Sometimes real confidence is being secure enough to admit that you might be wrong.

In this solo episode of The Lonely Chapter, Sam Maclean reflects on three ideas that have repeatedly surfaced in the conversations since Episode 100:

• Why confidence and certainty are not the same.
• Why complex human problems rarely have quick fixes.
• Why giving someone permission to talk doesn’t automatically make them feel safe enough to be honest.

Drawing on conversations with former FBI agent Eric Robinson, London Fire Commissioner Jonathan Smith, Dr Rob Stevens, Chris from Conversations for the End, Brandon Day, Dr Susie Bennett, Jason Kubiak and RAF veteran Liz McConaghy, Sam explores what genuine confidence looks like when we make mistakes, need help or encounter something we don’t fully understand.

The episode also examines our attraction to quick fixes for low testosterone, grief, chronic pain, burnout and mental health, and why advice isn’t always what a struggling person needs.

This is a reflection on confidence, accountability, leadership, self-awareness, men’s mental health, psychological safety, emotional vulnerability, active listening and learning to replace certainty with curiosity.

If this episode stays with you, share it with someone who might need the conversation.

We live in a culture that rewards strong opinions and quick answers. But the reality is that life is not that simple. It's way more complicated than that.

And since passing the 100 episode milestone on this podcast, some of the conversations I've had have sort of been similar in terms of some of the ideas that have come up and recurred. So today I'm going to reflect on three of those ideas. And the ideas in question are, confidence is not the same as certainty.

Complex problems rarely have quick fixes, and permission to talk is not safety to talk.

So if those three questions or those three statements, I suppose reflect with you and you'd be interested in exploring those with me and maybe agreeing with me on certain points and maybe disagreeing with me on certain points, but if you want to wander through my thoughts on those things, then stay right here and let's get into the episode. Idea number one is that confidence is not the same as certainty. And this came up in my conversation in episode 101 with Eric Robinson.

Now, Eric spent many, many years in the FBI and I think it was 15 of those years he spent in the SWAT operations team.

And one of the things that he pointed out about that team and what essentially is a very high performing team, a high threat team, and going into some really dangerous environments was the reflections that they had after as a team, as a way of learning now before the operations.

Obviously training is a key part of a role like that and ensuring that you and the rest of your team are up to standards and, and good enough to do the work is a key part of it.

Now what that does is that instills confidence so that repeat training, that repeat exposure to, it's obviously never going to be exactly the same as a real life scenario.

But as close as you can get, or throwing in some curveballs to really get people thinking that stuff, really builds confidence in those people, in their ability to adapt to a situation, which essentially is what you're going to need to succeed in a role like that. When they had these reviews, they'd look through the good, the bad. So what worked? What did we do well, what could we have done better?

What do we, Were there any mistakes we made? And the ability to do that only starts when you've got the confidence in yourself and everyone around you.

So if you've got confidence in yourself, being more curious of yourself and of where you maybe could have done better is less threatening to you.

If we're not confident in our own ability and we start talking about what we could have done Better, it quickly becomes like a cover up because you know deep down that you're not good enough. And you know that that showed in whatever operation occurred.

And he mentioned in that episode that it's the experienced operators, it's the ones that have been doing it the longest who were the ones who admitted the mistakes first, which is a really interesting thing to think about.

And when reflecting on his own opinion of himself, he knew that experienced operators like himself had competence and he had previous competition experience and evidence of that competence. So those repeated successes that he'd had previously came back in use. Because now he's looking at a mistake that maybe he made.

And he knows that that mistake doesn't mean everything for him because he's got all this evidence of all the great things that he's done. So it doesn't threaten his whole identity as a successful operator. What confidence allowed him to do and other people to do is to be accountable.

It's to, when you make a mistake, accept that and look the people around you in your, in their eyes, people who maybe you've let down in that moment. And hopefully it's not a massive mistake. Obviously there's catastrophic mistakes. There's different levels of mistakes as well.

But the ability to stand there and say, I messed up, like it doesn't mean that you're a failure, it doesn't mean that you're now judged on that forever, but it means that you've accepted that and it shows that you're willing to learn from it. The difference between confidence and certainty is that confidence is built over time. It's that repetition.

It's the evidence that we spoke about earlier. Whereas certainty is something that you can be certain, but you can still be wrong or you can not be like doing the right thing.

So they're completely different things.

Like your confidence in your own ability only comes deep down once you are certain of yourself and once you've looked at the evidence and the trace you've left behind and gone, do you know what? I can do this.

