How to 3X Your Confidence

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. 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 and think, man, what the hell am I doing? You know, 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. Hey, everybody, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to your awesome training on high performance. It's a thrill to be here with you. I wanna welcome you here and I honor you for deciding to want to live your best life, to lead your best career, to make your greatest difference. And sometimes you just need a little bit of monthly training in your own psychology and how you think about your own performance so you are able to give your best. As I go throughout this framework today on how to three 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. And that's why we come together. 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're here with working on yourself right now, bust out your journal, because I got an awesome framework to work you through that you can write down in your journal and return to every Sunday going forward for the next couple of weeks. That will help you stay on track as the most confident and capable you as possible. I do personal development every single day. And I consider that one of the reasons that I've been able to achieve what I've been able to achieve so far in my career and having the impact I've been able to have only came from working on myself, on my skill sets, on my own confidence, as we'll talk about today. So I honor and respect everybody joining here today. And what I always say with personal development is, you stay. It's almost like if you've ever seen a coach or a therapist, you know, you can't judge that session. The first five minutes. You got to get into the work. And as you're getting into the work, maybe that 10th minute, 12th minute, 20th minute, one hour, that one idea shapes your perception, that one idea shifts how you literally show up tomorrow. So even if you're thinking, well, Brendan, I am already a confident person, I really don't need your training today. Thank you so much. I just want the free stuff. I'm here to tell you, you might actually learn something new about yourself today, because this confidence framework I'll be walking you through is a lot of what I heard from the top 15% of the top 15% of successful people worldwide. So if you don't know what we did with the High Performance Institute study, now pretty well known from my book, High Performance Habits, we conducted the world's largest study on high performers at the time from literally millions of data points from people from over 190 countries in the world. And as we did that, I did structured interviews with those who scored highest on the High Performance Indicator assessment, which is a tool that. That gives scores in the areas that most correlate with high performance without being fancy. What that meant was I ultimately interviewed Basically the top 15% of the top 15% worldwide in lots of different industries. And the way that those folks talked about and thought about confidence was very unique based on how I've sort of been able to train so many other people around the world who. Who might not have been at their levels. They think differently about confidence. Successful people really do think very differently about confidence than unsuccessful people. And we also know that those who are struggling and striving and trying to climb up, that often their way of thinking about confidence is actually preventing them from having it and demonstrating it. So I think you're gonna learn a lot of new ideas and a new way to kind of look at things. I'm also, like, always going to challenge you to measure yourself. You know? Are you happy with the confidence you have in your life right now? Do you feel as confident at this stage of your life as you had hoped to feel? You know, if you think about yourself or where you're at with your career or even your family or social situations, do you have the confidence that is necessary to show up, be your authentic self, have fun, laugh, poke fun at other people in positive ways, cheer on other people, lead. Do you have the confidence that is required for you to climb to the next level in your career? In social situations, as you chase down bigger and bigger and bigger goals and dreams, do you have the confidence that you need? Do you? And when I ask that, I'd love for you to do a couple different things. One, start defining, what does confidence mean to you? Because as I shared in my big study, we learned that everybody kind of defines confidence in unique ways, and we got to know what those ways are for you. Okay, so I'll be talking about that. But I'm curious. When you think about your confidence level, whatever way you define it, if you had to score it on, say, a scale of 1 to 10, 1, you have no confidence, you hate yourself, life is really terrible, and you just feel like, wow, I'm not willing to be vulnerable. I'm not willing to share. I'm not willing to go for the goals. I quit when it gets hard. I'm unsure all the time of myself in lots of different situations. Basically, one means you're dead. Okay, so you're probably not a one. On the scale of confidence, 10 would feel like, I have absolute confidence in myself, in how I show up, in how I'm going to deliver. Now, if you're a 10 in authentic confidence, that's good. Now, most people aren't there, by the way. I'm certainly not there. I'm probably like a 7 at this stage of my life, in my career. Probably like a seven. And I know it's easy to say, well, people who are tens, they must be narcissistic, crazy people. But not when we're talking about authentic confidence. Right. I didn't. If I said, on a scale of 1 to 10, certainty, and I asked you to score yourself on 1 to 10 certainty and 10, you said, I am totally certain about everything in my life. You're a narcissistic, crazy psychopath. Right. That's probably not a healthy place to be. But when we're talking about confidence, you might be there. I do know some people who are authentically confident at a level of 10. You can put them in any situation, anytime, anywhere. It doesn't mean they won't have insecurity. Because, listen, confidence does not mean the absence of insecurity might be something to write down in your journal. 