Overcome Insecurity and Boost Self-Esteem
00:02:14 Chapter 2. Core Beliefs and Automatic Thoughts
00:05:15 Where Lack of Confidence Comes
00:13:31 See if you can notice any of these patterns in your own thinking
00:23:27 Takeaway
The Confidence Formula: May Cause: Lower Self-Doubt, Higher Self-Esteem, and Comfort In Your Own Skin (Be Confident and Fearless Book 8) By: Patrick King
Hear it Here - https://bit.ly/ConfidenceFormulaKing
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994VF5XH
Join us as we dive into Patrick King's book, "The Confidence Formula: A Cognitive Model for Building Unshakable Self-Confidence." In this episode, host Russell Newton, of Russell Newtown MG, explores the roots of insecurity and how to transform negative self-beliefs into a solid foundation of confidence. Learn practical strategies from Dr. David M. Clark's cognitive model to identify and challenge your insecurities, such as rumination, lack of confidence, social anxiety, and fear of public speaking. Understand the importance of self-monitoring and safety behaviors while exploring the role of automatic thoughts in shaping our expectations and core beliefs. Discover how to reframe your negative bias filter to embrace positive communication skills and strengthen your emotional immune system. If you struggle with self-doubt, fear of social interactions, or a lack of confidence, this episode is for you. Learn how The Confidence Formula can help you break free from the cycle of insecurity and live a more confident and fearless life.
Tags: #NewtonMG #Insecurity #Rumination #SelfEsteem #AdrianWells #CoreBeliefs #Expectations #PatrickKing #DavidMClark #MentalHealth #SocialPhobia #RussellNewton #SocialAnxiety #CognitiveModel #SelfMonitoring #SafetyBehaviors #AutomaticThoughts #LackOfConfidence #SocialInteractions #CommunicationSkills #NegativeBiasFilter #SelfFulfillingProphecy.
Transcript
I've never wondered why some people seem naturally confident while others struggle to get by.
Speaker:What if I told you that your core beliefs are at the heart of your lack of confidence?
Speaker:Hello, listeners.
Speaker:Today is August 13, 2025, and you're tuned in to Social Skills Coaching, where you become more likable, more charismatic, and more productive.
Speaker:Today's featured book from Patrick King is The Confidence Formula May Cause Lower Self-Doubt, Higher Self-Esteem, and Comfort in Your Own Skin.
Speaker:This is from Patrick King's Be Confident and Fearless book series.
Speaker:If you'd like to learn more about Patrick King, take a moment and visit bit.ly slash pkconsulting for more information.
Speaker:Today's topic is from Chapter 2 of The Confidence Formula.
Speaker:We're talking about core beliefs and self-confidence.
Speaker:If you find yourself doubting your abilities, feeling nervous about interacting with others, or simply wishing you could be more assertive, then this episode is just for you.
Speaker:First, we'll discuss the foundation of your self-doubt, and included in that is understanding how childhood beliefs shape your confidence still today.
Speaker:And then we'll identify unconscious assumptions, thoughts, and behaviors that affect our own self-confidence.
Speaker:In this exploration, we'll also uncover how your faulty thinking patterns, your self-monitoring, and your safety behaviors all interconnect to perpetuate your struggles with confidence.
Speaker:So, stay tuned for this episode that'll help you recognize those core beliefs and start your journey towards reclaiming your self-assurance.
Speaker:Chapter 2.
Speaker:Core Beliefs and Automatic Thoughts
Speaker:18 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:33,720 Gina has been trying to talk herself into enjoying this work party for about forty-five minutes now.
Speaker:It’s not working.
Speaker:She’s sitting in the corner booth of the pub where the party’s being held.
Speaker:She’s nursing a drink.
Speaker:She’s staring at the candle on the table because it’s a boring but safe thing to do.
Speaker:She’s mastered the art of appearing preoccupied so she doesn’t garner attention but also doesn’t appear to be wandering aimlessly.
Speaker:Gina doesn’t really want to take the risk of getting into a conversation with someone, anyway, because all they’d see is her funny-looking smile.
