In The Confidence Gap, psychotherapist Russ Harris provides an approach to dealing effectively with the negative, limiting thoughts and fears that prevent you from achieving your goals. Rather than trying to speak to, tamp down, or ignore negative thoughts—all ineffective methods—Harris recommends you relate differently to your thoughts. This will allow you to pursue your goals without your thoughts interfering with your efforts.
Harris is a trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and has held workshops on this approach all over the world. He’s also authored several other books, including the best-selling The Happiness Trap. The Confidence Gap is for people who struggle to carry out their life goals and seek to change their thinking to be more empowering.
In this guide, we’ll first explain what the confidence gap is and how relating to your thoughts differently is the only way to bridge the gap. We’ll then show exactly how to relate differently to your thoughts: by recognizing, labeling, and detaching from them. Finally, we’ll explain why you also need to relate differently to the idea of success to effectively pursue goals in the long term.
As we lay out Harris’s approach to relating productively to thoughts, we’ll provide alternative perspectives on how to achieve your goals that draw on spiritual teaching, as well as more traditional self-help methodologies.
According to Harris, the confidence gap is the misconception that you can only live your life in a rich and fulfilling way—doing the activities, meeting the people, and gaining the skills that matter to you—once you become confident.
For instance, you might want to try stand-up comedy but believe you can’t sign up for an open mic night until you feel confident about your abilities.
(Shortform note: In You Are a Badass, Jen Sincero contends that the reason people don’t go for the things they want is that their egos, which feel undeserving of success and happiness, prevent them from doing so. Sincero would likely echo Harris by saying that you can’t wait around for your ego to develop confidence and self-love before you pursue your goals.)
However, if you wait for confidence to naturally arise, you’ll wait forever and never be able to live the rich life you want, claims Harris. This is because you can’t get rid of the negative thoughts and feelings that stymie your confidence—especially the feeling of fear. Fear is an instinct that serves an important evolutionary purpose. Fear and negative thinking make you attuned to dangers around you. However, fear also holds you back from confidently doing the things you want to.
For instance, if you wait until you stop feeling nervous about doing stand-up before you sign up for an open mic night, you’ll likely never do it because you’ll never stop feeling nervous.
(Shortform note: In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert echoes Harris’s belief that fear is unavoidable and also an innate product of our need to survive. However, she adds the idea that fear isn’t useful in many realms of life—like in the creative realm, which has nothing to do with survival. Harris doesn’t directly discuss when fear is and isn’t useful. He does believe that you can harness your fear to pursue your goals with more vigor, as we’ll see later on. However, it might be worth borrowing a page from Gilbert’s book and asking yourself if harnessing your fear will be useful in a given situation: Harnessing it might not always be the right move.)
Harris adds that there are specific negative thoughts and fears that undermine your confidence:
Negative Thoughts About What Others Think of You
Harris’s list of specific negative thoughts revolves around thoughts about your own abilities: how unskilled, unworthy, incapable, and afraid you are. But others might add another negative thought to this list that doesn’t center on your abilities: negative thoughts about what others think of you.
In You Are a Badass, Jen Sincero argues that many people worry excessively about what others will think of them, which prevents them from pursuing audacious or unexpected goals. Sincero adds that such worries, like fear, have an evolutionary foundation: They make us more inclined to submit to the will of a group because we need its protection to survive.
However, Harris might contend that worrying about what others think of you is a form of fear, which he alludes to in the above list: You fear the judgment of others and therefore opt out of activities that would otherwise fulfill you.
What’s more, while Sincero provides methods to stop caring about what others think of you, Harris might say that it’s impossible to get rid of such worries because they’re wired into our brains. Instead, he’d likely recommend the technique below to relate more elegantly to your fears about how others perceive you.
Because you’ll never magically gain confidence, lose your negative thoughts, and banish all fears to pursue your goals, the better route to doing what you want in life is to relate to inevitable negative thoughts and fears differently.
In other words, rather than either pushing bad feelings and thoughts away, “treating” them with positive thoughts, or just waiting for them to vanish on their own (all approaches that won’t give you long-term confidence), develop a different perspective on the thoughts and fears.