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 and think, man, what the hell am I doing? You know, 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 that 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, but 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 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 somebody 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. Now, I promised when we said we're going to talk about confidence that it would break it down into three different types of areas that we see that high performers uniquely look at when they're talking about confidence and some unique ways that they seem to develop it, Some simple ways and some more advanced ways. And I hope that these all serve you. So let's talk about these first three ways and then how to build it. That's what this is. We're talking about three different types or areas for your confidence to be applied. Then we're going to just dig in the rest of the session about how you might be able to develop it. Realize I am not a therapist, a psychotherapist, a psychiatrist, or a neuroscientist, or anything that ends in Istanbul, okay? But I am here to give you some perspective, some really great research, and also, as a high performance coach, this is what I do. I mean, I've been blessed. Just in this last week, I sat down with a couple guys who all earned literally hundreds of millions of dollars over their careers and in their positions. They're still wondering what the next right move is. And I admire that about them. But they're able, like most other high performers, to have a unique perspective in each of these major areas of their life. And then they develop them, and that's why they keep getting better and better and better performance outcomes. So let's just jump right in. 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 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. 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? Cause 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 their 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, that proud of, confident in that person? Do you feel like they're living? The values that you deeply feel in your mind, in 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? I. 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 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 anger 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 what 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, what working so hard to adapt and to change and to learn and to grow so they can like the person they are. Cause no one wants to get at the end of their life and have tremendous regret about who they were in their life. Right? And I know a lot of people who do get at the end of their life and they did have confidence, but they didn't like themself. That make sense. And 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. Doesn't mean I'll be my absolute 1000% best. It doesn't mean I'm going to always get the standing ovation. It's. It just means I'm gonna have confidence in my ability to deliver an exceptional speech every single time. I was in Bali with my wife and we got on a plane and it took about 32 some hours from where we were at to get home. So we landed in Phoenix, Arizona, where I was gonna give two speeches. We landed like 1am in the morning, and the jet lag's pretty tough. I think it was 15 or 16 hours difference in time zone. So we land, and the next thing I know, I'm ironing my shirts and getting my suits on and I'm going over to a big event with I think it was like 1000 people or something like that. And, man, I'm having this jet lag. I'm feeling weird. I get there, the promoter, and I decide right before I go on stage to get rid of all my slides. You know, don't use slides. Like, don't use any slides. No. And when you go do this, don't do that. And you know what? Let's change the sort of call to action at the end here. And, okay, I'm gonna go introduce you now. And they walk up on stage and I'm standing back there with jet lag. Now I'm gonna be up there for 90 minutes in front of a thousand people, no slides. Complete change in call to action. I got like two minutes before I'm on, and I was just kind of laughing to myself. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm so glad I've been in this position before. And I had high confidence I could go serve. Well, not because in that moment I felt great about myself or my body. I was in another time zone. I was like, whoa. But because I have a high skill at that. I've been speaking now for 20 years. So for me, I was like, I'll be able to handle this. 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, right? 