The Secret World of Credit Cards & The Science of Building Unshakable Confidence

Imagine being 12 years old, already having 30 bone fractures, and wondering, why can't I just play like other kids?

I'm Leanne, and I was diagnosed with brittle bones disease.

Now I'm running the Bank of America Chicago Marathon for Lurie Children's.

So every kid can just be a kid.

Join Bank of America in supporting Leanne's cause.

Give if you can at bfa.com/slash support Leanne.

What would you like the power to do?

Bank of America.

References to charitable organizations is not an endorsement by Bank of America Corporation.

Today, on something you should know, why do people blush?

And is there anything you can do to stop it?

Then the fascinating story of the credit card and the explanation of why they all seem to get mailed from South Dakota.

Citibank, Wells Fargo, Capital One, they all opened up their credit card centers in South Dakota so that they could charge an amount of interest that would allow them to profitably run these cards.

And Sioux Falls, South Dakota became the credit card capital of the US.

Also, how to adopt the characteristics that will make you appear more powerful and simple strategies to be more confident and the difference between confident people and the rest of us.

Confident people or courageous people feel fear, doubt, worry, anxiety, just like the rest of us.

The difference is that they stopped letting fear make decisions for them a long time ago.

All this today on something you should know.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart Choice.

Progressive loves to help people make smart choices.

That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you.

Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Not available in all states or situations.

Prices vary based on how you buy.

Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today.

Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Have you ever wondered why people blush?

Does it serve a purpose?

Well, that's the topic we're going to start with today.

Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know.

Blushing is what Darwin called the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.

So why do people blush?

Well, it appears it does serve a purpose by conveying to others genuine remorse, regret, or embarrassment.

It works in much the same way as crying does, like when you're remorseful about something.

It shows appeasement and allows other people to forgive you more easily.

Blushing also tends to be uncomfortable for the blusher, so it tends to be a deterrent to repeating the behavior in the future.

Blushing is involuntary and uncontrollable, according to a study in the journal Emotion.

And interestingly, people of all colors and ethnicities blush.

It's just that Caucasians are the easiest to spot.

And that is something you should know.

I would imagine somewhere within arm's reach of you there is a credit card with your name on it.

Probably more than one.

We use credit cards a lot, but where did they come from?

What was the first credit card?

How did the credit card business evolve into this seemingly complicated web of rewards programs, frequent flyer miles, cashback bonuses, and extremely high interest rates?

It's a fascinating tale and and one that affects just about all of us.

Chris Hutchins is an expert on credit cards.

He is the creator of a website.

It's called allthehacks.com.

And he has a really good podcast, also called All the Hacks, which I know you'll like it if you try it.

Hey, Chris, welcome to something you should know.

Thanks for having me.

So the idea of credit, particularly in business, the idea of credit goes back a long way, but the idea of carrying carrying around this little plastic card that basically says, I'm good for it,

that's a fairly new invention.

And when did it begin?

Let me take you back to 1850, where I think the kind of corporate formation of it started, but it wasn't for probably another century before cards existed.

But Amex was probably the first company that we think of for credit cards that was created back in 1850.

And funny enough, two of the three founders were Henry Wells and William Fargo.

So the guys who eventually started Wells Fargo were the ones that actually started Amex.

And they were both started as express mail companies.

Amex focused on the East Coast and then those founders left to start Wells Fargo a couple years later to focus on the West Coast.

But that was not about credit cards, right?

1891, Amex kind of moved more into financial services with traveler's checks.

And it wasn't until around 1950 where we saw our first thing that kind of resembled a credit card.

And that was from Diners Club.

And so they created this card that allowed people to charge meals at restaurants and pay for it later.

It was almost like you could have a tab at a restaurant, but it could be across multiple restaurants.

And they had about 20,000 people use it in the first year.

And about 10 years in, they had almost a million members.

So that was the first thing that kind of resembled what we would think of as a credit card today, but you had to pay it off each month.

It wasn't something where you could carry a balance.

And it was Bank of America in 1958 created the Bank AmeriCard, and that let consumers carry a balance and pay interest.

And while it's not legal today, they had what seems like the craziest customer acquisition tactic, which is they sent actual credit cards unsolicited that worked to 10 million people.

And they started with a test pilot of 60,000 people in Fresno and they just blanket sent credit cards that worked to tons of people.

