one foot in front of the other, taking it minute by minute or hour by hour or day by day is all we can do. And right now does this not feel more relevant than ever? Because we are in such an uncontrollable world, yet we have the controllability of one factor, which is the ability to just keep going. And I've had to call on these three words in my own life since I was sent them time and time again, and even in the writing of this book, which was rejected

over and over and over again. And as I'm now launching it into the world and I'm doubting myself and my brain bullies rampant because I'm doing something I've never done before, I can only control about just keep going. So I hope every parent that is reading this story to their child at night remembers this one story, my son, who's six, came home and he was like, mom, I need to bring your book to class. And I was like, why? What's going on? And he said, well, George is scared because he just started a new school. And I think he needs this book. And so you're either the mouse that needs the reminder to just keep going, or you're the friends in the book, like the owl or the deer or the bird that reminds our friends. Just put one foot in front of the other. Take a deep

breath when you have big feelings. Jump up and down to get those blood flow and your body working again because it feels so paralyzed. And those physical techniques that I use in coaching executives, I put into a version that a six-year-old could comprehend. And so as you read it together, you can begin a conversation with your children about what it means to be brave, what it means to have courage, what it means to fear failure and doing it anyway. And all these lessons that we know we need to learn as adults, let's teach him to our kids and start that conversation early. So, yes, teach him to our kids, but I think really model it for our kids. I have this belief that we all learn best via experience and observation. Yes, adults, but kids too. And my biggest

concern is that we as parents are trying to tell our children how to be confident, how to be brave, how to be courageous. And telling doesn't work for most people, for the most part. If we really want to instill this in our children, yes, we need to help them figure out environments where they can practice it for themselves, but I think we got to demonstrate it, like as often as possible. And, okay, so as you were talking, I wrote down like six different notes. So I'm going to take this in a lot of different directions. So bear with me. First, you'd said at the very beginning, we have this tendency to want to comfort the people we love, our friends, the people around us in certain ways. We see this on social media, like somebody's having a rough time

and it's like, the feed is always like, you're beautiful, you're amazing. Just make it go away. Right? Yeah, we like, or it's going to all be okay. It's all going to work out. You got this. And I'm not saying not to encourage people. And I'm not saying that this is bad or that you're doing something wrong, I just think we can do better. And why our inclination is always to step out of the discomfort and polish it up. And I don't know, sometimes when you're in it, it's the person who's like, I have no fucking clue what's going to happen. Just keep going. Right? Yes. Or, God, I don't, this might be a fucking disaster, but I believe in you, right? Like, whatever it is. What are your thoughts on that? I think that I've had to coach myself into that mindset and then I try and,

like you say, mirror that for my kids. I've experienced so much disappointment. Everyone sees a shiny resume, right, of all these networks I worked at and all of that. I can't tell you how many times I failed. Way more than I ever succeeded. I just had, I posted this on social media. I just had the TEDx that I had booked in Reno and their funding fell out. So they had to cancel. the whole event. It was a dream of mine. And that disappointment, we have this toxic positivity where it's like, it's all going to be okay. It's like, no, sometimes you just sit in the disappointment and say, this freaking sucks. And now what? I'm going to just keep going. I'm going to put together the email to the next organized event that says I have a polished talk. I'm going to put one foot in front

of the other. That's all we can do. And this idea of, you're going to be all right. You're so wonderful. It's okay. It doesn't help anything. We know that. Yeah. And so I've had to remind myself, this isn't something that all of a sudden like, woo poof, we're cured. We don't do this anymore. Every time it happens, a great disappointment, just happened recently, a great disappointment where I have to stop and say, you can't control this. What can you control? You can control what you? You can control what you do with this. Yeah. And you can put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Yeah. And it gets me to where I want to be. And I think everyone right now has some version of that canceled TEDx or failed relationship or insert whatever it is that they're going through.