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, 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 in 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, that they suck along the way. That's where 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 the 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 of 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, 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. And as I'm moving forward, I mean, it's a skill I don't have yet. And I'm going to have to learn how to build a bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger brand and business as we're going along here. Like many of you have been on the road with me now for the last 10 years. It's gotten bigger and bigger. It was a couple hundred followers and a couple thousand and a couple million and a couple more million. It's gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. I didn't have the skill set to do all that, but I trusted in myself. I trusted in myself and that allowed me to have the patience to develop the skill. 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're thinking 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 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 into the bar or. 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. It 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 taking, 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, let's 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, you know, go getter, go into 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 gonna ask questions. Whoever I meet, I'm not gonna try to impress. I'm just gonna 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, Brendan. 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 almost always comes back to how they perceive themselves or their abilities in one of these three areas. So I hope this helps just a little bit. Frame it. Just get in your head now, let's solve some problems. If you're low in any of these areas or you feel like, I just. I don't trust myself, Brenda. I'm not sure why or I'm not getting the momentum I wanted. I'm not sure why. I bet we can get some of that if we do some simple Tactical high performance things. Okay. First thing that you might do is first and foremost define and measure on a consistent basis these areas for yourself. And what I mean by that is I'm going to ask you to do something I'm always asking you to do in this high performance community. I think one of the reasons people stay in our community for so long, one is because you guys are awesome. And also because every single month I'm challenging you to add a few more things to your life where you're measuring yourself to gain greater self awareness. And so what I'd like you to do is I've already asked, maybe if you've been with us for a while. You know, I have Sunday practice and Sunday practice is where on Sundays I sit down with kind of like a score sheet for myself of all these different areas that I'm working on in my life. And I score myself on a score of 1 to 10. And some weeks that score sheet, those areas are exactly the same. For example, every week I, I measure myself on patience because I suck at that. Like I'm not a super patient person. So every week I look, I'm like, was I patient with the people I love and I care for? And I lead this week one, no, ten. Yes. So I score myself. That's just a way to get quick sort of grading and self awareness. I would love for you to add for the next 10 weeks to your Sunday review. If you don't have a Sunday review, begin one. If you have one, add the category of confidence. But then break it down. Did I feel self confident? Did I trust myself? Was I congruent with myself? Did I honor myself? Did I have confidence in what I was doing this week? If I was filming a video, did I go for it? Did I have confidence in my skill this week and was I confident with other people? Was I confident with my spouse? Was I confident with the kids? Was I confident with the people I was leading? Like, did I demonstrate confidence in social situations and in the way that I think of that as important. So score yourself 1 to 10. 1 to 10. 1 to 10 every week on a Sunday. You cannot improve what you do not measure and you cannot improve what you don't measure consistently and hold yourself accountable to improve that score. That's why I personally do ratings of 1 to 10. Some of you guys have asked that before, like why do you do 1 to 10 versus 1 to 5 or something like that? Because I know I'm always trying to move it up, you know, I'm never going to be perfect at a 10. But I'm always like, okay, well if I was a seven this week, how could I be an eight this next week? Like, what three actions could I take to go from a seven to an eight or a nine this next week? And I do this every Sunday with myself. And I highly encourage you do it yourself as well. Because confidence tends to be something that people actually don't think about, right? Confidence tends to be something that people feel or try to project, but they don't think about it, they don't have any philosophical mooring on it, they don't measure themselves. And so it's why they're 40 years old and still feel the same confidence as they did when they were 20. You know what I'm saying? I know a lot of 50, 60, 70 year old women who've been at our seminars and programs, we've worked with, they've climbed up those ladders, they've started their dream business, they've led others, they've built downlines. They're inspiring, they're supportive, they're loving. They somehow birthed other human beings and did a good job being moms. And they're 50 years old and have the same confidence they had when they were 40, 30 or 20. They still have the same damn self doubts. If you have the same self doubt for 20 or 30 years and you're not getting more confidence, you are not taking