And to no surprise, 20% of those people were completely delinquent on their bills within the first year.

And the U.S.

government passed this Truth in Lending Act in 1968 that prohibited unsolicited credit cards.

But believe it or not, that was how the first credit card got out in the ecosystem.

I remember Bank AmeriCard.

In fact, I think my very first student credit card was a Bank AmeriCard.

And then there was Master Charge.

It was Master Charge, not MasterCard at the beginning.

And American Express has been around for a long time, as you pointed out.

But that's about it.

I mean, now there's DiscoverCard, but really, it seems like there's only a few and the club membership is very small.

There aren't a lot of other credit cards.

Yes, there have been a handful of new entrants recently, but a lot of them kind of sit on top of the rails of these legacy providers.

And you could really separate it into two.

There's the issuers.

So this is your Chase, your Bank of America.

And then there's the payment processors, which would be Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover.

And they're separate in the most case, except Amex actually happens to be both the issuer and the processor.

And same is true with Discover.

And so there's really only these four big, at least in the U.S., processors that everyone has to work with.

But lots of banks can issue credit cards.

And so if you look, I just recently got a a credit card that has one brand, but if you look at it, it was issued by First Celtic Bank.

So there are tons and tons of issuers.

Almost any bank could issue a credit card.

Many credit unions issue credit cards, but they all run on the rails of Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and Amex, at least in the U.S.

But lots of organizations issue their own credit card.

I mean, schools, colleges, universities, cruise lines, as well as obviously airlines, all have their own credit card.

Could I have a something you should know credit card?

Yeah, you actually could.

So a lot of affinity organizations, you know, or membership groups could offer credit cards, colleges and offer them to alumni and students.

And at the end of the day, it comes back to the business model of credit cards.

And so in the early days, there were no rewards.

Even Amex launched in 1958 and they had no rewards, even though they had millions of customers by the 60s, 70s.

And it wasn't until 1981 when frequent flyer programs kicked off.

American launched first.

Delta and United caught up that next year.

They were very nascent.

They were more like coffee punch cards than they were, what they are today.

But in the mid-1980s, American launched the Advantage credit card and it was the first rewards card and it was tied to American Airlines.

And very quickly, everything changed.

In the mid-80s, Diners Club launched the first points program.

The Discover Card at Super Bowl 20 launched the Cashback cashback discover card at the time that company was a subsidiary of Sears and then in 1991 Amex launched membership rewards where you could transfer points places but it wasn't until that point in time where all of a sudden we thought of cards offering rewards so prior to that and continuing until today, there's a business model behind all of this.

So when those cards get charged, there's what's called the merchant discount fee, and it probably ranges somewhere between between 2% and 3%, could go a little lower in some cases.

And that's what's being paid for by the merchant.

So, if you're buying something online, you're buying something at a store, someone pays that, and that gets split out.

Some of it goes to the issuing bank, some of it goes to the network, the Visa MasterCard Amex, some of it goes to the processor.

So, if you're online, there's a technology company called Stripe that powers a lot of e-commerce.

If you ever paid for something at a farmer's market with Square, they're a processor.

And so, like about 25% of the fee goes to the processor and, you know, a small amount, maybe 0.1, 0.2% goes to the network.

And then the rest goes to the issuing bank.

So this merchant discount.

So in other words, if something costs $100,

maybe $2 of it gets split out to these other organizations.

Yeah, I would say $2 to $3.

And so in a world where consumers don't care about rewards, you could go and say, hey, let's create the something you should know credit card.

And there will be a bank or a credit union that would say, hey, how about we have this card?

It offers no rewards, but we'll give you 1% of it.

And so membership organizations use this as a way to say, hey, if you want to support the member group, you could go use our card or a university alumni card.

And, you know, they university or the membership org would get a percentage of that interchange.

However, what happened was these rewards programs got so lucrative that you couldn't really compete if you were also paying some percentage of that revenue to the organization.

So it's really hard to launch your own credit card and be competitive with the cards that Chase and Amex and all of these other major issuers are offering.

And so when an airline, because airlines seem to be like the big player in the rewards game, right?

Absolutely.

I would say they, there have been tons of wild stats.

I think in 2024, Delta said that 1% 1% of U.S.

