This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - How To Build Courage with Dr. Margie Warrell | 273

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

The word "courage" often gets thrown around in ways that dilute its true meaning. It’s not about fearlessness or recklessness—it’s about trusting yourself enough to take meaningful action despite fear. This episode of This Is Woman’s Work sets the record straight on what courage actually looks and feels like, and how it’s the foundation for growth, success, and self-trust. Our guest, Dr. Margie Warrell, is a five-time bestselling author, international keynote speaker, leadership coach, and Forbes columnist. With 25 years of experience working globally, Margie is dedicated to helping people face their fears, unlock their potential, and live bravely. From her humble beginnings on a small farm in Australia to her roles as a Senior Partner at Korn Ferry and an Advisory Board member for the Forbes School of Business & Technology, Margie embodies the courage she teaches. In this conversation, Margie shares how courage closes the gap between self-doubt and self-trust, hesitation and action, and fear and possibility. She invites us to see courage not as an extraordinary trait, but as a practice that builds bridges to the lives we truly want. As Margie says, “Fear creates the gap. It’s courage that closes it.” Connect with Dr. Margie Warrell: Website: https://margiewarrell.com/  Book: https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Gap-Steps-Braver-Action/dp/1523007249 Related Podcast Episodes: 141 / How Regular Women Take Risks with Liz Deacle 181 / Stress Less and Fear(Less) with Rebecca Heiss 197 / Fear & Failure (Part 1) with Amy Green Smith 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

I am Nicole Kalil, your host of the This Is Woman's Work podcast. And if you've been tuning in for a while, you know that I have a stalker-like obsession with all things confidence. It's my favorite thing to talk about, to build, inspire, and to witness. Having more people, more women, connect with their own confidence is both what keeps me up at night and what gets me up in the morning. Well, that and my one life altering cup of coffee. And while I love sharing all the ways that we can build confidence, I've found that what really gets people leaning in is when we talk about what derails it, what prevents us from connecting to it, and all the ways it's misrepresented and misinterpreted on social media, in advertising, and by society in general.

Because they've all done a bang up job of teaching us how to look confident, but very little about how to actually become it. And let's be honest, we've swapped the word confidence with other words like happiness, success, and often courage. But here's the truth, they're connected for sure, but they're not the same thing. I like to think of them as overlapping circles. Let's take courage as an example.

The sweet spot where confidence and courage overlap is where trusting yourself firmly and boldly drives you to do brave things and take risks that matter to you. And then doing courageous things builds confidence right back because you learn from experience that you can trust yourself and that risks are worth taking. It's like a compounding cycle of growth and awesomeness. So which comes first? The chicken or the egg?

Confidence or courage? My take? Who cares? Just start wherever your feet are and let the chain reaction happen. If courage is where you're looking to start, or it's been a while since you've flexed your courage muscle, have I got the guest for you. Dr. Margie Worrell is a five-time best-selling

author, keynote speaker, leadership coach, and Forbes columnist. She's spent 25 years living and working across the globe, helping people face their fears and unlock their potential. From her humble beginnings on a small farm in Australia to being a senior partner at Corn Fairy and an advisory board member of the Forbes School of Business and Technology, Margie is proof that courage is the gateway to every great thing. Oh, and she's also a mom of four and a champion for women's empowerment, and her mission is to inspire others to live bravely and refuse to settle in every aspect of life.

Margie, we've talked about courage a lot on the show, but I don't think it's ever been a topic for an episode. So I have many questions and I'm going to start by asking you if there is any way that you're seeing courage being misrepresented or misinterpreted out there, kind of like what I do with confidence, help us to determine what courage is, but also what it isn't. Great, thank you, Nicole. And by the way, awesome to be with you.

I love talking all things confidence as well, so I think you and I share many common passions. So courage, this concept of courage, we hear it a lot, it gets talked about a lot, and I think there are some misperceptions around it. The number one thing that it is not is an absence of fear. It is not fearlessness. It's not thinking twice about whether or not you do something. It is deciding to take action amid fear, amid sometimes a lack of confidence, amid the risks that you might fail, mess up,

be exposed as not good enough, unworthy in some way. And so there is no courage without fear. So I think that is the number one thing that we get wrong around courage. And I believe it's very closely related to confidence, which you talk about a lot and care about a lot. But I have a particular take on the connection between courage and confidence, and that is that we cannot build our confidence without courage. Because if you look at the definition of confidence, it is our belief in our ability to succeed at something. And many of us can look around us and see people who seem to have a lot of confidence. They just put their hand up to speak in a meeting without hesitating. They are happy to get up and take the floor, to step onto a stage,

to put themselves out there, to introduce themselves to a stranger, go off to an event where they don't know anyone, travel somewhere they've never been, et cetera, et cetera. We'll go, wow, they're just so confident. I wished I could be more like that. I could be more like that. The only way we build confidence, and this comes back from various theories, is by doing the very things that a confident person would do. That takes courage. None of us just wake up one day and go, gee, I just feel like putting myself out there today.