(Shortform note: One author who does feel that you can eliminate negative thoughts is Maxwell Maltz, who wrote Psycho-Cybernetics in 1960. He asserts that if you can stop listening to and believing negative thoughts, you’ll stop perpetuating a negative feedback loop, in which you act on bad feelings and therefore experience bad outcomes, which feed back into bad feelings. Maltz provides two methods for banishing negative thoughts, including paying attention only to the facts of a situation, rather than your feelings about it.)
This lets you do things that require confidence without having to wait endlessly for that confidence to arrive. If your dream is to do stand-up, for example, you can go out and do it without waiting for the confidence to miraculously show up.
The bonus is that when you take the actions that require confidence, you become better at those actions and thus become confident in doing them. For instance, when you attend open mic nights, you inevitably become better at stand-up, and that improvement gives you confidence.
(Shortform note: In The Confidence Code, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman agree with Harris that taking the actions of confidence precedes the feeling of confidence. However, they disagree with him that you need to relate to thoughts and fears before you can take action. Instead, they recommend just doing the action, especially if it’s a high-risk one. But if performing a high-risk action right away is too scary, they also advise building up to a high-risk action by performing lower-risk actions first. In this way, they do offer a preparational action, like Harris’s preparational mental work, that lets you take action.)
Harris stresses that learning how to relate more effectively to your thoughts and fears requires continual practice—just as you must practice to improve at doing stand-up, for instance.
In addition to practice, there are three additional steps to the cycle of improvement:
Once you reach the third step, you return to practice and perform the cycle again.
(Shortform note: In Make It Stick, the authors provide even more guidance on how to effectively practice a skill, like relating to thoughts and fears. They say you can practice best when you’re solitary, when there’s a goal you’re working toward, and when you strive to build upon your current ability. The authors agree with Harris that you must then go through the cycle of applying those skills, assessing your progress, and modifying your approach in the real world, adding that you might consider recruiting a coach—who might just be a friend you’ve told about your intention to relate differently to your thoughts—to provide encouragement and pointers.)
Now that you know that you can build confidence by relating differently to your thoughts and fears, let’s look at how you can relate to your thoughts and fears differently. According to Harris, you can do this in three parts.
Detaching (what Harris calls “defusing”) is the process of seeing the thought not as an objective truth but rather as merely a string of words with no foundation in reality.
(Shortform note: It might help you see your thoughts as merely fleeting concepts if you conceive of them as the product of your power-hungry ego, as Eckhart Tolle advises in A New Earth. He claims that all humans possess an ego that’s afraid of being “less than.” To prove itself superior to other humans, the ego creates thoughts that help define itself.)
You can detach from thoughts in three steps, writes Harris:
Step 1: Recognize the negative thought: Recognize when you’re having a negative thought by familiarizing yourself with four common types:
Other Negative Thoughts About the World in General
Harris lists common negative thoughts you might have about yourself, but there are other common negative thought patterns you might have about how the world works in general. It’s worth familiarizing yourself and recognizing these when you have them so you can detach from them, as well.
For instance, many people think dichotomously, believing there’s either a good way of doing something, or a bad way—there’s no gray area in between. This might lead you to reject a friendship because the other person has objectionable political leanings, and you can’t conceive of having a friend you don’t agree on everything with. It’s likely that the above thoughts Harris mentions and your general negative thoughts about the world feed into each other. For instance, you might apply dichotomous thinking to yourself and judge yourself harshly when you don’t do something “the right way.”
Step 2: Label the thought: Once you’ve recognized what type of negative thought you’re having, label it in your mind, says Harris. This might be “expecting the worst,” or “afraid of failing.” You might also assign a (humorous, if possible) name to common negative thoughts: Perhaps you could call your fear of failure “the scaredy-cat” and say to yourself: “The scaredy-cat is here.”
(Shortform note: If you’re new to labeling or don’t feel in tune with your common negative thoughts, it might be worth asking people you’re close to what sort of negative thoughts they often hear you vocalize. For instance, if they frequently hear you say, “I’m sure to do badly on this exam,” you’ll know you often make negative predictions. You can then better label that thought when it arises.)
