Why Being Hard on Yourself Is Killing Your Confidence And What Actually Works Instead - With Shahroo Izadi

Shahroo Izadi spent years working at the sharp end of behavioural change - in addiction treatment, prisons, and the NHS, helping people change habits when everything was stacked against them.She helped those people society often labels as “resistant”, “undisciplined”, or “broken”.What she discovered there challenged one of our most deeply held beliefs about confidence and change:That people need to be harder on themselves to improve.They don’t.In this episode, Shahroo talks to me about confidence, habits, and why kindness is a strategic option (not a soft one). She shares how working with addiction revealed the real drivers of long-term change: self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-belief. And how those same tools are just as relevant for high-functioning, successful people struggling with everyday habits: scrolling, overworking, numbing, self-sabotage - as they are for addiction recovery.She says:“The most powerful confidence comes from doing what you said you’d do when no one is watching.”Shahroo also speaks about her own experience with binge eating, dieting, and shame, and how reframing her behaviour as a food problem rather than a weight problem changed everything.This episode explores how confidence is earned through consistency, protected by compassion, and strengthened by doing hard things when no one is watching.We explore:* Why shame blocks change and compassion accelerates it* How confidence is built from evidence, not willpower* Why your “hardest habit” is often your greatest source of self-trustA conversation that will change how you think about habits and yourself.This podcast is designed to be practical. Every Friday, I’ll be sharing practical tools inspired by each episode to actively help you boost your confidence. Subscribe to get it straight to your inbox.If you want to help me get the word out, liking, following, restacking, sharing, rating, reviewing etc makes a huge difference. We’re on apple, spotify and youtube. You can also share this episode easily using the button below.To hear more from Shahroo, you can find her on instagram here and visit here website here.This episode was produced by my amazing husband. It’s a job he never knew he wanted! If you’d like to support the making of future episodes, you can buy him a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rosiedallingBy the way, I help C-suite leaders and founders build confident, robust teams. If you want help with that, drop me a line here.Enjoy the episode - and tell me in the comments what you think.Rosie Get full access to In Confidence at inconfidencepod.substack.com/subscribe