How to 3x Your Confidence
15 Dec 2020 · 29 min
Brendon Burchard draws on 20 years in personal development to break down confidence into three parts: self-respect, skill acquisition, and social confidence. He explains how each builds on the others and shares methods to strengthen them.
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Hey my friends, it's Brandon Burchard and welcome to a special episode of the Brendon Show. Hey, I'm Brendon Burchard and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. With this episode, I've spent the last 20 years studying human behavior change and writing, coaching and training literally at the top levels on the topics of motivation, focus, productivity, confidence and more. My goal, inspired by my own personal journey, is to help you and my audience live love and matter. Which means to feel more vibrant, more connected and and more fulfilled in every area of your life. That's what we're doing today. If you liked today's episode, grab a screenshot and share it on Instagram. Just tag me Enonbruchard so I can see you and give you a shout out or a hello. And if you want to go to another level of personal development in your life this month, be sure to join me live every month in my coaching program. Just visit HPXCoaching to get signed up. I teach a brand new personal development session every single month. Meaning it's like a personal development seminar for you. Live every single month on the first of the month and then after I teach that for about 75 minutes, then we do live breakouts where you get to meet new people, network with people, set your monthly goals and establish real accountability for your growth. Listen, you know that expert guidance and real consistency and an inspiring community is critical to your growth. So join me this month on the 1st just go to hpxcoaching.com that's hpxcoaching.com it's time to level up, my friend. It's time to take your year back. It's time to find that focus and that confidence and that vibrancy and that vibe. Again, go to hpxcoaching.com and and let me be your coach into fuller levels of high performance in every area of your life. Now, without further ado, let's jump in to today's episode.
How to 3 times your confidence Now I think I'm going to approach the topic of confidence today maybe in a different way than you're used to or you've been exposed to. And I hope in some of these very tactical things it helps you gain confidence. But I hope also as a larger perspective on your life right now, you find a little bit more sure footing as you move forward the next couple weeks and months, as you're transitioning into new things in your life, as you're trying to do more, as you're Trying to accomplish more and give more. I want to help you do it a little bit more sanely, a little bit more with some joy and with much more impact. I give a huge shout out to you because there's so many people in the world who say they're interested in personal development, but you, you're here working on yourself right now. Confidence does not mean the absence of insecurity. People get that wrong all the time. It's one reason a lot of people don't feel as confident as they should at this stage of their life. They're like, but Brendan, I still have doubts. I must not be confident. I'm like, do you think confident people don't have doubts? Do you think confident people don't sometimes go in the. I hope this goes okay. I mean, do you think confident people also don't hit, you know, two in the afternoon sometimes? Think, man, what the hell am I doing? Where am I going? Why am I working so hard for this? When am I going to break through the next level? Look, confident people do have insecurities and doubts too. So sometimes I have to tell a lot of coaching clients, stop being so hard on yourself. You're probably more confident and capable than you really understand. But you don't give yourself credit because you're trying to be perfect, not confident, different things, right? I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm not trying to be certain. I'm trying to be confident. Confident in myself, in my abilities, confident in what I'm doing in my life. Those are things that can exist. Even though there are always insecurities, doubts, internal resistance or defiance. Right? Even you can be a really confident person even if people reject you all the time. Like your confidence exists on its own, whether there's doubt or rejection or not. And that confidence then means it's your own. You determine it, you decide it, but you also get to pick and choose it. And what I mean by that, we're not just talking about general self esteem here. We're going to talk about a very specific approach to confidence that we know leads to high performance. So measurable confidence that leads to measurable outcomes in your well being, your health, your relationships, your career, your finances, that there's a certain kind of confidence that's been really studied in the field of psychology that might help you kind of retool and rethink about it. Because confidence doesn't mean you're so happy all the time and everything is perfect and there's no doubts or insecurities. Matter of fact, if I Met somebody who had tons of confidence and didn't have any doubts and insecurities. I would say this to them. And so if that's you, if you're like, well, I'm just confident. I don't have any doubts and insecurities. I'm like, ah, you're aiming too low. That's it. If you don't have doubts or insecurities, you're aiming too low for your capabilities and your potential, Right? If no one thinks you're crazy and if you don't have doubts and insecurities, then you're not yet operating at the edge of your true potential. I mean, you're so stuck. I mean, you're, you're, you're like in the quicksand of the comfort zone. We want you to have some doubts and insecurities. That's okay. So I just want to get over that right off the bat because too many people in my particular field of either personal and professional training or career development or, you know, in the thought leader industry or in the social media influencer world, they're out there, you know, telling you have some kind of confidence as if it's a complete certainty or perfection. And I'm like, that's not real life, man. I don't know anybody who's authentically confident, who doesn't have a lot of doubts, a lot of insecurities, a lot of like, am I going the right way? They're constantly adjusting because there's this learning thing. When you're really confident, when you're really, truly confident, you tend to be a really great learner. Because if you're really confident, you're willing to adjust. If you're really confident, you can adapt. If you're really confident, you can be agile. If you're really confident, you can take in input without getting offended and angry or feeling judged or rejected every time someone gives you some input, right? Real confidence is the ability to take lots of new information and make some selections and choices and move forward. Even amid the doubt, the fear, the insecurity, the rejection, the catcalls, the mean people, the judgments, the harassments. To be able to still be you authentically amid all of the craziness. Marching towards something that you identify as is important. That's the kind of confidence we're talking about here today. First area, when I say confidence, most people think of this one, they think of the self, right? The self esteem part of confidence. Like, how do I feel about myself? Do I like myself? Do I feel like I am congruent with the best of my potential with my real values. Am I congruent in who I say I am versus how I actually show up? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday? Do I have that self confidence that comes from both self care and congruence? And also just the esteem of taking joy or pride with or love in who we are, honoring our soul, honoring our spirit, honoring how we have shown up in the world. That tends to be the stuff when we say self confidence, what most people think about. And so when you just think about your care, your appreciation, your love, your respect for yourself, that sometimes is bucketed into self confidence, right? Sometimes that's bucketed into self esteem. That's all good too. One area that we focus on a lot in performance psychology is we try to understand how when you think about self confidence, we're trying to think of like, do you have the confidence to approach and go after the tasks and the activities and the goals that you feel will lead to a better future for you? So it's not just how do you feel about yourself? Because you know what, there's a lot of people who feel great about themselves and they do nothing on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to push themselves. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, I know a lot of people who sit there on television in the basement, plugging away on their laptop or watching some show and just judging people. Uh huh. Look at her. Mm. And they feel great about themselves, but they're doing nothing with themselves. So sometimes great self esteem or great self confidence in that casual way that I just described isn't necessarily moving their life forward. I mean, do you know any people who are so confident in themselves, but they do nothing, right? They feel good about themselves. Matter of fact, they might even be narcissistic. They might be incredibly judgmental against other people, but they just think, well, I'm pretty good. And they're constantly judging, judging, judging, judging, judging, judging. Anyone know somebody like that? I bet you recognize that that's not a real kind of confidence that we're after. But what I've learned over and over with high performers is they really do want to have that connection with self. They really do want to have a, like respect and an honoring. And they work each day then to show up in a way that at the end of the night they respected who showed up that day. They honor that. And so maybe as we're talking about confidence today, you can go within a little bit and just say, hey, look, do you like the person who's showing up in your life right now yourself, I mean, do you feel like the person who lived yesterday, was that the best of you? Are you happy, proud of, confident in that person? Do you feel like they're living the values that you deeply feel in your mind and your heart and your soul are important. Sometimes a way to get a little bit more out of self confidence is to say, do I really genuinely respect myself? Do I genuinely care for who I am? Can I give myself a little bit of credit? Can I love myself a little bit more so I do feel good about myself? Because if you don't feel good about yourself, it is hard to have a big vision. Isn't that true? If you don't feel good about yourself, it's hard to have a big vision. So what I found with high performers, where they actually really did care about this thing that we talk about, which is self respect, which is self love, self care, self compassion, maybe that softer side of confidence that most people consider right, that I really think we're actually seeing right now in the world, a major pivot towards that type of self care and self confidence. Where you see this big movement, like over the last decade, especially the big surge toward the mindfulness movement, that happened because a lot of people didn't like themselves. They didn't like that they were being angry all the time to other people. They didn't like that they're not noticing and enjoying and feeling grateful for life. They didn't like that time was passing by and they never even noticed the kids growing up. And so they didn't like themselves. And I think what we've realized over the last couple decades is if you don't like yourself, it's really hard to be confident in your goals each day. You can. But this is an important area that high performers really do talk about. They talk about congruence and self respect. They talk about liking the person they are. And if they don't like the person, they are working so hard to adapt and to change and to learn and to grow so they can like the person they are. Because no one wants to get at the end of their life and have tremendous regret about who they were in their life.
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That reveals to you that there's other types of confidence other than just self. Okay? So we'll work through those. Right now, one of those other types of confidence is basically a confidence in skill. A confidence in skill. Now this is the one that most people think about when you actually talk about confidence. They don't automatically go to self respect, they don't automatically go to self care or congruence. Most people go, am I confident to go do that? In the world of psychology, we often talk about this in the phrase of self efficacy, right? The term self efficacy being, do I have the ability, do I believe in my ability to accomplish this thing? Self efficacy is, I feel like I have a high level of personal agency or personal control and I can do this specific task or activity, right? It's like if you put a kid in front of a chessboard, their confidence could be easily measured as well. Does this kid feel like they can win this specific game against this specific person? That's a skill set level of confidence, right? It's like for me right now, at this stage of my career, you can put me on any stage, anywhere in the world, anytime, no matter what the circumstances. I have Confidence I will deliver every single time, no matter what. It doesn't mean I'll be my absolute 1000% best. It doesn't mean I'm going to always get the standing ovation. It just means I'm going to have confidence in my ability to deliver an exceptional speech every single time. And I know you have that in many parts of your life too. You just know how to handle something. Some of you are moms and you just know when the kids are screaming and you come home and there's like just, you know, five, six kids running around, they're all screaming. You just know how to handle that. When you know how to handle something, doesn't mean that you always get it right. Doesn't mean everything's perfect. But you're just like, if you've been there and done that, High level of skill leads to high level of self efficacy and often self esteem correlated with it, that if you've done it before, you have more confidence. And this is why this is an important thing. If you have a big goal and you're moving towards it and you keep backing down because you think, well, I'm no good at that. That is not how high performers think. High performers have a big goal and they go, well, naturally, I'm not good at that. I haven't done that before. So when they start and it's messy and it's ugly and it sucks and they're embarrassed and it's not working out and they're not getting momentum and progress, they don't quit. Listen, underperformers, when they first start a journey to achieving a dream, they tend to quit very quickly. I mean, in the first couple weeks, months or year, they're just done because they're uncomfortable with it. Because in their mind, they're basically wired wrong. Their mindset says, well, I should be good at this. High performers automatically know they're not. They go, oh, to get to that goal, I'm going to have to begin a new skill acquisition path, right? Because if it was a goal that was attainable, they'd already know how to do it. They'd already have the skill. But high performers are often setting very ambitious and challenging and scary goals. And they're okay with the fact that they suck along the way. That's why we come up with that phrase right here. Honor the struggle. They're willing to honor the struggle along the way because they know it's just going to be difficult, it's just going to be hard. And they don't let a low level of skill confidence stop them from going for it. It's really important they don't let a low level of skill confidence stop them from going for it. You know, let's go back. Like, if I can share just one of my beginning of my journey. When I got my first stage, I was terrified. I had no skill confidence whatsoever. None, because I hadn't done it before. Now I've developed this and developed this and developed this. But see, in my first 10, 20, 30, 40 stages, I didn't have skill confidence at all. I wasn't good as a public speaker. I sucked at it. My first couple live casts or broadcasts or teaching events and seminars, I sucked. But I was okay with that because, see, I had confidence in myself. I was like, I'm going to be congruent. I'm going to be the best of who I am. I'm going to give my best. And I didn't let low skill confidence stop me. So now you see why it's important to know these distinctions. You can have little of this, but if you have this, you'll keep marching. That's why it's important to be the best human you can be now. So that as you're going for that next new big thing, you're comfortable when you don't have skill at it yet. So if you're not yet really engaging and going for something, please recognize these are two different ways of thinking. And if we can line them up, oh my gosh, that's what high performers have done. They really have a lot of self trust, self respect and congruence. And they're okay acquiring skill or ultimately have developed that skill. And now it's extraordinary. The third part that most people would think about when they think about confidence that they really want is they want what's called social confidence. Like, this is the stuff that, you know, if you could walk into a room right now with 50 billionaires, would you feel confident in that room? That's what, like, could you go and mix and mingle and talk with people? Or would you feel like completely fish, you know, fish out of water, awkward and weird and strange and like, like, where would you be? One, you couldn't talk with anybody. You'd sit at the punch bowl or at the bar and just like get wasted, not to talk to anybody. Okay, 10 is you'd be walking up and engaging and talking with people. No problem. What's the difference between the two? One person who won't engage and one person who does. Now be careful of saying, well, that's just an introvert versus an extrovert. Because you're wrong. High performers, it turns out, are just as likely to be introverts as extroverts. There's this big myth that high performers must be extremely charismatic people who are just confident in every social situation. Not necessarily true. And it's not necessarily an innate talent or personality style. What makes a high performer have high social confidence? Listen to this. What makes a high performer have high social confidence is their joy in asking questions. That turned out to be the strongest correlation. They are curious people, and their curiosity gives them social confidence. I learned this in college when I read a book from Larry King, the famous broadcaster. He wrote a book, how to Talk to Anybody, Anytime, Anywhere, about anything. And what I loved about it was it was kind of a misnomer because it said how to talk to anybody about anything. And it wasn't really about how to talk. It was about how to ask questions. And it really changed my worldview in college because, you know, I want to be able to walk in the bar or walk into a class or walk into networking, just talk to people. Especially when I first started dating, I just. I wanted to walk up to girls and just be like, hey, of course they don't like that. Took me a little long to learn that. But what people love is to be engaged. People love to have that conversation back and forth. That's really driven more by questions and curiosity than it is by telling or projecting. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. So if you're a person who's just like, well, I'm not a confident person, so I can't go for my dreams because I'm awkward around people. I'm like, oh, no. Lots of people are awkward around people. You look at some of the most successful people who we measure today and go, oh, wow. I mean, and we think about as like, titans. If you look at, say, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, you look at Richard Branson, you look at many people who we really celebrate at the top, including government officials, female and male, all around the world. A lot of them pretty awkward people, but they enjoy people, right? They're awkward and they didn't have a lot of confidence. Elon Musk, we celebrate as, like this go getter going to space guy. But he also had a big part of him very awkward with other people, even trying to figure out how to have his own type of social confidence as he moved forward. So did Bill Gates. Now, if you ever get around Bill Gates, and I've been blessed once or twice to interact with the guy. Very conversational, super laid back. He knew and he was aware that he was, quote unquote, a geek. Right? Not my words, their words. Right? So here's this geek guy who becomes a billionaire and along the way, just like Mark zuckerberg, they had to learn how to engage other people outside of their own frames of reference. And the way they all ultimately came through was to leverage that thing that made them successful in the first place. Curiosity, asking more questions. And the truth is that same journey happened for me in college. I went from pretty lacking confidence my freshman and sophomore year by the end of my senior year and then into grad student and then working for accenture and then now out on the road talking to literally tens of thousands of.
People all around the world.
I'm so socially confident. Not because of I'm Brendon burchard. I'm confident because I'm going to ask questions. Whoever I meet, I'm not going to try to impress. I'm just going to ask them questions about themselves and then I might have a greater connection point. Now, I know some of you go, well, duh, that's like Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. And it is true, if you haven't read that book recently, read it again. It'll help you. But it's about asking and engaging other people. So here's the three major areas and I hope that sharing just a little bit about them and some simple distinctions from what high performers say, some of it is common sense. I know that. But it's not always common practice. If you look at your life, do you feel like your self confidence is giving you the momentum you need to achieve your dreams? Is your self confidence in your skill sets and how you deal with people? I mean, if you combined all of these, is it giving you the momentum that you need to achieve your dreams? Because a lot of people go, yeah, yeah, I get it, Brendon. But if I actually show up in their life and I look at their goals, I'm like, your goals are paltry compared to what you're capable of. A lot of people I coach with, I look at their last three months of progression and I go, what's going on here? And it almost always comes back to how they perceive themselves or their abilities in one of these three areas.
All right. Hey, my friend, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're ready to go to another level, don't Forget, go to hpxcoaching.com Let me be your coach. Let me spend the first of each month with you giving you a personal development seminar. Let me help you get unstuck, break through your emotional blocks, find your real clarity, your real passion, your real purpose and implement the habits that you know you need to implement. Change your life by getting a coach, getting some expert guidance. Listen, you got as far as you could get. You're here. You've achieved so much in your life. But to go to another level requires another level of mindset, another level of discipline, another level of direction and community and consistency. And that is what my coaching program is all about. So go to hpxcoaching.com and listen, if.
You'Re ready to go to a whole.
Other level, I'm hiring. Please go to brendan.com hiring for our open roles. I got a big secret project that we are rolling out and you'll only find information that@brendon.com hiring we've got, I don't know, 10 or 12 open positions there. If you ever wanted to work with me, if you wanted me to be your leader, you wanted me to literally employ you and help you grow in your career and do what we do, serving this mission of helping people around the world achieve their dreams faster, helping them improve their lives. We live every day as a team to do that. And we are currently hiring. We're building out a new product and we need some people to help us do that. Brendan.com hiring if you don't know how to spell my name, don't even think about it. We're looking for people who are pros. If you're interested in internship with me, don't go there. We're not hiring interns. If you're interested in starting your career with me, don't go there. We are an A team here. We've got people who are really experienced. So if you're new to personal development or you're new to marketing, you're probably not going to be the person we're looking for. We're looking for people with at least three years of professional experience in a lot of different roles because we take.
This role very seriously.
We get to change lives and millions of them every single day. That's the work. So we're looking for real pros, top of your game, ready to come on to an organization that reaches just as many people in the world as any other personal development influencer or trainer on the planet. And we'd be excited to have you join us in a big new initiative we're rolling out for the beginning of the year. I can't even tell you any more about that. Go to brendon.com hiring if you'd like.
To work with us.
And if you just want to go to another level and have me as your coach, not your Boss, go to hpxcoaching.com so I can give you a brand new personal development session this month to help you set your goals, get on track, get unstuck, and achieve your ultimate difference. Go to hpxcoaching.com for that. Thanks again for listening to the Brendon Show. You all mean so much to me. I have so much coming out in the next couple months for you here that's going to be unique and special and I know you're going to love it. So keep your head up. I know it's been a hard year. Please remember, as always, you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you.