GDP is transacted over their American Express cards in a year.

I think they said almost, but like the fact that you're thinking of the amount that goes through a Delta Airlines card being that high really says something.

But the most interesting stat here is if you actually look at airlines and you look at their balance sheets and you try to understand how they function as companies, you will find that they are much more like banks that sell their rewards currencies to these issuers of these credit cards than they are like airlines.

So, I'll take an example.

American Airlines as a company has a market cap, meaning the value of all of the stock of $6 billion.

But if you just look at the value of the loyalty program, it's about $25.5 billion.

So, the loyalty program is worth more than the entire airline, which would imply that the airline itself minus the loyalty program is actually not worth, it is worth a negative amount of money.

But of course, you couldn't have the loyalty program without the airline.

So it's almost as if these airlines are operating solely to be able to prop up a loyalty program that is their true driver of business.

But the business it's driving is travel, correct?

Yes, yes, exactly.

Like people love to travel.

People love to be rewarded in the form of aspirational vacations, trips, things that, you know, maybe cost money and fall out of their discretionary budget, but with miles and points and rewards, you can go on these trips and they feel free.

We're discussing the story of the modern day credit card and my guest is Chris Hutchins.

He is the creator of the website allthehacks.com and host of a podcast called All the Hacks.

This episode is brought to you by Tic Tac.

Your boss is going off at you for missing a deadline and you swear the clock just moved backwards.

Suddenly, you remember the pack of Tic-Tacs on your desk.

Now you're riding horseback on the beach, the smell of citrus in the air.

And what's this?

Your boss is sitting behind you, breathing heavenly fresh mint.

Refresh your mouth and mind and share your good vibes with Tic-Tac.

ABC Tuesdays, Dancing with the Stars is back with an all-new celebrity cast.

You have the crew!

Robert Irwin, Alex Earl, Andy Richter, Shen Affleck, Baron Davis, Lauren Howreggi, Whitney Levitt, Dylan Efron, Jordan Childs, Hilaria Baldwin, Scott Hoyd, Elaine Hendricks, Sanyal Fischel, and Corey Feldman.

This season, get ready to feel the rhythm.

If you got it, flung it.

Dancing with the Stars premieres live.

Tuesdays, 8-7 Central on ABC and Disney Plus.

Next day on Hulu.

So, Chris, before we get deep into the rewards programs, I want to go back and ask some more fundamental questions about credit cards.

Starting with, as I remember, I don't know if this is still the case, but as I recall, there was a time when a lot of restaurants and retailers didn't take American Express.

And I assume that was because American Express takes a bigger piece of the transaction than Visa or MasterCard.

So my question is, is that or was that the case?

And is it still true?

So that's certainly part of the case.

It does cost more to process an American Express card than many, many other cards.

However, I just pulled up the average cardholder for Visa, MasterCard, Discover, the industry average is someone spends about $8,000 per card a year.

And on Amex, the average cardholder spends about $20,000 per year.

And if you look at the average transaction size, it's much, much higher.

If you look at Amex, they have something about 8% of all the credit cards in circulation, but they are the second largest issuer by purchase volume, just behind Chase.

So you could make a case that, and if you were not Amex, you'd say, don't take Amex.

It costs more money.

If you were Amex, you'd say, definitely take our customers.

They'll spend more money at your store.

They'll spend more money at, you know, your restaurant.

So that would be the argument for accepting Amex.

And as someone who carries a lot of Amex cards, I would say it used to be much more the case that a restaurant might not take Amex or a retailer wouldn't.

But I can't think of the last time in the U.S.

that I've had a problem using an American Express card.

Overseas, I think that can be a little bit more of a challenge.

So I would say if you want one credit card only and you're going to travel a lot internationally, it would be hard for me to make a case that it would be an American Express, but it's certainly easier than I think it has been in the past.

And it hasn't really caused me any issues recently.

I would actually used to go to a restaurant in Malibu, California when I lived there years ago that only took American Express.

And I've never, ever seen that before.

But that's the only credit card you could use, which I'm sure caught a lot of people by surprise.

Because while I imagine everybody who has American Express probably has MasterCard and Visa, not everybody who has MasterCard and Visa has an American Express.

Yes, I remember a restaurant in Brooklyn that was the same.

