We grow up believing success will make us happy. Get the job. Earn the money. Buy the car. Find the partner. Work hard out there, and you’ll finally feel good in here. But what if that’s backwards?
The Outside-In Myth
For years, I chased external things – love, alcohol, food, adventure – to fill an inner gap. It’s what inspired my first book, Blokes, Beers & Burritos. A saucy self-help novel based on real experiences (well, mostly!) and what I eventually discovered was this:
I could travel halfway around the world searching for happiness…
but I was looking in all the wrong places.
The Turning Point
It took years to realise I’d been chasing happiness and fulfilment in the wrong direction. I thought I could find it in relationships, success, or the next big experience. But no amount of external achievement – or distraction – can fix an internal imbalance. That’s when I discovered what I now call The Success Cycle.
The Success Cycle Explained
Everything you experience follows the same loop:
Thoughts → Feelings → Behaviours → Results → reinforce Thoughts.
If you think, “I’ll be happy when…” you create a loop that keeps happiness just out of reach.
You chase results, but the emotional state never lasts because the inner world hasn’t changed.
When you start shifting your thoughts and feelings first, your outer world begins to respond.
You stop chasing validation, approval, or control and those things start flowing naturally instead. That’s the irony: When you stop chasing outer success, you create the inner stability that attracts it.
The Lesson
True confidence isn’t about changing your job, your life, or your circumstances. It’s about changing your relationship with yourself. And real success doesn’t come from more – it comes from meaning.
If you keep waiting for the next milestone to make you feel “enough,” it never will. Because confidence doesn’t live in the job title, the salary, or the applause. It lives in how you think and feel when no one’s watching.
The Good News
You can change the cycle at any point. Start by noticing what you think, how you feel, and how that shapes what you do. When you start working on your inner world, everything else begins to align.
That’s what I eventually learned – and what I now teach through The Confidence Breakthrough – so you don’t have to spend years figuring it out the hard way.
The Takeaway
Your outer world won’t thrive until you understand – and master – your inner world.
That’s where real success begins.
👇 If you’re ready to start building inner confidence – the kind that changes everything else –
Join the waitlist for The Confidence Breakthrough Online Programme (joblakeleytraining.co.uk/individual-confidence-breakthrough-programme), or
Find out more about The Confidence Breakthrough book (joblakeleytraining.co.uk/the-confidence-breakthrough-book