FHTH Ep #176 - You Think You Need Confidence (But cha don’t)

One question I continue to get is: how do I get more confidence?

What if I told you that you don’t need it?

I’m serious y’all. Confidence is a nice thing to have. It’s definitely something you can have. But you don’t need it to do whatever it is you’re attempting to do.

What you DO need are the three things I’m talking about in today’s podcast.

Give it a listen.

❤️ Love, Sari

H2H Fun-damentals™ masterclass is launching soon! This is the only online trial skills training that will let you have more fun, feel less stress, and never worry about winning again - I swear.

Get on the waitlist here:
https://sariswears.com/fun

⬇️ ⬇️ And, register for the free LIVE training I'm doing! ⬇️ ⬇️

"You don’t need confidence TO do something, you get confidence AFTER doing something."
sari de la motte

EPISODE 176 TRANSCRIPTION

Sari de la Motte:

The doors are opening soon to our brand new masterclass, H2H Fundamentals. I am super excited to finally be sharing the fundamentals of the H2H Method since y'all have been asking for it. And guess what? Like the name says, it makes your job and the trial process fun. I swear. Get on the waitlist at sariswears.com/fun. Sari, as in my name, S-A-R-I swears.com/F-U-N. There's a special early bird bonus for waitlisters who end up enrolling in the class, so go do that now. The link will also be in the show notes if you are walking or driving.

Intro:

When you're up against a hostile room of people who don't want to be there, you need real strategies that get results. Welcome to From Hostage to Hero, the show that gives you practical advice you can use right now in the courtroom, boardroom, or classroom. Learn how to move your unwilling audience to one that is invested in what you're saying, eager to participate, and engaged in the process. Learn from the Attorney Whisperer herself, your host, Sari de la Motte.

Sari de la Motte:

Hello, my loves. Sari de la Motte with you for another episode of From Hostage to Hero. And today, we're talking about a very juicy topic. And the reason this came up is that we did a survey of what you'd like me to talk about. And the number one thing was how to read jurors' minds, which we've got that webinar coming up, so that will be at sariswears.com/live if you want to go register for that on how to read a juror's mind. Yes, I'm going to talk about that. It's not what you expect. You know my shtick. I'm going to talk to you about stuff.

But the second thing that y'all wanted me to talk about was confidence and how to have more of it and all of the things. And so today's podcast is all about you think you need confidence, but you don't. And I know that you think I'm wrong, but by the end, you're going to know I'm right.

Before we do that, I'm going to pop open my laptop here and read a reader shoutout. I almost said listener. This is from Trial Guides, and this is by Arthur C, "Five Stars, very short and to the point. What I really like about this book is its practicality and easy use." Thank you, Arthur. I'm glad that it was practical and easy to use. So if you have not already given us a review, please do so. And I want to get the podcast reviews up, my people. If you're listening to this, can you just give me a five-star or whatever star you think? Just tap it. You don't even have to write anything. I just want to up those reviews. So thank you in advance.

All right, so when it comes to confidence, y'all think you need it to do something. But you don't. So you keep thinking, "I wish I had confidence in court. I wish I had confidence to do X, Y, Z." It could be anything. "I wish I had confidence to go and talk to that beautiful woman. I wish I had confidence to actually take this to trial instead of settling," whatever it may be. You believe that confidence is a prerequisite to doing something when the opposite is true. Confidence is a byproduct after you do said thing.

Let me say that again. You don't need confidence to do something. You get confidence from doing something. And this is what most people don't understand. And this is also why so many of you are sitting around waiting for the confidence to show up and then not doing anything because it never shows up. And you're just so scared, and you're in fear, and all the things, so you don't go and do any of the great things that you are totally 100% capable of doing. So I really want you to understand what you do need and how that is going to lead to confidence in your life, or court, or whatever.

So again, to review. You think you need it to do something. You get it after you do something. Here's what you need before you do something. The first thing, courage. Courage is doing something, especially if it is scary. You hear a lot about fearlessness in our work, and that that's a great thing. And it is at times. All right, fearless means you have no fear. I think that it's possible to get there in certain areas of our lives where we're like, "Fuck it all. I'm just going forward. Fearless." But I don't think that that's accessible to most of us right off the bat. That may be something that, again, comes later. So it's not like we want you to be fearless and just jump in front of a bunch of cars.

