Ever finish a perfectly ordinary workday feeling like you've run a marathon? You answered emails, sat through meetings, dealt with a few difficult personalities and somehow arrived at 5 p.m. with absolutely nothing left for the people or things you actually enjoy.

And the maddening part? You’ll probably do it all again tomorrow.

My dear friend Bruna De Palo, a fellow neuro nerd, neuroscience executive coach and one of my favorite humans, has a fascinating explanation for why we make life so much harder on ourselves than it needs to be. And it starts with something our brains are very, very good at: conserving energy.

Bruna's new book, The Brain Instruction Manual for Leaders, explores what happens when the way we work, communicate and lead is fundamentally at odds with how our brains are designed to function. We're burning through precious mental energy on misunderstandings, unnecessary conflict and trying to get people to do things in ways that actually make their brains less effective. Brilliant strategy, right?

Now, you know I'm all about confidence and brain science, so this conversation was right up my alley. Because when someone feels threatened, dismissed or backed into a corner, their brain responds accordingly. And good luck getting their best thinking, cooperation or confidence when that happens. The really interesting part is how often we create those conditions without even realizing it.

What I love about Bruna's approach is that she doesn't ask us to become nicer people just because it's the right thing to do. She makes a compelling case that understanding how brains work can make us more effective and leave us with more energy for our actual lives. And you don't need to manage a team to benefit. If you deal with other human beings (and I'm guessing you do), this conversation is for you.

Highlights from our conversation:

• Why an ordinary workday can leave your brain feeling completely spent
• The surprising price we pay for trying to get the best out of other people
• Why the leadership approach that once got results may now be working against you
• How understanding someone else's brain can change a disagreement without changing either person's opinion
• Where the line falls between understanding human behavior and manipulating it

Bruna De Palo is a neuroscience executive coach, keynote speaker and creator of the B.R.A.I.N. Leadership Model™. Drawing on nearly two decades of corporate experience and neuroscience studies at MIT Sloan, she helps leaders understand how the brain shapes behavior, performance and workplace culture. A faculty member at the NeuroLeadership Institute, Bruna works with Fortune 500 organizations worldwide and was recognized among Thinkers50’s Global Top 50 Executive Coaches in 2026. She is the author of The Brain Instruction Manual for Leaders. Learn more about Bruna at brunadepalo.com.

AI is pretty damn seductive. Give it a problem and seconds later it has an answer. Something you don't know how to do? It can probably help. Need to sound smarter, work faster or figure out something that would've taken you half the day? Done.

But can it make you confident? I think it can, but there’s a big catch.

I love AI. My team and I use it for everything from writing and data analysis to design and coding. I’ve even developed a rather personal relationship with my Claude. Used well, these tools can help us become more competent, better prepared and a whole lot more resourceful, all things that can absolutely strengthen confidence.

But our brains have to stay on the job.

Because confidence still requires us to evaluate information, question what we’re being told and ultimately make the call. AI can help us with that, but it can also - and frequently does - hand us a beautifully written, incredibly convincing pile of crap. It can agree with us when it probably shouldn’t. And it has absolutely no idea what that little alarm going off in your gut knows that the data doesn’t.

So how do we get all that extra competence without accidentally putting our own brains out to pasture? That’s what I’m digging into in this episode, including a few ways I’m using AI to strengthen my thinking instead of replacing it. Because the real confidence boost isn't getting an answer faster. It's knowing what to question, when to push back and when the final call still needs to be yours.

I talk all the time about how confidence is a choice- it’s the even the title of one of my books - so when someone comes along and says, “Okay, Alyssa, but are you sure it’s YOU whose actually the making the choice?” you better believe I'm listening.

Enter Paula Houlihan, fellow neuro nerd, executive coach and someone who has spent years studying what happens to our decision-making when the pressure is on. Paula was a high-performing corporate professional who thought exhaustion, stress and pushing through were simply part of being successful. Then a life-altering diagnosis forced her to take a very hard look at the choices that had gotten her there, including the ones she hadn't realized she was making.

That last part got me. Because we walk around thinking we're being perfectly rational and intentional while our brains are busy reaching for whatever worked before. That's wonderfully efficient when the old programming still serves us. It’s when it doesn’t that things get tricky.

And high performers can create the perfect conditions for that old programming to take over. We take on more because we can. We put enormous pressure on ourselves. Then, when we need more time, we start stealing it from things like sleep and taking care of ourselves, which are precisely the things our brains need to make better decisions.

Paula and I get delightfully nerdy about what's happening in the brain when pressure starts calling the shots, how to recognize when you've slipped into reactive mode and what it takes to get yourself back into the driver's seat. If you've ever made a decision and later thought, Why the hell did I do that?, listen in. This conversation may make you question just how many of your choices are really choices.

