Ep 257 – Just be confident, Just get over it, Just be yourself… The problem with this advice and more

“Just Be Confident” Is Useless Advice: What Actually Works When Your Brain Doesn’t Know How

You bombed the interview. Your brain immediately goes into panic mode: “Just get over it. Just be confident next time. Just believe in yourself.” You repeat these mantitudes like they’re magic spells, but nothing changes. You still freeze up when curveballs come. You still second-guess yourself in high-pressure moments. And worst of all, you’re now beating yourself up for not being able to “just” do these things.

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain has no idea what to do with these instructions.

This episode tears apart the most common—and completely useless—advice we give ourselves when things go wrong. Telling yourself to “just be confident” is like telling yourself to “just make the sun come out when it’s raining.” It’s not that you can’t become confident; it’s that this vague platitude gives your brain zero actionable steps to follow. So instead of growing, you end up subtly shaming yourself for not magically having confidence appear.

The breakthrough moment comes when you realize that confidence, getting over disappointments, and believing in yourself aren’t things you “just do”—they’re skills that take years to develop. And the fastest way to develop them isn’t through empty motivational phrases; it’s through extracting specific lessons from disappointing moments.

The real story: A client went to an interview, got asked “What would you do if the project budget and timeline suddenly got cut?” and immediately jumped into problem-solving mode—listing how she’d adjust resources and timelines. Later, she was kicking herself: “I should have asked WHY first! That was so obvious!” But instead of just telling herself to “get over it,” we dug into what actually happened. She discovered she didn’t pause. She didn’t get curious. And now she has a concrete lesson she’ll never forget: pause and ask “why” before answering high-pressure questions.

That’s not surface-level advice you forget by next week. That’s a foundational mindset shift that changes how she shows up in every future high-stakes situation—interviews, promotion meetings, all of it.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

 

  • Why “just be confident” and “just get over it” are brain instructions your mind can’t execute
  • The hidden shame cycle: how these platitudes make you beat yourself up for not magically improving
  • How to extract specific, actionable lessons from disappointing moments instead of drowning in regret
  • The pause-and-ask framework: why curiosity before answering transforms interview performance
  • Why you don’t need to check all the boxes or have perfect answers (backed by real hiring manager interviews)

Ready to discover if vague self-improvement advice is keeping you stuck? Join Mindset to Hired for the comprehensive system that replaces empty platitudes with actual strategies that work—  link here. 

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Just be confident. 

 Just get over it. 

 Just believe in yourself. 

 Have you ever told yourself these things or heard someone say those things to themselves? 

 If so, stay tuned. 

 I’ve got an episode for you on the get a six-figure job you love and Thrive podcast. 

 Hello, hello. 

 So. 

 In my coaching group. 

 I coach weekly inside my group. 

 We have lots of people who bring lots of different scenarios and I coach them on them and we work through these problems in real time and this is what kind of speeds people up very quickly in order to move through all their blocks, whether they are subconscious, whether they are. 

 Clear as day and we just need to give them a point them in the right direction, give them a strategy, whatever it is, we’re working through that weekly, which is why my clients are getting fast results, I believe, because you, you can’t stay stuck for too long, OK? 

 You can’t stay stuck and sometimes we don’t know when we’re stuck. 

 So we think we know, like we might think we know and then we don’t get the result, so we don’t really know. 

 So here’s one of the things I’ve been noticing is that. 

 People will say things to themselves that they think are helpful. 

 So one of the things that people might say is just get over it. 

 Just be confident. 

 So, for example, had a client, she went on an interview and she felt like she had messed up. 

 She felt like she wanted to do over like she had not. 

 You know, use some of the things that she learned in the program and she was really wanting to go back and do it again. 

 And she was telling herself, I just need to get over it. 

 Just get over it, right? 

 And so here is an example of a piece of advice or a sentence that your brain does not know what to do with, right? 

 It’s kind of like saying, just make the sun come out when it’s raining, like, or just do something that you’ve never really known how to do or done before, right? 

 And it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. 

 It doesn’t mean like my client can’t get over this. 

