Ashok Gupta argues that confidence isn't something you build but something you uncover beneath layers of fear and conditioning. He uses animal studies and the people-pleaser archetype to show why empowerment matters, then offers meditation and retraining practices to strip away what's covering your existing confidence.
And this is a deeper part of our journey as we go through the Gupta program is learning to feel confident about who we are as a person. Now, animal studies show that when someone feels that they are in a passive state and they are not empowered, they have higher levels of stress, certainly in the animal kingdom. And I'm sure that's the same for human beings and certainly with our approval seeker or people pleaser, this part of us doesn't necessarily trust our own judgment. And that's why the people pleasing is there, because it's saying other people's views are more important than my own. And perhaps they're more intelligent than me or I think they are better than me in some way. And this is about learning to connect with our inner strength, our inner confidence. And this isn't about being aggressive or shouting or trying to be over dominant with other people, but just having a quiet confidence in ourselves, not needing to explain yourself to others. But as Henny's mentioned, their confidence and trust in our own voice. And as we practice all of these tools, including regular, longer, deeper meditation, we start connecting to our natural sense of confidence. And isn't this amazing that I don't need to give you confidence, you don't need to give yourself confidence. You already are a confident human being. You already have all the assertiveness and confidence and strength and inner courage already within you. And Ashok, you might say, well, that's actually very flowery and very nice, but that's not how I feel. And what I'll say to you is, you are like the diamonds, you already are the finished article. But what's covering the diamond are layers of dust. And these layers of dust have been formed by the experiences that we've gone through that we've hidden. That natural confidence and incredible power that you have has been covered by these layers of dust which have been caused by the experiences of life, the tough experiences of life. And the purpose of the meditation, the regular meditation, is polishing, polishing, polishing, removing the layers of the ancient dust. The purpose of the retraining is polishing. It is removing certain aspects of the dust that got very, very sticky on top of that diamond, so that the retraining is removing specific specks of dust. Meditation is polishing the overall diamond that you are and the self awareness of the parts work once again is removing some of these layers of personality that got formed in our past that are hiding the true confidence that you already are. And isn't that incredibly empowering that you know, it was the Buddha who said, you know someone asked him, how did you get enlightened? You know, what did you gain? How did you do this? And he said, I gained nothing and lost everything. And so it is with our journey that we are not gaining confidence. We are not gaining health or learning how to be healthy. We are simply removing the fear and the resistance and the restrictions that cover this beautiful diamond that we already are, that already knows how to be healthy and happy. And when you see it from that point of view, it's empowering, because you don't need to learn anything. It's actually de. Learning, unlearning what you have learned. Those of you Star wars fans, you'll remember that famous scene with Yoda where he says, you must unlearn what it is you have learnt. And so it is here we are simply unlearning decades of that conditioning.
