#233 What Parents Get Wrong About Their Kid’s Confidence Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 0:00
Confidence is the reward. It is not the prerequisite for doing all the hard things, whether it’s this career validation that we were talking about last week, and the whole, you know, three-step framework that we teach for career validation to get, put the pin in your, in your vision of where you want to be. You don’t have to be confident, you just have to be brave. You have to have courage. Young people don’t become courageous because they suddenly feel ready, they become courageous because they feel supported. You I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a parent say, once she gets more confidence, then she’ll start reaching out. Once he feels more confident, he’ll apply. Once they’re confident, they’ll take the next step, and you know what, every time it’s said to me, I think that’s not how confidence works. See, confidence almost never comes first. It takes courage. Welcome back to College and Career Clarity. If you are a regular listener, or welcome to our journey, where we support career confidence in a successful launch of the kids in our homes, or the kids that we’re serving, 15 to 25 year olds. And today we’re going to talk about how courage comes first. And you know what? Let me talk about myself first, about snakes. See, I love to kayak, I love to hike, I love the outdoors. I even live in Cincinnati, Ohio, where there are no venomous snakes, but I have this perceived risk that around every corner, when I’m in the outdoors, something’s going to happen, and I Google snake species when I’m out of town hiking, I am well aware of what’s around every corner that could be around every corner, but yet my great love for the outdoors and getting outside most often with my husband means I do it anyway, even though there’s this actually crazy perceived risk in my case, I still go out because there’s something that I want more, and this really goes back to what we talked about last week in our messy middle episode, where we talked about where things fall apart for young people in their career development journey. If you didn’t listen to that, you actually might want to go back and listen to that episode before you listen to this one, because that one set up what we need, see, when kids hit the messy middle of this launch process that we’re taking them through, as parents, as educators, as those who care about them, they things kind of fall apart in a very predictable spot, and it takes courage to get through, so if you didn’t listen to that, go back, figure out where things fall apart, and then come back here to learn how we can overcome that messy middle. See, when kids hit that messy middle, what I perceive is the snake that’s out to bite me, and whether it’s venomous or not, they’re perceiving rejection, awkwardness, disappointment, uncertainty, as the snakes lurking around that next corner, that’s what happens. And so, instead, what I want to talk about today is how to, what the building blocks of courage are. See, it’s pretty predictable, and I’ve seen in our young people that we work with what shifts things in them, so that they can go out and do the hard thing right, and there’s three ingredients, three building blocks that starts to change something on the inside that helps them go out and validate where they’re headed, and that first ingredient is not you, parent, it is support, but it’s not your support. See, you can say the thing and I can say the thing, that’s exactly the same thing, because you do know some things, but they don’t believe that you do, because they’re your kid. You could tell my three now adult kids, something that I said, too, and they’re usually going to be more apt when they’re teenagers, when they’re young adults, to believe somebody other than their parents. You’ve seen this work all the time, you know, likely you’ve hired coaches, you’ve, you’ve hired tutors, test prep people, you’ve done this all before, you know, the sports comparison really is probably the best. When my kids were in youth sports, when yours perhaps tried youth sports, we were all for paying those crazy registration fees, getting them maybe a private coach, investing in them so they can be better.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 4:59
Her, okay, so when I set out to be a podcaster, you know, I had podcast mentors, people who’d gone before me that were very successful, that were willing to share their secret sauce, and I hired a producer, so I had the support that when I did those first reach out to guests, and I said, “Hey, will you come on my show that doesn’t even exist yet? And I was nervous as all get out, because I thought, why should they say yes to me? I did it because I knew how, and I knew that there were these people that went before me, and they told me how to do it, and that made all the difference. So, ingredient number one, let’s get some support. Let’s get a support system, and what I just showed you was my support system. When it became podcasting, they also gave me tools. Those tools, for me, made it feel doable, right? It reduced my uncertainty, because there were tools, tricks of the trade, if you will, that people had used before me that they were successful, so why couldn’t I use those same tools and be successful as well? It basically was removing the what do I do now and gave me exactly what to do next. You know, when we are working with young people, what I see is that messy middle going back to what we talked about last week with the validation of careers is when they have to, you know, get out from behind their device, right? They have to go, and we talked about what that looks like in that last episode, but it takes courage, right? It’s one thing to lurk behind a device and do research and exploration, but if I have to reach out to somebody on LinkedIn via email to ask them if I can talk to them about