We actually have to choose to do it. And it's in the process of doing the very thing that we don't really feel like doing that we're not confident we're going to succeed at doing that actually we may be terrified. We're going to fail at and fall short at and make a fool of ourselves at that. Bit by bit action, brave action by brave action, we build our confidence and close that confidence gap, which is something that's often associated with women.

There's a gender gap, but we talk a lot about the confidence gap. I've written about that on Forbes myself. And I really believe that if you want to feel more confident, don't wait for confidence. I actually have a chapter on that in my last book, you've got this, which is don't wait for confidence. Start before you feel ready and do the very thing that a confident person would do and dare to defy the little doubting voices in your head that are saying, you're not good enough. What will people say?

voices in your head that are saying, you're not good enough. What will people say? Yeah. So, I'm going to hone in on two things that you said that I just want to reiterate because they're so in alignment with everything I know to be true about confidence and that is choice and action. I think, as you said, so many of us wait to feel confident and I understand that it is a feeling, but I think first and foremost it's a choice and what confident people do is they step in action before the feeling

catches up right instead of fake it till you make it I say choose it until you become it choose confidence choose courage over and over and over again until the feeling catches up. Now that's easier said than done. So do you think courage, like confidence, is a skill we can develop or a muscle that we can build? Do we get better at accessing courage the more we use it? Yes, and yes, and yes. So let me just step back a little bit there. There's a saying that I have and I've written about this actually in my new book, The Courage Gap, which is that we have to behave our way into believing, which is what you were saying, choose it until you feel it. But we have to do the very

things. We have to take the actions and then over time our belief system will catch on when we realize, oh my gosh, I did that and the ground didn't open up and I didn't die and I am okay and I could handle it. And so spot on, yes, we build confidence by acting as though we had it, even if we don't have it. But to your point as well, is this something that we can build? Is it a skill? And the answer is yes. And there is so much research out there that shows that. And so, if we think about this through the lens of self-belief, of what it is to have confidence,

not everything we tell ourselves is true. All of us have a little voice in our head. And for some of us, the voice of doubt and worry and fear can be really loud. And it can be so loud that we confuse reality with what that voice is telling us, that I'm not good enough, that I don't have what it takes, that I'm never gonna have the smarts or the experience or insert something here that we think we have to have. The truth is that, yes, not everything you tell yourself is true, but our stories, those stories we're telling

ourselves can hem us in and keep us from in the presence of that little doubting voice, of that fear that we won't measure up, that we're not going to be able to land with two feet on the other side, we reclaim the power that our fear, that little negative doubting voice can hold over us. We empower ourselves. There's actually a neuroscience here in terms of our brain's wiring. There's a saying that the neurons that fire together, wire together. Even in our brain neural pathways, we can have a pretty weak pathway in terms of our own belief in our ability to do hard things and to take chances and to put ourselves out there or to succeed in different environments and manage change well. When we go into those situations, when we're exposed to those situations

that we might really not want to be exposed to, our Our fear is saying, don't go there, because fear is wired into us to protect us. All of us have it. We wouldn't be here today without it. But when we step forward and take those actions, when we choose to do the very thing we need to do, even though we don't feel like doing it, we are strengthening those neural pathways. We are becoming more comfortable with the discomfort that's required in the process and we're building what's called effect tolerance. So we get more comfortable being uncomfortable. We become more at peace with the, oh, I'm a little scared but I'm doing it anyway. And so it's not

just a nice platitude, you know, just do it, make it till you make it, whatever, behavior way into believing. We actually strengthen our courage muscles. It is a muscle. And so, the people that say, oh, I'm just not that confident or I'm just shy or that's just how I am or I can't do the things that you do, I say really loud BS to that and say, you just haven't chosen to. You have not exercised your power of choice to do that very thing. Will it be terrifying for you in the beginning? Probably. Will you be feeling sick in your belly with nerves?

Maybe. Will you nail it? Unlikely. But by the very act of doing it, of taking that action, you are empowering yourself. Then the next time you do it, it'll be a little, little bit easier. Then the time after that, a little easier again, and on it goes until the thing that once terrified you is like, what?