And I think the way that negotiation would work is Amex would come in and say, we'll give you an even better rate.

if you exclusively take Amex.

And so, I mean, that just seems to be the obvious reason why a restaurant would do that.

Otherwise, it wouldn't make any sense.

So they say, you know, we have such great card holders, tons in Malibu and, you know, New York.

If you just exclusively take us, we'll give you an even better rate.

And so I have been to one restaurant.

I don't know if they still do that, but that has happened to me once as well.

Was it a law or is it a law that?

Because if you were going to buy something really expensive,

it seems like you could go into a store and say, look, how about I give you cash and you deduct what you would otherwise have to pay to a credit card company to process that payment.

I'll just give you the cash, lower the price.

So this is actually changing a lot.

And being in California, I didn't really notice the changes as much as other states have.

And so in many states now, you can just charge a fee.

You could say, if you want to pay a credit card, here's a fee to use that credit card.

I think in California, you can offer a cash discount, but you can't offer a fee or you can't require a fee for using a credit card.

Now, some stores might do that, even though it might not be, you know, within the rules and those rules might change.

But I would say a lot of gas stations near where we are say, here's the cash price, here's the credit card price.

And so I think that is happening.

But at the end of the day, I think retailers understand that

if you make it harder for a consumer to purchase, you might lose the transaction in its entirety.

And so I talked to my brother-in-law who owns a tire shop and he was like, I could charge a fee, but at the end of the day i don't want to turn people off because that two or three percent is not as important to my business as happy customers coming in and making their purchases and their transactions easy and smooth so every merchant can choose how they want to operate and if you had really really high you know priced items maybe you would say oh you know the fee is really meaningful so we would charge it i know a lot of uh car dealerships will let you put your down payment on a credit card but maybe only up to a thousand dollars and so if you were buying a fifty thousand dollar car you probably wouldn't be able to put that entire amount on your credit card because it would be quite expensive for them relative to the margins they have on that vehicle.

Yeah.

I do sometimes, because I have a Discover card and I sometimes use it,

that I do run into merchants saying, no, we don't take Discover.

And I think, well, if you take all the others, what difference does it make?

I think ultimately they need to set up a relationship with a payment processor that supports all of them.

And a lot of the online online payment processors just make it really easy.

They just out of the box support everything.

But I imagine there are some legacy ones that, you know, maybe are more in-store, in person that just don't have it.

So they would have to call and set up a new relationship and figure that out.

And so they just never did it.

But practically, I don't think it's very hard to be able to accept lots of different payment methods, but it might take some work if you set up all of your infrastructure for your company 20 years ago.

Yeah.

Why are the interest rates on credit cards just ridiculously high?

Either they're making just gobs of money or they're taking big losses because people aren't paying or it's a combination of both.

I think the combination of those things is definitely true, right?

There is a lot of delinquent credit card debt of people who can't pay their bills and ultimately get charged off.

And so that high interest rate is not just entirely profit for all of these companies.

That high interest rate actually wasn't something that was always there.

So that all started back in the 1970s because there was a cap on all of these interest rates for most states.

And in 1978, there was a Supreme Court ruling that allowed banks to charge the interest rate that was allowed in their state, even if customers lived in states with stricter caps.

So in early days, there were caps on all these interest rates.

And so South Dakota eliminated all of those caps.

And if now, if you've ever gotten a credit card in the mail, you'll probably notice that many of them come from credit, from South Dakota.

And so Citibank, Wells Fargo, Capital One, they all opened up their credit card centers in South Dakota so that they could charge an amount of interest that would allow them to profitably run these cards.

And Sioux Falls, South Dakota became the credit card capital of the U.S.

And so historically, those interest rates weren't as high.

But nowadays, for a lot of the reasons I mentioned, they are as high.

Well, back to the rewards programs.

I think one of the confusing things is like, you know, which one do I,

if you're accumulating miles on lots of different different airlines, it's hard to get enough on that airline to do anything.

Or like, how do you know what rewards program to do?

I think if you look at it from two perspectives, on the earnings side, the best cards for an individual person to use are the ones that reward them for the place they spend money.

So if one individual spends all of their spending at a restaurant, there are cards that will earn two, three, four, 5x points on restaurants or two, three, four, 5% cash back at restaurants.