A few things you'll want to listen for:

• Why high performers can be especially vulnerable to autopilot thinking
• How to spot the moment your brain may be making the decision before you do
• Why a strategy that helped you succeed before can quietly start working against you
• The clue hiding inside those “if only they would…” moments
• Paula's deceptively small interruption that can change what happens next

Paula Houlihan is a keynote speaker, executive coach and creator of the Choice Management™ Model, which draws on neuroscience, psychology and her own corporate experience to help people make more intentional choices under pressure. A former corporate senior claims specialist with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Paula now works with leaders and organizations to rethink the habits that drive performance, burnout and change. Learn more about Paula and her work.

You know that boss who needs to be copied on every email? Has to sit in every meeting? Somehow manages to take credit when things go well and locate someone else to blame when they don’t?

We need to talk about that person.

Because we tend to give bosses a whole lot of confidence credit just because they’re the boss. They have the title. They have the authority. They’re telling everyone else what to do, often with impressive certainty. So surely they must be confident, right?

Oh, my friends. No.

Some of the most maddening boss behavior is insecurity hiding behind a job title: the micromanaging, the gossip, the refusal to give someone else the spotlight and, worse than that, keeping talented people firmly positioned beneath them instead of giving them opportunities to grow. Even that boss who refuses to challenge a ridiculous policy because “that’s the way we’ve always done it" is telling you something important about their relationship with confidence, and once you start looking at those behaviors through that lens, a lot of the workplace nonsense starts making sense.

This is where so many of us get into trouble because unless and until you can spot it, their insecurity can mess with your confidence.

When someone constantly second-guesses you, withholds credit or treats your competence like a threat, it’s way too easy to wonder whether the problem might actually be you. Please do not give them that much real estate in your brain.

I’ve got 10 pretty reliable signs that your boss may be struggling with confidence, plus some practical ways to deal with it without immediately polishing your résumé. If you’ve ever left a meeting thinking, What the hell is wrong with this person?, press play. You may finally have your answer.

In my last episode, I took a swing at the idea of resilience and why “just be more resilient” is about as useful as telling someone to calm down. Because you can be perfectly capable, smart and self-aware and still find yourself reacting in ways that make absolutely no sense to you.

This conversation with Cedric Bertelli picks up where I left off.

Cedric has spent years studying what happens when emotions keep showing up long after the situation that created them is over. Anxiety. Anger. Fear. That feeling of being stuck in a reaction you can't quite explain.

His premise is fascinating: some of these reactions are your brain running an outdated prediction based on something it learned earlier. And when those old predictions are running the show, they can mess with your confidence in ways that are easy to miss.

We talk about what those reactive patterns can look like, why we get so good at managing them without actually resolving them and why we sometimes mistake an emotional pattern for “just who I am.” We also get into resilience, which led to one of those moments where I thought, Oh. That's a completely different way to look at it.

And then Cedric gives me a very specific exercise for what to do when one of those emotional reactions hits. It is simple. It is counterintuitive. And apparently, if he's right, it can actually update the prediction your brain is making.

I can't wait for you to try it. Because confidence isn't much use if your brain has already decided you're in danger.

A few things we get into:

• Why an emotional reaction can feel completely real even when it no longer fits your reality
• Why we sometimes build our personality around something that was actually a coping mechanism
• What your body may be telling you before you consciously understand what's happening
• Why “be more resilient” may be missing the point entirely
• What Cedric says to do when a recurring emotional reaction shows up

Cedric Bertelli has over 15 years of experience in developing and delivering Emotional Resolution® (EmRes®), a groundbreaking method that helps people overcome emotional difficulties by tapping into their innate physiological capacity. As the founder and director of the Emotional Health Institute, Cedric leads a team of dedicated professionals who share his vision of empowering individuals and communities to achieve emotional well-being. You can learn more about Cedric at cedricbertelli.com.

There, I said it. We toss “resilience” around like it’s some kind of emotional superpower: life punches you in the face, you dust yourself off, keep going and congratulations, you’re resilient.

I don’t buy it. Sometimes “being resilient” sounds suspiciously like “suck it up and don’t let this affect you,” and frankly, that’s terrible advice.

Because things are going to affect you. A layoff. Losing someone you love. Getting sick. A relationship blowing up. Even the smaller stuff that leaves you lying awake thinking, “Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Your brain is going to react. That’s what brains do. The interesting question is what happens after that first reaction. Do you hide until the scary thing passes or do you actually get your brain involved?

And this is where intelligence gets pulled into the conversation, because I think we’ve been defining that wrong, too. I don’t care how many facts you can cram into your head if you can’t figure out what to do when the facts change. Google knows more facts than any of us. AI can spit out an answer before I’ve finished typing the question.

