Luke Murray defines confidence as predictive accuracy and breaks it into three components: recent experience, relevance, and positive results. To build it, shorten your goals (post one video, not a thousand) and focus on actions you control. Lack of confidence is normal; growth happens when you do unfamiliar things anyway.
I'm scared to post this because I don't have confidence. And the first thing I want to say is, if you're asking, well, what's the thing that you're scared to post? What's the secret? Or do you have some, I don't know, revenge porn out there that you need to like hurry up and go find? No, I'm just scared to say anything at all, to post or publish anything. And so I wanted to open this by acknowledging that emotion. I'm going to sit with it in a second here. But the reason that I feel this strong emotion is because I don't have confidence. So I'm going to define what confidence is, and I'm going to steal a lot of that definition from this guy over here. I'm going to talk about where it comes from, which also will be stolen largely from Dr. Hormozy. How do you get more of it? Which I will have some of my own thoughts on and more about this feeling at the very, very end and how basically what it means. But yeah, I just want to start with, I am uncomfortable in my body right now. Like I feel tightness in my throat. I feel like I'm going to throw up a little bit. And I just want to name that before I jump in. I know it's not the best hook in the world, but this is what I'm trying to communicate, that if you're looking at everyone else, like I have been for the last few months, be like, how do I jump in and make it high energy and make everybody love it? And you're like, oh my gosh, that's too much. I'm just here to be real. That's the most important thing. So what's this definition of confidence? My definition. Slashes. It's just predictive accuracy. So the reason I don't have a lot of confidence is because I cannot predict with any accuracy that this isn't going to be an absolute piece of shit video. So I'd like to be able to, but I can't. And the reason is because I don't have the 3 pieces, the 3 Rs that you need in order to get a lot of confidence. And those things are experience that is recent, relevant, and that you've got positive results from. Or most people would probably add repetition, like a lot of it. But frankly, if you're getting the results, then it doesn't really matter. So I used to be a physician, and when there was a code blue, that means someone in the hospital was actively dying, I would sprint there and I would run the code and I did a good job. And that's a super valuable skill that is extremely relevant and that I got good results at. But I haven't done this in like 4 or 5 years. So if that were to happen in the other room, I would have very low confidence running into that room. Relevance, I mean, I've started lots of companies, but if someone said, hey, I started this NFT thing, like I've done things recently, I'm doing things now, and I've I've got good results, but I don't have skills that are as relevant. So I'd be less confident and then less confident. And then finally, results. As you can see, I am a very unsuccessful bodybuilder. I do it constantly, or at least multiple times a week. I've been doing it. It's very, very relevant, recent. Um, but I look like this. So I don't have a whole lot of confidence when it comes to my ability to predict that I would be good at being a bodybuilder. Now, the question then, I guess, is like, well, how do you get these? And how do I, how do I address this feeling of not confident? Well, one of them is with your head, and this is like how you plan. And the other one is with addressing the emotions. So how do you get more of it? First is changing the goal and changing it on two axes or in two criteria. One is shortening the time frame of what you're shooting for. Instead of being like, I mean, what I did is I was like, I'm gonna make 1,000 videos. I mean, literally, I'm like, I'm planning my first thousand, then I'll make my second thousand. Uh, way too long of a time frame for me. Very, very intimidating. And I spent the better part of 3 or 4 months not producing anything because I was thinking about video, literally 1,000. Um, and the second is their controllability. Or another way to say this is confidence. Like, things that are under your control, you have a high predictive accuracy with those things. So I have a very high predictive accuracy that I can turn on my phone and press record, and so I have a lot of confidence that I can do that. So if you break goals down into much, much shorter time frames and you focus on things that you can control, and honestly, you change the goal from a— I guess the next chunked up level is like I just want to post one video. So there's a level of skill required that I don't have yet, but I do feel confident about posting a video. So one of the things about confidence is also, also has to do with your expertise. So if you have all three of these, you don't have to break things down very much. If you said, hey Luke, go start a behavioral health company in Northern Kentucky, I have recent relevant results, so I have a lot of confidence, then you wouldn't have to break that down. If you were my boss. But if you're gonna tell me to do something I didn't have any of these with, you would have to break it down a lot. And I don't have any of these when it comes to producing content. So I have to manage myself and say, hey Luke, maybe just turn on your camera and press record. So that's what I'm doing right now, and that increases my confidence on a tighter timeline, on a shorter shorter kind of attainable goal. The last thing I want to talk about though is the idea that being not confident or, or not comfortable means that there's something wrong or that there's something to fix. There isn't. I have been good at a lot of things. I've had a lot of success in a lot of areas of my life. I've been a physician. I've become a millionaire a few times over. I've started successful companies. I'm an Ironman and an author. A bunch of stuff that was difficult. However, if I'm going to continue to grow, I have to keep putting myself in situations that I don't have recent relevant results at. If you did this all the time, you would just do the same thing for your entire life. And there's nothing wrong with that, but one of my top probably 3 values is growth. And so that means this feeling, which that's what it is. Not being confident is a feeling. It is normal. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Shooting this video basically for myself to remind myself that this is how I need to go about not just shooting videos on the internet, it's how I need to go about every one of the challenges that I'm going to on purpose put in my life because that's the kind of life I want to live. So anyway, this is a public speech I just gave myself to force myself to post my first video. Hope you liked it.
