02/10/2026
Confidence Is Overrated (And Possibly Dangerous)
I get asked a lot, "if I join your class I will gain confidence?"
It's a fair question, and I understand why people ask it. But I'm going to be annoying and say that confidence isn't actually what you want.
Think of the pub quiz. There's always one bloke who slams his hand on the table and says, "It's Sydney. Capital of Australia. Write it down." Absolute conviction. Not a flicker of doubt. Completely wrong. (It's Canberra, Dave.)
Confidence told him he was right. It didn't make him right.
Now swap the pub quiz for something a bit more serious. You can walk out of a class feeling brilliant, like you could take on anyone, only to find you've got really good at the wrong thing. Confidence in a technique that doesn't work, or in a situation you've never properly understood, isn't protection. It's a nice warm feeling right up until it isn't.
What attackers actually look for
Here's the bit most people never think about. Nobody gets picked as a target at random. If you've been selected, it's because you fit a profile: someone who looks like previous success. Distracted, easy, unlikely to cause problems.
And the person doing the selecting isn't running on confidence. They're running on drive. They have a task, they've chosen how to do it, and they intend to see it through. That's a mindset, and it's a much more useful thing to understand than any amount of self-belief.
So what do I teach instead?
A combative mindset. It means:
Awareness, so you spot the problem before it arrives
Decisiveness, so you act instead of freezing and politely hoping it goes away
Commitment, so that if it does come to it, you carry it through with the same drive the other person has.
Release, so you use your voice and your aggression instead of freezing.
Honesty, about what works, what doesn't, and where your gaps are.
Notice there's nothing in that list about feeling good. That's deliberate.
Yes, I make my students swear. Loudly.
If you ever wander past my class and hear a room full of otherwise perfectly polite people bellowing expletives, no, you haven't stumbled into a very bad pub. That's training.
There are two reasons I do it.
First, it's realistic. Nobody facing a genuine threat says, "Excuse me, I'd rather you didn't." Real situations are loud, ugly and full of language that would make your gran faint. If the first time you hear someone screaming obscenities in your face is the day it matters, it lands like a punch. If you've heard it, and said it, a hundred times in training, it loses its power. You build immunity to profanity, so it stops being a weapon against you.
Second, it breaks the freeze. Most people don't fail because they lack technique. They fail because they go rabbit-in-the-headlights: stunned, silent, stuck. Shouting, swearing and screaming gives the body an outlet. In my experience, that release of aggression settles the nervous system and snaps people out of the freeze, so they're thinking and moving instead of staring. It's a switch from "this is happening to me" to "I'm happening to them."
It also does wonders for mindset. Remember, the other person is driven and committed. Finding your own voice, and a bit of controlled aggression to go with it, is how you start matching that.
Is it a bit awkward the first time? Absolutely. By week three, people are swearing like sailors with a sense of purpose, and quite enjoying it.
The funny thing is...
People do leave my classes more confident. But it's a side effect, not the goal. It's the kind of confidence you earn by being tested, finding the gaps and fixing them, rather than the kind you get from a poster and a motivational quote.
I'd rather you walk out slightly humbled and actually prepared than buzzing and wrong.
So if you want to join my class, great. Just don't come for the confidence. Come for the mindset, and bring your lungs.
Dave can keep Sydney, we're visiting Canberra.
