How to Believe in Yourself (more than self-esteem)
3 Oct 2016 · 13 min
In this podcast episode Brendon Burchard answers the common question “How can I believe in myself more?” by presenting five practical strategies that go beyond simple self‑esteem. He records the talk outdoors at his Oregon writer’s villa and walks listeners through each idea: 1. Momentum – create daily micro‑wins (tiny goals in work, relationships, health) to generate dopamine and build a forward‑moving habit. 2. Integration – at the end of each day consciously acknowledge and internalize successes so they become part of one’s identity, preventing the “check‑list” trap. 3. Feedback – seek honest, supportive input from trusted people; use positive feedback to reinforce belief and treat constructive criticism as a growth challenge. 4. Emotional Priming – deliberately activate desired emotions each morning through affirmations, reading inspiring passages aloud, or visualizations, thereby “generating” the energy needed for the day. 5. Love – recognize a deeper, universal love (spiritual, relational, or existential) and practice self‑love by honoring one’s unique qualities; extend love outward to others, creating an emotional contagion that boosts confidence. Burchard ties these steps together, emphasizing that belief is built through consistent action, internal reflection, supportive social loops, intentional emotional states, and a foundation of love. He concludes with a call to subscribe and an offer to download his “10‑step guide to achieving anything 10× faster.”
Chapters
Welcome to the charged life. This is Brendan Burchard. I'm often asked, brendan, how can I believe in myself more? You know, sometimes we get knocked down. Sometimes we just struggle for days or weeks or months or decades, you know, and we have that, like, I just lost faith in myself somewhere. I was so confident in my. My teens or my twenties or my thirties or whenever, and now I lost my mojo, man. I just don't. I don't have the confidence in the vibe and the pop, and I just. I lost faith in myself. What can I do? And I don't have a pat easy answer for that, but I got five ideas here that might just help you. I'm outside here at my writer's villa in Oregon, and I thought, you know what? Why don't we just talk about this? It's a tough topic, but let's take it on. So forgive the sounds of nature if we got them. Forgive the sounds of anything going by, but let's rock and roll. Number one way to start to believe in yourself is momentum. Now, I know off the bat, if you really hate yourself right now, you're like, thanks, Brendon. I got no momentum. That's why I hate myself. So hold on. I'll get to the mindset stuff. I'll get to the emotional stuff. But sometimes believing in yourself is just tactically winning a little bit each day. You know, just a little bit of a win can give you that dopamine that says, oh, good job reward. I feel better. It can be a very simple neurological payoff of just achieving a couple small goals. And as you've heard me say, anytime you're dealing with difficulty, it can be just simple things. But it's got to be momentum. So whatever you're doing in your life, if you got a job, think about what small things can I do tomorrow to. To move ahead. If you're dealing with a difficulty in a relationship, what would be a simple win? A simple moment of appreciation? Just something they could say or you could say to put some more pop and energy back into that relationship. Just one smile, one kiss, one good date can change the game for you. Also, if it's just something simple you can do in your own health. Look, sometimes going to the gym and leaving you feel a little better, you, you know, just a little bit of movement has been proven to change people's states of minds and their emotions, too. So just get in the gym or get a little bit of small goal setting. Get a little bit of momentum forward in any area of your life that's at least the beginning and then do it again the next day. Don't just go and crush it tomorrow and then be a jerk and do nothing and watch seven seasons of Netflix on the next day. Momentum is daily little things. Every single day adds up to greatness. Second big piece. And this is more to the emotional side. Integration, my friend, integration. People who don't believe in themselves, it's often. It's not that there hasn't been evidence that they shouldn't believe in themselves. They've had some wins, they've had some goals that came true. They made the magic happen, but they never integrated the win. They never had a good thing happen. And they sat there at the end of the night thinking about that good thing to happen and allowing it to come into their heart, allowing whatever they did to give themselves credit for it, permission to feel good about it, to say, you know what? I did this today. It went well today. That worked today. And to integrate that win, integrate that success, integrate that moment into their heart, into their identity as a human being, being. What happens is most of us, we knock off the checklist and did it, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it. And five years later, after all these did it, did it, did it, did it, made it happen, Made it happen. Crushed it, crushed it, crushed it, crushed it. Five years later, we feel the same about ourselves, the same level of confidence, the same level of belief in ourselves, because we didn't allow those things to enter our psyche, enter our spirit as strength. We didn't. We had momentum externally, but we didn't have any momentum internally building our character and our strength. We never achieved that sense of pride or ownership of what we did. We didn't own it that we did it, so we never got stronger. That means you need an integration practice at the end of the day. Just sit down at the end of the day and go, what worked today? What did I do today? What little thing should I allow myself a little bit of credit for? What did I say that was nice or kind? What did I send away that I got done? What did I finish? What? What goal did I move a little closer to? And just at the end of the day to allow that to come in. This isn't about just pepping ourselves up and saying, I'm awesome, I'm awesome, I'm awesome, with no evidence, I'm saying, you know, you got some momentum. Integrate that now own that you did the work today. You fought the good fight, you finished the day. You're still alive. You know what you need to go do tomorrow. Integrate that success. Give yourself that credit. You'll develop that strength of spirit that's so important. You don't believe in yourself after all that. Hey, bub, get some feedback. You know, most people fear this. When you don't believe in yourself, you don't want any feedback. Because they might say you're stupid or you suck or you're ugly. And, you know, if they do that, you're getting feedback from the wrong people. Sometimes it's necessary to get feedback from the people that we love, feedback from people we know like and trust. And just say, hey, can I ask you a question? What am I doing that