Courage, Kevin, and I talk to our daughter about this all the time. Is that, she goes, "I'm scared. I'm scared." She learned how to ride a bike, for example, when we were in Finland this last summer, and she kept saying, "I'm scared. I'm scared." If you ever taught a kid how to ride a bike you recognize now, you didn't recognize it as a child, but you recognize it as a parent that it's all a mind game. It's all about confidence. It really isn't about mechanics or anything else because they're all hanging off of monkey bars, and she's balancing on the end of the sofa. It's not about whether she can balance or whether she can do this. It's all a mind game. And so she kept saying, "I'm scared. I'm scared." And we kept saying instead of, "There's nothing to be scared of." This is where most parents go. And this is where you go, "I don't need to be scared. Just stop being scared." That's the wrong thing.

We said to her. "Of course, you're scared. It's new. You don't know. You might fall. You might. Courage is what you need, baby girl. Courage is I'm scared, and I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to try it anyway and see what happens. Now we're going to be here if you fall. We'll pick you up. You've got a helmet. We've done everything that we can, but we can't guarantee that you won't fall. Do you have the courage to try anyway, even though you're scared?"

We kept telling her. We teach our daughter all the time about how brains work. I said, "Your brain is working so great. It is telling you exactly what it's supposed to be telling you. That this is scary, that you shouldn't do it. Because remember what we talked about, baby girl? Our brains are wired to keep us safe. So your brain is saying, 'This is going to hurt.' And what you need to say to your brain is, 'It might, but it might not, and I'm willing to try anyway.'" And once she got into that mind space, she just took off, and that was it. She learned how to ride a bike.

So you don't need confidence to take a case to trial. You do not need confidence to stand in front of a jury. You don't even need confidence to go talk to that beautiful woman or handsome man. What you need is courage. And you go, "Well, how do I get courage?" Courage is a decision. People are always asking me, "How do I get this? How do I get that?" Most of the time, my answer is just fucking decide to do it. Just decide. I'm going to go do this thing. There it is. Now you have courage. That's it.

And you can tell yourself, "What's the worst that can happen? So she rejects you. So you lose the case." I'll tell you right now, if it's losing the case, "I'm not doing it because I might lose the case," you are more likely to lose the case when you don't believe in yourself versus trying some shit. So courage is what you need, not confidence.

The second thing you need is patience. Once you have the courage to go and try the new things, whatever it may be, you have to have patience because you're not going to get it right right away. So we have this really cool hill that goes down to our cabin in Finland. We have this area that's all family. It's either a house or a cabin. It's all my aunt, my uncle, my cousin. It's all a family compound. And so, the road down to our cabin is this nice little hill. And when Elena finally learned how to ride our bike, I said, "Okay, going down that hill to the cabin is the most fun thing ever. It is so much fun." And so, she's like, "Okay, I think I'm ready to try it." So I'm like, "Awesome."

So I'm the push her parent. Like, "You can do it. You can do it." So she goes, and she falls spectacularly. And she was like, "Why'd you make me do it?" And "I'll never get on a bike again." And so we had to talk to her, yet again, about how just because you have courage to try something doesn't mean that you're super good at it right away.

Because here's the second place where I think y'all go wrong is that you're like, "Okay, I tried it, Sari. You come back to me. I tried that once, and it didn't work, so in your face." You don't actually say, "In your face." But it'd be funny if you did. I would love for you to say, "In your face," to me sometime. You have permission to say that because I would laugh because it's so mean. It's something I would say.

But you haven't tried it many times. You haven't done it many times. You are not willing to go out there and consistently be patient and continually trying the things. I see you do this with the different CLEs, or the different opening templates, or the different voir dire methods, or whatever it be. You're trying them. You're sampling them. This is why we have a whole program called Path to Mastery back in the crew because we're all about mastering something. Not just trying something on for size and then going, "Well, that didn't work very well," and moving on to the next thing. Because you guys are all on the search for the new thing all the fucking time. Instead of sitting down, having the courage to go to trial, even though you don't know what the fuck you're doing and you're scared and continually going back and having the patience to keep being bad at it.

Listen, trial lawyers are made, not born. I know there are some freaks out there. Probably, Nick Rowley was sucking away on his mama's tit and taking a deposition. Right? Probably. Sorry, Kevin. That was too much for Kevin. He's a golden child, and there's other ones like him. Yes. Randi McGinn, same. I'm not going to repeat that, but right? They're incredible and probably were the moment they emerged from their mother's womb. But for most trial attorneys, it's all about making yourself great. But you think, you buy into this whole idea that if I'm not born great, if it doesn't come easy the first time, if I don't feel super confident, then fuck it all. Listen, so many of you, most of you, the majority of you, are so talented beyond imagination, like beyond. I have seen the most incredible shit when you guys put down all the mind fucks that you're carry around. And you go in with courage, and you have patience.

