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Courage First, Confidence Comes Later · Candid Coach Conversations

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome to Candid Coach Conversations.
• 0:03
  I'm Kimberly Boyd, founder of Live Life Fully, and today I have a dear friend and colleague, Amanda Kaufman, certified Live Life Fully coach.
• 0:12
  Hello, Amanda!
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  Kimberly, I'm so excited to do this.
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  Me too and I love seeing you.
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  And it's time for y'all to move closer.
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  It's on the record now.
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  Yes, yes, for the world to know.
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  Oh my gosh.
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  yeah, so tell me Amanda, how are you doing?
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  doing really well.
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  Thanks for asking.
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  It's a beautiful day here in not out at the lake, but still in Texas.
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  Beautiful day.
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  Awesome.
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  Awesome.
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  Awesome.
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  So I know that you and I have been talking about a whole bunch of different things.
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  And one thing that really has stood out and that I'd love to hear even more about is on the topic of courage.
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  And what I mean by that is I want to hear from you about what it means to have courage or what it means to be courageous.
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  is such a really wonderful question.
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  You know, for the longest time I thought that
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  I needed to just be confident.
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  Like I needed to have everything all figured out before my life would finally lock in somehow.
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  and it wasn't until I started really digging into personal growth and development that I started to understand more about the nature of confidence and how courage is that
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  prerequisite ingredient.
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  And you know, confidence confidence comes.
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  I mean, like eventually you become confident, but it's one of those things that it's in the rear view mirror.
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  You know, you look back and realize you're confident as opposed to having it before you start.
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  So when I think about what courage is, it is that decision to take action, even when you don't know that it's gonna work out.
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  And
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  Yeah, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about that.
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  But like so often when
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  For example, you know, I became an entrepreneur a decade ago.
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  I had no confidence.
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  I didn't know it was gonna work out.
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  I hoped it did.
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  I had a lot of hope, but I wasn't confident.
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  No way, no way.
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  Because it was doing something completely different than I had been trained in doing for a really long time.
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  And I didn't know anybody personally who had done what I was wanting to do.
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  I think that the thing about courage too is so often it's clear at least.
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  what the next step is and it's usually uncomfortable.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  my gosh, as you're talking and then you just sealed the deal, drove the point home for me.
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  When you were talking about becoming an entrepreneur 30 years uh ten years ago or a decade ago, I thought, oh gosh, I remember signing my first lease agreement on office space.
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  Is it then when you said it you know it's 'cause it's the uncomfortable?
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  uncomfortable with signing a lease agreement that was more than my house payment.
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  Oh yeah, I can imagine.
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  Cause it's like you know how much you're gonna be paying.
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  You obviously have an idea and a reason that you're taking that step.
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  So, you know, um I think sometimes people talk about about, that was really brave or that was really courageous.
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  And it was actually just kind of stupid, like they didn't really know what they were doing and it was dangerous.
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  But when you when you're doing something like signing that lease, yeah, like so much courage required, right?
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  I have to imagine you had a plan, but you couldn't see that it was definitely gonna work out for certain, right?
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  Right, 'cause there was no guarantee.
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  The only guarantee was that I was personally guaranteeing to back that lease.
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  That's the only thing I knew for certain.
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  Yeah.
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  Isn't that so interesting?
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  Like so often we have the certainty of what could go wrong.
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  Hmm.
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  And courage is taking that step knowing that it might not work out.
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  Yeah.
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  So good.
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  And I love the fact that you said about the confidence, because I agree.
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  I think so many people, me included, would think that, I've got to have confidence and then I can take that courageous leap.
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  And it's not even always about the leap, really.
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  It's about that courageous step or even wiggling of the toe.
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  Agreed, agreed, you know, like thinking about the entrepreneurial journey, just being on camera, you know, capturing the sound of my voice and
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  Knowing that a stranger will see it and just there's all these things that can go wrong because we have all these examples of you know people being kind of crappy on the internet
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  and saying mean things and you know, like there's a pretty high certainty that something bad could happen.
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  And so, you know, developing that muscle.
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  Now I'm pretty confident on camera and I can do conversations like this, but that's on the back of
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  thousands of tiny little toe-wiggle steps to build that confidence.
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  But it was courage that started it.
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  Yeah.
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  So tell me Amanda, what makes it important to you for people to think about courage differently and that it's courage first, confident is the ripple effect.
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  what makes that important to you, for people to know?
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  You know, we all have goals.
