Safety, Rewards & Values alignment

By Kerryn Vaughan

2nd April 2026

There's a very simple formula to achieving confidence: Courage, Action, and Practice.

Saying it's simple, doesn't mean it's easy.

While there are the occasional outliers, there are generally 3 essential elements that activate courageous action. Safety, reward, and values alignment.

Safety: This is the king pin, and if time permits, we all try to ensure this is in place before making any crazy attempts at courage. This includes physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and financial safety.

If safety isn't available, reward and values alignment can still activate us.

Reward: This is about something that's greater and more rewarding than the sense of safety. Maybe it's a giant leap out of a life of misery - never easy, but rewarding nonetheless.

Values alignment: Even without feeling safe, alignment to our personal values can motivate us to take courageous action. Something we feel so strongly about that we accept any consequences that may arise as a result of courageous action. This can include saving our own life or somebody else's in extreme circumstances. 

Sometimes it's just one or two of these 3 things, and other times it's the full suite.

Sometimes all 3 are present, and we still don't take action.

Somebody told me the other day that 'stupidity' can also motivate you to take courageous action. Personally, I think almost all stupidity is driven by reward (or at least the desire to achieve the reward) - validation, acceptance, belonging, acknowledgement, recognition etc.

I’ll cover that in the next article.

Like I said - simple, but not always easy.

Bottom line - confidence is available to everybody, and the only way to get there is to take courageous action and keep practising until it becomes unconscious competence.

There’s always a gap between where we are and where we want to be…

Wear the CAP to close the gap 🧢

Kerryn Vaughan is the author of ‘Magnificent Kids!’ and ‘Get Off The Bench!’, co-founder of Girls With Hammers, and host of Get Off The Bench Podcast.

Kerryn is a leadership facilitator and the founder of Confident Leaders Program and The Confidence CAP, as well as an accredited DISC ADVANCED® consultant.