Increasing Your Confidence

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendon 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 gonna 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 in 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 brendan.com monthly that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com 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 show's best of trainings. Don't take things so personally. I think that's a good one. If you are constantly being Offended or hurt or, or upset by other people. And it is affecting your confidence. That is your issue, not theirs. They don't owe you any confidence tablets. They are not responsible for filling your tank. No one owes you confidence. You are the only allower and generator of confidence in your life. So if you don't have it today that in a way that is sufficient for you, please pay attention to our points today, because you are the only grantor of confidence in your life. If you are a bottomless pit that cannot be filled with the appropriate level of confidence, what do you do? You blame everybody else. Well, I'd be more confident if my husband loved me more. I'd be more confident if my children like me. I'd be more confident in my business had billions. I'm like, stop, stop. Let's get sane for a moment. Let's give ourselves the credit that we deserve for our struggles and our efforts. Let's psychologically step into the truth that we're the only ones ever going to grant us that confidence. I remember thinking at one point in my career, I thought, you know, once I have a million dollar launch, I'm gonna be so much more confident on video, you know, that external validation, that number, that million dollar thing. Yeah, I'll be more confident. And I hit it. And the funny thing is, it was amazing. And I bet all of you, you all had tons of successes in your life where you went out, you celebrated, it was awesome, right? You go on the trip, maybe you have some wine, maybe you have a great night, you celebrate, you really celebrate. But even as your lifestyle improves, guess what? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Mondays come along and you wake up with you again, or you put the plaque on the wall. And at first when you hang that plaque, you feel so proud of yourself. Confidence comes in. Look at that. I did that. I'm so proud of that. And then you walk by that plaque 50 times down that hallway, and then one day you look at it and you don't feel anything from it. And it wasn't really. It's not in you. You didn't really give yourself that deep, real acknowledgement that can lead to confidence. You know, here's something I'd love for you all to do in your journal right now. Just write this phrase. I acknowledge myself for. Just type it. I acknowledge myself for. And then just. And I would love for you to write that. Dozens and dozens and dozens of responses. Just keep thinking about it. I acknowledge myself for having survived that difficult childhood, for having still. For having still deep belief in Myself. I acknowledge myself for the hope and the hunger I still have. I acknowledge myself for giving to others. I acknowledge myself for sticking with it. I acknowledge myself for showing up for others. I just like, just write it down. Just keep. I acknowledge myself. I acknowledge myself. I acknowledge myself. I acknowledge myself because, you know, you don't need other people's attention and approval. You need your own. You need your own. You've got to give some attention to yourself again. And that's why we have this beautiful movement in the world of the self care movement, is people going, wow, I got to. I have to take care of myself. But you also have to acknowledge it in a way that you approve of you. A lot of the reasons people don't have confidence is they don't approve of themselves. But I'd love for you to give yourself the gift at the very opening I acknowledge myself for. You know, if I think about my career, I acknowledge myself for believing my art when a publisher told me it was no good and wanted to reject a book of mine. But I stayed with the book. That was the motivation manifesto. I acknowledge myself for still striving after I went broke at the very beginning. I acknowledge myself for always generating the energy that I want to experience in a moment of service. I acknowledge myself for always trying to learn and to give my best. I acknowledge myself for having some good health practices. I acknowledge myself for having done my meditation practice today. I acknowledge myself for trying to be a better man to my wife, even though I suck sometimes. I try to be a better leader to my team, even though it's difficult. See, I can be okay with the fact that my performance isn't where I want it to be in several areas of life. But I can still have confidence because I believe in my ability to figure things out and to apply the effort to improve and grow. Most of your confidence has kind of piled on you or left you based on unconscious things, right? You just. You went through life and you feel confident as you do. But what you didn't know is psychologically what was happening is your mind was rewarding you with confidence. Listen, your mind was rewarding you or not based on whether or not you had an intention for something. You stepped into that and you did it over and over and over again. A lot of our confidence actually came from that. Unconsciously, we didn't even know. So here's the problem. Guess who really lacks a lot of confidence? Those who lack intention. This is so funny. Think about this for just a minute here. Listen. A lot of people who lack Confidence, lack confidence because they don't have a lot of intention. So what they're doing is they're just kind of showing up in the world and they're going through the flow and they're letting the world push and push and mold and shape and turn and just like push. And all of a sudden, so they're kind of a whim, their self identity and their confidence is at the whim of the world, shaping. And as you know, today we live in a society in a world that is not very intentional, mostly reactive. And so what happens if you let the world do it for you? It will shape a reactive identity that feels out of control, that feels a lack of congruence. And if you went through your life that way without a lot of intention, your mind would say something like this. Your mind would say, I don't know myself. See, you cannot know yourself separate from intention and initiative, right? Intention and action. You just, you will never know yourself until you say, I intend this to happen. I'm going to take an action, I'm