Step 3: Detach from the thought: Now that you’ve labeled the negative thought, you can detach from it. To do this, first state the thought “out loud” in your mind. This might be: “I’ll fail at this anyway, so there’s no point in trying.” Then, visualize those words and mentally modify their appearance: You can change the font, size, color, or visualize them as graffiti, a label on food packaging, or as titles in a film.
(Shortform note: Visualizing words isn’t just useful for detaching from thoughts: It’s also used as a memorization device. In Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer recommends memorizing poetry by visualizing words, so you create a line of images. It’s easiest when you choose images of things that sound like or rhyme with the word. For instance, you could swap “here” for an image of an ear.)
If you’re not a visual person, you might “sing” the words in your mind (or out loud), suggests Harris. You can sing to the tune of “happy birthday” or your favorite song, or you can “hear” the words as a tinny radio voice or as an actor reading off a script. Alternatively, if you gave your thought a name in the last step, you might picture that individual or creature saying the thought. For example, the scaredy-cat might be a fretful cat who says: “There’s no use trying!”
Feel free to come up with your own version of detaching that works best for you: Harris claims detaching is most effective when you devise a method that suits you.
(Shortform note: If you prefer “hearing” your thought in your head, it might mean you’re also an auditory learner. These are people who prefer receiving information by listening. If this is the case, you might also practice relating to your thoughts—in other words, going through the cycle of improvement we described above—by reviewing your practice out loud with a friend or therapist. This might help solidify your assessment of your progress and better inform how to modify your approach. An additional benefit of changing how you practice according to what type of learner you are is that you’ll improve more quickly: As Harris asserts, when you perform these mental exercises according to the method that suits you, they’ll be more effective.)
The result of detaching from thoughts is that they lose the power to dictate your actions, asserts Harris. They remain in your mind and never go away, but you can continue living your life in the way you want without acting on their input.
(Shortform note: It may seem impossible to not heed your thoughts when deciding how to act. After all, our only resource for decision-making is ultimately our brain and the thoughts it produces. While it’s true that we eventually must rely on our own faculties to make decisions, it’s also true, as Harris claims, that our thoughts often aren’t based in reality and thus aren’t always helpful in decision-making: Thoughts can be triggered by random occurrences (a memory, a phrase, an image, the environment) and have nothing to do with logical decision-making. For example, you might have the thought that you want a piece of apple pie simply because you saw someone eating that—not because eating pie is the logical next step for you to take today.)
When attempting to pursue your life goals by taking on a new challenge, you’ll often experience the thoughts and feelings of fear. Harris writes you can deal with fear by making mental room for it (a step he calls “expansion”).
Instead of trying to push away your fear (a tempting response for everyone because no one likes the discomfort of fear), let it exist. Doing this draws power away from the fear, allowing you to pursue your goals with your fear present but not impacting you. What’s more, allowing the fear to exist lets you harness its energy to better pursue your goals.
(Shortform note: Harris writes that you’ll often feel fear when you pursue important goals. In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone takes this idea even further, saying that feeling fear indicates that you’re taking the right steps in life. This is because you feel fear when you push yourself out of your comfort zone, which is almost always necessary to accomplish big goals. Cardone doesn’t offer thoughts on how to make mental room for fear, but he does recommend using fear to positively guide your actions. He explains that when you take actions that scare you, you gain confidence from having overcome a fear. Doing this consistently helps build long-term confidence and an exciting life—the goal Harris wants you to achieve, as well.)
You can make room for and harness your fear in three steps, writes Harris:
Step 1: Recognize and label the feeling and thoughts of fear in your mind. This is the same as the process of recognizing and labeling your negative thoughts, except now, you’ll also pay attention to your body. How does fear feel physically? Does your jaw clench? Do you tap your foot? Whatever they are, let those thoughts and feelings remain in your mind and body.
For instance, when rehearsing your stand-up routine, you might notice a tightness in your chest and become aware of negative predictive thoughts like, “I know already that this will go badly.”
(Shortform note: Harris advises you to label your thoughts and feelings of fear, but this won’t be equally easy for everyone. Some people struggle to label thoughts and feelings and can only use a few descriptors for a wide variety of emotional and physical states. Labeling emotions is even harder for people with alexithymia, who are unable to identify or understand their emotions. Though they do experience physical symptoms—which Harris recommends you pay attention to—they don’t understand how they’re connected to thoughts and emotions.)
