HOW TO STOP NEEDING TO PROVE YOURSELF

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[00:00:00] One of the most exhausting habits that we develop is the. Current habit of needing to prove ourselves, we're trying to prove that we're doing enough. We're trying to prove we've made the right choice. We're trying to prove that we're worthy of trust, that we are, ~uh, ~doing it all.

We are trying to prove that we are enough. But the truth is ~like. ~We get stuck in that cycle of wanting to be impressive and wanting to prove ourselves, and then we start convincing others to give us confidence and we get hooked in a cycle of external validation that is always going to keep us on a hamster wheel of needing to let people know just how much we're doing, and it stops when you start giving yourself permission to stand by yourself and stop.

Proving yourself today, I wanna talk to you about the freedom that comes when you no longer feel the need to prove anything, and how that shift will change the way you move through life, the way you [00:01:00] interact with other people. You don't need people to be impressed with you when you are already impressed with yourself, but you have to be impressed with yourself for this to work.

Um, the truth is that somewhere along the way, so many of us learned that ~becoming, ~being confident was from being convincing that if we could just explain ourselves well enough, we'd feel secure. If we could just be popular enough, ~we, ~if we could just be thin enough, if we could just achieve a little bit more, if we could just add one more zero to our annual income, ~then ~then people would know that we are good enough, that we are impressive, that we are.

~The elusive ~special. We want to be special, but you already are. And in this episode we're gonna talk about how to start making some mental shifts to stop performing for approval and start leading your life from a place of internal certainty.

Hey guys. I am Trish Blackwell. Welcome to the Confidence Podcast. If you're new here, I'm so glad you took a chance on the show. This is going to be a great episode. Whether you're listening on Apple, [00:02:00] Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast listening app of your. Preference. I'm so happy to be a voice of encouragement ~in ~and truth in your life.

Listen, every Tuesday we drop new episodes, and my goal is that there's always something very, very tangible, very easy and actionable that you can implement immediately into your life, into your mindset, and you start. Feeling and seeing internal shifts. Now, if you are a listener and you felt those shifts and you love the show, please, please make sure you're following the show.

Did you know about like 28% of you listen every week, but don't follow and, uh, ~follow the show, ~leave a review, share with a friend. What this does, it just tells the podcast algorithm world, Hey, push this out to more people. And ~I, ~I ask that of you because I try to keep this. Show ad free. And so this is my little pitch to you.

Let's keep it ad free. Let's grow the show by sharing it with people if you have found it valuable. ~So we're, ~let's dive into the meat and potatoes here. Whew. Listen. [00:03:00] This used to be the bane of my existence, this deep pressure to want to prove myself. So much so that ~I, ~if I thought somebody was watching me, I would just try harder.

Now, ~I'm, I ~listen straight up. I am a try hard. I. Am and I'm not embarrassed to that. I am proud that I am someone who goes all out. I am intense. I am ~an um, ~an all or nothing person, learning how to be in that balanced gray area. But I am proud of the fact that I don't do anything halfway. ~I, ~if I like something, I love it.

I go all out. I'm fully committed, but that also means that ~when I felt that I needed to, this. ~Underneath that is this need for people. ~This need. ~A perceived need. I had a preference for other people to notice that I go all out, that wow, she works harder than other people. ~I wanted to do. ~I wanted to go all out, but I also wanted people to notice, wow, even more than so and so, because I was in the world of teachers and coaches, ~we, we.~

Brought up in this culture of competition and I'm one of the most competitive people. I'm all [00:04:00] for competition, and it's incredibly value. ~I, my kids. ~My kids compete in snowboarding, they compete in hockey. Uh, we are a competitive family. But there is a downside. The underbelly of that is that we then think that if we're not so exceedingly, extraordinarily more advanced than somebody else, than we're not doing enough, or that we aren't noticeable, and there's this invisible pressure that comes with high achievers and very driven people that ~we, we don't ~we, you're not probably thinking, I need to prove myself today.

