Fear and Confidence: How to Build Success That Doesn't Cost You Everything

A conversation with Tamara RoseApril 15, 202576 minutesOriginally aired as Divine Feminine Radio, Episode 10

Watch: Fear and confidence, and how to build success that doesn't cost you everything

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If you keep proving, pushing and overachieving and it still doesn't feel like enough, fear may be making more of your decisions than you realize. This episode is about telling fear from reality, trusting your intuition and building the kind of confidence that only comes from doing.

What you'll hear

Tamara unpacks fear of success, fear of failure, fear of not being enough and imposter syndrome: where they come from, what happens in your brain when fear takes over, and how to move through it. She shares the leaps that changed her life, none of which made logical sense at the time, and a simple way to choose between options when you can't tell which one is intuition.

Where fear of success and failure come from

Fear creeps in when you're stuck in one perspective, one paradigm, one point of view, and can only see two feet in front of you. That's why Tamara asks clients to zoom out 10,000 feet; from higher up, you see many more options. For women, there's also a long history underneath. For generations it was safer to be small, to please and to follow what you were told, and those fears are so ingrained that we rarely question them. We just think they're real.

How to tell fear from reality

Traveling in her late twenties, Tamara walked down a dark dirt road in Costa Rica with no lights while a man walked toward her, and her mind went straight to how she'd defend herself. The reality was simpler: two people on a dark road, in a country with very little violent crime. Your brain predicts the future from the past and usually picks the worst case, then replays it until you create it.

Intuition works differently. It can take you somewhere you've never been, which is why it often doesn't make logical sense. Tamara signed up for a weekend personal growth course the moment a friend recommended it, joined a ten day silent meditation retreat without knowing what it was about, and once let someone talk her into rappelling down a parking garage at night, years after a fall from a cliff had left her afraid of heights. She started on the first level, ended the night at the top, and the fear was gone.

The amygdala hijack, and how to interrupt it

The amygdala is your fear center, and when it takes over, Tamara pictures a fish out of water, flopping and gasping for air. It happens several times a day: someone cuts you off in traffic, or you come home and the dishes you asked for still aren't done, and you're off to the races. What's usually underneath is an old childhood feeling of not being cared for, while the reality is only that the dishes weren't done. Nonviolent communication helps here. Name what you actually feel, angry and sad, say why it matters to you and make a request. Even "I feel disrespected" is a judgment, and the feeling sits underneath it. The deeper practice is calming your nervous system so the hijack doesn't start in the first place.

Confidence comes after action

People wait to feel confident before they act, but confidence comes after you've done the thing, usually a dozen times. Tamara had no confidence when her intuition told her to lead her first three-day event on stage with about three months to plan it, and that event is what grew the company to three quarters of a million dollars in a year. Take one uncomfortable, aligned action every day; sometimes all it takes is ten seconds of courage, like putting your shoes on and getting out the door.

When you're torn between options, skip the one that looks like your past. Real intuition is usually one clear, uncomfortable pull toward something new, more like a speedboat than a patched-up raft. Trust is the practice of seeing everything that has happened as part of your path, and surrender means letting that divine flow carry you. Want to go further? Read why you keep repeating the same pattern.