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on C4 or in magazine. working through my brain. I haven't quite figured out how to articulate it yet, but I talk about confidence a lot. And I think the underlying belief that a lot of people have is if I do something confidently or if I'm confident, then the outcomes will all work. Like if I just choose confidence, then I will get exactly what I want. And it doesn't work that way. You can do something with all of the confidence in the world, with authentic trust in self and still have it fail.

still have it be an absolute disaster. I often say confidence isn't that it's going to work out. Confidences, I trust that I'll be okay no matter what. I love that you just said that because I describe confidence as the belief that you can do anything despite any circumstances, meaning you're going to do it even knowing that you might fail at it because you know that you'll be able to keep going and eventually get to your success. Arrogance is just thinking that you're good at everything. because I get a lot of people that say to me, well, if I don't want to be too confident, I don't want to come across as arrogant.

Confidence is not just showing up and being like, it's doing the thing even though you know it might not work out. And again, have had to remind my own self of that as I launch a book into this world and your expectations are, you know, hitting the New York Times bestselling list the first week. And the reminder, and let's really geek out on what I've shifted in my own mindset, is the universe, if you have this trust and belief that you've done all that you could to birth this baby and the universe will do it in good time, the right thing, that trust is what gets to successes. There is this level of energy that you put out that things will meet you at. And that's something that I'm really trying to get myself reminded of. And so I don't want it to seem like I'm just a confident person that never has those thoughts. We're all human. It's what do we do with them?

Yeah. When they happen. Okay. So I'm going to just, again, handful of things buzzing through my head. First, I'm glad you made the distinction between arrogance. I think there are so much misinterpretation, misuse of confidence. that we don't even know what it is that we're talking about anymore. And a lot of times we call arrogance or ego confidence, but that's not what that is.

I always say arrogance is when you think you're better than somebody else. Insecurity is when you feel less than. Confidence is not needing to compare yourself to anyone at all, right? Like there's that distinction. And let's just talk about for a hot second what a mind fuck it is to write a book about confidence. There's this pressure to like feel or demonstrate it all the time. and confidence is only ever always a journey. The only people who feel 100% confident, 100% of the time are narcissists and people

who are lying to themselves and others. And we don't want any of that. We literally talk about the same things because I say the only people that don't have brain bullies are narcissists and sociopaths because their brains are wired differently. So if you have a brain bully, just pat yourself on the back because it means that you're actually a normal human being. Yes. Thank God.

Right? Thank God. Yes, if I didn't have a brain bully, Nicole, you should not have me on this show. Right. And we're seeing a lot of people out there who, and out there, I mean, like, on the medias, who if they have a brain bully, are not acknowledging it. And we see a lot of arrogance and ego. And it's just unfortunate. I'm curious, your thoughts on this. Just keep going is phenomenal advice. And sometimes quitting something or someone is. is the bravest, most courageous, most confident thing any of us can do. How do we know when to just keep going and when quitting is the best right thing to do? Yeah, that's such a great question. I have quit a number of things in my life that I equate to not quitting. It is releasing of the energy that does not serve the greater purpose of what I want to do with my life.

And that's the distinction. I think that when we use the word quit, there's this negative connotation to it because we associate it with what we thought as kids. You never quit. You never give up. So it's a different use of the word. In the book, we talk about mouse being scared because he's afraid he might fail. And so he wants to quit.

And his friends remind him, just keep going. That's because quitting is you believing that something might not work out. And so instead of quitting, it is believing that you are who you surround yourself with and what you surround yourself with. And if that inner gut is telling you that this does not serve the place that you want to be, you have to eliminate that energy altogether. There's no even halfway foot in the door. So have you ever had a really toxic relationship that you have completely cut out of your life? I have. Yes. Many. A toxic business. environment. I have. That is not quitting. That is choosing the energy you surround yourself with

