Cage Your Confidence Gremlins
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Confidence is the skill that converts self-awareness into action, and the thing blocking it is what Tupper calls a confidence gremlin — a specific limiting belief such as 'I don't know enough', 'I'm not good at numbers', 'I'm a bad presenter', 'I'm too old' or a fear of visible bodily reactions under pressure. The mechanism is deliberately physical: while the gremlin stays inside your head it drives your behaviour, stopping you speaking up, applying, or disagreeing. You have to let it out — name it, say it aloud, discover other people have the same one — in order to cage it. Caging doesn't mean the action becomes comfortable; it means you take it anyway and you, not the gremlin, are in the driving seat. Third-party feedback is the key test, because gremlins create a filter on reality that other people simply don't share.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Name your specific gremlin
Identify which limiting belief is actually operating. Common ones: not knowing enough, not being good enough, needing to be liked, fear of failure, age (too young or too old), presenting, senior people, and fear of uncontrolled bodily reactions like blushing, shaking or stuttering.
Pro tip The 'gremlin' language exists because 'psychology' and 'limiting beliefs' feel too clinical for most workplaces — use whatever wording gets people talking.
- 2
Discover that everyone else has one too
Realising your gremlin isn't unique is often the single biggest unlock. Raising it in a group and seeing other people — including obviously successful, senior ones — put their hands up produces relief and removes the shame that keeps it hidden.
Pro tip Run it as a show of hands against a list of common gremlins so people see each other, not just hear about it.
- 3
Let the gremlin out
Say it out loud — to a peer, a coach, a group. While it stays in your head it controls you: it stops you speaking up in meetings, applying for positions, and challenging people you disagree with. Externalising it is the precondition for doing anything about it.
Watch out Admitting it can feel risky in cultures where credibility matters, which is exactly why so few people do it.
- 4
Test the gremlin's filter against other people's reality
Go to someone who was there and ask a specific question — 'what's the one thing you remember from when I was talking on stage?' The answer is almost never the thing your gremlin fixated on. That gap proves the gremlin is your experience of the situation, not the situation.
Pro tip Ask about the moment where your gremlin stood out most to you — the contrast is the whole point.
- 5
Cage it by taking the action anyway
With the gremlin out and visible, consciously do the thing it was blocking: speak up in the meeting, apply for the role, challenge the view you disagree with. It won't feel easy or enjoyable, but you are now in the driving seat and it isn't.
Watch out Playing it safe to avoid the feared outcome is what quietly shrinks a career over years.
- 6
Expect it back and re-cage it
The gremlin is part of you and is very hard to kill. There are activities that make it smaller and less significant, but the realistic goal is getting better and faster at putting it back in its cage each time it reappears.
Pro tip Notice how gremlins interact with the other skills — a 'senior people won't make time for me' gremlin is often what's really blocking a mentor request.
Watch out Treating a returning gremlin as evidence you failed just feeds it.
In the wild
Helen ran a Squiggly skills session with a group of senior lawyers and doubted they'd be open about confidence at all, given how much credibility matters in their positions. She read out the ten most common confidence gremlins and asked everyone to raise a hand for each one they identified with. They watched each other's hands go up around the room. When she asked what that made them think, the answer was 'we've all got gremlins' — followed by laughter and visible relief. Admitting it was the big step; once it was said out loud, the door was open to doing something about it.
→ A group that had never discussed confidence moved from hiding gremlins to being able to cage them.
Some people carry a gremlin about uncontrolled bodily reactions — blushing, a red neck, sweating, shaking hands, stuttering — none of which they can control, because adrenaline drives them. What they actually fear is what others will think when they see it, so they avoid any situation where it could happen, which means avoiding pressure, which means playing it safe in their career. Helen's counter is to ask a colleague afterwards what they remember. The feedback comes back as 'you were so clear and articulate' or 'you looked really smiley' — nothing about the blushing that felt to the speaker like a red lighthouse on stage.
→ Direct evidence that the gremlin's filter isn't shared by anyone else in the room.
Common mistakes
Trying to kill the gremlin outright
It's very hard to get rid of a confidence gremlin permanently — it's part of you and it will keep popping up. Aiming for elimination sets you up to read its return as failure. Aim instead to make it smaller and to get quicker at caging it.
Assuming senior people don't have them
It doesn't matter how senior someone is or what position they hold — most people have some kind of gremlin getting in the way of their growth. Believing otherwise both isolates you and feeds the 'senior people' gremlin specifically.
Avoiding pressure to protect yourself
Refusing to present, speak up or apply removes the feared outcome but also removes the career. Each avoidance makes the next opportunity feel further away and hands the driving seat back to the gremlin.
From the transcript
“you've almost got to let the gremlin out in order to cage it because when the gremlin's in your head it's in control of you”
“once we have let the gremlin out we can more consciously cage it”
“so often it's very useful to get somebody else's perspective on the situation where your Gremlin really really stood out to you”
From the episode
5 Skills To Succeed in ANY Career - Helen Tupper (Squiggly Careers)
Helen Tupper (Squiggly Careers)