You're probably never thought to yourself today, I am gonna be impressive, but. You might have noticed that when people are watching at the gym, you run faster or you choose a heavier weight. For me, when I was swimming, uh, I swam competitively and it paid for my, my education. ~I, ~I went a little bit past, ~um, ~the collegiate level as well when I was swimming, even like when I was training for my Ironman triathlons ~and.~

You guys, I was just doing an easy workout in the pool. If I saw someone get [00:05:00] on the pool deck, I would like start sprinting as if anybody cared. There was this under like, pressure to go, I need to look like I'm always working hard or being impressive. You don't notice it happening, but there is an invisible pressure to make things look easy, an invisible pressure ~to to, to be, ~to be stand out more than other people.

Now, ~this is not everyone. ~This is gonna resonate for my. ~Type a. ~Highly driven, put pressure on yourself, type ~of, of, ~of person. And we do this through like ~the ~being a try hard. Again, I'm all for it. Like, I want you to try hard, but I want it for the right reasons. And that has been for me in the past 10 years, the biggest shift in my own personal development, trying hard to be impressive versus now I try hard to make a deep impression.

~I wanna go all up. I want. ~I want people to say at the end of my life, wow, that girl went for it. Like, you know, I used to be a little bit embarrassed about ~like ~my willingness to go try new things and like, what if I embarrassed myself? My kids and I, I have reframed that entire narrative to go, listen. [00:06:00] I want people to go ~look at her, squeeze the juice, ~look at her, squeeze the juice ~out of the ~out of life.

Now, sometimes she looks like a fool. Sometimes she looks amazing. Good for her. She is not wasting a day that God has given her on this beautiful earth. That is how I wanna live my life, but I'm doing it because I want to maximize that which was given to me, not because ~I, ~my value is in having other people say, you're wow, Trish.

~You're, you're, ~you're impressive. And I say that and you go, wow. Yeah, of course. But can I tell you, I lived 30 years of my life ~in the, ~in the second narrative, the desire for other people to go. Well done. You have something? I had to learn to ~go ~get ~the, ~my validation and my confidence ~from my, ~from others and shift it to internal confidence.

That is the only way I was able to break, ~um, ~cracks in this pressure ~that there, there is, uh, we, ~you might do it through ~the, the, the over, over, ~over trying. ~You might be, ~you might be proving yourself through overexplaining your decisions or justifying your choices or, ~uh, performing, um, your. ~Trying to overperform.

In your competence rather than just trusting it, the need to prove yourself feels [00:07:00] responsible, it feels productive. Maybe for you, it's this underlying like, let me tell you everything I've done today, this like, oh, we're doing ~this, ~this, this, this, this, this to sort of justify what you do. I remember my husband would come home when our kids were younger and I was working my business, but also, ~you know, in, ~in the world of diapers and naps and timing and it was exhausting.

And I remember. Finding myself telling Brandon, Hey babe, I did this and then I did this and I did this ~as, ~as if I needed him to know I haven't just been sitting here all day. And ~that, that, ~that got curious. I had to get deep and go, why am I trying to make sure he knows how much I've done? ~That ~is a, there's an invisible pressure ~that I, ~of performance that I have here, and ~I, ~I wanna get curious about that.

When you feel the need to prove yourself or you feel the need. To list out all of that you're doing to justify yourself. I want you to tap into curiosity and ask yourself what's really going on here? [00:08:00] Because the need to prove yourself didn't come from nowhere. It often started with being praised for achievement, being corrected when misunderstood, or learning that approval equaled safety.

And when you learn that approval equals safety and you're not getting it, then you feel insecure. And if we look at the world like ~you're, ~you're listening to the Confidence Podcast, ~the, ~the opposite ~is ~of confidence was often. Insecurity, which means not secure. So the more security you can create in yourself, the more confidence you create.

Now, the more security you create in your home, if you're a parent, the more confident children you will have. They feel safe, they feel secure. So the more security you create in yourself, with yourself, the more confident you will be. And so the urge to prove yourself, it's not a flaw. It's actually a learned strategy.

