Reviews - The Confidence Gap: A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt

69 reviews for:

The Confidence Gap: A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt

This book was more workbook oriented than I thought, which forces you to slow down and really absorb what the author is saying. I thought the author made some really important points about building confidence and carrying it throughout life in any regard

rarudd1's review against another edition

2.0

DNF: It's okay, pretty typical self help book. Nothing really new in it. I read this because it was recommend in the book ACT, but I thought ACT was better.

drgray's review against another edition

5.0

📚Who This Book is For: Individuals wanting to make progress towards their goals, learn new skills for managing their hesitations about getting started, and those interested in learning about how mindfulness and attention affect their goals.⁠
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✏️Review: This book is extremely clear, well-organized, and well written - the structure of the book is clearly designed to teach the information with the psychology of adult learners and those new to the material in mind. The repetition of themes and connections among them helps everyone have a clear outline for what the book is working to achieve and how individual can implement the strategies in their own lives.⁠
This book's information and recommendations are based on the framework of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is an evidence-based therapeutic treatment modality and something that has gained more ground in popularity recent. And like other types of treatments, also has a lot of good lessons and information anyone can use to incorporate into their daily lives and goals - regardless of whether or not they are in treatment for their mental health.⁠
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🗒️Main Take-Aways: ⁠
📌Differentiation between values and goals, with values acting as the compass and goals as the destinations.⁠
📌Fearlessness is not the goal; acting despite fear is.⁠
📌We can learn and grow by focusing on goals, identifying what skills we may need to practice in order to reach those goals, and using mindfulness skills can help us with all of it.⁠
📌When we separate our selves from our thoughts, we can help get unhooked from whatever our thoughts are telling us.⁠

deutschemausi's review against another edition

3.0

informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

The confidence gap is a self-help novel written to help those of us that feel like our confidence leaves something to be desired.

Although I appreciated the audio narration of this novel, something I really didn’t enjoy is the sentences left unfinished to be continued by the title of the next chapter, it was incredibly disorienting 😅

Originally what drew me in is not only the popularity within the confidence self-help sub genre, but initially this was something I wanted to work on in myself so I was immediately drawn in.

Something I really appreciated was the validation given to the “proven” tactics to combat negative thoughts- in that they do not work. Such as thinking positively etc. that tactic just doesn’t work 9/10 times and the validation made me feel very seen.

Although I feel like there were some new tactics that I can practice, the easiest way to describe this book is:

“Fake it till you make it”

Let me preface this by saying that they do give you lots of tools and immediately from the get go say that they won’t tell you just to fake it but all in all that’s kind of what I took away from this book.

Unfortunately I just don’t think this book is for me but it may be of some use to people who haven’t been presented these tools before!

gzofian's review against another edition

5.0

Here is where I am coming from - I love self-help books, I have read a ton of them, and I try hard to believe in a benevolent Universe governed by, perhaps even created by, the power of thought that is the God in all of us. I even have personal experience of 'creating my own reality' through setting a goal and envisioning it to be already in existence. Having said that, I do get tired of books that tell you to just believe, and even to believe without wanting, because in the wanting you are telling the universe of your lack - so no matter how much I want to be a size 8 my mind just laughs when I tell it, several times a day, that I am 8 stone!!
This book is not like that. This book makes complete sense, and this book should be required reading for everyone, everywhere, every time! It speaks of the sense of inadequacy we all, (perhaps secretly) carry with us, it explains why our minds are so adept at putting the kibosh on our hopes and aspirations, and it also explains why that anxiety, fear and lack of confidence is actually not only normal and natural, but serves us well, and is our friend not our enemy - albeit a rather whiny friend! The techniques for achieving the life you choose, rather than craving the life that you feel is out of reach, are sound and work. It is like listening to a very wise friend. I would give it 10 stars if I could.