Speaker:She thinks her lips contort when she smiles.
Speaker:She believes her smile looks more like a wince.
Speaker:Nobody likes a wincer.
Speaker:Besides, Gina would fall flat in conversation with any of these people.
Speaker:They’re all frightfully smart.
Speaker:A couple of them went to Ivy League colleges.
Speaker:What would an Ivy League graduate have to say to someone like her, who only managed three years in a public state college?
Speaker:Gina thinks she’d only sound stupid.
Speaker:Brenda, who works in the cubicle adjacent to Gina’s, stops by her table.
Speaker:“Why are you hanging out here all by your lonesome self?” Brenda says.
Speaker:Gina smiles—or, rather, starts to smile—but stops because she hates her smile.
Speaker:“Oh, no reason .
Speaker:.
Speaker:.
Speaker:I just .
Speaker:.
Speaker:.
Speaker:I just started thinking about something, and kind of lost track of time.
Speaker:Sometimes I do that.”
Speaker:Brenda raises an eyebrow.
Speaker:Suddenly Rick from accounting taps Brenda on the shoulder and says, “Darts tournament.
Speaker:Starting now.
Speaker:I hear you’re better at aiming pointy things than anyone in marketing.” Brenda zips away.
Speaker:Gina’s a bit taken aback.
Speaker:What was that eyebrow raise all about?
Speaker:What in the world did that mean?
Speaker:Brenda must think she’s way too strange.
Speaker:Maybe it was her awful smile?
Speaker:She must think Gina’s selfish sitting all by herself.
Speaker:That’s what the eyebrow raise meant: “Who do you think you are?”
Speaker:Gina can’t handle it.
Speaker:She knew she didn’t belong at this stupid party.
Speaker:She makes her escape from the party without saying goodbye.
Speaker:Later, at home, she beats herself up for being a bit of a loser, and quietly tells herself that other people are not worth it, not worth the risk and the awkwardness.
Speaker:She can’t really decide who she hates more—those perfect people at the party or herself.
Speaker:What started off as a chance to get to know her workmates a little better has turned into what it always has: another weekend night on the sofa, binge-watching Game of Thrones, which shows people treating other people far less violently than Gina treats herself.
Speaker:Where Lack of Confidence Comes From
Speaker:Gina would be described as suffering from a kind of social anxiety, but at the core of these feelings is a deeper one: the sincere belief that she is fundamentally not worth very much.
Speaker:Because we feel unworthy on a deep level, we feel less than other people, so social interactions may feel like the most difficult of all.
Speaker:We avoid other people because, in some way, we feel worse about ourselves when in context with others who we see as better than us.
Speaker:A lack of confidence and its close cousin social anxiety are different from most phobias or actions because you can’t realistically escape the source of your fears.
Speaker:At some point, you’re going to have to get out into the world.
Speaker:Most of us have to do so on a daily basis.
Speaker:And yet, even with repeated exposure to social situations, some still can’t overcome their lack of confidence and let their anxiety continue.
Speaker:It seems entirely illogical that you wouldn’t be able to adjust to something you encounter so frequently.
Speaker:But it’s not a logical thing, and there is a very specific thought process that underlies it all that reinforces harmful beliefs.
Speaker:British psychologists David M. Clark and Adrian Wells devised a “cognitive model” of social anxiety (and the lack of confidence) that treats the affliction as a complex process characterized by fear and insecurity.
Speaker:Clark and Wells described the typical step-by-step mental patterns of someone who is in an active social situation, and when they’re ruminating before or after it happens.
Speaker:In this way, it’s frighteningly easy to see how social fears can manifest.
Speaker:And with just a few small tweaks, they can be infinitely worsened or brought back from the brink.
Speaker:They observed how disempowering thoughts began, how they are reinforced, and how they eventually begin to be part of the narrative people tell themselves.
Speaker:To understand this process is to understand how you ended up at this point.
Speaker:The following characteristics are, I’m sure you’ll agree, not too different from those of a person with low confidence.