Our new trial lab program where you can come in along with two other attorneys. It's three attorneys for the week. Spend a week with me and go in front of three mock juries. The reason that we're now offering that publicly and not just to my VIP clients is because it's transformative. Why? Because you'll do something in front of the first jury, and you'll be like, "Well, that didn't work." And then we'll just refine it over the week until by the end, you're like, "This is awesome." And I'm like, "Yes, you had the patience to keep going in there and trying and doing the different things."

So you need that courage. You need that patience. But you also know what you need, the third thing that you need? It's not confidence. It's trust. As you're going in, and you're doing the ballsy moves, and you're having that patience. You got to trust that whole time that it's going to work out. You're going to trust that this is all meant for your development and for the greater good. It may not show up in this trial. So what? Your job is bigger than one trial. Everything you're learning. "Well, I shouldn't be practicing on my clients." Where the fuck else are you going to practice?

Listen, if trial lawyers are made, not born, just by the matter of how things work, you're going to get better the farther you go along in your career if you are courageous, patient, and trusting. So yes, the clients who get you later in your career are going to get a better version of you. Does that mean the clients that got you early in your career shouldn't have gone with you? No. Stop thinking like that. Every trial is an opportunity for you to be courageous and to have patience as you work on your craft because that's what this is.

It's like saying, "Yo-Yo Ma should have never played in front of an audience until he was Yo-Yo Ma." Well, guess what? He would never become Yo-Yo Ma if he wasn't playing all the time. The Beatles, listen to their story. They were constantly playing. They probably were shit when they started. Oh, well, there's not as much at stake. Stop with that. Stop with all your self-righteousness about how you're the only people in the world that are carrying a big burden. You're not. You are important, and you are awesome, and I love you probably more than anybody else, but stop with that shit. It's self-righteous. And you know what it is? It's from your saboteur.

Your saboteur's trying to come in and go, "But what you do is so important, and you're changing-," and you are. But your sab uses it to say, "So you shouldn't risk. You should let somebody else do this that's better than you." Fuck that shit because that means, and then there's like, what? A handful of trial attorneys that someone has deemed worthy on taking cases. There are a lot of people doing shitty ass things out there, lots of corporations. We need each and every one of you. And the sooner that you stop with this, "I'm not confident enough to," and you just get in there and have that courage and that patience and that trust, we're going to start winning more cases, and we're going to be doing right by our clients. You are serving no one by giving your cases to someone else that you think is better than you. That serves no one.

You think it serves your client, but it doesn't. Not even that. I don't buy that. I don't think you should bring in some heavy hitter. People go, "I was thinking of bringing in Nick Rowley." I love those guys. They got their own cases to handle. Why? Because every time you give up a case to somebody else, some big name, you miss the opportunity to do these three things and create a kick-ass trial lawyer. Yeah, you got one case into their hands. But now, you've shut the door to the 40, 50, or 500 cases that you could totally win because you've been actively participating in your own development all because you think you need confidence. You don't. You don't. And your client is better off with you. Why? Because they chose you. Because in most situations, you are living in the same city that they're in, not the big gun you're hiring. They're going to have face-to-face contact with you. You're going to be able to tell their story better. You've been trained. Now I got to give this up to some big-ass lawyer.

Listen, you're never going to become a big-ass lawyer unless you start doing those cases of yourself. So all this to say, you do not need confidence. You need patience. You need courage, and you need to trust the process and trust yourself. Let me tell you right now because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Sari, but how do you know that I can actually be great? What if I am one of the trial attorneys that just don't have the natural ability that just is terrible?" Here's what I would say. "If you love what you do and if you spend your time investing," which is what our next couple of, not the next one, maybe it's the next one, podcast is about, "in yourself, in your professional development and you continually go out there with an open heart and an open mind, you will become the best. You are good right now. You just need to go out there and get those training wheels off."

So fuck confidence. That's something that comes after. See you've continued to see the greats after they've produced the results. Listen to Rick Friedman. He was throwing up before his trials when he first started. You're seeing the after effect now and you go, "Oh, look at them. They're so confident." Yeah, because they put in the courage, the patience, and the trust. You've got to do it too. You can't skip ahead of the line. You're seeing their after effect. Start doing these three things and other people are going to see the confidence in you. Confidence is a byproduct. It's not a prerequisite.

All right, I love all of you, my children. Go and learn and do these things. Talk soon.

If you liked this episode topic, check out these others: