Best Of: A Class on Confidence

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendan show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes on online to tens of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking.

On some stages across the world.

Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students. So I know you're going to really enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts and in these special episodes here, these are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategies that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this, but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance Institute and I train on that and then I do Q and A and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendon.com monthly that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com forward/monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this. So if you like this, you would love that training program. But without further ado, let's jump in right now to one of the Brendon shows, best of trainings.

I want to go into this conversation with you today about thinking about the mindset of Confidence and success in general. And just some simple things you can do on a daily basis to help you get there. First and foremost, let's talk about confidence. One thing I want you to realize that confidence is, is it's fleeting. I mean, it's a fleeting emotion. It can come and go if you're not generating it. A lot of people beat themselves up. They say, well, I'm just not confident. Well, or I don't have confidence. Remember, the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates energy. You yourself have to realize that you'll never have it. It's going to be fleeting unless you determine and have the intention to have it. So it's a quick reminder if you want confidence to stick, you have to continually focus on it and decide to have it, not hope to have it. Just decide. Just like the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates it. You're going to say I'm going to generate confidence in this moment. And you have to do that on a consistent enough basis in lots of different situations. And suddenly it becomes more of a universal sense. Feeling and belief. Does that make sense? So if you're in school, you have to go into your classroom confidently. You have to talk to your professor confidently, you have to talk to your peers confidently. You just have to generate confidence and just go there, even if it feels a little unnatural at first. Until you find your rhythm and, and find your sense of place about it. And then doing it over and over and over and over again, it will start to stick. Confidence is only fleeting for those who only focus on it once in a while. If it becomes something you focus on a continual basis, that means it becomes a practice. That means it's likely to become a skill. That means it's likely to become a competency. That means it's likely to become an enduring feeling sensation and traitor. It all builds on each other. But without continual focus, your confidence will always wane. By focusing on how confident I feel and willing myself, remember willingness. Willing myself to be more confident in that situation over and over and over and over and over again for 19 years on fairly regular basis. It's why I feel sort of in my life much more confident than I ever imagined I would. And not to say that I don't have my moments when I where sometimes it's not there and I kind of feel dork out. When I met the Dalai Lama or two US Presidents. Now when I met them I was like kind of dorking out a little bit, but I was having fun. Cause I was willing to be there. I believed I was worthy of being there. I believed I was capable of adding some kind of value or experience there. And just those beliefs helped me approach those and feel more confident. I might lose my footing once in a while, but because I'm intentional and I return back this idea, that confidence that I deserve to be here, that I want to be here, that I can add some value here, helps me adjust along the way and make sure that it's not just fleeting, but it's something that sticks. Second idea, a lot of people believe that you have to completely quelch or get rid of fear in your life to feel confident. And I think that's kind of absurd and very Pollyannish. A lot of people who do things that they're scared of can do them confidently at the same time, right? A fireman charging into a fire. Believe me, they've got adrenaline, they've got some fear and lots of concern going on. But they're confident because they're going to apply their skill. They're confident because they're going to do their work, they're going to put in the train, they're going to put their training into place. They've practiced that scenario, they've planned for that scenario, and they're confident because they have prepared. And so I want you to realize that a lot of things that you fear, it's okay that you fear them or you get anxiety. Like, people sometimes think anxiety is so bad. I get some performance anxiety backstage at my big events. You know, I'm going to go speak out to a couple hundred, couple thousand, tens of thousands of people. Believe me, I get the butterflies and the energy and some sense of that is fear. Some sense of that is a little worry or concern or anxiety, that's okay, but it's not going to stop me. And that's the difference. People who become unsuccessful in their life, every time they feel anxiety or discomfort or any sense of struggle or hardship, they stop. Successful people realize that often not only is that necessary to prepare them, to enhance them, it's also just part of the journey of growing. It's part of the journey of learning. It's like if I'm not ever fearful or concerned, if I never have any anxiety, that means I'm not thrusting myself into challenging situations to grow. So let's not have this belief that just because you're scared sometimes that you're not confident. That's not true. You can be confident and experience anxiety, right? It's the same thing. It's like, trust me, I've worked with some elite warriors like Navy SEAL or people like Olympians. They've got the anxiety, they've got the adrenaline push, they've got even sometimes the true genuine fear in that situation. But they're going to rely on this simple thing. They believe they can figure it out and they know that they're going to do their best. And by giving themselves that trust and that credit, they find a sense of confidence even when they're amid the unknown, even when they're in challenging circumstances. And remember, that's part of the definition of confidence, is how the hallmarks of confidence, we can see it on you. Can you be really you? Can you take some action and can you adapt in situations? That's telling us that you got some confidence. Third idea, Usually competence feels like consensus. It's happening for us because how we're thinking, our mindset, our thoughts and our body, our physicality, our movement, our physiology. And so you can hack that. You can say, great, okay, if I want to be confident, what would I have to think about myself and this situation to feel good about it and a little bit more strong, certain or confident? So what would I have to think about it? Second, how would I have to move? How would I have to hold my body? How would I have to breathe? How would I have to see? What would I have to pay attention to and notice? What would I have to decide that this situation is all about and how much value I'm going to add to it? These types of questions can be hacked. We can run them over and over and over again. As soon as I knew that was a trick, I was like, that's a trick. I can do that. What I really want you to do is focus on finding what is it for you in the way that you would hold yourself in a present, peaceful, focused, highly alert sense. For some people, that's a big dramatic movement. Other people, it's a way of breathing in a meditative, spiritual, present tense. Whatever it is for you, find your way. And all I ask you to do is you already know it. So challenge yourself to stand up and say, if I was just, let's say, twice as confident as I've been in the last two weeks, how would I walk? How would I be breathing? How would I shake somebody's hand? How would I look them in the eye? You already know all the answers to be more confident. The only issue is you probably haven't been applying them with enough consistency, enough force and intensity, regularity and practice and in multiple situations to make it stick. That make Sense. Now, that wasn't a flippant thing to say. I'm not judging you and saying, geez, you haven't done this or you haven't done this. What I'm trying to suggest to you is every single one of us have become a higher performer than we already are. I work with Fortune 100 CEOs who they really do, they struggle with this issue. And all I say is, hey, look, every other area of your life that you mastered, you just practiced it, you made it intention, you studied it and you did it a lot in lots of different situations. So you got good at it. That's what I want you to do with this very philosophy. So find that movement for you. I'll also suggest this. It's very hard to be confident and feel physically confident and alert and alive if you are dehydrated, if you are fatigued from lack of sleep or you're heavy because of a lot of lack of nutrition. Like you just, you ate something really bad.