So maybe intelligence today has a lot more to do with knowing what to ask, figuring out what matters and being resourceful enough to find your way through something you’ve never dealt with before.

Which, by the way, is where confidence takes center stage. Confidence matters when you’re standing in the middle of a situation you didn’t choose and deciding what the hell you’re going to do next. You need enough clarity to figure out what’s actually wrong, enough flexibility to see what might have changed and enough resourcefulness to find a way forward. You don’t have to pretend it didn’t hurt. You have to learn from what happened instead of just wearing it like a badge of honor.

And I think that’s a much more useful way to think about resilience. Not “Look at me, nothing gets to me!” Please. I am a human being. Things get to me. The goal is to come through the hard stuff knowing more, seeing more clearly and being better prepared for whatever comes next. That’s a very different kind of strength and it has a hell of a lot more to do with confidence than simply gritting your teeth and getting through it.

If you’ve ever been told to “be more resilient” and wanted to scream, but I don’t want to? this one is for you.

There are few things more frustrating than feeling unheard.

Not disagreed with—I can handle disagreement. I'm talking about when someone has already decided you're wrong before you've even finished your sentence. They interrupt you, dismiss you and they default "no." Before you know it, you’re questioning whether your idea was any good in the first place.

I've spent plenty of time wondering if I just needed a better argument against these naysayers. Maybe if I had better data to prove my case, better timing or I’d phrased my position differently they’d actually see what I was trying to say.

When I sat down to do this episode with Jackie Roby, she challenged me on that when we stopped talking about how to change someone else's mind and started talking about what happens inside our minds the moment we’re met with resistance.

Why does pushback feel so personal? Why does one dismissive comment make us want to shrink, defend ourselves or stop contributing altogether? And why do so many smart, capable people carry around conversations that should have been over hours ago?

One thing Jackie said has been rattling around in my head ever since we recorded this: people don't change when they feel threatened. They change when they feel safe. That applies to the person you're trying to influence—but it also applies to you. If your nervous system is firing on all cylinders because someone challenged your idea, you're probably not showing up as the version of yourself you wanted in the first place.

That's where confidence quietly changes the whole conversation. It isn't about winning the argument or having the perfect comeback but about staying grounded enough to finish your thought, ask the next question, hold your boundaries and walk away knowing your voice still mattered, regardless of whether someone else agreed with you.

A few moments from this conversation that stayed with me:

• Why resistance is often about the other person's need for certainty—not the quality of your idea.
• How to stop taking every disagreement as evidence that you don't belong in the room.
• The difference between trying to win someone over and creating the conditions where they're actually willing to listen.
• Why confidence sometimes looks remarkably ordinary: staying calm, staying curious and refusing to disappear.

If you've ever replayed a conversation over and over and over or wondered why someone wouldn't even give your idea a chance—I think you'll find yourself somewhere in this episode. I certainly found myself in it.

Jackie Roby helps ambitious leaders stop white-knuckling their way through success. As an executive leadership advisor and keynote speaker, she specializes in leadership development, workplace burnout, and creating emotionally healthier workplaces where people don't have to silence themselves to succeed. She chairs the Global Wellness Institute's Inclusive Wellness Initiative, co-authored the best-selling Confident You: The Raw Conversations, and founded The She Suite Connector, a vibrant networking community for women of color and allies. Learn more about Jackie and her work at inspiredjourneyconsulting.com.

Hey. I need to clear something up, because we keep doing this and I'm going to lovingly call us all out: we're using the word confidence to mean about 47 different things and most of them are wrong.

We see someone dominate a conversation and think, "Wow, they're confident." Someone refuses to admit they made a mistake? "They must really believe in themselves." Someone walks into a room like they own the place? "I wish I had that kind of confidence."

Nope. Nope. And nope.

Here's the problem: when we don't understand what confidence actually is, we start comparing ourselves to the wrong people. We mistake arrogance for confidence. We assume overconfidence means someone's got it figured out. We wait for some magical feeling of certainty to show up before we let ourselves make a decision and all the while our brains are over here writing a whole dramatic story that may have nothing to do with reality. (Thanks, brain. Super helpful.)

This episode is a little confidence myth-busting, because the truth is way more useful than the version we've been sold. I'm going to walk you through what confidence actually runs on: knowing what information you have, knowing what matters to you and being willing to make a decision from there—even without 100 % certainty.

And if you've ever wondered why someone who seems "confident" makes you question yourself, or why you can feel completely capable one day and second-guess everything the next, listen in. Because once you understand what confidence actually is, and what it definitely is not, you stop chasing the wrong thing.