And this came up as well, in an essence, I suppose, in episode 108 when I spoke to Jonathan Smith, who is the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, and he spoke about leadership a lot in that and confidence in that term. So he leads one of the largest fire services in Europe and in the world, really.

And confidence gives you the ability to make those big decisions at the top of that organization, but you also require the humility to ask for help in that situation. So the man that sits at the top of an Organization as big as the London Fire Brigade still has to be humble enough to ask for help.

And he has to be able to say, I don't understand this. Can you explain this? Maybe his perspective is different from someone else with a different lived experience.

Someone else may be more versed in this thing. Maybe they've studied it more. So you can never sit there and go, I know everything. I'm the best person to make this decision.

Because it's impossible that that's the case in every given scenario. Ultimately, that decision is going to have to sit with him and it's going to be looked at as a decision that he's made.

But there's no issue with taking advice. And again, that confidence in yourself.

So being confident in your ability, not guessing, not double guessing yourself, not thinking, am I good enough to do this role? But being confident enough to say, you know what? I don't know this bit 100%. Who can I ask? Who's going to help me come to the best possible decision?

And I've spoken about it before in my own reflections in terms of lessons in the fire brigades. And one of the things that I said in that episode was that as a firefighter and working in the fire service, people need calm and clear decisions.

They don't need you to be perfect all the time. Obviously, we want to make the right decisions, but this is a role that moves quick and you do need to adapt at very short notice.

So that confidence comes from repeat exposure, that training, that experience, and being part of a team, working together and asking for help when you need it. Like being open enough to say, I saw you do this thing the other day, which was really cool. I don't quite know how to do that.

Can you show me or can you guide me on how you learn that? When I reflect on my own life as a podcaster now, I've done over a hundred episodes, but I don't know everything. And if anything, I know less.

I'm asking more questions and I'm constantly being thrown up with more questions of life in my face. Everything I learn opens up a new pathway. So it's. I've got to be able to step back and go, I don't know it all.

In fact, a lot of the time I'm the idiot in the room asking the questions because I don't know the answers.

And I'm speaking to experts or people who've lived through this thing to try and work out how to navigate that or how to understand that, whatever it may be, but to bring it into land for this idea. It's knowing that confidence is. It does not mean that you're always right.

And it's okay to know that sometimes you won't know everything and you may need to ask for help. And that confidence in yourself can only come really from practice.

It can only come from repeat exposure, whether that's training, whether that's experience, whether that's learning through other people as well. But it's important to reflect on that internally.

When we are questioning ourselves, when we're having those internal dialogues with ourselves, is it because we feel threatened? Because deep down we know we aren't confident? Because maybe we're covering up something?

And that certainty that we're showing externally may be very opposite from what we're living internally. Idea number two is that complex problems rarely have quick fixes. Now this has come up in a lot of episodes.

A lot of the conversations I have, people have gone through a complex problem. It's the nature of life. We come up against them a lot.

And I try and go through these with the guest and pull out the lessons that they have from the other side. And one of the biggest lessons that repeatedly comes out shock is it's not easy and there is no quick fix.

So maybe in a more niche area, when I spoke to Rob Stevens, Dr. Rob Stevens, I should say, about TRT and low testosterone.

So these things that really, if you start to dive into it, have a lot of things that can affect it. So the tiredness, the fatigue, the brain fog that you feel might not be simply fixed by trt. It might be way deeper than that.

You've got things that affect it like sleep, stress, nutrition and exercise.

And there's this big surge at the minute, specifically in this area of companies online pushing big marketing, big names, and really talking about TRT as this super saver thing that is gonna change your life and fix all your problems instantly. And as I said, the idea is that these complex problems don't have quick fixes.

And one symptom in someone's life cannot explain the entire story of that person there. There needs to be a deeper exploration of that.

Now, I also spoke to Chris from Conversations for the End, which on a side note, brilliant podcast guys really, really smart and really breaks down Cole Young's philosophy into easier to digest content for people who may be more simple minded like myself. And during my conversation with Chris, he spoke about his own understanding and his own story of grief and the way that he tried to outrun grief.

He used the common things. So he used distraction in Drugs and alcohol and he used those things to keep him busy and distracted.

And avoidance, that's, that's ultimately what it is, is you're avoiding processing that really difficult thing.

What really helped Chris eventually was once he noticed that this path of destruction and avoidance was not healthy for him, he had to start processing stuff.