You.

It's hard to go in your best place after that, right? You eat a bunch of Gut bomb hamburgers or French fries or Coca Colas and all of a sudden it's like it is hard when you are lethargic because of what you ate. It is hard. So optimize your physical body. What I want you to do is just some very simple things to accomplish that. So simple. Sleep eight hours. If you think you can beat eight hours, you're fooling yourself and you're fooling every study that we have that studies performance. The vitality of sleeping seven to eight hours that you get is so powerful and most people aren't doing it. Second, hydrate more. You got to drink a lot more water. I mean a lot more water. If I'm working out during a day, if I'm going to work out, that means on that given day, I'm probably drinking 5 to 6 liters of water a day, right? Again, I can only do that because I'm not sedentary too, because I'm also exercising on a continual basis, right? At least every single day. The minimum I'll do is a 45 minute walk. But usually every other day I do something pretty intense, right? An hour long cardio session or a 20 to 40 minute power weightlifting session that helps my body stay strong. Another thing that I really want you to focus on doing for your physical body, for your physical body is learning to take practice like meditation or learning to take a break every 50 to 90 minutes, get up from your desk or walk around Hydrate and stretch, stretch and stretch. It's hard to feel confident if your body is tight, right? Like, think about the times when you felt most alive. Fun, flirty, sensual, crazy alive, confident, whatever. Great feeling, emotional state, you probably felt a little loose in the body a little bit. So we have to train ourselves that we sit so much like this. We get so tight. So every time, if you're ever around me and you stand around me for just a little bit of time, you see me moving, rotating my shoulders, stretching out my hips, like constantly. All the time. I'm constantly moving my body because I know when it is activated. And loose, that's where my power is. So stretch, so important, right? So if your body is loose and limber, you're eating foods that are healthy for you, you are doing things like sleeping and hydrating. All this adds to making the temple stronger. It adds to making you feel better. Because I really believe if you have more energy, it's a lot easier to feel more confident if you're just wiped out. That's where it's so easy to go. Into the parts of our body and our brain that feel negative, hurt, frustrated, inflamed. Now we start bringing it up into our emotions and our behaviors. And it's all because we didn't take care of it. Because, I mean, honestly, think about it. If you had double the energy each day, double the energy each day, do you think you could easily double your confidence? Yes or no? Most people say, yeah, if I had more energy, I'd feel a lot more confident. It's a lot of times I just walk in that meeting and I'm just barely surviving. I don't feel confident. I don't want to express myself because I'm just tired. You tend to express yourself more when you're more energized. And expressing yourself is just one more step to personal freedom, right? That ability to authentically express who we are is so important. So get your body right and move. Pay very close attention from now on. Here's the takeaway. From now on, every single day, pay very close attention to your physical structure and how you're holding it. How are you? I want you to stand. All I want you to do, just focus on standing more tall than you've ever stood. What I want you to do, I want you to stand taller. That's all I want you to do. For what that means is just put your shoulders back. Imagine your head and the top of your head just going up to the ceiling. Just lift your whole body up. Start focusing on your posture all day long. I want you to focus on your posture, especially when you're in social situations. A lot of people where they feel lack of confidence socially, it's because they're like, hey, how are you doing? Now I want you to just, boom. Pull the shoulders back, put the head and neck up, walk up to someone, look them in the eye, stand tall, stand full. As you look them in the eye and you shake their hand. That's all I want you to do. Total focus on your physical body and physical alignment as you're doing that. Because from a place of physical alignment, physical looseness and power, high vitality and energy, confidence is kind of easy. But if you're wiped out, you're tired, you're malnourished, and you're tight physically, it's hard to get there. I know that you probably know these things, and many people watch this. You've already been through a lot of my training, so maybe you're already in optimal health. Guess what? Everyone I work with, there's always another level. What's the next level of action for you to get more energized in your life? What's the next level of ambition for you to be more physically energized in your life? What's that next level of habit or routine you could set up to optimize your body and mind even more? We can always go to that next level. And as we go up that level, we have that intention. We start to feel more confident because we start learning things again. We start challenging things again. And suddenly we start to feel like, whew, you know, I did it again. I didn't think I could go to another level, but I did. It gives you more confidence. So please focus on your movement. How are you holding your body? Also, last piece to this so simple voice. I want you to start projecting more with your voice.