going to keep at it. If you did that through your life, if you did that through your life, you had a lot of intention. This is my goal, or this is my dream, or this is my vision, this is my mission. Like you painted the picture, you stepped into it and you kept doing that. Your brain goes, I know myself. I am capable here. I am capable here. Because every time I set a goal, I move towards it and I stay with it. I'm capable. That's what your mind did unconsciously throughout your life. It said, hey, listen, I'm capable here. Because it seems like every time I say I want this, I move towards it and I keep working at it. Hey, I'm capable. And that gives you what psychologists will often call that sense of self agency or self efficacy, both of which have been directly tied to our overall sense of confidence and our sense of confidence in specific social situations or skill sets. So let me break this down. Agency in psychology, in high performance studies means whether or not we feel like we are the commander of our ship if we have our hand on the wheel, right? Do you have the hands on the wheel of your life? That's personal agency. I feel like I am the agent of my life. I am the person in control. I am the person who can call the shots. I am like, I have a sense of command. That's personal agency. Okay? Self efficacy is the belief that I can do it because I've developed the competency to be able to do this right? I believe I can go shoot this video because I've shot videos before. And so my confidence in shooting videos is high because I have shot videos before. I said I want to shoot videos. Intention. I shot videos. Action. I shot a lot of videos. Consistency. Therefore I have confidence in that specific realm. You got it. And so this is what is important. Most people never break this down. Your current level of confidence has actually been shaped by your past and how many intentions you set, how often you showed up and you turn that intention into initiative, action. And how often you stayed with it. Consistency or congruence. Confidence is often your mind rewarding you for intention, action and consistency or congruence with that initiative. Right. Or that intention. So if my intention is to be great husband and I take all these actions to demonstrate great husband, and I'm congruent in my behavior and the way I talk about my wife and how I live my life with great husband, then confidence, good husband, right? I know that's so junior varsity, but do you guys get this? So if you are lacking confidence, guess what? I bet you and I could sit down right now, you could buy me a beer. Well, you would not want to buy me a beer. Imagine me on alcohol. Not good. Okay, imagine if we sat down for some lunch. Gluten free. Let's go. We sat down for some lunch, you and me. We sat down and we talked about your confidence. I bet you and I, if we had a real thoughtful conversation, we could track it back to, okay, let's talk. Just even, like the last six months, have you been intentional with your days? Did you set that goal? Think about what you wanted? Did you take action towards it and were you consistent? Those three things have led to a net effect. Confidence. Those three things have filled your confidence tank, whether you knew it or not. Write this down. Because once you know this, you get to take back control. Once you know, this game changes, once you know, this different world. I figured this out about when I was 21 years old. I didn't have the confidence that I felt like I needed to have. To kind of go live the life I wanted to have deep relationships, to enjoy my time with other people, to. To, you know, succeed my career, to write, to learn to be good in social situations. And so here's what I did. Like, even in social situations, people like, oh, it's like, burn. But I'm. I'm just. I'm so awkward in social situations. And so I go in social situations and I'm just by the punch bowl, by myself. And I go, okay, what was Your intention? What do you mean? Well, I. What do you mean? Well, I. I just showed up, you know, and I went to social networking and it was awkward and you know, so I just was there and it felt awful and I don't have any confidence anymore. So you didn't have an intention to connect with one person in that room? You didn't take one action to fulfill that intention and you didn't stay consistent by doing that with maybe two or three other people? No, I just got there and I was awkward. So think about that. Think how many times you just got there and you were awkward versus I am going to go to this party, I am going to meet one person. I'm going to have one good conversation. I'm going to make somebody laugh. I'm going to make a new friend. Just one. Just one. Not the whole room. I'm not going to win the earth. I'm not going to be the life of the party. One person. You didn't have that intention to go really connect and find one new connection? Well, no, I just went there and did what? Well, I just went there and was awkward. So you went there. Did your intention say, I'm going to go there and be awkward? No, but is that what your action demonstrated? Uh oh. Your actions are demonstrating intention or lack thereof. Your actions, my friend, are demonstrating intention or lack thereof. Omg. See, I used to just go show up and I was super awkward and I'd no problems. And I know you guys are like, you're still awkward, dude. I know, but I would literally show up and I'd just be like. And I would just react. I would show up fearful. My intention was, I hope I don't make an ass of myself. How's that for a positive statement? Intention? No, a better intention would have been, I'm going to show up, make great connection with one person. I'm going to focus on one person that will make me feel comfortable and then I will move from there. No, no, instead I said, I hope I don't make an ass of myself. And with that intention, what do you do? You follow that line with action. You go hide in the corner. That's it. Lacking intention, it just is the. It's the kill. It's the killer of confidence. Because once you have this, everything can change. All right, my friend, I hope that you enjoyed that. 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. You know, just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself listening to it. Make sure you hashtag the Brendon show because when you do that I can look you 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 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 brendon.com monthly. That's brendon.com 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 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. Sam.