Those are going to be better cards for that person than a card that rewards you for groceries if you're not someone who ever goes to the grocery store.

So that I think makes sense to most people.

On the whether you earn points, whether you earn flexible points or airline miles or cash back, that really depends on the person at hand.

And I would say

the ability to get outsized value over cash back.

generally comes from the ability to be very flexible with travel.

However, I have lots of friends who come to me and say, hey, I'm not really flexible with my travel or I don't travel that much.

For those people, I think cash back can be a much more compelling outcome because they're not forced to think, okay, well, I want to take this trip.

Is it possible to do with my points this time?

How does it work?

Can I find the right flights?

Can I find them for all four people in my family?

And that can make it a little bit more like a game, but a little bit more stressful for some people.

So if you're not someone who is flexible with travel and interested in kind of playing that game, cash back can often be a lot more lucrative in terms of the value you'll get and the ease of using that value.

But at the end of the day, I would tell everyone, whether you're playing points or cash back,

you want to look for something that rewards you the most for how you spend your money.

And there are plenty of credit cards that will give you a flat 2% cash back or 2X points.

So I consider that the floor.

And I say, if you're not earning 2% back or 2X points on all your purchases, you're probably not doing the base level of optimization because you could get the city double cash or the capital one venture card and get that kind of 2x, 2% on everything.

So anything above that, you know, you can work your way to getting a lot more.

But I think of that as the floor of what everyone should be getting.

Well, I love these, you know, peek under the hood conversations where we learn about things, especially something as ubiquitous as credit cards.

I mean, we use them every day, and

I just like hearing the story.

I've been talking to Chris Hutchins, and the name of his website, which I suggest you check out, is allthehacks.com.

And at that website, you can also access his podcast, All the Hacks, which I think you'll really enjoy.

Thank you so much, Chris.

Thank you so much for having me.

Wish you could become a morning person?

You know the type of before the sun, early morning runs, first one to the office with donuts and a smile?

How do they do it?

Easy.

With a new Galaxy Watch 8, sleep tracking and personalized insights from Samsung Health help you improve so you can wake up to a whole new you.

One who, dare I say it, skips the snooze?

It's possible.

Train your sleep with Galaxy Watch 8.

Learn more at Samsung.com.

Requires compatible Samsung Galaxy phone, Samsung Health app, and Samsung account.

When your investors, customers, and workers demand more from your business, make it happen with SAP.

The AI-powered capabilities of SAP can help you streamline costs, connect with new suppliers, and manage payroll, even when your business is being pulled in different directions.

To deliver a quality product at a fair price while paying your people what they're worth too, so your business can stay unfazed.

Learn more at sap.com/slash uncertainty.

Confidence and courage.

Two characteristics most of us admire in other people and probably wish we had more of ourselves.

When a confident person walks into a room and starts talking, you can feel it.

But where does it come from?

How can you and I gain more confidence and exhibit more courage?

Is confidence a choice?

Is it genetic or is it the result of something else?

Juan Bendana has been researching confidence working with over 250,000 individuals and has some interesting, encouraging, and surprising insight into confidence.

He's author of a book called Confident by Choice, Three Small Decisions That Build Everyday Courage.

I want welcome to something you should know.

Hey Mike, happy to be here.

So I think a lot of us wish we had more confidence, more courage to step up to the plate, speak up more, take charge.

So why don't we?

Yeah, I think what holds people back from

being courageous or even feeling confident is the prediction of a negative outcome.

They think the worst is going to happen.

You know, 80% of our thoughts every single day are negative and often they are about a future that hasn't even happened yet.

You know, if you think of what worry is, worry is the anticipation of a negative outcome in the future.

You know, it's us predicting the future.

So I find that the difference between those that are courageous and those that haven't necessarily practiced courage is that courageous people see the doubt, they see the fear, they see the, I don't know how this is going to go, but they go for it anyways and they use, you know, action as an override switch as opposed to letting fear make decisions for them.

You know, confident people or courageous people feel fear, doubt, worry, anxiety, just like the rest of us.

The difference is that they stopped letting fear make decisions for them a long time ago.

So what's the connection?

What's the difference?

What's the relationship between confidence and courage?

Because they seem very similar.

But

when you say that

people who are confident or courageous are basically feel the fear and do it anyway, it often doesn't look like that.