 But saying that to yourself, or even when someone tells you that, it’s like, it’s not, your brain doesn’t know what to do with that because they, your brain doesn’t know how to take the advice. 

 It doesn’t know how to actually get over it. 

 Right? 

 Or it doesn’t know how to actually be confident. 

 And it’s like when, when you might say to yourself, just be confident, that’s it. 

 Like if that was the only piece of advice you needed, then you would just be able to walk into any situation, just be confident, no matter what curveballs were thrown at you or what unexpected situations you you, you were put into, you would just be able to be confident if that was really the advice or the whole just believe in yourself, right? 

 And it’s like, Our brain doesn’t know what to do with those pieces of advice. 

 So repeating them to ourselves is kind of pointless, even though they sound like they are helpful, right? 

 Because it’s like, yeah, I just want to be able to get over it, right? 

 So what we end up doing is just kind of telling ourselves, you should just be able to get over this, you should just be confident. 

 And then we end up kind of beating ourselves up subtly, like subtly kind of shaming ourselves for not being able to do that. 

 And not being able to handle ourselves in the situations that we were how we want to, right? 

 Or how what our ideal would be, right? 

 And that isn’t helpful because then that actually makes you less confident. 

 It makes you less likely to dig into like exactly how you would get over something or how you would be confident in different situations or how you would believe in yourself. 

 Because honestly, just be confident, just get over it, just believe in yourself, or Like huge lessons in themselves that for, for me, has taken years for me to get to the point where I can get over something in a faster amount of time, or be confident in a situation or or believe in myself when I’m doing something that I’ve never done before. 

 It’s like, those are things that you can’t just do, right? 

 It’s not like just pour the glass of water already, right? 

 It’s not something that you can just do. 

 So here’s what I did with my client, and I’ll share with you how, how we process this and how she got, how she was able to literally get over it in the on the spot and then she posted how it was the best coaching that she’d received from me and So I wanted to share a little bit of that with you, but first I wanted to make it clear that when we give ourselves these pieces of advice, or when someone gives us these pieces of advice, we don’t know what to do with it. 

 And so it doesn’t help us to say those things. 

 And so I want to share what’s more what’s more helpful. 

 So when we do it, we beat ourselves up and then we end up being farther away from the goal. 

 And then if it happens again, which it will, like you’ll be in a situation where you’ll need to be confident, where you’ll be throwing a curveball, or where you’ll have a disappointment and you’ll need to process it and get over it. 

 You won’t have any new tools or new techniques or new way of doing it cause you’ll just have been telling yourself, you just do it. 

 You should just know how to do it. 

 You should just forget about it, stop thinking about it, or just, you know, just figure it out, brain. 

 I don’t even know how, but you should be able to, right? 

 So then you don’t build any awareness or any growth from it. 

 It just becomes something that you’re telling yourself you should just do, right? 

 And so that becomes a problem because you don’t learn and grow as much as you could. 

 And you don’t experience the learning and the growth and the expansion that’s available from those moments. 

 So, instead, what I propose is that we we we just accept that we need to process and like metabolize those situations. 

 So when you have a disappointing situation, or you have something that didn’t work out how you wanted to, you want to look at it and see, like, and, and see what you could have done differently, and really the fastest way through and like the the way through it. 

 And through it is out of it, basically out of the uncomfortable emotion of like disappointment, which is why you’re telling yourself to just get over something is, is going to be to to go through it. 

 And through it is going to be from really extracting the lesson from that experience. 

 So the fastest way to go through it is to truly extract the lesson from that experience. 

 So, my client, for example, she had gone into an interview and she wasn’t being curious about About them, she just kind of rushed to give an answer. 

 And that was her thing where she was saying, I just need to get over this, like, cause she wanted to, she was like, I want to do over, I know I didn’t do so well. 

 And by the way, they still ended up calling her back and she was still in the running for this position. 

 So it, it actually wasn’t as big of a disappointment as she thought. 

 But that said, that’s just an aside, is if you are Feeling that disappointment because you feel like you should have done it differently or you see now something that you could have done better, clearly, you want to be able to clearly identify that for yourself. 

 Because there’s a difference between trying to just put it off and not think about it and get over it. 