because we know, and I talk a lot about energy and I hope that it doesn't resonate like a woo-woo thing. This is all frequency, neuroscience, things that I'm sure you've had guests on the show that's proven rather than just, I believe, in crystals and all of these things. We are the frequency we vibrate at. And that's the world and the field that comes to us. So if we're vibrating at this amazing high frequency, things are coming to us. They're being attracted in the universe's right time. If we're frequency in this really low level because of the people that are around us, because we're not being genuine, because we're allowing people to suck our energy, that's the universe that you'll live in. And cutting those people out is not quitting. It's

protecting. It's protecting yourself and your energy. I'm thinking out loud. This is a very unpolished thought. But I sometimes wonder if fear is the breadcrumb that helps us to distinguish whether or not we keep going or whether or not it's time to let go of energy or quit or give up on something. Meaning, I've stayed in past relationships for far too long. And I told myself at the time that it aligned with what I wanted. I thought I wanted this person or I wanted this relationship or whatever. So there was an element of like desire that I was making these decisions from, but staying was significantly less scary than leaving was. And I just wonder if I would have been really honest with myself, if I would have gone the path of acknowledging when it requires

me to be brave, when it requires me to be courageous, that's probably a better insight into, like we are taught to avoid fear, right? But if we lean into it, it's probably a better guide or a better breadcrumb of the direction we really should be choosing. Thoughts. I actually, in the book, fear is not the enemy in the book. Fear is just existing. We don't want to avoid fear. I think what you're saying is, is that fear is this sort of barometer for us to determine whether or not something is safe. And I say to the children as I'm reading it, you know, being brave is doing something even though you're scared as long as it's safe. And as adults, when we have that instinct, that fear, can we ask ourselves, is it a fear of failure? Or is it a fear of what the consequence

of that leaving a toxic relationship would look like, starting over, being alone again, all of those things. If you can ask yourself that question, is it because you're afraid to fail and it might not work out? Or are you afraid of the hard times you're going to have to go through to recover from that decision? You can distinguish between whether or not it's the right choice to make. Yeah. All right. You know, I said earlier, I think arrogance and ego are often mistaken for confidence. And I do think sometimes courage and bravery are sometimes mistaken for confidence. And my belief is that there are two different things, but one fuels or feeds the other. Or like there's like if you think of overlapping circles, the ideal place to be is where you have both, right?

But from your perspective, how do confidence encourage fuel or feed each other? Can somebody be brave without feeling confident and vice versa? What are your thoughts? I think that it is ever-changing. It is a roller coaster. One day you wake up and you feel super confident in the next day. And I've experienced it in just the process of releasing this book to the world where I've woken up and I'm like, we did it. It's out there. We did this. It took me six years to write, sell, and publish this book. And I tell that story to children. I ask them, how long do you think it took to make this book? And they'll say, a day or a week. And I'll

say six years. And do you know why? Because I just kept going, even when people told me no, even when I would wake up and be like, maybe I should quit this. Maybe I'm not good at this. But I just kept going. It's the only reason that we're here. And so in those days where I don't have that feeling of confidence, I let that be as well. Because we cannot always, to your point, be this confident, bubbly, I'm on top of the world person. It's not realistic. And there's gifts in the days where you are searching for your courage because you're coaching yourself back into that place that you know you succeed most in. But you realize that human element that we don't have the control over exists. And that's okay too. And then instead of when our

children are disappointed, saying, how can I fix this? Not invited to a birthday party, calling up the parents being like, fix this, make, make, invite them. Yeah. Saying instead, that must be really disappointing. Oh, that must feel terrible. And it's just the acknowledgement of the feeling that your children want. They don't want everything to be made better because then what's that setting them up for? A world that they can't even live in because that's not the way the real world's going to work. Right. So how can we parent ourselves when we have that disappointment and just say, oh, that sucks. That's okay. Yeah.