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  you know, if there's one thing that I'm really convinced of after doing a decade of coaching, everybody has a dream, everybody has ambition, everybody has something that they
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  want to improve in their life or even fundamentally change.
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  Sure.
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  And without courage, that change is so unlikely.
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  Because very often we'll stay in relationships that we shouldn't stay in, we'll we'll continue with habits that we shouldn't continue with, and we'll we'll just kind of go
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  along.
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  And before you know it, life has moved on for a really long time.
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  And there's just so many opportunities that you miss if you're unaware that courage is required to be able to activate in those opportunities.
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  And I think like, especially when I talk to people who
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  have achieved, you know, when they when they have been successful or they have enjoyed a level of success and they're looking at that next chapter or that next big thing,
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  sometimes it's when you have won that you feel like you have the most to lose.
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  And if you feel like you have this most to lose because maybe you got the good reputation, maybe you earned a lot of money in one domain and now you want to go into another domain.
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  Or maybe you just
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  Often it's status, right?
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  We you earn some kind of status once you're successful.
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  And the thought of losing that status of like embarrassing yourself or being seen to start small.
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  Often prevents very capable and high-achieving people from doing the very things that are going to activate their next level of alignment and performance.
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  So, courage to me is a non-negotiable habit.
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  Like you have to figure out what it means to you to be courageous and like build the muscle of courage.
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  I really don't think courage is this thing that you're just born with.
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  Like maybe, maybe there's certain personalities that are more gregarious or they're more um, you know, I think about like daredevil kind of types.
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  but again, like that doesn't necessarily mean you're tapping into courage.
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  If you're if you're reckless, if you're just like doing stuff to be crazy, you know, I think that that's one sure kind of of courage.
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  But I I I see a lot of really smart, really accomplished people feel so stuck in their life and it's because
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  'Cause they think they've got to be confident first.
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  Yeah.
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  my gosh, talking about the daredevil piece and and then being born with courage, what instantly popped into my mind is watching children learning to walk.
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  And they were not born, none of us, I don't think, any of us.
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  I have not heard of anyone being born knowing how to walk.
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  That would be so creepy actually that I think about that.
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  Anyway.
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  Right.
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  my gosh.
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  But like the courage that it took all of us to pull up or even to get that crawl, that that ramping up on our hands and knees, and then finally we would crawl.
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  Like that's when I think about courage, I think about that.
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  Like those were courageous actions, courageous decisions that we all made in simply learning to walk.
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  And so then what it led to was, gosh, what made us want to do that when we were
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  ten months old, twelve months old, however old we were.
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  And I'm wondering if it came from this core of curiosity.
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  And so then I think, well, dang, if we could be more curious.
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  Cause I'm like, how would somebody start practicing?
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  If it's a habit, a mandatory, non-negotiable habit, how could somebody start practicing courage?
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  And then I went through that whole thing about learning to walk and then getting curious.
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  And so maybe
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  If we allow ourselves an opportunity to become more curious, it'll naturally lead into courageous action.
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  I I think there's definitely something to that.
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  You know, what I was thinking about of the the baby rocking itself up and and you know being willing to get up again after falling down, you know, they're surrounded by people
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  who are walking.
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  You know, they're in an environment of people who are walking, and it's you know, it's a very efficient way to get around.
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  And you you know, I think when you're a small kid, I actually even remember being uh a very young kid looking forward to the autonomy and looking
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  Forward to the independence.
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  Obviously, I didn't have those words at the time, but I remember just like wanting to be grown up because I perceived of all that freedom and that ability to to to do things that
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  I didn't I did I wasn't allowed to do as a as a kid.
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  So I think environment is really huge.
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  And I got this funny idea.
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  I'm like, what if you're hanging around with people that sit all the time and they don't walk?
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  Would you would you spark into the same kind of level of curiosity?
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  Yeah.
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  Fascinating.
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  And Stacey Flowers talks about as far as our surrounding well, a lot of people talk about it.
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  I think of Stacy Flowers because she talks about the five finger friends.
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  And it is true.
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  I mean, there's research that shows we are the average of the sum of the five people we spend the most time with.
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  And so, yeah, definitely environment will.
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  And taking curiosity and expanding that that environment and that perception.
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  I that's ultimately what it took for me to become an entrepreneur.
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  and then you know, I think courage is also really important when you don't have examples exactly.
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  So, you know, another moment in my life where courage became extremely important was well few times where I moved thousands of miles away.