 And then there’s a difference between truly extracting that value to the point where you know you’ll never make that mistake again or you’ll never go through that in the same way again because you will be, your brain has now changed, right? 

 So one of the key things I teach is curiosity. 

 We want to go into curiosity whatever we can in an interview because that opens up for a dynamic discussion that is gonna cause you to ask really good questions and it’s gonna create that openness where they’re gonna start seeing, oh, this person really cares about you know our organization and our mission and that’s why they’re asking such good questions and only someone who really cares about helping us out would be asking these questions that kind of a thing. 

 So anyway, my client didn’t actually, she didn’t ask the question that she wanted to ask that she saw that she saw in hindsight that she could have or should have or to in her words was so obvious that she would have asked, right? 

 She didn’t ask that. 

 And so we kind of dug into like, well, why didn’t you ask it? 

 And so it was because she didn’t take a pause. 

 She just kind of immediately started talking, right? 

 It was just like, well, they asked me that and I was just like, I would do this, or I would do this, or I would do this instead of pausing to ask, hm, why are they asking that? 

 I wonder why, where that comes from. 

 Like, what’s the question underneath that? 

 And that’s where you would insert a question. 

 For them first, right? 

 And she knew that it was kind of like, OK, well, I intellectually knew that that of course I would have asked that. 

 Like, obviously I would have asked why, right? 

 And and she didn’t ask it in the moment. 

 So that’s where she could kind of see, OK, well, I didn’t take a pause. 

 Why didn’t I take a pause, right? 

 And even just like a small pause to be like, OK, hmm, that’s interesting. 

 Why would you, like, I wonder why they’re asking that. 

 And then asking them. 

 So I’ll give you those more specifics of it. 

 So she was And she was in a in the running for, I think it’s a program manager role, and they asked her, well, what would you do if all of a sudden the project got cut and there was no, there was not that much time or budget and we cut the the time in the budget, what would you do? 

 And so immediately she started saying, well, I would try to get more resources. 

 I would try to do this and adjust the timeline and she just jumped in. 

 To like how she would handle the situation instead of asking, why, why are you asking that? 

 Does that happen a lot here? 

 Or, or wouldn’t you ask or like why, why has the project been cut down like that? 

 Like what’s the reasoning behind this sudden change, right? 

 Like she didn’t ask the question, but had she have asked, she would have gotten some more information and then she would have been able to answer better, right? 

 So that’s, that’s a learning moment that she’ll never have to do again, right? 

 She’ll, she, she will always now know. 

 I will pause, I will ask why I will allow myself that moment to be like, huh, why are they asking that? 

 Why has that happened? 

 Because that’s going to allow her a better answer. 

 So this is the foundational principle of the curiosity and the asking questions and becoming that person who does that. 

 And knowing exactly how to manage your mind in a way that makes you do that every time. 

 And that is really the lesson. 

 So if she had just said, oh, you just need to get over it, that like to herself, she’s like, yeah, just get over it. 

 She wouldn’t have come for for for the coaching and she wouldn’t have gotten that really deep lesson that now will drive the rest of her career. 

 When she’s in situations like that in high stakes situations like that, in high pressure situations like that where things are coming at her, she will pause and ask why. 

 She will ask herself why she will ask the questions that are needed in order for her to have better outcome in order for her to communicate better in that interview and And whatever the meeting is, she’ll have a better result from that. 

 So when you have a situation that’s the same and you’re like, oh, I just need to be confident or I just need to believe in myself, like you won’t be able to just do that because if you could, you would have already done it, right? 

 So it’s really important to note that you can have All the qualifications and you can have all the right things on paper and you can have everything that you need. 

 But if you are throwing a curveball. 

 And you’ve never been thrown that curveball before, you can still completely derail yourself in the interview, and you might not be able to come back from it. 

 And that being said, it’s not a problem because you need to actually train your mind to be very like the foundational principles that I teach you are how to actually train your Mind for situations like this, right? 

 How to actually become the person who creates the the mentality of a person who is handling these situations really, really skillfully in an interview in the moment and not just being the person with the surface level, just get over it. 

 Just be confident because those things are what keep you from growing and what keep you from really stepping up your game. 