Step 2: Welcome the fear in your mind. You must not only leave your fear in your mind and body, but actually welcome the fear. Harris recommends that you do this by mentally speaking to your fear as if it were a trusted friend whose goal (though misguided) is to help and protect you. You might thus say to your fear: “Thanks for being here; I know you have my best interests at heart. Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the comedy routine I’m rehearsing.”
(Shortform note: The idea of welcoming such an unpleasant sensation as fear may at first seem impossible. To help yourself embrace fear, it might be useful to turn to Buddhist traditions. In Buddhism, suffering is seen as inherent to life. Buddhists believe that all beings suffer and in fact, that trying to get rid of fear tends to make suffering worse. However, when you can accept your suffering—in this case, your fear—you can work to eliminate it by changing your perspective on it.)
Step 3: Harness the fear. Finally, tune in to your body again and consider how you can use your experience of fear to take more energetic action. If your heart rate is elevated, your hands are jittery, or you can’t sit still, you can use that heightened physical state to vigorously burst into action.
For instance, if you’re about to perform, use the energy of your fear to propel you on stage and project to the last row.
(Shortform note: Harnessing your fear may not always be the right move or even possible. For instance, if you’re afraid of having a difficult conversation with your partner, harnessing your fear might make you jumpy and inattentive in the discussion. You might thus try a different third step—for instance, thinking about difficult conversations you’ve had in the past and how none of these have been as bad as you thought they’d be.)
You’ve now detached from your thoughts and made room for your fear so that you can complete the tasks you want to without letting those thoughts and fears dictate your actions. The next part of bridging the confidence gap is to be more present in the task you’re doing (the task that moves you closer to your goals). This will allow you to become better at it, writes Harris.
For Harris, being present consists of paying attention to what’s happening in your mind and around you, being open to learning about what’s happening, being curious about how it’s happening, and flexibly adapting your attention to the situation by broadening or narrowing it, depending on what’s most helpful to you in the moment.
(Shortform note: Harris advocates being present primarily when pursuing goals. However, the Dalai Lama feels you should be present at all times (or at least as often as possible). This is because the ability to be present is the foundation for leading a spiritually fulfilled life, in which you act on spiritual teachings on a daily basis. For the Dalai Lama, being present consists of having a calm mind that lets you see clearly and without the filters of thoughts and feelings what is happening around you. In practice, this is similar to Harris’s definition of being present, except that Harris adds the step of adapting your attention based on what best serves you now. He likely has this step because he focuses on being present when pursuing a specific aim.)
Let’s see what being present might look like if you’re about to perform a stand-up set: First, you’d pay attention to the thoughts running through your head, how your body feels being on stage, and how the audience is reacting. Then, you’d be open to recognizing negative thoughts, noticing that your palms are sweaty and that the back row is disengaged.
You’d next be curious about why these things might be the case. You could note that your mind sends out negative thoughts when you’re performing and that perhaps the reason the back rows aren’t laughing is that you’re not loud enough. Finally, you’d adapt your attention to focus on what’s most likely to let you succeed on stage: You’d detach from the negative thoughts, stop thinking about the back rows, and simply focus on the laughing front row. When you later rehearse your set, you can act on your discovery that you might not be loud enough and practice projecting.
As we’ve already seen, Harris believes that you must practice the cognitive skills we’re talking about to become better at them, and the skill of being present is no exception. You can practice being present in two ways:
Perform breathing exercises. Harris recommends an exercise in which you first take 10 deep, intentional breaths and then breathe naturally, keeping your attention on the in- and outflow of the breath for as long as possible until you become distracted by a passing thought. When you notice this, just gently redirect your attention to the breath.
Perform mundane tasks mindfully. Pay close attention to what you’re doing—the motions you perform, the colors you see, smells, textures, and so on—as if you’ve never performed this activity before.
Harris notes that staying present will be difficult at first because the mind constantly serves up thoughts that draw your attention away from the present moment. When this happens, simply acknowledge that your attention has been drawn away and return it to the present without admonishing yourself.