advantage of this time on earth to measure yourself and improve yourself. It'd be like somebody going to the gym for 15 years and on the 15th year they still lift the same on the bench. You're like, but you've lifted for 15 years. I mean, why don't you take that one extra five pound plate and slide it on there, right? You got to be aware of these things and you have to measure these things if you're going to actually improve these things. I hope that helps. So I know you can say, yeah, yeah, yeah, Brenda, I got it. My question is, has confidence been on a Sunday review for you? If it hasn't been on a weekly review for you, then you're not yet high performing. And people don't like when I say that, but it's so true. You cannot just casually listen to me and go, sounds like good. Write it down in a journal. Look at it once in a while. You need to measure yourself. This is what we are always doing in high performance. It's one why you got to keep coming back every week because or every month. I'm just going to keep asking you to look at this area of life, measure yourself. Challenge yourself to improve. Challenge yourself to improve. You should be, by the end of this year, more confident than you've been your entire life. And if you're not, then whose fault is that? Did the earth not give you enough circumstances to feel confident? Do you have to go through another five emergencies before you can feel confident? Do you have to create another 10 things? Do you have to win five more friends? Like, what's it like? At some point you go, what's it going to take for me to finally feel great about myself and go for it? And I'm here to cheer you on. As much as I'm kind of teasing here a little bit, I'm here to cheer you on. You should feel great about yourself right now. And you're the one who's going to give yourself that permission. You're the one that's going to develop the skill, that's going to make yourself feel even better. You, you're the one that's gonna engage people differently. And as you engage people differently, you develop your skill, your craft, your art. You check in with yourself. You live congruent. It's who you can be. And you measure that every week. All of a sudden you go, wow, I'm really growing here, Brendan. I feel it. And trust me, I've had the blessing of working with some of the most extraordinary people on the planet. And these simple little things move the needle for them. So Sunday review, my friend. Start measuring your confidence and start working on these things. Hey, guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way. Just go to progressmode.com, click on Private group to apply to See you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progressmode.com Big Other Area B. Reveal uncertainty. This one is the opposite dynamic of how I used to think of confidence, right? We think of confident people as people are just like, you know, it's like Wonder Woman, right? Is confident. We think of Superman, is confident, who just knows everything, really what it turns out to be high performers are a lot. Listen to this. High performers are a lot less Superman and a lot more Clark Kent. That's what it turned to be in all the research. With millions of data points. In all of my conversations, high performers, we're much more likely to reveal things like, I don't know. Things like, I'm unsure. Things like, how do you think this should go? Things like, could you kind of help me with this? Like, high performers literally, explicitly share that they don't know how it's going, they don't know how it's supposed to go, that they need some help, that they need some mentorship, that they need some guidance. That's confidence. Confidence is not holding back the deck of cards of your weaknesses. Confidence is a comfort. With vulnerability, and when people say vulnerability, they often don't know what they mean. When we're talking about vulnerability specifically related to confidence and high performance, like measurable outcomes, the thing that we can measure and see is that high performers in group meetings, in team meetings, in social situations more often share their insecurity. They more often say, I don't know how this is supposed to go, or they'll be the person at that fruit punch bowl who says, I don't really know anybody here. I don't really know how to start to meet some of these people. Could you introduce me to somebody? And that's how they handle the social networking, where they're awkward. Instead of just sitting back at the punch bowl, drowning their sorrows and feeling bad about themselves, they engage the person next to them and say, hey, you know what? I feel kind of awkward here. I don't know a lot of people. Could you introduce me? That's how high performers are handling these little situations in life. They're not the most confident person in the meeting who goes, I know everything here. They're the most confident going, you know what? I don't know this. Here's my question. What do you guys think? And that is how you lead confidently. You reveal that you don't know everything, which is the opposite of how I came up. When I went to a big consulting firm, Accenture, after college, I was wowed by everybody's confidence. They just knew everything. They come in here, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I thought, man, I'm. I'm not. I don't fit in here. These guys know everything. And as I worked there, over the next. Whatever it was, six, seven years, I can't remember, I realized that the people who stayed at one level and. And the people who gained partners, the People who gained partners were much more often to