 And not just in an interview, but in the next meeting you have in the next promotional race meeting you have in the next high stakes situation because you can learn, OK, that’s what I would do in that exact situation, right? 

 Like now she knows, like in that exact. 

 Situation when they ask me that specific question, then that’s what I’m going to do, right? 

 But really it comes down to training your, your brain to handle situations like that much better, right? 

 So that you don’t feel like you are wanting to do over all the time. 

 And so that you’re not feeling like you messed up all the time. 

 You’re actually training your brain to create the environment where you feel safe to respond in a skillful way that is going to leave people thinking, oh, this person is the person that we want to have, you know, taking us to the next level this is the person that we want at the table making decisions with us, right? 

 And this is the kind of feedback that my clients have gotten and they report back and they say, yeah, this is literally what they said to me. 

 They said. 

 I want you, we want you at the table making decisions with us. 

 So this is not just like the surface level stuff is helpful for one time, but it’s not helpful over time, right? 

 It’s, it’s not gonna help you for the rest of your career. 

 So that’s really where it comes down to that full mindset change, that full mindset shift. 

 So I use this analogy of the iceberg where you only see the tip of the iceberg when. 

 You’re interviewing, right? 

 So you just see the questions and the answers and all that, but like underneath it is a whole mindset, right? 

 It’s a whole entire mentality that you need to have to set yourself up for success when curveballs happen, you won’t know what the curveball is gonna be. 

 You won’t know what the answers are that you need to have. 

 You won’t know what they’re gonna ask you. 

 You won’t know these things ahead of time and so you need a proper system, a proper way to think that allows you to expand and open up into this unknown in a way that allows you to appear skillful and to appear like the person they want to hire, right? 

 So this is something that I’ve been teaching for years. 

 I’ve gotten really good at it. 

 I’ve done my life coaching certification and I’ve, I’ve been in many interviews, many high stakes situations every single week. 

 I coach and I don’t know what someone’s gonna bring to the table. 

 I don’t know how, like, I don’t know what to expect, so. 

 This is like a, a thing I’ve trained myself on because I, I’m not ready for the situations that I put myself in like I’ll put myself in scary situations or I’ll wanna do things that I don’t expect just for this purpose so that I can get really good at that. 

 And so that has allowed me to develop inside the program that I have now, my new program Mindset to hired is a full system for how you create this mindset for yourself. 

 So it’s not just about one thing, it’s not just about learning moment one time. 

 It’s not just about being confident, getting over it, or just believing in yourself. 

 It’s about having a full mindset foundation where you can pull from and access and be the like actually be the person who handles these situations in a way where people still wanna hire you even if you don’t know the answer because a lot of the times people think they have to know all the answers. 

 They think they have to have the perfect answers. 

 They think they have to know. 

 Everything ahead of time. 

 They think they have to have all the experience and all the boxes checked and I’m here to tell you cause I’ve been interviewing hiring managers this past week, and that’s a bonus included inside my program as well. 

 , you, you get to access to the hiring managers that I previously worked with in my career that I, that used to be my colleagues that they have hired, they have all been hiring right now. 

 That’s my criteria for the interviews and they will even say, you do not have to check all the boxes. 

 That is not what we’re looking for, right? 

 But people think that’s the case, right? 

 And it’s really not like, one of my hiring managers that I just interviewed said, he said. 

 You know, I don’t think you’d actually want a job where you checked all the boxes because that would be really boring. 

 He’s like, no, we want people who want to push themselves, who want to stretch themselves, who want to increase their capacity to do more. 

 And of course, they’re not gonna check all the boxes. 

 So, Just like you don’t have to check all the boxes, you don’t have to have all the answers. 

 You don’t have to be this perfect shell of a human that you think you have to be. 

 Like this is just such a misconception in the world of interviewing, in the world of hiring is that we have to be perfect and that is not what gets you the job. 

 So what gets you the job is a solid mindset, which is kind of the framework that I break down. 

 Is the mindset and I love that. 

 Like that’s why I called it mindset to hire because ultimately that is what I do is I want to dig into your mindset because that’s what’s actually gonna cascade everything that you do after that. 