It often looks like they don't care.

They're not afraid.

That's why they're doing what they're doing because they're either convinced it's going to work out fine or they don't care how it's going to work out.

We've found in studying thousands of people from CEOs to executives to people coming into an organization to even students at a college, university, that confident people, and we can sort of dive into the difference between confidence and courage, but confident people

just have a better relationship with fear.

So they have a better relationship with being courageous because courageous people, courage is your willingness to put yourself into the moment of fear.

Confidence is really the belief that you have in your ability.

It is your self-esteem, the way that you see yourself, right?

So confidence is really the self-image that you have, the self-esteem, the esteem you have for yourself, while courage is your willingness to do something scary or do something hard or do something that is uncomfortable.

So we've found that confident people just have a better relationship with fear, which in turn, you know, it helps them be more courageous because they're willing and understand

that

It's a part of the process, you know, that it's sort of the price of admission to do the hard things, to do the uncomfortable things.

They have all of those same feelings.

They just understand

that fear and anxiety and worry and the judgment that comes with it all is just going to be a part of the process.

When you say confident people have a better relationship with fear, I don't really know what that means.

What is it to have a good relationship with fear?

I think like any great relationship, It needs to be cultivated and nurtured and invested into.

You know, you can't have a great relationship with a friend if you never see them.

You can't build a great relationship with your partner if you never schedule the date night.

So what I mean by relationship with fear is that they have more run-ins

with fear and self-doubt and all of those different emotions that come up with those experiences by putting themselves into environments where they know they will be tested.

Meaning the person that

often doesn't develop confidence is one that is not willing to put themselves into the environments that will test their confidence.

You know, it's easy to do the same thing over and over and over again, day in and day out, but that doesn't allow us to grow.

That doesn't allow us to expand.

So confident people, what I mean by they build a better relationship with fear is that they find more opportunities for fear.

They raise their hand in the the meeting.

They volunteer.

They public speak.

They put themselves into an environment where maybe they're not entirely comfortable with it yet,

but

they understand that that is where all the growth lies.

So let's look at the people who

don't have that.

They don't put themselves in those situations.

They don't have those interactions with fear.

For fear of what?

the laundry list is long but to name a few the fear of rejection the fear of judgment the fear of losing something and really that's the essence of it because why are people afraid I'll give you the example it's a popular example of public speaking I don't think people are necessarily afraid of speaking in public.

They're afraid of being judged.

They're afraid of it not going well.

So what are they going to lose?

They're going to lose respect.

They're going to lose love.

They're going to lose admiration.

They're going to lose an opportunity.

So there's a loss there that we feel and we equate those moments to a loss.

So whether it's fear of judgment or fear of rejection or fear of failure, all of those things, you are losing something.

If you fail at something, maybe you're losing admiration.

Maybe you're losing that opportunity because maybe by putting yourself into that environment, if you were to win, it was going to give you all the opportunity in the world.

But since you lost, since you failed, that the road is done.

It's ended.

So I think people are really afraid of loss

of something, whether it is admiration or respect or relationship.

And often that is manufactured in our minds.

Like we think that if we fail at something, it is the end of the world.

Or if we get rejected, we will never be successful at that thing again.

Or if our business doesn't get funded, then we will be a failure for eternity.

When the reality is, those moments are just that.

Moments in time.

And if we can see them as moments and say, I understand that failure is not a determination of who I am.

It's actually a stepping stone for where I would like to go.

And if we could see failure as research, it's like I'm just researching all the ways that don't work as opposed to I failed.

Wow.

I guess I'm a failure.

That's the thing.

And what I was getting at is for fear of what?

Because yes, you might lose admiration or you might lose respect.

And so what?

But what you just said is what I think is so true is, and then the world ends, that my world is over, that it's, it's very catastrophic.

It isn't just the fear of respect, losing respect.

It's losing respect and now that's the end of everything.

Yes,

absolutely.

And it isn't.

It never is.

It just almost never.

I mean, I can't imagine if you failed at public speaking, your life is over.

Yeah, no one, here's a reality that I have to remind myself of constantly.

There's this phenomenon, the spotlight effect, which all all of us experience.

It is essentially a phenomenon in psychology where we think people are thinking of us all of the time.