go, you know, I don't know, how do you guys think that works? Or I don't know, has anyone ever done that before? Saying, I don't know is power, not weakness. But you've been trying to do too many things on your own. And that's one reason you don't have the confidence you deserve at this stage of your life. Because, see, I didn't want to start with my definition of confidence for you. Cause I want you to be thinking about it. But I'd like to share it. Now that we've talked about defining and measuring. The way I look at confidence is I think the confidence that matters the most is the confidence in one's belief in our ability to figure things out. That's what I believe confidence to be. Do I believe in my ability to figure things out? Not do I know things? Because it's not always true. There's a lot of things I don't know. But do I believe in my ability to figure things out? Now there I'm confident. Not because I'm smart, because I'm good at asking, I'm good at saying, you know what? I don't know how to do this. What do you guys think? And I hope this is settling in for you. Because sometimes your confidence is so low because you think your confidence is correlated with what you know versus what you're willing and able to go figure out by revealing that you don't know. Got it. Next big practice for you that will really help is small changes plus integration. This one comes from my wife, if you didn't know. My wife opened two exercise studios throughout her career. Very, very successful at it. Ultimately sold them. And today, literally this morning in the car, I said, okay, I'm teaching this thing on confidence. Like, what would you teach, honey? She's led lots of big teams and had an extraordinary quality of life. And I said, okay, well, tell me how. What would you say? She says, well, to gain confidence, people need to make small changes. Not always go for the biggest thing, but make small changes and see themselves making those changes and then integrate that into their identity. Integration, if you heard me talk about it, it's a big topic in high performance. It's one reason successful people often don't feel. Feel like successful people or successful people don't feel confident because they've never integrated the wins, the W I N S wins. They've had a lot of wins in their life, but they never stopped and said, wow, I really appreciate that. I got a Little better today. I really appreciate that, putting myself out there. I'm proud of myself for trying here. You know what? I am a little stronger because I did that thing. To acknowledge that you've gained some strength is everything to confidence, isn't it? Write it down to acknowledge that you gained some strength. Look, if you had two kids and you survived, you've gained some strength, you get a little more confidence in life. I mean, come on, what else do you have to be through if you've already made some money in your business, but it's always more, more, more, more, more, and you never stop to go, wow, I really came from nothing. I made some money here. And you never integrated the win in your identity. Your identity stays the same level over here, even though you've actually accomplished a lot over here. And I see that all the time. It's why I see people who are the same level of confidence in their 20s and 30s, and now they're 50 and 60 leading other people, but they're completely wracked with insecurity. Every night they feel like crap. They don't know what they're doing. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you should have so much more confidence. You should feel good about yourself. Integrate some of these wins. So what small changes could you make in, let's say, the next 30 days that you could celebrate? Simple, small ones, like if you just did little things, like maybe, you know, you do five extra reps at the gym, or you stay for 10 extra minutes, or at work, you decide you're going to share one new idea a week. You don't have to change the world, you don't have to innovate the world. You don't have to take us to Mars. You just say, okay, at work. I'm going to share one more idea every week at work, and I'm going to celebrate that every time. I do it each week, by the end of the week or by the end of the month, I've shared four brand new ideas. Those are small. That's small. You can do that small. It's one thing. Little things. So think about your health. What small wins could you have in your health? Maybe next time you go to the grocery store, you. You just don't get the bag of chips. And that's a small win for the day because that prevents you from eating the whole bag of chips tonight or tomorrow. Nothing against chips, so don't attack me in the. But I think it's really important that you identify in your health as a parent in Your career. What are some small changes you can make? It doesn't have to be a big global brand change. It might be one more little thing that you do and then that one more little thing that's important for you to log it, to recognize it and integrate it so that you're getting stronger. If you don't acknowledge it, you can't get stronger. Another practice that you can try is to monitor procrastination. This is a big one. One of the reasons people don't get more confident throughout their life is because they keep letting themselves procrastinate. Without understanding that association between procrastination and confidence, you need to identify an area of your life where you're procrastinating and start, this is not totally accurate, but please listen to the practice. Start saying, I must be procrastinating because I'm not confident in something. I'm fearful, I'm