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  So I grew up in the Arctic of Canada and when I was 18 years old, I saw pretty cl like that certainty, like certainty of if I stay on this path, this is where it probably goes.
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  And then the uncertainty of well
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  I heard that if you get, you know, college education, I heard there's a lot of opportunities down south, which was basically everywhere that I didn't live.
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  And so to travel thousands of miles to go to university, that took so much courage because I didn't have a lot of examples of people around me who ever did that.
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  And
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  So then, you know, same thing when I was at university, I'm learning engineering, and I went and got a job in Calgary in Canada.
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  And I got I went into consulting.
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  I didn't know what management consulting was.
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  I had no idea what investment banking was.
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  I didn't know what any of these industries were.
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  I just knew there was this opportunity and they were inviting me forward.
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  I'd applied to a lot of jobs coming out of college because I graduated in 2008.
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  And you know, the the courage piece was like, I know what the step is.
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  The step is to accept this opportunity.
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  I don't know what it what's gonna happen next exactly.
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  and I'm so grateful that I did.
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  I ended up in a career where at twenty-five years old I'm advising like
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  the mayor of Chicago on procurement stuff is like wild to me.
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  Just absolutely wild journey.
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  And it would never have happened if I chose to stay comfortable.
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  You know?
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  Yeah.
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  And what I'm hearing, Amanda, and I don't know if this is even right, um, so let me know if it's not, is that even though you didn't know the bigger picture, you knew the step was
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  accept the offer.
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  And was I what I hear in that is that there was this knowing inside of you, like a calling, if you will, or a knowing, a tug saying, This is the way.
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  Hmm.
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  I'd add to that.
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  I would add to that because yes, there was definitely a tug.
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  I agree.
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  There was a tug in the context of options.
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  So getting back to that curiosity, right?
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  I think sometimes we wait for the tug, like we wait for that big signal, you know, some sort of bat signal or something to show up in our life and just be like, there's the tug.
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  And to me, tugs usually happen when I lay out options.
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  And it's like, okay, I could go this direction, this direction, this direction, this direction, or I could go no direction at all, you know, and then the tug makes a lot more
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  sense because I'm activating that curiosity about, well, I could, I could, could, I could.
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  Absolutely.
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  these different things.
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  So yeah, I would say there very much was a tug to go like go towards the consulting and perhaps away from some of the internship opportunities that I saw, and certainly a level
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  of intuition on it, but it definitely was not intuition in a box.
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  Like I wasn't sitting on my couch at home and just going, you know what?
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  I think I'm going to accept this invitation that never happened because I never got off my couch.
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  you know yeah you know there's a really great quote about luck that I love um by Seneca and he said that luck is when opportunity meets preparation
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  Mm.
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  Yes.
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  And I love that reminder because anytime I'm not feeling lucky, it's because I maybe haven't I haven't acknowledged all the opportunities that are around me, or I maybe need
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  to acknowledge that I'm not prepared for the opportunities I have.
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  Which does in fact take courage.
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  So much courage.
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  Yeah.
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  Your ego doesn't really want you to do that.
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  Your ego wants you to be safe, stay the same.
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  So yeah.
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  I love that quote.
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  Yeah, that's good.
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  In fact, I think everybody needs to hear it again.
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  Yeah, when luck is when opportunity meets preparation.
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  You know, I see it all the time in entrepreneurship.
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  I go to like networking events and seminars and things like that.
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  And you look left and right, there's like hundreds of people around you potentially.
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  And few of those people are gonna come out of that event or that that networking event or that seminar.
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  A few of those people are gonna come out and they're gonna be like, Oh, so lucky to be there that day.
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  I heard that thing, I met that person, I was so lucky.
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  And like the vast majority of people will be like,
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  Like, you know, I went to an event.
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  And they just weren't prepared for the fact that there's so many opportunities around them all the time.
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  Yeah.
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  Yes.
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  my gosh, so I'm curious, whenever you're going to an event, like you know that's what you're doing, you're going to an event today, and do you set that intention of or set an
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  intention at all, or is the intention I'm going to an event today?
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  You know, that's such a wonderful question and distinction.
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  I did set an intention this morning, and my intention was be myself.
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  I knew I was going to be having this conversation.
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  I knew I was gonna be meeting up with a colleague that I haven't seen in a long time, I knew I had this event happening today.
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  So I set this intention at the very beginning of the day.
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  Be myself.
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  And that helped me so much because I'm wearing blue jeans.
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  I'm going to a professional event wearing blue jeans.
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  I decided to go with the red lipstick today because I'm gonna be recording podcasts and things.
