Glossary
Doing the thing slightly beyond your comfort and getting through it. It’s the strongest source of self-belief.
Mastery experiences are Albert Bandura’s term for the strongest source of self-belief: doing the thing yourself, slightly beyond what felt comfortable, and getting through it. Watching others do it, or being told you can, helps less. In this course every drill is a small mastery experience on purpose: recording yourself on Day 1, asking one question in a meeting, making the call you have been avoiding.
Writers who have interviewed scientists and leaders about confidence arrive at the same blunt conclusion: it comes from action, not from thinking your way there. Psychologists found the same decades earlier. The strongest source of self-belief is “mastery experience”: doing the thing, slightly beyond comfort, and surviving. You are already doing that. Last week you recorded yourself and watched it back, which most people never do.