worried about something, or, I don't know, something like, what is it? Because most people procrastinate, they don't know it because of one of these three reasons, right? They don't know how to do something, so they procrastinate. They don't feel comfortable in the skill, in the activity, in the thing. They don't feel like other people will accept them, so they go, I don't want to do it. So they procrastinate. They don't feel themselves congruent or competent or capable, so they don't do it. So they procrastinate. Now, confidence is not always the root problem of procrastination. There can be lots of other things, right? There can be a high level of fear, but if there's a high level of fear, you got to have the confidence to go tackle that fear. A lot of people say, well, no, a lot of confidence, you know, comes. Or a lot of procrastination comes from unconscious limiting beliefs from childhood. I'm like, okay, but at the end of the day, you still got this task in front of you, and you got to summon the confidence to handle it. At the end of the day, we must choose to move forward. We could go back and talk about all of our childhoods for 50 years. Be fun, be great, hell of a great bottle of wine. However, at the end of the day, all of psychology, all of therapy, all of coaching, anything that ever does tread in the past, it's supposed to come back to today to ask, how can I make good decisions now? How do I do better for my health, my career, myself? Now, been through all that. What's next? For me, what's right for me, what's a healthy decision for me, what's healthy behaviors for me now? And I think that most people are procrastinating on the very things that can give them another breakthrough because they're hoping for certainty, to finally face the thing that they're procrastinating on. And I'm here to say, stop hoping for certainty. Start having confidence, belief in your ability to figure things out. So when I'm procrastinating on something, I always monitor, I'm like, why am I procrastinating on that? And I always come back to, I must not believe in my ability to figure that out. Where's the hitch? Do I not believe in myself, in the skill, what other people will think? Like, where's the hitch? And again, I'm not saying it's always the issue of confidence. But I am here to say, where are you procrastinating right now? Like, where? What's something you really wanted to go for? Have you wanted to launch that website, but you're procrastinating? Why? Is it because you don't know how to do a website thing? Is it because you just don't believe in yourself and your capabilities and entrepreneur to do what you're trying to do? Is it cause you think if you do actually put the thing up, you're. Your family, your friends will make fun of you and you won't be able to handle it? I don't know what it is for you, but you should always be monitoring procrastination. It's also part of my Sunday practice. I ask, where am I procrastinating and why? And what would I need to do to move that forward on Monday? Not in five months, not next year, on Monday. I'm very judicious about procrastination because I do recognize that, listen, the opposite effect is true. The more you procrastinate, the lower your confidence goes. Isn't it true? I actually think that that little loop of confidence and procrastination is so important for you to monitor and pay attention to. The longer you procrastinate, what you really want to do, the lower your confidence goes. Because your mind says, I'm not being congruent with my ideals, my ambitions, my dreams, who I want to be. I'm just procrastinating, and it will catch up with you really quickly. So one of the first things I do with my clients, I always go, where are you procrastinating? Let's find those things and move those things forward. Cause they can really hurt you. Okay, next big practice I like to ask people to pay attention to is to level up your peer group, which I know you already know, but here's how you do it. Notice it doesn't say get rid of your peer group. Doesn't say kick them. It doesn't say hate everybody. It doesn't say go hang out with billionaires. It says level up the peer group that you already have. What that means is oftentimes people who are struggling with their own confidence aren't having conversations or putting themselves in situations with their peer group to gain confidence. So what's happening is they're hanging out with people and no one is doing anything that is challenging them that would help them feel stronger. And because there's no challenge among their peers, their friends, their family, or whoever they're hanging out with, with no challenge comes no growth in confidence, right? It's pretty hard to feel more confident year over year if you just do the same thing year over year and you never stretch your capabilities. So when I say level up your peer group, here's what I want you to be. I want you to be the instigator in chief of challenge for the people in your life. Right now, it's your time to challenge your wife, your husband, your family, your parents, the people around you. And no one's going to like it, but you need to believe in yourself. You need to be curious about what the challenges they want to face are. And you're only going to get skill and proficiency at this as you do it more often. I know this feels really uncomfortable, but it's what I found in the research that high performers did. They were the ones instigating challenge in their peer groups. And that was a differentiator between successful people in their field of practice and those who weren't successful. Those who weren't successful, they just wait for life to deal on the challenge, is what I always say. It's like if all you are doing is dealing with life's current challenges that it gave to you, you're not yet living a conscious life, right? You need to have goals and challenges that you set, not just that life doles out to you. Otherwise you'll never grow. You'll just be reactive. And yeah, maybe you'll survive. You know, you have some of that post strength that comes from dealing with adversity. But if all the adversity and challenge you face in your life is only the ones that other people throw at you or the world threw at you, then I'm like, man, you're not growing at the level you're capable of. You should be setting challenges that are way above your ability currently. And you work to grow. Because if you keep leaving your growth to randomness, you'll always be stuck in the land of mediocrity. I know you've heard me say that. And so it's really important to say, okay, let me look around my friends now. I'm not gonna get rid of anybody yet. I know I got some negative people here, I got some negative family members here, and not everything's perfect here. But if I was gonna start challenging some people, how would I do it? Because as peer groups deal with challenge, they gel, they get momentum, they flow, they grow. When you go into organizations that have no challenge in them, it's always the same thing. If there's not challenges, people start end up fighting and feeling bad if there's not deadlines, if they're not moving towards goals and things to get done. Everyone just starts infighting and bickering and politics and just crap starts happening in the organization. But then when people have clear challenges or deadlines or tasks or activities or roles, people start gelling around a little bit. And I'm sure you've seen that in your life before. So now let's bring it into your personal and professional life and say, okay, what challenge could you set at work? What challenge could you set with the family? What challenge could you set with your best friends? You and your friends already go for a casual Sunday stroll once in a while. Be like, you know what? I want to become a more confident runner. What do you say we do an extra two miles today and we go for, you know, five minutes less than we usually would in that time, and we just go for it. And I know that sounds kind of like hokey, but someone is going to have to improve your peer group. And I always tell people, like, you can't hope that it happens. So either you're going to lift up your peer group by how you demonstrate yourself and the challenges you're setting for yourself and others, or you're going to have to replace people. And I often tell people like, well, instead of just wanting to replace everybody first, try to inspire them first. I know it's really popular on social media just to get rid of everybody. Someone disagrees with you, get rid of them. Except that high performers love people who disagree with them. It helps them actually learn and grow. So it's not about getting rid of people who disagree or don't like or who don't cheer you on. And I'm not saying keep negative people around all the time, but I'm saying before you just go out and try to get new people or throw out the old people, do the work. Maybe the people who are in your life right now, you know, up on high, you were given those people to deal with for a reason. So let's do something with those people. You know, I really believe that most people, because they lack confidence in this area I'm talking about right now, they don't have confidence in their peer group, so they don't have confidence in themselves. So where they say, well, I would have more confidence, but she's evil to me all the time. And we dish out our confidence to other people. As if other people had anything to do with your confidence, Right? We can say they do, but you alone control your power. Eleanor Roosevelt told us, no one has permission to make us feel any other way than we give ourselves permission. No one can diminish you. You can let them diminish you. They can say things. But it's just like the Buddha said and the Dalai Lama said. It's like someone can come up and insult you and, you know, terrorize you and scream at you and say horrible things to you, but that doesn't have to integrate into your identity. Right? It's that old saying that when they ask, you know, the, I think believe that was the quote from the Dalai Lama. You know, what do you do when people come up and they just doubt you and they scream at you and they call you a fake or a fraud and they're just like, just giving it to you? He goes, oh, well, I just refuse to accept that gift. He doesn't take it. He just, he stood in that environment, but he doesn't allow it to penetrate his psyche of who he is. So you can't blame other people for how you feel and how you're showing up every single day. It's convenient. And I know it's so easy to say, well, you don't understand Brennan. You don't understand my wife, you don't understand my kids, you don't understand my boss. And I'm like, no, no, I'm kind of a worldly kid at this point in my life. I trained over 2 million people. I think I've heard every story possible out there. And what I've also noticed is that high performing people also had doubters, also had haters, also had jerks for husbands, mean wives, people in their community who didn't support them, haters, online bullies and yet they still decided to shape their own identity and pursue their own dreams. And along the way, they knew they had to lift some other people up with them. Right? It's that Booker