~It's an old co. ~You can look at it as this is an old coping mechanism that I thought was helpful. Now that I have a larger perspective, I see that [00:09:00] it's not. ~And, and I, and ~the reason I have this drive to be impressive and why I feel so strongly is ~that, ~that I wanna stand out, I wanna be exceptional. I wanna be the one that's noticed for doing it well, ~and, ~and I am okay with that deeper desire for safety.

This is not about excellence. This is not about being the best 'cause. There's always gonna be somebody ~that's, ~that's. Prettier that's more successful, that's richer, that's more, uh, accomplished. That's the best in not just one sport, but five sports. Like there's always, we live in a world with 8 billion people and there's humility that comes with accepting my, I gotta stop looking outside and keep my eyes on my own, lean of life.

Look at what if I've been given, and how am I gonna maximize what I've been given. How can I be the best version of me and stop worrying about all the other versions of other people and when the, and it's 'cause the need to be impressive isn't about excellence, it's about safety. And so when you, [00:10:00] when you realize ~that the, ~that you're seeking to be valued by others to create safety for yourself so you feel secure and confident, you're then, so that you don't.

Worry about being enough. We can go, wait a second. So the bars, that's why the bar keeps moving. That's why we get to one accomplishment and we go, oh, it's still not enough. It still feels, it feels good. We got the peak, the mountaintop, and then it drops. And so you don't just wanna do well, you wanna it to look good.

You don't wanna just succeed. You want it to be undeniable. You don't wanna just confidence. You want this external proof. And the problem is that confidence that gets built on impressing other people is really, really fragile. It depends on response and recognition and results and things that are completely out of our control.

One of the best ways to create internal confidence is to create security within yourself. ~How, one, ~one way we do that, other than building self trust, learning to change your inner narrative, how to reset your mind, all those things, like that's all we, I coach on [00:11:00] all of that in the College of Confidence, my group coaching, uh, community and program.

But we do it by creating that security that we are enough security, that uh, we don't have to impress security, that we are safe and we are valuable because we are pursuing excellence for the sake of being the best version of ourselves, not for being better than someone else. And you do that by. ~Uh, ~building a self-validating voice, encouraging yourself and creating ~a, a, ~a blueprint that's internal of self-validation of saying, I'm improving.

This is me in the pursuit of being the best version of me possible. And so that's why ~you, even, ~even though a lot of people are massively ~successful, people are ~successful, their drive drives them to, with this state of stress and anxiety, because they always feel that pressure. Because they're trying to solve an internal need with [00:12:00] external evidence.

As long as you keep outsourcing your confidence and your validation to the external, which is out of your control, you are gonna be driving yourself crazy. Because what we can control is what we say to ourselves, what we acknowledge in ourselves. And so when we stop outsourcing what is out of your control, you create security in yourself by controlling what you can, which is your inner narrative.

Which is what you tell yourself, ~which is, ~which are the atta girls and attaboys, the validation, ~the, ~the proud ofs, the tracking, the wins ~that, that, that you, ~that a high achiever who ~was ~grounded and confident does. Now two quick side notes. If you don't yet do the 3, 3, 3 method, it's a three minute journaling method that I have all of my students do at night.

I have a free 10 minute training video plus my worksheet on it. Go to trish blackwell.com/ 3 3 3 method. You get it for free, and this will be the first step to creating that self-validating voice and it helps you. Prioritize and actually achieve more [00:13:00] all in three minutes a day. So go check that out. The other quick side note, little announcement is, uh, today is ~the last day, ~the last day to sign up and come join me and be my friend in the College of Confidence.

If you're listening live good news for you. This is the last day, and you can, it's February 10th, 2026. At the time of the recording, if you're in the future. I hope it's going well. So sorry that this is not available to you, but go to trish blackwell.com/friend and you can come coach with me for 30 days for free.

FREE, so trish blackwell.com/friend, when you are anchored in your self. Your confidence doesn't get squirrely. It's not contingent on other people noticing what you're doing, other results working out the way you want. The winds that are out of your control, you're anchored into yourself. And the ~re ~way we anchor ourself ~with ~is with our validation to ~our ~ourself, being able to talk to ourselves ~and, ~and anchor ourselves in our own narrative.