Speaker:They all come from the same basic place: “I’m not enough.”
Speaker:Making assumptions.
Speaker:In the first step, before any actual interaction, a socially anxious person works, so to speak, from a set of expectations and beliefs about themselves and the world they’ve nurtured, likely since a very young age.
Speaker:These assumptions float to the surface in a social environment, making them extremely difficult to navigate.
Speaker:They are all present in the person before an interaction occurs.
Speaker:Clark and Wells divided these assumptions into three categories:
:High standards.
:Socially anxious people often impose unreasonable expectations on how they should behave in a communal setting: “I have to look smart,” “I have to be appealing,” “I have to sound like an exciting person,” “I can’t be weak.” These standards go way beyond having good manners—they constitute a harsh checklist of behaviors that cause a great deal of stress.
:Actually, these border on expectations of perfection and flawlessness.
:Of course, they are setting themselves up for failure with these expectations.
:Yup, that’s right—nobody actually ever reaches these ridiculous heights.
:Think of these “standards” more as medieval torture devices than legitimate, reachable goals.
:Conditional beliefs.
:Socially anxious people have deep concern over the outcome of their interactions with others and fear the potential fallout: “If I don’t speak for an extended amount of time, they’ll all think I’m boring,” “If I say how much I dislike a certain singer, they’ll think I have no taste,” “If I talk about things in my life, they won’t like me.” That’s giving a lot of power to other people in the interaction.
:And anyway, who really decided that this was the case in the first place?
:You did.
:Nobody else.
:You may attribute cause and effect to situations with no prior justification or evidence.
:And if you just quietly accept this condition without ever confirming it, you never give yourself the chance to realize that, probably, other people don’t agree at all.
:It’s like deciding on some arbitrary rules for how a game is played—and then deliberately making the rules work against you.
:Silly, huh?
:Unconditional negative beliefs.
:Low self-opinion—often imprinted from childhood—is major fuel for the socially anxious: “I’m weird,” “I’m dull,” “I’m uneducated,” “I’m naïve”—the list goes on.
:This kind of self-talk can be incredibly tough to overcome since it channels a belief system that’s developed and cultivated over years and years.
:Remember the ripple effect?
:But these assumptions are just that—assumptions.
:It’s you making a guess about how the world works.
:In this case, your guess is wrong.
:All these assumptions either stem from or are maintained by an underlying belief that you are not good enough, worse than others, or somehow fundamentally bad or wrong.
:With these three assumptions at the forefront of the socially anxious person’s mind, getting through a social situation can feel like a juggling act.
:They also need validation that they’ve executed their self-directives successfully—if they don’t get explicit approval from others, they’ll take even a neutral response as rejection.
:When you find someone that operates with these assumptions, you find that there is nowhere for them to go but down into a spiral of negativity.
:Intense self-monitoring.
:In the second step, which occurs during interactions, a socially unconfident person fears negative reactions from those they’re associating with.
:This internal duress transforms them from a person into what Clark and Wells call “a social object.” This means that instead of acting in a natural or unforced way, the socially anxious person watches their own behavior in the company of others, monitoring themselves as if they were being graded for how well they do.
:Remember the “spotlight”?
:And how the spotlight isn’t really other people’s observation of you, but really a reflection of your own constant self-consciousness and judgement?
:Unconfident people are trying to accomplish the impossible task of doing two things at once: interacting and analyzing.
:They are so busy thinking about doing that they can’t really do.
:They are so closely watching their actions, expressions, and words that they scarcely have time to just be, spontaneously.
:Predictably, splitting your attention doesn’t help get positive reactions from people, and usually just reinforces the fears and assumptions that drive them.
:It’s a vicious cycle.
:Imagine speaking to a person who seems always distracted, always stilted and unnatural, thinking of what to say next as you speak, or behaving as though interacting with you is incredibly difficult, uncomfortable, and stressful.
:Doesn’t feel good from the other side either, does it?