T. Washington quote, you have two choices. You're either lifting people up or you're pushing them down. And I just say, if you got some people in your life right now and you want to feel more confident, start learning how to help them and serve them. Read some books on how to be a coach, read some books on how to influence people or how to be a great leader or something like that. Because if you level up your group, everything changes. And I say that personally as a result of that. I had friends in college who were way more confident than I was. And they say, brendan, let's go mountain bike that pass. And I'm like, you know, Brendan, let's go climb that mountain. I'm like, brendan, let's go kayaking. I don't know how to do like all these things. I have been by other people in my life, put in positions that leveled me up, that they gave me that gift. They said, brendan, try this, do that. And I was not confident. I didn't have the skill and I thought people would think I'm stupid, but they still gave me the shot. So you get to choose now, are you going to be that person for somebody or not? And then I say the last thing as a practice is for you to lead. Similar to living up your specific peer group. Also to lead a team, a cause, a movement, whether that is starting volunteering something in your local community and trying to get 20 people around to go do something, or it's taking the next level of leadership at work, or it is literally trying to do something cause related or movement related. You got to. The best way to get more confidence in life is to put yourself in a leadership position because you know what, you can't win. That's the best thing about being in a leadership position. You're always going to have to be adjusting. Leadership is ultimately adapting. And so you've got to be able to adapt and to move and the more that you're able to adapt and move and deal with difficulties and challenges because you're chasing big visions and big dreams, the more confidence that you get. I think about my own career, the more that I ended up leading, whether it was a team or leading my industry or standing up on stage leading other thought leaders, saying, hey, this is what we should be doing, this is what we should be caring about in our industry, about integrity, we should be Caring about trust, we should be caring about customer service, we should be caring about brand, we should be caring about these bigger pictures than just cost per lead. As I started, I got so much criticism. You know, the people out front get a lot of criticism. And because they get a lot of criticism, they also tend to develop a lot of self awareness, they tend to honor that struggle, they tend to develop more skill, they tend to get better with people. And dealing with critics, leaders tend to establish more confidence in their lives than followers by nature, right? Just seems obvious. But here's my question. If you and I sat down together and I said to you straight up, tell me about a leadership position you are putting yourself in in your life right now. Do you have something that you could answer with that is significant, that is challenging you, that is pushing you? If not, I'm not saying you can't be amazing. But my job here today was to say, how do you push, how do you challenge? And if ever sounds flippant or disrespectful, I apologize. If it ever sounds like I'm saying, saying I know what I'm talking about, no one else does, I apologize. If it ever sounds like I'm overly confident, I apologize. But what I do know is if you don't have somebody regularly in your face a little bit every month challenging it and cheering you on, it is a lot harder to fully engage the world, to have the confidence and ultimately to reach high performance. So I hope that this session has helped you a lot. A few of these practices, they're so basic, you know, every single month, measure the dang thing, Start telling people, I don't know, how would you do it? Start getting curious with people. Start identifying small changes, celebrate them when you make them. Start looking at every single week, where am I procrastinating and why? Start making sure you're challenging your peer group and start stepping into that next level of leadership in your brand, in your career, in your space, on your team, how you lead, and then all of a sudden all this starts adding up and then one day you start waking up and go, I do feel more confident. And your confidence wasn't by accident. When I was young, I lacked the confidence that was necessary to be happy in life because I couldn't talk to the people I wanted to talk to. I didn't want to do what I want to do. I didn't have self confidence. So I followed what other people told me to do. And it's a lot easier to become a minion when you don't have confidence. It's a lot easier to become another cog when you don't have confidence. It's a lot easier to march other people's banners and their achievements and their dreams versus your own when you don't have confidence. And I recognize that was a big problem, a big problem for me. So in my 20s, I really diligently worked to develop more confidence. And if I hadn't done that work, then, I mean, my gosh, when social media came out or these cameras came out, or when I had the ability to step on stages, and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger, I don't know where I'd be. And so what I'm suggesting to you is if you'll start working on your confidence now with a focused intent and diligently, then who knows, in 10 years, when that big opportunity emerges, when the next gate opens up, then you know that you can handle it.