Bringing Greater Presence to Your Whole Life
In these exercises, Harris draws on meditation and mindfulness practices. If you’re looking to not just pursue your goals more fully but also make better decisions and generally be more aware in life, you might consider making meditation and mindfulness a part of your daily routine.
You can do this by, for instance, setting a daily meditation schedule. Consistent practice is key to strengthening your mind’s ability to be present. One neuroscientist discovered that meditating for only 12 minutes five times a week improves your ability to focus. You might therefore perform Harris’s breathing exercise every weekday morning before going to work. If you want a different flavor of meditation, you might consider a loving-kindness meditation or a body scan. These involve more steps than simply paying attention to your breathing.
Further, to be even more mindful when performing mundane tasks, you might create mental shortcuts that associate actions or places with being present. For example, getting in the car in the morning triggers you to become present and focus on your motions.
At this point, you’re hopefully able to do more of the things that matter to you because you’re preventing negative thoughts from hijacking your actions by relating more effectively to them. However, to pursue meaningful goals over the long term, you must also relate productively to the idea of success so you don’t become disillusioned along the way and give up.
Harris writes that it’s dangerous to believe that fully achieving your goal is the only way to be successful and to feel good about yourself. Often, achieving your goals is contingent on factors outside of your control, which can make it hard to reach them and thus to ever feel that you’ve “succeeded.” When you feel like your goal is unattainable and that success is elusive, you’re more likely to give up pursuing the goal.
(Shortform note: In perhaps no other field is success more outside of your control than in the creative field. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert stresses that professional creatives have little control over their careers because there are so many creative gatekeepers: publishing companies, media executives, and funding agencies, for instance. Gilbert even recommends not trying to earn money through creative work, but instead pursuing recreational creative goals.)
Further, even if you achieve a goal, your sense of satisfaction and success will be fleeting: Soon, you’ll find another goal you haven’t yet achieved, and you’ll feel dissatisfied again.
(Shortform note: Others feel that even if you do succeed in achieving your goals, they might not make you happy in the way you imagined. This is because, often, our goals are the ones society creates for us. These tend to be individualistic and meritocratic—things like making lots of money, having a celebrated career, and owning a house. Many reach these goals and discover—as Harris alludes to—that their satisfaction is fleeting or, in fact, nonexistent. Others might think they’re happy having achieved their goals, but then a crisis occurs, and they discover they’re not spiritually or emotionally fulfilled.)
Harris instead invites you to define success as living according to your personal values as often as possible. He recommends this because living by your values is fully within your control, making it much easier to achieve success. What’s more, living according to your values is inherently rewarding and increases your overall satisfaction in life.
For instance, if you value empathy, you can choose to be empathetic at any time: at the doctor’s office, when talking to a sibling, and so on. Any act of empathy would be a success. Further, because you value empathy, acting on that value makes you happier and more fulfilled.
(Shortform note: Harris believes defining success as living in accordance with your values gives you full control over your success because you can choose to live out your values at any time. However, others might contest the idea that a values-driven life is one you have full control over. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins argues that you don’t get to choose your values: They arise independently based on life events, your environment, the people you’re around, and so on. Not being able to choose your values in the first place implies a lesser degree of control over your life than Harris seems to believe in. Of course, not being able to choose your values in the first place doesn’t change the fact that you can still choose to act on them at any time.)
Importantly, Harris doesn’t feel you shouldn’t set goals at all. Instead, he thinks that you should set goals that stem from your values. This way, even if you don’t fully reach a goal, you derive satisfaction from the journey toward it because you’re acting according to your values. This also means you don’t only experience satisfaction in the brief moment of attaining a goal: You experience it all along the way toward that goal.
For instance, if you value empathy, you can live out that value in your stand-up show by paying careful attention to the audience and using material you think they’ll like specifically. Thus, even if you didn’t feel you reached your goal of having an amazing show, you still were empathetic to your audience, which gives you a sense of success and satisfaction.