It's going to suck. Yeah. My daughter tried out for like a travel basketball team and didn't make it. And every instinct as a parent, and by the way, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a parenting expert. I'm not even sure I'm doing it well half the time, right? But she didn't make the team and every instinct as a parent was to call and find out why or parents of friends were like I can't believe she didn't she should have you know and I went to her we went to her my husband and I and we're like gosh how do you feel like do and she was like yeah

you know it sucks but she got over it faster than I would have even thought like she was fine a few hours later no big deal she was a little bit bummed but she came up with the strategy of doing the rec league version instead and she ended up being one of the better players on her league team and it was such a confidence boost for her to step into more of a leadership role where she would have made the travel team she probably would have sat on the bench most of the time either way anyway the opportunity would have been to figure out her way and to learn and grow and all of that from that but my point is we're so quick to want to fix we're so quick to want to not have our children feel fear or pain or sadness or anything and we're doing them

such a disservice. It's through those things that confidence gets built. It's so funny that you say that. My son went to sleepaway camp for the first time. And I was just so worried because he didn't know anyone. And I was like, maybe I should call a friend and try and get a friend there. And my husband was like, Lynn, he's going to gain so much confidence by being in such an uncomfortable situation. I was like, wait a second. I'm the confidence coach here. I'm the one. But it's my parental instinct to want to have him be happy and go there and have a friend and a buddy. And let me tell you, he showed up in that cabin, knew not a single kid. And within 30 seconds, identified four kids in his cabin that he just vibed with.

And he was like, okay, bye, Mom. And they just ran off. And I looked at my husband and I was like, this is going to be the greatest gift we ever give him. Yeah. Is the feeling of discomfort that he's going to experience time and time again. his life. And if you're equipped to understand how to live in discomfort and get through it and push through it, you will be a successful adult. There's no question about that. So why, and it's our parental instinct, but why wouldn't we want to continuously say to our kids, that's so disappointing,

isn't it? Yeah. That's hard. And it's life. That's what's going to happen. So what are you going to do with that? And I got cut from every single team that I tried out for in the seventh grade. And when my son got cut from the team, I told him this story, to your point to being a mirror for our kids. And I said, honey, I got cut from every single team in the seventh grade. And I called up my friends that made the teams and I congratulated them. And then I got to work. And I went to camps during the summer and all the things. And I worked so hard until I was able to make the team. I didn't give up. I kept pushing. And that's what sticks with our children is hearing that we've failed over and over and over again and we've learned from it. That's what I hope comes from this book,

from my own parenting strategies, and in what I do in my work. Yeah. So it's interesting that you bring up that example because we sent our daughter to a two-week sleep over camp over the summer. And the first couple days, we were getting notes home like, please come pick me up. I don't want to be here. She was super homesick. And I knew as a parent that the right thing to do was to keep her there. And you know, she'll be okay. Let her work through this. And like five days in, she's still saying the same thing and she's not sleeping. And like it was this really challenging thing to figure out as a parent. And ultimately, we ended up picking her up after eight days. So early. And I still don't know if it was the right thing to do or not, but here's what I do know is I have confidence as firm and bold

trust and self. And when we talk to her, we said, you know, just take it one day at a time. Do your best. Just keep going. Right. And at some point, I said, listen, you give it a day. And if you still feel the same way tomorrow, we'll come and get you. And we'll just take it one day at a time. And if the next day, you will come and get you. And it was a little bit of, I have confidence, Confidence is firm and bold trust in self. And at some point, I had to teach her to trust herself and to decide for herself and to know that whatever it was, if this was, and I put in air quotes of failure, that she's going to learn and grow from that failure. And we talked about it on the way home and several days since, what we learned, what we would have done differently. And it's just, I go back to parenting is freaking hard. There is no right answer. And a lot of it involves doing the things. that your instinct tells you not to do. And I told her, too, listen, this is our first time being a parent, too. This is our first time sending our kid away to sleep over camp.