:If a person can see how anxious and uncomfortable you are, they may respond in a certain way, which—you guessed it—gets passed back through the same negative bias filter and interpreted through all your beliefs of yourself as basically terrible .
:.
:.
:repeat until someone ends up on the couch miserably watching Game of Thrones again.
:Clark and Wells declared three thought patterns that socially anxious and unconfident people use to monitor their conduct.
:See if you can notice any of these patterns in your own thinking:
:Thought pattern 1.
:“If I feel anxious, I must look anxious.” The socially anxious person feels like they must be an open book, and everyone around them can tell when they’re going through an episode of great distress.
:This is just another way that we can assume that our inner experience and the real world are more closely connected than they really are.
:Unconfident people believe they exhibit outward displays of tensions like shaking or stammering and the whole room can see them, similar to the spotlight effect.
:Furthermore, they may think that being found out as a nervous or unconfident person is somehow unforgiveable.
:But in truth, an outside observer might not even see or notice the person showing such strain.
:Even if they did, in reality, very few people will judge or be cruel to someone in obvious distress.
:Would you?
:Neither would others!
:Picture someone who is convinced that everyone else in the room is super relaxed and confident, and only they are nervous.
:This fact in itself ramps up the anxiety, as they constantly equate “they can tell I’m anxious” with “they can tell I don’t belong and now hate me.” This goes on and on, completely invisibly, until the person is so distressed, they rush out of the room in an awkward way, leaving everyone to wonder what happened.
:But, up until that moment, everyone in the room was oblivious to anything going on.
:Unconfident people will manage to convince themselves of their own downfall, and in doing this, cause it.
:Thought pattern 2.
:Distortion of an observer’s perspective.
:Clark and Wells found that many people suffering from social phobia “appear to experience spontaneously occurring images in which they seem themselves as if viewed from an observer’s perspective.” But the images returned to the individual aren’t ones that objective observers would necessarily have—they come back as gross caricatures of themselves that represent their internal fears.
:For example, somebody who perceives themselves as overweight might imagine everyone who looks at them sees an elephant.
:A person who considers themselves emotionally weak might see a vision of themselves as a frail, rickety convalescent.
:Thought pattern 3.
:Fear, distort, and repeat.
:Clark and Wells defined the third step as a “felt sense.” Essentially it means multiplying the fears and distortions of the first two thought patterns until they become a firm part of one’s self-belief.
:This generates and solidifies the negative self-perception of a socially anxious person.
:Safety behaviors.
:Armed with a boatload of mini-phobias and self-monitoring abilities, in the third step, the socially anxious person often develops a catalogue of behaviors that will protect them from breakdown in a social situation.
:These are “safety behaviors”—exterior behaviors that serve to defend a socially anxious person from what they perceive as potential threats.
:They’re psychological soothers that help them take their mind off their uneasiness or prevent them from taking hold.
:You might perceive them more clearly by their more widespread name—defense mechanisms.
:Again, picture someone who is insecure of their stature, who buys a huge truck to attempt to overcompensate and feel “big.” They follow these guidelines to the letter, and if they emerge unscathed from a certain social situation, they think it’s because they were careful and guarded—not because they were never in any danger to begin with, as is often the case.
:Many times, a person will deploy safety behaviors in a sort of “package,” since their anxieties often come from a diverse number of multiple sources and forms.
:The multiple actions form a kind of playbook, a series of checked behaviors to be dispatched at various points in the social setting.
:For example, take someone who is utterly terrified of looking stupid.
:They fear their alleged stupidity will manifest itself in various ways:
:“I’ll sound stupid when I talk.” To combat this fear, their safety behavior might be to aggressively search for interesting topics at home to bring up in conversation, or continually turn the topic back to them and their accomplishments.
:Charming.
:“They’ll make fun of me.” The person might try to look imposing or tough in a forced way.
:“They’ll know I don’t understand what they’re talking about.” To cover this up, they’ll pretend to nod along with everything that is said, and never admit that they don’t know something.
:Clark and Wells noted that some of these safety behaviors are, in fact, self-defeating—by over-executing them, a person could cause the very symptom or blunder they’re trying to avoid.