(Shortform note: If you hesitate to set goals at all because you don’t want to slip into goal-oriented thinking, consider an alternative perspective on goals and values, also from Tony Robbins: He doesn’t ask you to define separate goals and values, but rather to define two types of values: “ends” and “means.” Ends are the big-picture values you want to achieve in life (like connection, contentment, and joy) while means are the smaller-picture values that help you achieve the ends (for instance, valuing friends as a means leads to greater connection as an end). Thus, by pursuing your “means” values, you’ll live out your “ends” values without having to worry about achieving specific goals.)
To live out your values, first note the values that matter most to you, writes Harris. If you’re not sure what your values are, think about how you want others to remember you in your eulogy—what positive traits will you want to represent to them?
Then, based on those values, come up with short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. Make these goals specific and measurable. For instance, to act on your value of empathy, you might set the short-term goal of calling a friend who’s having a hard time this week. In the medium term, you might take a course on enhancing empathy. And in the long term, you might try reaching out to a family member you’ve always had a fraught relationship with, and use your empathy to rebuild a connection.
(Shortform note: Before determining short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals, productivity experts believe you must get clear on where you are now. In Goals!, Brian Tracy insists that you be completely upfront with yourself on where you currently stand in the pursuit of your goals. For instance, you might recognize that you’re far from achieving your long-term goal of rebuilding a relationship with a family member because you habitually disrespect them. Reflecting on your current status gives you insights into the obstacles you might face as you pursue your short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals, allowing you to overcome them.)
Once you’ve established your goals, pursue them, keeping in mind that attaining the goal doesn’t constitute success: Behaving in accordance with your values along the way constitutes success. For example, if the friend you set out to call this week doesn’t pick up, don’t feel that you’ve failed. Instead, you should feel good about your efforts to contact them because you acted in a spirit of empathy.
Harris cautions that you won’t be able to always act on your values in every situation, and that you shouldn’t expect this of yourself. What’s more, your values will shift over time as you age and your life changes. Therefore, don’t cling to values, and don’t beat yourself up when you don’t act on them. Simply acknowledge that you didn’t behave in accordance with your values, and recommit to them.
The Importance of Values in the Workplace
Harris stresses the importance of defining and living by your values in your day-to-day, while others, like Brené Brown, stress the importance of doing so as a leader in the workplace. Having clear values lets you make tough decisions with greater confidence.
Brown, unlike Harris, recommends picking only two general values, which aren’t confined to different areas of your life. These values will be both personal and professional—there’s no difference. Brown adds that you must take care to pick values that are genuine to you and not values that others want you to have. Harris’s advice to consider how you want to be eulogized might help you do that.
Then, instead of creating goals based on your values, she recommends pursuing your values by asking yourself three questions:
What behaviors are aligned with my values?
What behaviors are not aligned with my values?
When did I act in harmony with my values?
Finally, perform the behaviors aligned with your values and avoid those that aren’t. Transforming values into behaviors rather than goals serves the added purpose of avoiding excessively goal-oriented thinking. If you only strive to perform behaviors, not reach goals, you won’t feel that there’s a specific aim to attain and therefore won’t become disappointed in yourself as readily. Since Harris stresses that you’ll never be able to act on your values in every situation and that they change over time, he’d likely approve of Brown’s behavior-oriented approach to values.
Using Harris’s three-step process, practice detaching from a negative thought.
Think about the last few days: Did you have any negative thoughts that prevented you from doing something or that simply dampened your happiness? Categorize that thought as a barrier, self-judgment, comparison, or prediction, and write the category here.
Now, label the thought in a way that’s helpful to you. You might describe the type of thinking (“comparing myself to others”) or come up with a funny or evocative name for the thought (“Mister Woe-is-me,” for instance).
Now, write down the full thought or say it mentally or out loud. If you’re writing the thought, you might even do so in an application where you can modify the appearance of the text. Then, practice changing how the thought looks or sounds: Experiment with altering the font, color, and size of the text, or with saying the thought out loud in a silly voice or to the tune of a song. There are even free online voice modifiers that can make your voice sound like a robot, cartoon character, or alien.
Finally, reflect on how the last step makes you feel. Does the thought seem less real to you? Have you achieved some distance between yourself and the thought? Do you think that if you detach from this thought the next time it appears, you’ll be able to continue doing what you were doing in spite of it? Note any reflections below.