 So it’s like If you have the right mindset, if you have the right mentality, then you will be able to feel the way you need to feel, and you’re gonna have the actions that you need to have following that. 

 And it’s gonna be automatic, it’s gonna be easier, it’s just gonna become, you know, a natural part, natural progression, natural part of who you are. 

 Instead of you just trying to tell yourself, just be confident, just get over it, just move on. 

 Just keep going. 

 Like those platitudes drive me nuts cause I’m like, I feel like I’ve been spending years digging into them as far as like what it actually takes to just do those things, and people make it sound so easy, like you’re supposed to have already known how to do it. 

 I like, you’re supposed to have already done it, like, why aren’t you over it? 

 I think that’s what bugged me. 

 So much about my ex, he was very much like, just get over it. 

 Like, why can’t you just get over it? 

 Why, like, why are you having feelings around anything? 

 Like feelings are bad, they’re not allowed, blah, blah, blah. 

 And it’s like, well, little did he know that by him because he used to push down his own feelings and just like beat himself up a lot. 

 He was very hard on himself too. 

 And that wasn’t helpful for him because ultimately he’s in the same place. 

 And the growth actually comes from Digging in, being like, I’m not afraid to look at you. 

 I’m not afraid to see what’s here. 

 I’m not afraid to check this out. 

 And it’s actually the biggest growth that I’ve had has been through really digging into the, into that situation and seeing, OK, how does this situation prepare me for a other situations in my, in my life and my career now, right? 

 Not just like this one again, but how, like what are all the ways that I get this lesson, right? 

 And that has sped me up tremendously. 

 All right, thank you so much for being here. 

 That’s what I have for you today, and I will look forward to being back on the podcast next week. 

 And if you haven’t joined me yet, my program is called Mindset to Hire. 

 It is a substantial audio program, so I’ve made it very easy for you. 

 All you have to do is listen. 

 The lessons are comprehensive, and they will take you through everything that you need to know to land the job. 

 And people get stuck at different points. 

 So I’ve noticed people either get stuck at the point where they’re they’re not getting interviews or they’re not getting the attention of the right people. 

 That’s one part and that’s a whole opportunity stacking module that I’ve created. 

 , I give you examples of everything that you need to say. 

 I’ve given you the examples of like all my conversations, how I went through them, the mindset behind my conversations, how the energy that I brought to the conversations, what has made my conversation successful to the point where like, now I’m interviewing hiring managers this this past week. 

 And they have both said to me, like after the after the interview off the record, they’re like, hey, by the way, if you need anything, if you need me to recommend you for anything, if you’re looking for anything, like I’m happy to help you, right? 

 Like just the relationships and the conversations that I had years ago carry me forward and carry me through and that’s what I want to help you create, right? 

 And a lot of people, they think, oh, I just need to apply, apply, apply more. 

 No. 

 I mean, if it’s working for you, yes, but if it’s not working for you, which I know it’s not working for money. 

 The conversations and the actual human connection is what will get you there and it’s not so easy because you need to have the mindset to actually be able to do it successfully, right? 

 So that’s the first part and some people get stuck there. 

 They’re like, I’m not getting, they’re not getting interviews or they’re not getting, traction. 

 They’re not actually having opportunities or conversations on the calendar. 

 That’s the first place that people get stuck. 

 So I help you get through that. 

 And then once you’re doing that, once you’ve got conversations and interviews and stuff lined up. 

 Then it’s about the other parts of it which are I and I’ll put the, the link to the page so you can check out the whole program below, but I’ll give you the gist of it here. 

 So the next thing is communicating your value. 

 You need to communicate your value so that it’s a no no brainer, and I call these open secrets because we know that we’re supposed to do this, right? 

 It’s just kind of like we know we’re supposed to be confident and get over it and believe in yourself, but then we don’t take a deep dive on it and we don’t really do it. 

 We don’t really know how to do it. 

 So, communicating your values, so I’ve developed an entire system on communicating your value because I’ve done this for myself. 

 I went from being the receptionist into the HR manager position within years, and I did that because of the value creation value communication system that I created and so it’s nuanced in a way where you need to talk to different people. 