Most people talk like this. How you doing? Okay. How is it? Oh, did you pay attention to celebrity news? I did. It wasn't very good. I know. It wasn't so good.

Did you see the weather? Oh, the weather sucked.

Okay. Gosh. How is the thing? How's the thing?

Did you see that celebrity? What stupid thing?

Oh, gosh. What's the office politics, blah, blah, blah.

And they're just, like, so under. They're not projecting. Part of the real feeling and sensation of confidence comes from the ability to communicate. And if you're somebody who's always been told they can't hear you, like, if someone's, I can't hear you. I can't hear you is a good reason to explore that. Why are you speaking so softly and don't believe yourself? Well, that's how I'm spiritually built. No, no, no, no, no, no. If you want to find more confidence, it's time to project your voice into the world more. It's fine to speak your thoughts, your feelings, your truths, your needs, your desires, your ambitions. It's time to share again. But also I want you to increase your volume because something's funny. As soon as you decide to increase our volume, you know what we have to do. We have to align our physical chest, our neck and our mouth to do that. I know it sounds so simple, but it's a little trick to speak louder. People automatically pay more attention to their body because they know you can't talk very loud from down here. But if you boom. You go here to project, you feel that vitality in your body again, you're projecting a little bit more. You will feel that it will stick. Trust me. Give it a try. I hope these practices have helped you. Some of these ideas, I know they're so simple, they're so basic. But listen, common sense is not common practice. And that's why most people struggle. Your job is to make these little things, I'm telling you, just common practice in your life. From having intention in situations to have more confidence, to having intention in situations to know that you can figure it out, to know that you can adjust your body and physical movement. All these little things I've suggested, they're going to help you. So give them a try. Put them on a note card for yourself. Do whatever you have to do.

All right, my friend, I hope that you enjoyed that best of episode. Was that inspiring? Were you fired up? Did you love it? If you did, make sure you do me a favor, go out on social media somewhere and share that episode. Just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself listening to it, make sure you hashtag the brendanshow. Because when you do that, I can look you up, up and we can find you on Instagram and post that on social media. And sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people, we send them gifts, autograph books, swag T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you, you let us know, share what you thought about this episode out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to Brendan. That's Brendan.com forward/monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings like you just heard. But we do that every single month. And there's some live Q and A there and I do some giveaways and we give students in that monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@brendon.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so that they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little bit more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B R E N D O N show.