So we think there is a spotlight on us and we feel as though we are the main character in everyone's movie when the reality is we are an extra with barely a talking part in most people's narratives.

So people aren't thinking of you, they are thinking of themselves.

So if we could just see our lives and the experiences we have as a part of, sure, a bigger story, but understand that not everyone has their eyes on us all the time, 24-7, 365, because that makes people feel like their lives are an audition.

You know, it makes people feel like they need to have it all together.

And then the strategy becomes, I'll just fake it till I make it because everyone's watching when the reality is they're not.

So if you're one of those people who doesn't feel generally confident, I mean, we all are confident in some situations and we're all less confident in other situations, but we know those people that look very confident and we admire them and go, ooh, I wish I could do that.

How do you get there?

If you're afraid to put yourself in those situations that will give you that confidence, how do you ever get it if you won't do that?

Yes, great question.

The simplest way at the very beginning of something is to borrow confidence from another area of your life here's what i mean we all have different you know confidence scores in every area of our lives for some people they are a nine out of ten confidence when it comes to their relationship but when it comes to their finances maybe they're a two out of ten so We have to first look at what are the areas of our lives where, and I guarantee there is at least one area of your life where you feel,

you feel pretty good about your ability in that context.

You feel pretty solid.

And you look at that area, and this is something in personality psychology, where the psychology of personalities, we have sort of different versions of ourselves that we bring to different contexts.

You know, you're kind of a different version of yourself with your friends than you are with your spouse than you are with your parents than you are with your siblings than you are in work it's just slightly different so it's i i think one of the most beneficial ways that people can kind of start the process is to look at the areas of your life you feel most confident in and identify and sort of nerd out about

How do you see yourself in those contexts?

What do you say to yourself?

What's the language you're using in your mind?

What do you focus on in that?

And I've had the opportunity to work with a few professional athletes, Olympians, and understanding their psychology.

And it's fascinating when you see an athlete that is a 10 out of 10 confident in their sport, but a two out of 10 confident in their relationship.

And if they could just see themselves in the relationship as they see themselves in their sport, that's where you can kind of borrow confidence.

Like, how do you talk to yourself?

How do you see yourself?

What do you say?

What do you focus on?

Like, what kind of body language do you bring to that context and then just copy what you do over there and bring it over here?

I wonder how many people consider themselves confident.

My guess is not a whole lot.

No.

According to the research, 80% of people identify with low self-confidence, not even moderate, like low

in the U.S.

So it's a challenge because we are living in a time right now, which gives us more reasons to doubt ourselves than to feel confident in ourselves.

And we are constantly sort of playing to give, you know, a sports analogy, we are playing a game where the scoreboard is either a point for self-doubt or a point for self-confidence.

And the challenge is self-doubt for a lot of people is winning.

You know, we post something on social and it gets five likes.

So point for self-doubt.

Why isn't my content doing well?

We ask for the promotion and it gets denied.

Point for self-doubt.

We finally put ourselves out there and start dating and go through a breakup.

Point for self-doubt.

You know, we say that we're going to get in great shape and we eat salad all week and we step on the scale and we gained weight.

Point for self-doubt.

So the challenge is the scales are tipped, you know, pun intended, the scales are tipped in a way where most people that I run into personally score more points in a week for self-doubt than they do for self-confidence.

So if you look at every experience you run into as sort of these like, I'm getting points on the board, the majority of us, and I've even found it for myself, I score at times far more points for self-doubt than for self-confidence.

I need to be the one, we need to be the ones to say, I'm going to turn this game around.

I know we're we're losing by 30 points, but I'm going to start putting some points on the board for self-confidence.

I'm going to start giving energy to the best of who I am.

I'm going to invest in the people in my life that I care about.

I'm going to invest in my own growth.

But it's hard to do that when the world that we live in is

so rooted in comparison.

There is always someone doing better than you.

So you always feel like your win has an asterisk and it is sort of like, okay, that was good, but they're doing so much better.

So then we discount our wins.

We discount the things that were supposed to make us feel confident in the first place.

And it's hard for us to genuinely feel that sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with confidence because we're living in a time where it feels like it's never enough.

So one of the things that seems true is people don't put themselves in those situations or don't even act too confident for fear of what other people will think.

And you've already talked about the spotlight effect, and we think people are thinking things that they're probably not thinking.