We don't know the right thing. We don't have the right answer. So we're doing our best. And at some point, we had to listen to her. So it's just a weird, you can look at the exact same thing and have different perspectives, different answers, different what's right for one kid. But it is really interesting how confidence, teaching, confidence or demonstrating confidence often goes against that initial instinct as a parent.

And you nailed it in the sense that there is no right answer. There's no, if I, if my son had been writing home every single day, how he was so homesick and needed to come home, I would probably have done the exact same thing. And I think what you taught her was that you also just learned how to help yourself. because this wasn't an environment you maybe you were ready for. And sleepway camp isn't for everybody. And that's okay. It happened to be a great experience for my son.

But if it's not the right time or they're not emotionally equipped yet for that separation, that's okay too. That's not a failure on anyone's part. And the great thing is that she advocated for herself and really understood that she wasn't able to handle that quite yet. And I think there's a gift in that too. That's being brave. That's being courageous.

And so when we search for these right answers as parents, which none of us have and even the parenting experts don't have it, the doctors don't have it, all of that, when we are searching for that and if it's hard for us, then it means we're doing something right. It's the ones that don't care. It's the ones that are like figure it out. It's the ones that aren't invested in whether or not we are taking the right steps. But it's those conversations that we're having afterwards. It's, It's that's what's shaping them. And when we are making these hard choices as parents, we're also being brave and courageous and confident because we have to know that we know our kids best and we're making the best decision based on the information we have, which is exactly what you did. Yes. So my last question, and I know we're real tight on time here, but I have to ask, in your book you talk about being brave isn't something that you are. It's something that you do. Why make that distinction? what does that mean? I think people think that some people are just born confident. Some people are just born courageous or brave. It's not that we're born that way. It's we make the choice to put one foot in front of the other and to just keep going. So the beauty in that is that we have the ability. It's that we just have to tap into the ability and make the choice. So it's this relief that, no, you don't just come out of the womb at Taylor Swift that just exudes charisma. confidence, it is a hundred percent of learned skill. And the great news in that is that anyone can get to that point if you put in that work. And that's why I really wanted to distinguish. You aren't just brave because you were born that way. It's because you're making the choice to be that way. Yes. All right. The book for your children and for you is just keep going. It's available on Amazon or wherever you buy books. Have your local bookstore get it. Let's keep them in business.

And Lynn also has a confidence quiz on her website. So if you go to lynnsmith.com forward slash quiz, you can take the confidence quiz for yourself. By the way, I also have a confidence quiz on my website, which helps you identify which of the confidence derailers is impacting you most right now. So maybe the two quizzes together will really help you. But Lynn, thank you for geeking out with me and talking about this topic that I could talk about for days on and for writing this book and for writing this book. and for your wisdom today. Thank you so much for having me, Nicole, and the incredible work that you do with women

that listen to this podcast and need these reminders every single day. So thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. All right, friend, confidence isn't something you have or don't have. It's not biological, not a personality trait, not something someone can give you or take away. It's a skill.

And like any skill worth having, it takes a whole lot of practice and repetition to develop. The good news is, courage builds confidence and confidence fuels courage, which means every time you show up scared and do it anyway, you're strengthening both. And if you truly care about your kids' confidence, and I know that you do, like the oxygen mask, you'll need to work on putting it on yourself first because they're watching. They learn confidence the same way they learn everything else through experience and by seeing it in action. When they see you handle fear, recover from mistakes or just keep going after a rejection, they will learn to do the same. You don't fake it

till you make it. You choose it until you become it. Choose confidence, moment by moment if you have to, until the feeling catches up. And because I can't say it any better than Lynn did, let's just leave it at this. Brave isn't something you are. It's something you do. And that is woman's work. Hi listeners, it's Jack Bishop. I'm the Ingredients Guy on America's Test Kitchens Public Television Show and the host of our award-winning podcast, Proof. Proof combines history, science, and culture to tell unexpected stories about food. Every episode is filled with aha moments that you want to share at your next dinner party.

New episodes drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. and you might never look at food the same way again.