Tom Cooke

What if confidence isn’t the thing you need first?

I was working with a small group over Zoom recently, and one thing that came up was confidence.

People wanted more confidence to take action. More confidence to do the scary thing. More confidence to put themselves out there.

I get it, because we’ve all thought that at some point.

But I don’t think confidence is where you start.

I think you start with courage.

Courage is accepting that you’ve got fear, doubt, worry and anxiety, but taking the step anyway.

If you’re feeling stuck right now and unsure what’s really holding you back, I’ve put together a quick quiz to help you figure it out. It’ll give you clarity on what’s getting in your way and what to focus on next. https://go.tomwjcooke.com/growth-quiz

When I first started running workshops, I was petrified. I had sleepless nights. I worried about it for weeks before the event.

But I knew what I wanted for my life.

I knew what I wanted to build.

So even though I was scared, I did it anyway.

That first workshop went really well. People got value from it. I walked away with an experience I could build from.

By the time I ran the second one, I was still nervous, but I had more confidence because I had proof.

That’s how it works.

Courage comes first.

You take the step, you get the experience, and that experience gives you confidence.

If you’re waiting to feel confident before you act, you could be waiting a very long time.

Never stay where you’re not valued.

I see this a lot with self-employed people. They’re desperate for the money, desperate to fit in, desperate to be liked, and desperate to get the sale. So they keep showing up in places where, no matter how hard they try, people still don’t value them.

That matters more than people think.

Because if you stay somewhere you’re not valued, over time you start sending that same message to yourself. You start lowering your own self-worth. You start chipping away at your own self-esteem. And that will hurt you far more than walking away ever will.

Not everyone’s going to get you. Not everyone’s going to appreciate what you do. Not everyone’s going to see your value.

That’s ok.

Go where you are valued. Go where people do see what you bring. Go where they like what you do and who you are.

If there’s a place in your business right now, a network, a group, a community, where you feel like people don’t appreciate you, don’t listen to you, and don’t really care, go somewhere else.

Go and find the people that do.

You might be achieving more than you think.

I see this with founders and self-employed people a lot. They feel like they’re miles behind, but when you actually look at what they’ve done, they’ve usually achieved far more than they give themselves credit for.

They’ve started the business. They’ve got clients. They’ve made sales. They’ve solved problems. They’ve kept going through difficult weeks. They’ve made decisions they used to be scared of.

But they don’t really see it.

They’re so focused on the next goal, the next target, the next level, that all the smaller wins get ignored.

That matters, because big success is made up of lots of smaller successes stacked over time.

If you can’t see those little wins along the way, there’s a good chance you won’t properly see the big win when it finally arrives either.

You’ll just move the goalpost again.

Sometimes you need to stop and actually acknowledge what you’ve already done.

One quick thing. If you still feel like you’re underachieving, moving too slowly, or not using your full potential, I’ve put together a free quiz that’ll help you see what might be going on.

You can take it here https://go.tomwjcooke.com/growth-quiz

If you feel like you’re underachieving in your business, you’ll know how frustrating it is.

You set targets, fall short, then the next time you set a goal there’s that quiet voice in the back of your mind saying, “You’re not going to do it.”

That’s when you start feeling behind.

You compare yourself to other people. You feel like time’s running out. You know you’re capable of more, but your results still don’t match what you know is in you.

There’s a process to getting what you want, just like there’s a process to getting what you don’t want.

You need to be present. You need to see what’s actually happening clearly. You need the right knowledge, the right intention, a clear vision, a proper plan, and you need to show up as the right person.

Then you take action.

Most people only focus on the knowledge and the doing, then wonder why things still don’t click.

If the inner pieces are out of line, the action feels heavy and the results stay slow.

One quick thing. If you know you’re capable of more but your results still aren’t matching your potential, take the free quiz here:

https://go.tomwjcooke.com/growth-quiz

If you’re not disciplined, somebody else will end up deciding how your life runs.

That sounds harsh, but I think there’s truth in it.

If your life is messy, unstructured, and all over the place, it doesn’t stay empty for long. Other people’s demands fill it. Other people’s priorities take over. Their agenda becomes your agenda, and before long you feel like you’re reacting to everything instead of leading anything.

That’s why discipline matters.

Not in an extreme, high-performance, 5am ice bath sort of way. Just in the simple sense of having a few things that keep you steady.

A lot of people go wrong because they try to become a whole new person overnight. They pile on every habit they can think of, then wonder why it doesn’t last.

You don’t need that.

You need a few things that work, and you need to do them consistently.

For me, exercise is one. Gratitude is another. They’re simple, but if I stop doing them, my performance drops. I get more stressed. More absent. Less present.

That’s where the struggle starts.

So the question is, what are your disciplines?

It’s one of the most frustrating feelings in business when you know what you’re capable of, you can see your potential clearly, and yet you still can’t seem to create that same level of success for yourself.

You see other founders online doing well, and part of you is genuinely pleased for them. But if you’re honest, there’s often a bit of envy there too, because you know you’ve got something in you as well. You know you could do it. You just can’t seem to get it to click in the way you want.

One thing that can really help is to think back to a time in your life when you were really winning.

A time when you were in flow, you had momentum, you were doing the right things with the right people, and things seemed to move much more naturally. Maybe you were leading a team, speaking at events, building something exciting, or working on something that genuinely meant something to you.

Those moments matter because they leave clues.

If you look properly at what was true about you in that period, you’ll often find part of the answer to how you move forward now.

A lot of people think they struggle with marketing because they haven’t learned enough about marketing.

I came off a coaching call this morning with one of my clients where we were doing a deep mindset session around marketing. We weren’t working on marketing tactics. We were clearing up all the confusion, fixed ideas, limiting beliefs, and meanings he’d attached to the subject itself.

That matters more than people realise.

Because if you’ve got a subject in your life that feels heavy, confusing, or hard to win at, there’s usually something going on underneath it. Misconceptions. Misperceptions. Misdefined terms. Emotional baggage. And if that stays there, you can keep trying to implement the skill, but it still won’t feel clean.

That’s what changed on the call.

Once all that noise was cleared up, he could see marketing for what it actually was, rather than through all the confusion he’d attached to it.

That’s a big part of how I help people.

Not by only working on the skill itself, but by helping them clear up what’s happening in their thinking around it.

A lot of procrastination isn’t really about lacking motivation.

It’s about what the task you're avoiding brings up in you.

You know there’s something you need to do. The call to the potential client. The proposal you still haven’t sent. The social media post you keep putting off. The message to the person who invited you to speak and you still haven’t replied.

On the surface, it looks like poor discipline.

Underneath, it’s often something else.

The task is triggering an old feeling. A past moment. A memory. A part of you that still does not feel safe doing that thing.

So if putting yourself out there online feels heavy, it may not be about content at all. It may be reminding you of a time you felt exposed, embarrassed, judged, or shut down.

That is why you go and do something else that feels easier. Something that looks productive. Something you can use to tell yourself you’ve still worked hard.

But the real thing still does not get done.

Until that fear gets cleared up, those tasks will keep feeling heavier than they should.

That’s why some people don’t need another productivity tip.

They need to deal with what the task is really stirring up.