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  It's just fun, nice little pop.
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  And you know, I think when you go to an event, there's this temptation to say, like, okay, I'm gonna be a baby shark in the water and I'm just gonna hunt.
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  but what I what I do is more along the lines of uh a a
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  opening and a surrender.
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  So with the intention to be myself
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  The thing I've cultivated about myself is that I'm attractive.
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  I'm an attractive person.
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  So I have faith that I'm gonna talk to someone or I'm gonna have an interaction because I'm in that room.
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  I don't know what the opportunity exactly is going to be.
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  I don't know, I don't know who it's gonna be with.
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  I don't know the extent of the opportunity, but I have so much faith and conviction that there is going to be one.
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  And the thing that I want to remind myself.
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  Yeah.
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  I love it.
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  So good.
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  Yeah.
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  And it also takes courage.
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  You know, that one really does.
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  For a long time, I had a lot of negative self-talk.
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  And what I had to learn, like in your mind, you know, is just saying unkind things about my appearance and intelligence and just like all the crummy things that somebody might say
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  to themselves.
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  And what I had to learn over time is that that that wasn't really my voice.
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  That was echoes of things that I'd heard over my life.
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  And the courage to hold fast and get centered and let those let those voices happen, whether they're real or imagined, just let them happen.
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  That takes a lot of courage because it feels very scary to let go of what other people think of you.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Yeah, very scary.
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  But it's so necessary.
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  Cause otherwise, like if you don't let your if you don't let people know who you are, how are they supposed to fall in love?
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  How can they?
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  Right?
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  How can they?
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  Yeah.
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  my gosh.
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  I love this conversation about courage.
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  I I think it's a non-negotiable.
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  You are correct.
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  I I agree.
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  It it shows up everywhere.
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  It does.
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  my gosh.
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  Okay, so we've got the quote.
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  We have that courage as a non-negotiable must be a habit.
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  And so what's one more takeaway that you want the audience to really hear from you?
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  Courage is always on your terms, right?
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  So yeah.
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  This one, this one was uh thinking about other people's opinions.
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  I think a really sneaky one is worrying about whether you're being courageous according to somebody else.
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  Right.
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  And I was a pretty timid kid growing up.
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  my my nine-year-old and I were baking cookies last weekend, and I told him, I was like, hey, that sheet of cookies is super hot, don't touch it.
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  So of course, four seconds later, he bumps up against it, right?
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  So he was pretty upset.
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  And I was like, wow, you know, I I never did that as a kid.
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  I never bumped into anything hot.
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  I didn't break a bone, I avoided fights, like I was a very
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  very anxious child, I think.
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  So courage for me might have been
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  and I'm a creature of habit as well.
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  I love my habits and my routines.
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  So courage for me could be something as simple as changing from from decaf, like caffeinated to decaf, right?
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  Because it's disruptive to my routine.
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  What if what if what if things don't like work out that way?
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  And so when I very first started working on the habit of courage, for me, very small things from other people's perspective were huge for
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  Mine because I had been fairly neurotic.
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  I was like quite straight and narrow with stuff.
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  And uh over time, what happened is is like my capacity, my capacity for the discomfort of having routines disrupted or trying new things, it started getting bigger and bigger and
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  bigger and bigger.
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  So now when I take a courageous leap, let's just say that you know, there's an entrepreneur who's in their first month, and then there's a
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  Amanda, the entrepreneur for 10 years.
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  For me, a big courageous leap is probably going to look absolutely insane to somebody who's brand new.
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  And so, and that's okay, right?
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  Like there are there are people that I admire that I'm like, my gosh, they did that.
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  Like, I whoa, you know, it's such a big leap.
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  And that's that's what I mean is like courage really is for you to identify and define.
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  Because here's the thing: when you do push yourself to
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  Maybe switch to decaf or whatever that thing is.
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  you get to feel the pride of the win.
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  And that's yours.
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  So don't let other people judge what it is based on their their scale of what's awesome.
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  You get to decide what's awesome.
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  So good.
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  Love it.
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  Love that.
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  Yes.
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  my gosh, Amanda.
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  Thank you so much for joining us today.
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  I really enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to you coming back and sharing some more wonderful insight with us again soon.
• 20:19
  Sounds good, Kimberly.
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  Thanks for having me.
• 20:21
  Absolutely.
• 20:21
  Alright everyone, thank you for joining Candid Coach Conversations and we are wishing you a beautiful day and remember to live life fully and with great intention.