And whether that was reaching in and putting stuff out intentionally to process or just acknowledging things as they've cropped up, because certain things in life bring up these thoughts that we thought we dealt with and maybe we didn't fully deal with. And rather than when those thoughts pop up, just running away from them, he would start to process them bit by bit.

I spoke to Brandon Day on this podcast about his experience when he was younger.

He, whilst he was in high school, he had great success sporting wise and from the outside looking in, he'd achieved what most kids who do sports would love to have achieved. And inside he was struggling.

He was in chronic pain under intense pressure, partly from external sources and also from that internal pressure we put on ourselves as well. And his way of fixing it previously was just to keep pushing forward and keep going and keep grinding himself.

And he eventually wore himself out and realized that that complete over discipline and keep going all the time wasn't the answer. And it led him down a path of recovery and understanding neuroscience and loads more that we got into in that episode.

But again, it's that idea that that complex problem does not have a quick fix. This is one thing that I've noticed throughout the entirety of this podcast is that the complex problems in life can't be fixed immediately.

And I suppose this podcast wouldn't really be a thing if they could be.

Because so many of the conversations that I have on here are with people who have lived through something major, maybe not so major, but they've helped other people. And the stories wouldn't be stories without the time in between.

If someone had a problem and then it was fixed overnight, it wouldn't be a story to tell, it wouldn't be reflections to be made, it wouldn't be lessons to be learned and shared with people. So ultimately it's that reminder of these complex problems are not straightforward to fix. And I think accepting that early on will help you.

I think if you are struggling right now with a complex problem or you know someone that is just, just the understanding and acceptance that it's not going to be an easy road, it's not going to be quick, gives you a bit of freedom in, in the start and it helps you start to set Realistic aspirations and goals going forward of where you want to be and where you think you're going to be.

Because if you think you're going to get fixed overnight by something else that is an external factor, then it's wishful thinking a lot of the time, and it's not going to be that straightforward. So a good reminder for us all, I believe idea number three is that permission to talk isn't the same as safety to talk.

Now, this one takes a bit more of a mental health approach, I suppose, because a lot of the conversations I do have on this podcast do relate to mental health. And people who share stories that are sometimes as deep as these are is obviously gonna have a toll on people's mental health.

Now, I've spoken to Susie, Dr. Susie Bennett, on this podcast previously, and I had her back on an episode 107.

And really just amazing work that Susie's doing to start with, like the work that she does, the studies that she's done into male mental health and suicide rates, really like shaping the future, hopefully, of how we look at some of these things. And the thing she spoke to me, in fact, in both episodes she mentioned it, is this performance of self that a lot of men have.

And it's that idea that men appear fine until they break.

So if someone does take their own life or they are struggling, we may not always know about it from the outside because they've hardened themselves and they've built up this Persona that they are hiding under. And it's devastating, really, because they appear to be in control. They appear to be functioning absolutely fine, but behind the scenes they're not.

And the things that are going on internally are extremely difficult. And again, I asked Susie about this, this idea, like, do men themselves or women struggling as well, do people recognize that they are struggling?

Or when it gets to that point, do they just break? And that's when they realize.

And she said a lot of people, a lot of men that she speaks to in her work do understand their pain and they understand maybe why it's happening. They understand what maybe help they need, but they don't feel safe communicating it, which is a really sad thing to hear.

But again, we've had this massive push in the last few years to men need to talk. Men should talk more because men are struggling. That's what they need to do. They need to talk more. Right. Well, it's simple to say that.

And I think a lot of people say that, say, well, men don't talk about their feelings in it completely. A is probably True. A lot of the time, the b.

It's not as simple as just telling men to talk, because it's about providing them a space where they can feel safe. Now, a man may understand what he's going through.

He may understand these emotions that he's got, he may understand that someone is willing to listen to him, but in the back of his mind, there's this voice telling him that, what happens if I speak up? What happens if I actually tell these people how I'm feeling? Because once it's out, you can't take it back.

And a lot of people have that feeling of they've been told for so many years, they've been told for so long that men need to be firm, they need to not cry, they need to stiff up a lip, all that stuff. And the reality is we feel emotions the same way as women, but there's a lot more acceptance in women talking about things to a deeper level.

And I think that just saying simply men need to talk is not good enough. When I spoke to Jason Kubiak on episode 110, he. He appeared strong on the outside, but privately, his life was falling apart.

He was struggling with his mental health. And again, that feeling that he needed to stay strong because. And we spoke about the roles that people put on you and the job that he did.

