Why Confidence Is a Choice, Not a Feeling (w/ Laura Ianello)
The Full Listener's Guide
We explore why confidence isn’t something you wait to feel - it’s something you choose through your actions, especially when the stakes are highest. In this conversation with Laura Ianello, head women’s golf coach at the University of Texas, we break down the practical mental skills that separate elite performers from everyone else when pressure mounts.
You’ll learn a simple four-step protocol to recenter yourself in high-stakes moments, why losing can be reframed as exciting, how to build routines that carry you when motivation fails, and why comparison is the enemy of mastery. This is about the Think Factor—using awareness, intention, and action to take control when everything feels out of control.
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🖐 5 BIG IDEAS
1. Confidence Is a Choice, Not a Feeling
Most people wait to feel confident before they act. Elite performers do the opposite - they act first, and confidence follows.
Confidence isn’t an emotion you summon before a big moment. It’s a decision you make through your behavior, your preparation, and your willingness to step into discomfort. When Laura talks about her golfers “sticking to their routines” and “not forcing things,” she’s describing athletes who have learned that the feeling of pressure isn’t a sign that something’s wrong—it’s proof they’re alive and engaged.
The mistake we make is treating pressure as an enemy. We think, “I’ll perform when I’m not nervous.” But nerves are information. They tell you that you care, that the moment matters, that you’re pushing yourself toward growth. The goal isn’t to eliminate that feeling - it’s to act despite it, trusting your process over your emotions.
2. Process Protects You When Outcomes Slip
Routines aren’t just helpful - they’re the antidote to spiraling when things go wrong.
Golf is unforgiving. One bad shot can compound into an entire bad round if you let it. Laura teaches her athletes to return to their routine immediately after a mistake - not to dwell, not to predict disaster, not to tell stories about what might happen next. Just breathe, reset, and execute the next action.
This applies far beyond golf. When you’re anchored to a process, you can let go of mistakes without becoming careless. You can lose without losing yourself. The routine becomes the thing you control when everything else feels chaotic. It’s your through-line, your center of gravity, the thing that keeps you from drifting toward the walls.
3. Losing Is Exciting (When You Know How to Learn)
Laura tells her athletes: “Losing is exciting because it means you learned something.”
Most of us see defeat as evidence of inadequacy. We finish second and conclude we’re not good enough. But elite performers see loss as information - data they can use to get better. When Laura’s team lost early in the season, they didn’t collapse. They analyzed what happened, adjusted, and came back to win.
This isn’t about pretending losing doesn’t hurt. It’s about reframing what it means. Losing becomes exciting when you shift from “I failed” to “I learned.” You start asking: What did this reveal about my preparation? My mindset? My habits? Where can I grow? The pain becomes purposeful instead of paralyzing.
4. Comparison Kills Mastery
You can’t master anything if you’re constantly measuring yourself against everyone else.
Laura recruits athletes who can be competitive without being comparative. There’s a difference. Competitive means you want to be your best. Comparative means you’re obsessed with whether you’re better than the person next to you. One drives growth. The other creates anxiety, self-doubt, and a loss of identity.
When you’re chasing someone else’s game, you stop playing your own. You force things that aren’t in your skillset. You lose trust in your routine. Laura’s athletes succeed because they stay in their lane - they know their strengths, they trust their preparation, and they let everyone else worry about everyone else.
5. Gratitude Grounds You
“Everything is not expected - it’s a gift.”
Laura came from a successful program at Arizona to an elite one at Texas, surrounded by world-class athletes and coaches. It would be easy to take that for granted, to assume it’s just the baseline. But she reminds her team constantly: the resources, the facilities, the opportunities - they’re gifts, not entitlements.
Gratitude isn’t just nice. It’s grounding. It keeps you from spiraling into entitlement when things go well or victimhood when they don’t. It anchors you in reality: you have more than you need, you’re doing meaningful work, and the outcome doesn’t define your worth. That’s the foundation of context-independent peace of mind.
🤔 3 REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Where are you waiting to feel confident instead of choosing to act?
Think about a moment coming up where you feel uncertain - a presentation, a difficult conversation, a challenge at work. Are you waiting for the nervousness to disappear before you step in? What would change if you accepted that confidence comes from action, not emotion? What’s one small action you could take today that would build evidence for yourself, regardless of how you feel?
2. What’s your routine when things go wrong?
When you make a mistake or face a setback, do you spiral into storytelling about what it means for the future? Or do you have a process that brings you back to center? If you don’t have a routine yet, what would one look like? What’s the smallest reset ritual you could build - a breath, a phrase, a physical anchor - that helps you let go and refocus on what’s next?
3. Who are you comparing yourself to, and is it helping you grow?
Are you measuring your progress against your own potential, or against someone else’s highlight reel? When you think about success, whose game are you playing - yours, or the one you think you’re supposed to play? What would it look like to stay in your lane, trust your strengths, and let everyone else worry about theirs?
🔑 1 KEY TAKEAWAY
Mastery begins when you stop waiting to feel ready and start trusting the process.
Confidence isn’t the prerequisite for great performance - it’s the result. You don’t become confident and then act. You act, and confidence follows. You build routines, trust them under pressure, and return to them when things go wrong. You reframe mistakes as information, not identity. You compete without comparing yourself to everyone around you.
This is the Think Factor in action: Awareness of when you’re spiraling, comparing, or storytelling. Intention to return to your process instead of chasing an outcome. Action that’s grounded in what you can control, not what you hope will happen.
Laura’s golfers don’t succeed because they never feel pressure. They succeed because they’ve learned that pressure isn’t the enemy - it’s proof they’re pushing themselves toward something meaningful. The goal isn’t to avoid nerves or eliminate doubt. It’s to act anyway, trusting that the routine will carry you when motivation fails.
This applies whether you’re stepping up to a crucial putt, walking into a high-stakes meeting, or navigating a season of your life where the outcomes feel uncertain. You don’t need to feel ready. You just need to trust your process, stay in your lane, and keep moving forward.
Because at the end of the day, confidence isn’t a feeling you wait for. It’s a choice you make, one action at a time.
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