their job, or maybe I could shadow them. It’s really helpful if I have an email template to do so. How do I ask, right? Or what types of questions am I going to use for my discussion when they give me time? So, templates, guides, frameworks, scripts, all of this helps the uncertainty drop, and when the uncertainty drops, what ends up happening is their feelings, their perceived feelings again, whether they’re real or not, of competence begins to rise. So uncertainty drops, competency rises. Okay, so ingredient one: get your support system. Ingredient two: get the tools, the templates, the tips, the tricks of the trade to help raise your level of competence, which is going to help give courage and make our kids brave. So, ingredient number three: surrounding yourself by the right people, not just the support system that knows how to do it, like the coaches. When we were talking about youth sports, you know, it’s funny about the youth sports thing, or even like high school sports. I think back, my daughter was a competitive gymnast from second grade all the way through her senior year, and we invested a lot of time and money, and what I see is, and I always find it curious, you know, I think it’s only about like 2% of high school athletes will go on to become college athletes, and then you know it just plummets the odds from there, right, but the amount of money and time that families invest in that support system when there’s a minuscule chance that your child will become a professional athlete, versus I see families all the time struggle with investing in support and tools for career development, but yet every young person is going to have a job. So, anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox, but I just always find it really interesting, and maybe that’s a good time for you to pause and think about, like, what are we investing as far as time and money into what we’re saying we’re going to support with our young person. What are we investing, right? So, anyway, it’s just something to think about. Okay, so once we have the support system, once we have the tools, then we’ve got to have community, and the community is different. It’s the people that are doing it with you. Okay, let me give you a for instance, I belong to a mastermind. It’s a pure lead mastermind.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 9:28
We don’t pay a single penny, other than our time and maybe our hotel room, when I go to Franklin, Tennessee, with my peers, so that we can invest in each other and we can coach each other. And there’s some areas that my friends are ahead of me in their journey, some of them are right with me in other aspects of our journey, and some of them are a little bit behind me on some stuff that I’m doing really, really well and have some experience in, so community defined as peers who are. At various stages, see, here’s what I see happen. It’s what happens in my mastermind room when I go four times a year to meet up with my mastermind. That’s how important it is to me to have community. Like, I literally take time away on the weekend, time away during the week, from work, from family. I’m on the road, I’m spending money on things, because it’s it’s giving me community to support my vision of where I want to be. I see this all the time with the families in our Launch Career Clarity course. We host a Launch Live Q&A, a minimum of once a month, to support our community, and the very first thing that we do when we gather on Zoom is we celebrate wins in the community, so you can see somebody that might be ahead of you that they did the hard thing that they found the courage to do it, and you see the outcome on the other side, and when you experience that, and then you have other people like we coach each other in the chat on Zoom, I’m leading, but we have our other Flourish coaching team members in there, and even the families, parents, and students alike are welcome, and by students I mean our students, so 15 to 25 year olds that we’re supporting, they get in the chat and they share best ideas, so you’re surrounded by other people that are doing the whole thing, the whole hard thing together, and then you become willing to act. So, let’s look at those three things: support, tools, and community, my friends, confidence is the reward. It is not the prerequisite for doing all the hard things, whether it’s this career validation that we were talking about last week, in the whole, you know, three step framework that we teach for career validation to get put the pin in your, in your vision of where you want to be, you don’t have to be confident, you just have to be brave. You have to have courage. Young people don’t become courageous because they suddenly feel ready, they become courageous because they feel supported. So, here’s what I want to challenge you with. What is an area, young person or parent of a young person, that you’ve been waiting for confidence to show up before you take that next important step? And what would make the difference in making them brave enough to take that next step? Identify a support, a tool, or a community, and if you’re wondering how we might be able to support that, that’s what we do in Launch Career Clarity. So, go to Flourish Coaching co.com forward slash course to learn all about it. Here’s the deal, this episode is going live about the midpoint of summer, and we’ve added extra launch live Q and A’s up through the summer, so that everybody who is in our group has the courage, the support, the tools, and the community to get them career clarity by Labor Day. You can do this any time of year, but I think summer gives you a unique opportunity of extra space to make really great things happen. So, okay, my friends, we would love to have you join us, but regardless, I’m cheering your whole family on. Have a happy midpoint to summer, midpoint to the year. Can’t wait to see what the second half of 2026 has in store. Take care.