He's a firefighter. He was also a professional MMA fighter for a time. He was a father.

And those things put additional pressure on him to cover himself up and to pretend that everything was okay. And obviously it got to the point where it broke him. And if you listen to that episode, you'll know all about that.

And for Jason, people doing things for him. So he spoke to a solicitor who agreed to represent him for free because he'd saved her horses in a fire a few years before.

Like, that's a completely chance encounter, but someone doing something nice for him in that moment.

And there was a point where he had a empty bedsit with no furniture in, and whilst he was at work one day, his watch had gone down, got in and fully kitted out and things like that. Just those little actions there. Well, in those cases, big actions, but I think action is the word, isn't it?

Just doing little things, little things for people, reminding them that they are loved and it doesn't have to be sitting down with them and going, tell me what's wrong, because that's a lot of pressure to put on someone.

And in my last episode with Liz McConaughey, she spoke about what she does now in Terms of when she asked people about their mental health, she will ask them to give them to give her a number between one and ten. Sending really good, one being really bad. And it gives that person the ability to tell you how they are feeling.

So I'm actually a three without putting the pressure on them to tell you what's happening if they don't feel ready to. And I love this idea, and I think it's so good.

I think the ability to let someone acknowledge that they're not okay and potentially receive actions if they need to without having to disclose everything.

And I think, especially for men as well, this thing where they know they need to talk, they know they can talk, but there's still that sense behind that of what will happen if I do. One other thing that Liz spoke about in that episode was the idea of being vulnerable with them.

So if someone is struggling to open up to you, it may be because of that.

It may be they're feeling that they can't open up because of what's going to be said, and they may need a little bit of encouragement from you, and that may be simply you being vulnerable with them.

So maybe there's something you can tell them about that you've been struggling with or something that is going on in your life that without taking the conversation away from them, gives them enough of an insight to go, oh, this person feels comfortable sharing that. Maybe I can share that as well.

And I think one of the other things that people struggle with when they do talk is that people make it about themselves or they try and give them advice. Now, advice sounds like, obviously, right? If someone's struggling, you.

If someone's struggling and they come to you and say, I'm struggling with this, it's really like on my mind. And you turn around and just say, well, obviously, like, just do this and this. That'll fix it.

You're not giving them the space to open up and actually explore where their mind's at with it. And we do this a lot, especially with people we know and love, because we want to help them and we think that giving them the advice is the answer.

But a lot of the time, listening and encouraging them to explore their own mind and come up with the answer themselves is where the power is. And I think as a Samaritan's listener, you sit there and you listen and you don't advise people specifically. You.

You ask questions to get them to explore those bits of advice themselves, if that makes sense. So giving someone the ability to explore their own answers, their own questions in their own mind with you there as a guidance is super powerful.

And if we could all do that, maybe people would feel a bit more open to talking, a bit less judged if they do talk, a bit less. Like if you speak, someone's going to give you advice and fix your problem or try and fix your problem.

That isn't necessarily really it's the problem, it's your mind telling you the story around that problem, right?

If you've put on some weight and you're talking to someone about that and they suddenly give you advice and say, well, just go for a walk every day or stop eating sugar or whatever it is, they're doing it from the right place.

And sure that it's good advice, but also if the story you're telling yourself about that weight that you've put on is, I've really let myself go, I'm not who I was two years ago, I'm disappointed in myself, I'm a let down, I'm a failure. Whatever that is in your mind, being told to go for a walk doesn't really help that and it doesn't fix that.

Even if you then do try and implement that stuff, it doesn't fix the fact that internally you're being really harsh on yourself in what essentially is a quick fix. But this is the human condition. So that is the three ideas that I've sort of seen recurring recently on this podcast.

And like I said, just to run through all of the three again, confidence is not the same as certainty, complex problems rarely have quick fixes, and permission to talk isn't safety to talk. And I think those three things keep coming up, they will keep coming up.

And whatever they look like in the conversations, I think they're really important lessons to reflect on and to discuss.

So have a think through some of those things today that I've mentioned and if any of them do reflect with you or you recognize yourself in some of them, then let me know. Be really interested to know your thoughts on these.

And maybe where I've got things wrong, maybe where you think I thought things right, but otherwise, if you haven't already, please do follow or subscribe to the show if you've enjoyed this episode and share it with a friend, if you think someone you know would find some value from it, as that really helps the show reach new people and hopefully help new people. But lastly from me, stay curious. Thank you for listening and I will see you in the next one.