you're seeing seems right? Because right now, I don't feel like I'm doing anything right. And they'll say, what are you talking about? No, you're smart, you're good, you've been doing this. Sometimes people can give us feedback and help us see that we are doing better than we think. Because maybe you're a perfectionist or maybe you grew up with somebody who pushed so hard on you, you never integrated any successes. And sometimes you need somebody pushing hard at you, saying, good job, kid. You're doing all right. I'm proud of you. I. I see that you're working hard here. I see that you're trying. So sometimes it's about getting around a new social circle of people who are strivers, who are also struggling, who are fighting hard, who can give you that feedback and say, good job. Keep at it. And if you do get negative feedback over and over and over, assess. Is it real? Do you need to change and shift and get better? And if you do, don't hate that. Don't get mad at that. Take that as a challenge instead of taking. Taking things as a insult and crying over people's comments. Go, huh. You know what? That's kind of. It's got some basis in reality. I'm gonna take that as a challenge. I'm gonna develop myself. Not to prove them wrong, but to get better. Allow yourself that. Allow that feeling to come from the feedback. Next up. I love this one. It's so simple. It's just priming the emotions that we wanna experience in our life. What does that mean? It means doing something in advance so we can feel it. And here's what I mean by that. In the morning, every single day. See, I want to be. I want to be motivated and driven. I want to feel grateful for life. I want to have a sense of passion about the day. But you know what? Some days I wake up and I feel like crap. So what am I going to do? Go through the day and just allow my impulsive feelings to tell me to feel like crap all day and lose multiple days? No, I'm going to say, okay, I. I recognize I feel like crap why I didn't sleep well or why I got this bad attitude right now. I'm going to change it. In the morning, I do an affirmation practice and visualization practice where what I do is I pick up something every single morning. I do this. I grab a little. Just a couple paragraphs. Maybe I read from my Bible. Maybe I read from one of my books or another book. It's a passage. I have a bunch of passages in my notes section. My phone too, if I'm on the road. And I'll just read it out loud, pretending that I'm like in my most passionate, happy place in my life. So I'll be reading out loud some Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I'll be reading out loud some Martin Luther King. I'll be reading out loud some Napoleon Hill or reading out loud some Earl Nightingale, as loud as I can. And that voice activates a power which activates an emotion which activates my day. So you just got to prime emotion. Or sometimes I'll be in the shower and I'll say, what can I do today? Or what I'm going to do today that would bring a laugh. What can I do today that I'm excited for? And I'll just get my energy up. Like, don't wait to have good energy in life. Remember, as I always say, the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates it. You don't have happiness, you generate it. So choose to prime the emotions you want to experience in life when cultivate it. Summon your energy versus hoping a good one lands on you and you'll start to feel better about yourself and about life. And the last big one. You knew I was going to go there. Love. You know, you already know the thing about love yourself. And maybe in some ways you've never allowed that. You've never noticed the beautiful things you've done in your life. So you've never allowed yourself to love yourself. But at some point, you've got to recognize that there's a love that's beyond you and beyond me and beyond your actions. And that love is whatever brought us here alive today. Some would say it's God's will and God's love. Some people it's the randomness of the universe. Some people it's nature Some people, it's whatever. But there is something way beyond us, and there's a way to access that and a way to honor that. And the way to honor that is to recognize that you are unique. About. Of 7 billion people, no one is like you specifically. And at least take that as a moment of saying, okay, I'm meant to live my uniqueness. I'm supposed to love the things that make me odd and weird. I'm supposed to love the things that make me strong. I'm supposed to. I was made this way. So let me honor what's good about that and what's not good about that. Let me work on that. Let me set a schedule to get better at that so that I can not only honor what I've been given, but I can give something back, too, by getting better. And that aspect of doing that that brings in so much joy and so much strength in our life is love. Loving ourselves, loving the process. And of course, the greatest way to believe in ourselves is to love other people, that they become so grateful for us, that they give us some of that feedback, that there's so much appreciation and love and joy in the moment with others that you can't help but just feel that vibe, that there's an emotional contagion when other people around you are feeling loved and cared for and excited about life. It's hard not to rub off on you a little bit. And you start to say, you know what? Life isn't so bad. And you know what? I deserve to feel good here right now, too. And you know what? You start getting some momentums so some wins. You integrate those wins. You get some feedback to get better. And all of a sudden, you start to believe in yourself again. All of a sudden, you start to live the charge life. Hey, my friend, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you would like to get ahead a little faster in life, what I'd like to do is give you my 10 steps to achieving anything 10 times faster. So if you have a big goal, a big dream, a big mission in life, and you just like to achieve it faster, what would you need to do? You know, this is exactly what I keep next to my computer or next to my bed. And every time I have a big dream, a big goal, I open it up and I kind of use this as my checklist to get ahead faster. Because you and I both know if you're going to be more effective or more productive, or you are going to achieve your goals and your dreams faster, you're going to have to switch your perspective a little bit on achievement itself. You have to adopt new thinking patterns and habits. You're going to have to have new daily rituals and habits, and your entire approach to learning and skill development must be better. So in order to help you do that, go to brendan.com 10x that's Brendan B R E N D O n.com 10x and you can download this guide for free. Just tell me your name and email. I'm happy to email that to you for free. The same guide I use to achieve any goal or dream faster. Thanks for tuning in. Until I see you next time, go out there every single, single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference. Today.