But we're still thinking that.

We're still thinking, I don't want to be

to

worry about what Joe's going to think of me if I stand up in this meeting and say something that comes out wrong or whatever.

So,

besides the spotlight effect example that you gave of, you know, that you really don't have anything to worry about,

what other fuel can people use to, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway

because it's the fear that's holding them back?

I think acceptance of something that often we don't want to admit, which is there's going to be people in almost every room that don't like you,

that think you sound strange, that think you're too much, that think you're not enough, that think you're too reserved, that you're too extroverted, you're too introverted.

And here's a really good rule of thumb that is not rooted in specific research, but I've found it is very true most of the time.

In any given room that you walk into, and this is from a friend of mine, Josh, 10% of the room, will like you no matter what.

These are people that, you know, see the best in you.

These are the people that are just happy to be there.

They're in a great mood.

They're that person you see like checking into a hotel that's just smile on their face.

They automatically will like you and they're just like going to be a fan 10%.

10% of people will not like you no matter what.

They've had a bad day.

They got cut off in traffic.

They just don't like something about you.

Something about you reminds them of their ex that broke their heart in high school for some reason.

There's going to be people that just don't like you no matter what.

And then the other 80% is up to you.

And what I find is that there's so many people that focus on the 10%

that won't like them no matter what, as opposed to the 90%

that can actually be on the positive side of things.

So when we accept the fact that not everyone is going to like us, that not everyone is going to be a fan of us, It actually gives us a level of peace because we don't feel like we need to,

you know, feel this imposter syndrome because we feel like we don't need to please everyone.

Like, accept the fact, acknowledge the fact that there is going to be people in almost every situation you get into

that aren't a fan and that is okay.

That is a reflection of them and where they're at, not a reflection of you and where you are.

I wonder if anybody's done any research about where you take people who are not doing something for out of fear, you know, they don't have the confidence to do it, and then they do it.

Like what percentage of those people end up being glad they did it, not glad they did it, amazed that they did it.

Like,

have you know of any research like that?

I don't know any research studies that have done that sort of thing, but anecdotally, it's never regret.

It's always, it's always like, wow, I'm happy I did that.

Maybe it didn't even work out, but I'm happy I did.

The regret is always a lack of action, not the action itself.

Regret is always, I regret not doing it.

It's never I did the thing, I did the courageous thing.

Wow, that was, I regret doing that.

It rarely is.

I almost exclusively hear stories of people saying I was terrified of going for the thing and I went for it and maybe it didn't work out, but I'm happy I did because of the person I became in the process.

Well, it's a topic I think people think about a lot and they question their own confidence.

They admire confidence in others.

And I appreciate you sharing your insight.

Juan Bedania has been my guest.

The name of his book is Confident by Choice, The Three Small Decisions That Build Everyday Courage.

And there's a a link to his book in the show notes.

Juan, thanks.

I enjoyed talking about this.

Awesome, Mike.

Well, thanks so much for having me.

It's

been great chatting.

You know, powerful people have a tendency to incorporate a few important behaviors that make them appear more powerful, whether they do it knowingly or not.

And you can do them too.

Here are a couple.

Always say less than necessary.

It gives people the impression that you don't need to gab about things because you know about them so well.

Chatty people appear insecure.

Act like a king to be treated like a king.

If someone asks you how much you want to be paid, aim high.

If you show that you think you're valuable, others will think so too.

Don't argue.

Powerful people know that you almost never change someone else's opinion with your words, so don't try.

Just stay above it all.

And never outshine your master.

Make your boss or the person above you think they are bright, witty, and charming.

If they feel threatened by you, they will work to sabotage your power.

And that is something you should know.

Would you do us a favor, me personally, leave a review of this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Cast Box.

They all allow you to leave a rating and review, and we read them and we appreciate them and it helps.

I'm Mike Carruthers.

Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

The Sausage McMuffin with Egg Extra Value Meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5.

Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Prices and participation may vary.

Take the next 30 seconds to invest in yourself with Vanguard.

Breathe in.

Center your mind.

Recognize the power you have to direct your financial future.

Feel the freedom that comes with reaching your goals and building a life you love.

Vanguard brings you this meditation because we invest where it matters most, in you.

Visit vanguard.com/slash investinginyou to learn more.

All investing is subject to risk.