That's not scary at all. I don't know about you, Nicole. I can look back on my career and the first time i was asked to like present at a meeting when i was twenty three or go traveling somewhere on my own it was like scary and now i wouldn't blink at doing that cuz i've done it so many times and so we can go well if that's not that scary but throughout our lives and careers and as women, as mothers, and all of the many hats we wear, we're always, there's always something we're being called to that's going to require us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Everything you said jives completely with my experience and I think is worth, you know, hitting pause and rewinding

and listening to over and over again. So many good nuggets in there and I love the idea that we behave our way into believing. That's going to be a huge takeaway for me. Your book is called The Courage Gap and you talked about the confidence gap and wage gap and there are a lot of gaps. What specifically is the courage gap? Look, Nicole, have you ever had one of those moments where you thought to yourself, oh, I really need to make that ask of someone.

I need to, you know, make, whether it's making, it's extend an invitation or ask them to stop doing something or to start doing something, or there's been something that's been upsetting you and you need to have a conversation or you know you need to put yourself out there and then you haven't. You just keep going, oh, I know I should, but you haven't. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, probably daily.

So you had the potential to have that conversation. You have the potential to pick up the phone or to send the email or to put your hand up or whatever it is, and yet you didn't. And so the courage gap is the gap between our potential to take actions that would move us forward, that would reward us in our relationships, in our careers as parents, and the actions we take. There's a gap, and our fear creates that gap, and our courage closes it. All of us have moments where we hold back from doing the very thing we know would serve us to do because it's hard and it's awkward and we don't have to deal with the potential fallout and someone might be upset or disappointed.

We might fail. It's going to be difficult to navigate change. So we stick with a situation, a relationship, platonic or otherwise. We stick in a job. We stick with a situation because in the short term, it's easier to stick with that situation than it is to change it because it's hard and uncomfortable. then we're going to step into the unknown and there's going to be so much uncertainty and we don't know what's going to come next because we all love control, we love certainty and so often those short-term desires keep us from taking actions that would increase our long-term happiness. That's what the courage

gap is, the gap between you and the life that you really want to have, that you're entirely capable of creating. And the gap between who you are now and who you most want to be as a human, as a woman, as a man, whatever, whoever you are, and who you're most capable of becoming. I have grown up on a dairy farm, yes, big sister, seven kids. My dad left school at 16, milk cows for 50 years. There were so many futures I could have had and there were so many paths I could have taken. The paths that I've taken have required me to practice a lot of courage, but they've expanded my life and my experience of life exponentially. And I see a lot of people who aren't living the highest and holiest vision for their lives because at some, sometimes molecular and unconscious level, their fear is calling the shots and governing their decisions and their actions.

Yeah. And I don't think any of us would purposefully say, let's put fear in the driver's seat, and yet unconsciously we do it all the time. So I want to shift to maybe a little bit more tactical, because I love being inspired as much as anybody, but I want to be able to then do something with it. And I feel like courage, like confidence, can feel elusive. of being inspired as much as anybody, but I wanna be able to then do something with it. And I feel like courage, like confidence

can feel sort of elusive. So the subtitle of your book is Five Steps to Braver Action. Can we talk about some of those five steps or each of those five steps so that we can get into more courageous action? Oh yeah. And the reason I wrote this book is,

yeah, we hear a lot about be brave, be bold, you've got this, all that. But how do you do it? You can hear it and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that all sounds good. But oh my gosh, I cannot, I cannot go over and tell this person this thing. Like we are, we know we should and we don't. And it's why I wrote this book. So to that end, the five steps are really very, very,

very practical. The first step is to focus on what you want and not on what you fear. A lot of us can find our attention pulled into all the negatives on what we don't want, on what we can't do, on what we wished we had but but we don't have on the future that we were afraid might happen. We put a lot of our energy and attention into what it is we don't want and what we focus on expands. So step one is getting really clear about what is it that you want? What is your highest intention? What is it you want right now if there's conflict in a relationship? What is it you most want for this relationship? If it's for your work and career, what is it you most want? Peeling back beneath the superficial of, oh, I want to be paid this

much and I want to have this title. No, but what is it you really want? What is it that lights you up? As a mother, as a wife, as a sister, daughter, I mean, I know not everyone's a woman listening to this, as a husband, father, who is it that you most want to be? And getting really clear about that and anchoring that in the values that define how you want to live your life. And when you're clear about your deepest values and your highest intention, that provides a North Star, but an anchoring point that makes your decisions easier and makes courage sometimes less scary, but more compelling. Like you have to do this thing

because if you don't do it, you're selling out. So step one is getting really clear about what it is you want and who it is that you most wanna be. And being anchored in that is your North Star. This step feels so important. And you're right, we tend to default to what's the worst that can happen, right?