Now. [00:14:00] This is what we're working on this month in the College of Confidence, so come and join us again. You can come and join for free in order to do the deeper work. Like this is on the surface. You might be shaking your head and go, yeah, yeah, this makes a ton of sense. This is cool. It's a whole nother ballgame to apply it to your life and start doing it.

The good news, it sounds like a lot. But it actually doesn't require a lot of time. It requires an expanded awareness. It requires a ~willingness, ~willingness for you to prioritize three to five minutes a day of quiet thinking, of looking at a thought on paper of jotting something down on a Post-it and practicing reframing your thoughts, getting really curious about what is it?

What is my actual. Narrative. Who do I think I am? What do I say about myself? What is my self concept? How do I identify and how do I talk to myself? And if it is not creating the life and you don't feel as a magnificent and incredible as you are, then it's time to rebuild that inner [00:15:00] narrative voice, that self concept in a meaningful way.

And it doesn't require a lot of time. It just requires. Consistency, curiosity, compassion, and connection with yourself, which you do through journaling, quite frankly. Now, that's overwhelming. Don't worry. That's why I coach people. Come join me in the College of confidence. But in order to motivate yourself to do some of this work, remind yourself it's not massively time consuming.

I just have to. I'm committing to be a more intuitive, mindful, connected version of myself, but we also have to know what does it cost me to not do this work? The cost of living in prove it mode is that it doesn't just drain your energy, it shapes your behavior. ~It leads to a. Uh, overexplaining. ~It leads to people pleasing.

It leads to defensiveness, it leads to exhaustion. And then the biggest cost is that your confidence becomes conditional on something you have no control over, which are people's opinions, people noticing people's [00:16:00] words. You feel confident when people agree, when results are obvious, when people are impressed, when validation is present.

But without those, your confidence starts being like one of those houses you see in the outer banks. That's built on the sand and you see it get crashed into the waves. When you stop proving yourself and getting your confidence and outsourcing it to something external, that's when you stop feeling the pressure.

You start speaking less, but more clearly, you make decisions faster. You stop narrating your own self worth. You stop being that chameleon. That's one way around one group of people and another way around another group of people. You stop worrying if people like you or caring what they think. Your energy starts to shift from being seen to being steady.

You don't feel louder. You just feel calmer because when you're trying to prove yourself, the first thing that changes, it's not your results, it's your nervous system. ~There's this, ~when you let it go, there's this quiet [00:17:00] exhale. It's a release of pressure that you didn't even know you were carrying. You stopped scanning the rooms for approval.

You stopped hoping that the cool kids like you. You stop rehearsing explanations in your head. You stop managing how your choices are perceived because you're going based on your ~value, ~value system, not what theirs might be. And that ~frees up y'all this enormous amount of energy. It ~frees up an enormous amount of energy, and ~you be, ~you are able to become more present because you are no longer performing.

You're more decisive because you're no longer waiting for consensus. You're more confident because your sense of worth isn't riding on someone else's response. ~You also, ~what's so crazy about this is it also shifts your relationships. You're not trying to be impressive. You start showing up more yourself.

You listen better. You connect more authentically. You're not trying to convince, justify, or defend you. You are more secure and confident in your value systems, in your faith, in your beliefs. Your interactions ~are, ~are calmer. ~You, ~you take less offense to people who are different than you. [00:18:00] You're no longer ~to be ~trying to be someone that you're not.

To get approval of people who aren't even thinking about you. You begin to trust yourself and when you begin to trust yourself that. Changes you move from? Do they approve? ~Do they like you? ~Do they like me to do I approve? Do I like how I'm showing up today? Am I proud of myself today? That shift, ~those two, that shift those, ~that difference between those questions seems simple, but it's incredibly powerful.

Do they like me? Do I like me? Do they approve of how I've showed up today versus do I approve of how I've showed up, of the effort I've made, of the person I've been of the values ~of, of, of, ~in my life that I have practiced and demonstrated? Am I proud of me?