 I like different people that you need to get their attention. 

 They care about different things, they prioritize different things for different reasons. 

 And so the system kind of shows you what you need to know, how you need to talk to these people, and how you identify who you’re talking to so that what you say has a higher chance of landing with them. 

 And take it from me, I’m someone who was turned down several times for my raise for my promotion. 

 I was turned down several times and so I had to keep going back and tweaking my process and being like, OK, well, where didn’t they understand this? 

 Where have I not created actually enough value? 

 Where, where do I need to showcase this better? 

 And so through that I became very meticulous at how to do that. 

 And then the third one is telling compelling stories. 

 Stories are worth pictures. 

 So if you. 

 , are telling stories you might be telling them in the formula formula situation task action result, which is helpful. 

 We have heard from hiring managers that they do like to hear stories in that way. 

 However, they most of the time miss an emotional component and so that’s, that’s kind of the thing that drives it home, right? 

 So lots of people could tell a star story. 

 And it could be really well told, but it could be very boring and not memorable and lack an emotional component. 

 And that’s one of the things I think really set me apart was being able to tell stories that had people actually interested. 

 Like they were like, oh, really? 

 It’s like, do you have a picture of that? 

 Like, it was, I was able to engage people in my storytelling. 

 So that’s the third part that I’ve put into the modules. 

 And then the fourth one is the curiosity piece and the asking questions piece. 

 And a lot of bonuses that come along with that, including the hiring manager interviews, which I have done, which I am so excited to share with you because it, like, I can say this stuff all day long, right? 

 I can say, oh, do this, you got to do this, you gotta think like this and and And bringing it together with people who are actually hiring right now and they are confirming these things. 

 They’re confirming how what I teach in my program is actually gonna get you hired and it’s not what you actually think and all the misinformation that is out there. 

 So I’m so excited for you to hear those bonus interviews and not just hear from me. 

 And even like my clients, I do client success interviews. 

 I have over on the podcast and The clients that talk about their learnings and their their successes from the program, they will tell you these things too, but it’s, it’s great to be able to hear it from all different directions, right? 

 So if you want to get a job in this market, if you’re in a job right now that you don’t love, if you’ve been in a job that you don’t love for a long time, if you’re bored, if you feel like you’re all your days are the same, if you feel like you know you need to get out of where you are, but you haven’t just found the right moment. 

 This is gonna be the thing that creates that for you. 

 So I’ve got hundreds of testimonials. 

 I get DMs daily, people telling me like, oh, this changed my life. 

 This literally actually changed the way that I talked to this person. 

 This story actually got me the job and that’s all available for you to see on the invitation page, which we will link up at www.natalieFisher.com/ or NatalieFishertraining.com, pardon me. 

 , slash forward slash start. 

 So you can see all the whole breakdown there. 

 So this is the The most comprehensive program I believe is on the market. 

 But when I started this, I actually bought a bunch of programs that were that that people were selling on how to get a job, and I have created something amazing with everything that I’ve learned plus everything that I’ve actually coached my real clients on for the past years. 

 It’s sounds insane. 

 So, if you want to get a look at that, you want to check out the link in the show notes or go to www. 

 NatalieFishertraining.com/start and I’ll see you in there. 

 As soon as you sign up, you can start going through the material right away. 

 And don’t worry about getting overwhelmed. 

 I’ve got an audio on that too because that happens like overwhelm is a thing that you might be experiencing now, but it’s not because of the amount of information. 

 It’s because of your priorities and not knowing how to prioritize. 

 So you can get in there right away. 

 You can start consuming the information. 

 I had somebody messaged me, he sent me an email and he’s like, I listened to every single one of your audios of, of the lessons in your program, and it landed a job with the Fortune company. 

 And I start next Monday. 

 So this is not theory, it’s not something that I made up. 

 It’s something that I’ve been working on for a long time and I stand behind it fully. 

 So, and I stand behind it to the point where if you don’t land the job after listening to the entire program, then I will coach you one on one until you do. 

 And it hasn’t taken my clients more than months to do it. 

 So I will see you inside. 

 Let me know what you think. 

 I’ll talk to you next week.