:Indeed, even though the behaviors are intended to protect, they are almost always dead giveaways for overcompensation and a lack of confidence.
:The intense amount of self-monitoring that accompanies safety behaviors can also start a self-aware loop of attention that could draw the person more inward and out of a normal social situation.
:And being hyper-aware of their anxieties and appearance can also make others notice that something’s off.
:In this sense, the social phobic makes a self-fulfilling prophecy: they’re so aware of their shortcomings and criticism that they cause them.
:Misreading social cues.
:In the fourth step, from an accumulation of all the previous steps, the socially anxious person tends to view their current situation and everyone around them in a negative light.
:That means they’re likely to misread the reactions of other people as rejections or criticisms—even if they’re neutral.
:For example, if someone they’re telling a story to laughs because they said something funny, they might instead interpret the laughter as mocking or rude.
:Many suffering from social anxiety have set-in-stone ideas about how people should act in social situations, and quickly notice when someone falls short of those usually unspoken standards.
:They judge even the most neutral or vague reactions as negative responses.
:The person telling the funny story, for example, might think their listener should be focused on them with full eye contact.
:If whoever they’re speaking to looks away for a second or exhibits a facial reaction, they consider it a message of disapproval.
:Sadly, they are viewing everything through a negative filter, so even the best of intentions can and will be interpreted to be malicious and a reason for low confidence.
:These are cognitive distortions, which we will cover in greater depth in the next chapter.
:Analyzing before and after social situations.
:In the final step, and the completion of the cycle, the social phobic/confidence-challenged tend to agonize and ruminate about social situations—even when they’re not actively in them at the moment.
:The lead-up to a social event can stir up great anxiety for a social phobic.
:They might spend a considerable amount of time worrying about what might transpire down to the last insignificant detail.
:They’ll remember previous encounters that were disappointing or negative to them.
:They’ll imagine they’ll fail spectacularly in the upcoming event.
:They’ll forecast being dismissed or spurned by others in the group.
:This is before they’ve even put their shoes on to leave.
:After the event is over, the social phobic will feel at least some relief from their anxiety since they’re out of the stressful situation.
:Indeed, it will feel something like escaping from a lion’s den.
:But it won’t be long until the post-mortem starts.
:The social phobic goes back over every interaction they had at the event, recalling their heightened anxiety and the small telling details that get set in their memory, and filtering every exchange and occurrence through their negative self-opinions.
:They’ll classify the event among all the other occasions in which they felt they failed.
:Essentially, they are looking for (or sometimes completely fabricating) evidence for the core belief that they already “know” is true, i.e.
:I’m not worth very much.
:People with higher self-confidence?
:They don’t engage in these distortions or interpretations or ruminations.
:They are more likely to simply engage with situations as they really are, without laying a negative narrative over it like a bad filter.
:What they are able to do is regulate their own emotions.
:They don’t have automatic negative interpretations, and if they do (for example, “He thinks I’m an idiot”), they immediately counter it with something more neutral and rational (“No, that can’t be true.
:I have no evidence for that!”).
:They have, in other words, a strong and well-functioning “emotional immune system.” They simply never allow harmful thoughts or interpretations to gain too strong a hold on them, and reject negative narratives almost like the body rejects pathogens or toxins to stay healthy.
:Luckily for us, we can strengthen and develop our own emotional immune systems.
:Core beliefs are at the root of your lack of confidence.
:They can manifest in many ways.
:Typically, they come from a set of automatic thoughts that have been occurring since childhood that you've never analyzed or corrected.
:Thus, you don't know anything different or less detrimental to yourself.
:This is characterized by faulty assumptions, self-monitoring, and safety behaviors, all of which compound on each other.
:That's the primary takeaway from today's episode, and we'll leave you with this quote from Brene Brown.
:Believe you are worthy, or you'll find reasons to believe that you are undeserving.
:From Brene Brown.
:The honor of Brene Brown.
:Hear you with the creator of Brene Brown.
:This is the founder of Brene Brown.