There's a next step that I want for you. I want you to let yourself get curious. Yeah, about where are you? [00:19:00] Are we still in a cycle of needing, wanting people's approval? Or are you ready to, ~and ~do that internal shift to internal self validation to start changing the narrative ~That ~and the way you talk about yourself and the way you think to yourself.

If you've not yet listened to episode 675, it's an episode that's one of our most popular episodes here on the podcast on narrative intelligence. Your narrative intelligence, which we also call your nq, is the internal story that you tell yourself about yourself. ~So one narrative can be, it's an entire diff, an entirely.~

Change and transform a situation in your life. And so while you go, I am, I can't be proud of myself 'cause I, I'm disappointed in myself. I promise. If you listen to that episode 6 75, you will start changing the narrative in which you think about yourself and you'll stop expecting yourself to be this perfect version.

You'll stop celebrating perfection and start celebrating progression. And when you celebrate progression, oh my gosh. It's good. Life is good. It's just this [00:20:00] beautiful thing. I want you to sit in this today. One of the greatest gifts one of my friends and mentors gave me when I was living in France is she just kept saying, life is beautiful.

She would say to me, NA, it's funny. She and I talked on the phone the other day 'cause her daughter's getting married. I'm so excited going to France, going to the wedding. And I just said to her, and I can remember her 15 years ago, her saying this to me, that isn't life beautiful? When you can sit in the present and in your day and say, my day is beautiful.

My life is beautiful. I am so grateful for the day that I've been given today. And it might have a lot of crap in it. It might be just challenging. Everything's going wrong, nothing's going your way. Every stoplight problems at work, like I get it. Find a way to say. Today is a beautiful day. You do that with gratitude.

But when you can sit in this, I have all that I need right now. Now, do I have things I wanna change in my life? [00:21:00] Absolutely. Do I have some financial goals? Do I have some physical goals? Do I have some relational goals? ~Do I have ~yes, but also right now, this is beautiful Also, right now. I'm on my way also.

Right now. My life is extraordinary because when you start celebrating progress and the present, you'll free yourself from the perfectionistic loop, ~perfe, ~perfectionism that cycles through and spits you out in this cyclone of not enoughness and insufficiency. Whereas if you can say, Hey, today I made progress.

And little by little big things get done and progress feels good. Listen, ~I'm in you guys ~if you don't know, we are huge snowboarders. Come follow my snowboarding account on Insta. It's signin snowboarding. My married name is Simon, by the way, S-Y-N-A-N. ~And um, I have a couple things. I'm working on some, ~I have a lot of front side threes, front side.

One eighties I'm comfortable ~and I ~then I realized, oh, there's a whole nother rotational direction that backside 180. And I am not nailing it. I'm falling a good amount. [00:22:00] But do you know how good it feels to be brave? Do you know how good it feels to make a little progress ~for me to, ~to mark something and realize that ~my, ~my hips are rotating a little bit more fluidity.

~That ~the stretching that I'm doing 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes a night is adding up. Now ~is ~am I where I wanna be? Do I watch other people ~go, oof. ~One day girl, that's gonna be me. Yeah. But I'm also. Absolutely stinking proud of myself because I am in movement. I am making progress and so are you.

We've gotta start celebrating the small wins. The small wins are the progress. Progress feels good. Progress gets us connected into the present to celebrate the present. And when you can celebrate the present, no matter all the things that aren't going well, you will focus on what is and be able to say, as my friend, not.

It told me life is beautiful. So I hope this episode resonated with you. If it did, make sure you let me know. Share with a friend, reach out on Instagram. I'm Trish Blackwell on Instagram and make sure you're [00:23:00] following leave a comment. I can't wait to see you guys in next week's episode's gonna be great.

And, um, I am posting if you're interested in improving your mindset. And journaling, and you want more than just the podcast. Come over to to YouTube. I'm posting three videos a week over there. They're short, they're sweet, and they're powerful. So it's Trish Blackwell on YouTube. Go out there today. Know that I am cheering you on and life is beautiful.

~Two 10, what the heck?~

~Uh.~

~All right. Let's get this moved over. Oh.~