Without ever considering what's the best that could happen, right? Without ever considering what's the best that could happen. That's what I heard when you were saying that is we do focus so much on what we fear versus what it is that we want. And so step one and practicing that skill seems like a really good place to start. All right, what's step two? Yeah. Well, and in step one, obviously, it's getting that clarity of direction. Step two is re-scripting what's kept you scared or stuck or stressed or living too safely. And so the stories that you tell yourself are almost like an operating system for your actions that you take. So if you tell yourself, oh, I can never do this, or I just

don't have what it takes, then that obviously becomes ultimately over time a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I had three little children, a three-year-old, two-year-old, and an eight-week-old baby, we boarded a plane in Australia to move to the United States of America. I did not know anyone, literally zero people in America when I moved in October just after 9-11, 2001. I found it really difficult. I'm a social person and it took a while because it was 9-11 as well just to build connection and to find any community. I moved to a suburb of Dallas. I felt like I'd landed on Mars at the time. Then in the following year, I was trying to get myself established. I had always wanted to start a business in coaching.

I'd been working in corporate arena. I just thought, well, I can't do that in a new country. I don't know anyone. I also had always thought I'd love to have four children. I thought, and I certainly can't have four children and start a new business. I had a lot of reasons why I couldn't do things. I'd had no role models as examples, which always helps, by the way, with building confidence when you have role models. I didn't have any. I realized through the help of a friend who cared more for me than they cared about me liking what they said, they said to me, I'm just going to call out just BS, Margie, that you can't have four kids and you can't start a business. You can do both. You mightn't be able to do it the way you've been doing life as it is. You might need to get more help, but you can do that. I'm just calling BS on this story that you keep saying that you can't do these

two things that seem to almost be competing with each other. I had to rewrite my story that I could have four children, I could be a good mother, and I could launch a business in a new country where I didn't know anyone. In the following couple of years, I did that. I had a fourth child when he was six months old. I launched my coaching business. Did I know what I was doing? No, but I was very passionate about the need to help people to be braver. Here I am 21 years later, my baby, my little Texan is 21 now. But I share that with you because I had to re-script a story that was hemming me in on what was possible and keeping me doing what I felt really called to do and inspired to

do but I was terrified to do because I didn't know how I would manage the inevitable juggling act that came with that. And so, but for everyone listening, I know that there are things that tug on your heart. I know there's things you want to do. I know there's things you want to change and chances are you're telling yourself a story that's, that's dialing up your fear factor and that's dialing down your belief in your ability to move forward and take action. The step two of my book is really about how you can rewrite the stories that are hemming you in,

that are siphoning your courage and making you more anxious than you need to be. Yeah. As you said earlier, a lot of it is made up anyway, so we might as well choose an interpretation that empowers us or is more productive or that just feels better toward what it is that we want. Okay, so then step number three. Step number three is about embodying courage. It's about getting your physiology working for you, but also the environment you're in, both your internal and external environment. So often when we think about fear, we think about it as an emotion. But fear also lives in our bodies. I mean, we feel it when our chest is tight or when our stomach is nervous and we've got butterflies.

The good thing about knowing that fear lives in our bodies is that it gives us a target for intervention. This step is twofold, but a big part of it is helping you regulate your nervous system, which is a nervous system. A lot of us are just constantly wound up and nervous. Our physiology impacts our psychology. There are two different core domains to courage. One is the regulation and management of fear, and two is the willingness to act in the presence of it. So this step is really about you managing the fear that is in your body and it's also about connecting to the people around you who help you walk a little taller through life because our environment internal and external shapes us. We shape our environment but but our environment shapes us. And so this is what

enables you to tap the full power of your environment, of your physical presence. And I know myself as a woman, I sometimes have to hold myself taller and take up more space because I'm in a lot of rooms with a lot of men, and I wanna be taken seriously, and I want my voice to be heard. And I know that if I walk in there and I'm a little shy or hunched over and not fully owning my own power, and standing tall in my power,

really grounded in my courage and my ability to do hard things, then I'm not gonna be listened to, then I'm not gonna have the influence that I want. And so really for those of you who are listening, I would invite you to think if you were standing tall in your power, connected to your own inner brave heart, how would you hold yourself differently?

How would you speak differently? How would you move differently through the world? Again, such good advice. I'm going to move us on to step number four. Yeah. Well, in step four, I share my journey as a young girl, learning a lesson that I have, it's like a principle that's guided me through my adult life, though I couldn't articulate it as a 10-year-old.

And that came from learning to ride horses on my parents' farm and being terrified in the beginning. But going out day after day and settling up and riding this horse, my horse before school and after school in my one-room schoolhouse. What I learned was that growth and comfort can't ride the same horse. Growth and comfort can't ride the same horse unless we're willing to step into discomfort, to make peace with those moments of acute vulnerability. We're never going to grow into who we can be. We're never going to be able to close that gap between where we are and where we want to be able to close that gap between where we are and where we want to be.

And so I share about my one brave minute rule in the book and just practicing one brave minute at a time. And what does it take for you to get more comfortable being uncomfortable? And when you find yourself feeling uncomfortable, instead of interpreting that as a cue to retreat like, oh my God, I'm really nervous. I am just going to run a mile. I'm going to go home and sit on the couch. No. Interpret that as a sign that you're growing into your potential and as a cue to move forward. I need to just walk right into this room. I need to just step right up to this person. I need to make this change. I need to keep on this path

because the discomfort is actually telling me that this is me growing and to embrace those growing pains. Margie, I love the way you frame things and how like some of these, I'm just gonna call them catchphrases, but they're gonna stick with me forever. Growth and comfort can't ride the same horse. I mean, so good. Okay, great. Now, step number five.

Step number five, I share in this step a story where years ago, where I, my very first book came out, Nicole, and I dreamt of being on Oprah back when she had her show. And I was a little nobody, nothing when I say that. I'm saying that, and of course I've always been worthy, but I questioned my worthiness and that little voice of doubt was loud. And one day I happened to see Gayle King, Oprah's best friend, in the same hotel lobby as me.

And I thought, oh my gosh, I should just step forward and give her a copy of my first book, which was called Find Your Courage. And I stood there frozen, terrified of imposing on her, terrified she'd look at me like, you know, who are you to disrupt me? And I was too afraid to step forward and give her the book. And I, to step forward and give her the book. And I, afterwards, I was so angry at myself. You big fricking wimp, you pathetic. How can you write a book to help people be braver when you've just wimped out totally? There was nothing to lose except a little bit of face

from taking four and a half steps and handing her this book. And so step five is about forgiving yourself in the moments when you fail to try, when you hold back and your fear wins out and making peace with your inner wimp. But it's also finding the treasure that our failures hold, whether it's we've failed to try or we've tried and we've failed because I've been brave many times too, and I've put myself out there and things haven't landed. It's gone flat. In fact, it's completely tripped me up. Step five is find the treasure when you trip and learning to forgive yourself for your flaws, for your fears, for your fellibility and extending grace inward.

And I think that's something all of us need to practice more often is to extend a little more grace into ourselves and to our own faults and failings and imperfections. Because when we do that, and the research shows that self-compassion actually helps us be more resilient. Because you're not going to risk failing if you don't know how to fail well. And so, practicing self-compassion and finding the treasure that your failures hold that

will allow you to move forward a little wiser, a little kinder, and a little braver. So again, aligns perfectly with my research on confidence, giving ourselves grace and failing forward, finding the treasure in failure, as you said, are two of the biggest confidence builders as well. And I've just found how often I'm the pride in myself for trying far outweighs whatever the outcome might be. And things are never as bad as I make them up to be in my own mind.

When I think of what's the worst that can happen, that's literally never happened. Not everything has worked out. I've definitely had failures, but it's never the earth opening up and swallowing me whole type of failure that I anticipate. I love, love, love all five of those steps. I know I'm going to go back and circle through them again. For those of you who want to learn more about Margie and her work, the website is margieworal.com. We'll put it in show notes.

Absolutely, get your hands on the book. I know I will and go through it with a highlighter and doggier the pages and all the things. It is The Courage Gap, Five Steps to Braver Action, available on Amazon, but also go to your local bookstore and let's keep them in business. Margie, thank you for an incredibly important and personally impactful conversation.

Oh, thank you for having me, Nicole. Take care. My pleasure. Okay, friend, that concludes our masterclass on courage. Please know that whether you're talking about courage or confidence, that the only place I'm interested in leading you is back to yourself. Because when you trust yourself and when you choose courage, even in the smallest of ways, you build a bridge between who you are and who you can be. You close the gap between self-doubt and self-trust, between hesitation and action, and between fear and possibility. As Dr.

Margie Worrell says, fear creates the gap. It's courage that closes it. And closing all the gaps? Well, that's most certainly woman's work.