Reach Your Dreams Faster

Most people, their confidence is based on an unconscious level of evaluation of themselves in the current moment. Like, ah, you know, I feel confident or I don't. Brendon. And it's just like, based on what? Well, just how I feel. And they're gauging their confidence based on almost a whim of the moment, a reaction to the overall emotional quality they're experiencing the moment versus thinking of it as something as like a skill. Thinking of it as something as that exists because of will. Thinking of it as something that is not like in the background, kind of like just happening over there. And maybe I'm becoming it, but rather in the foreground. It's like who I am. That your identity can be something that is rooted in confidence. Not by luck or happenstance or even breaking through to the next level, but rather by opening up to this one and by using your intention differently. Your current bank account is tied to your confidence levels in reality, right? Your current success, your current progress, your current level of joy, fulfillment, satisfaction, relationship depth, these things are all coming from confidence. Confidence is like the foundation of so many of the extraordinary feelings we want to have in our life, so many of the extraordinary results we want in our life. And we know from all of the research it is critical to your ability to maintain high performance, which is again, succeeding over the long term while maintaining positive relationships and wellbeing. So we got a lot to cover, huge topic, and I'm really excited that you're all here. And that is to get you to the deserved level of confidence that you need and teach you not only how to have it, but how to cultivate it, how to grow it, how to call it on demand, and how to show up in a way that is congruent to you and as your best self, because that's a hard thing. Confidence is not easy, y'. All. You know this. You know this because I feel like so many people, they think they're confident, but the results are not showing it. They think they're confident, but their emotions are not showing it. They think they're confident, but then placed in a uncertain environment or an awkward situation, the confidence goes out the door. Intellectually, most people think they're fairly confident, but in practice, in motion, it's like, oh, and so we got to talk about that today because I want to see you succeed at your highest levels. You and your family need that, deserve that. You and those who you love, lead and serve need that, deserve that. And so first, I want to be the person to welcome you into the community, make sure. You have a separate journal for these sessions because I really, truly believe that we have to do a better job of recording and keeping together our personal development. You know, I know so many people who, they get insights all the time, but they forgot the insight, you know, by, you know, 48 hours later. And what has helped me grow and develop and help me live my own high performance experience is I always record my personal development. I record it in only two places. I record it in the same binders as I'm using them throughout the year and, and I put them on one file on my phone. And what I do is every single week I go back through. Some of you all know this. On my Sunday practice, I go back through my personal development journals. And I would consider what you're doing here part of that. Right, have your personal development journal. And so that every week you can look back, what did I learn this week? What are the insights I got about my life and about other people? And I really feel as you connect with that more often, you're able to have way more breakthroughs, stay more consistent, be more congruent, enjoy life even more. So I would recommend you that you do that. Okay. There is this thing called the high performance experience, that there's a different quality of life that you cannot have one day or like luck into, but that you can literally feel and experience each day. And ultimately you can cultivate to deepen it, broaden it, expand it, strengthen it. Because everybody, I really believe, deserves to have a higher performing life. And I really believe they want to do that in their career and in their relationships. And I will say that today's topic, confidence is ultimately one of those things that prevents so many people from living a better quality of life because they keep hoping one day they have it right? It's like, I hope one day I have this thing. Like I remember at one point in my life, I hope one day I can become a writer. No, you become a writer by doing it every day. You become confident not by hoping one day it happens, but by doing confidence every day. Right? And I think that's a critical distinction. We're going to talk a lot about, we're going to talk about intentional, intentional confidence today. And that's how we're going to increase it. Because, you know, most people, their confidence is based on an unconscious level of evaluation of themselves in the current moment. Like, ah, you know, I feel confident or I don't, Brendan. And it's just like, based on what? Well, just how I feel. And they're gauging their confidence based on almost a whim of the moment, a reaction to the overall emotional quality they're experiencing the moment versus thinking of it as something as like a skill. Thinking of it as something as that exists because of will. Thinking of it as something that is not like in the background, kind of like just happening over there. And maybe I'm becoming it, but rather in the foreground. It's like who I am. That your identity can be something that is rooted in confidence, not by luck or happenstance or even breaking through to the next level, but rather by opening up to this one and by using your intention differently. And so, man, I have so much to teach today. I was almost thinking, I'm not sure where to begin. And I'm going to teach a little more than I usually do, frankly, today, because of the number of questions people DM'd me sent me via comments online. I got from some of our Mastermind members here tonight and our CHPC members. Those are people in my highest level elite groups. I got probably 40 texts today about this topic. And I was like, whoa, what is going on? This topic is hot and I'm excited to talk with you about it. So open up your journal, write a big headline. Confidence. Let's take it on. I'm giving you 10 big ideas and a lot of tactics along with those ideas about developing your confidence in a more purposeful way so that you can feel the way that you need to feel, perform the way that you need to perform, and ultimately excel and deepen your life. Okay, here we go. Oh, my gosh, so many. I got so many. I don't know where. You know, I don't like to begin with sort of things not to do. But today I said, you know what? I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna start. There's a reason they say do's and don'ts versus don'ts and do's because you're encouraged to share the do, then the don'ts. Right? But today I'm gonna break that rule a little bit. I'm gonna start with two massive major confidence killers. And these are things that we do either consciously or unconsciously, that really hurts our confidence. And so I'm going to talk about those ones with you here. And here we go, my friends. Bust out your journal. Write down number one and let's get it on. Number one. This is super important for confidence, for your confidence. This one. Don't tie confidence to image. Don't tie your confidence to. To image. Don't tie confidence to image. Okay, now some of you, this is super basic, right? We'll go deep. But this is a really basic one. And that is a lot of people tie their confidence to what their to image. Like, how do I look like, you know, this is that old thing. It's like, oh, well, if you're not in the perfect body weight, the perfect size jeans, or you don't have six pack abs, or you hate your hair that day, or you know, something in terms of your image is not what you want, then what ends up happening is you lessen your sense of self and you feel like your confidence is lowered. And this is happening in not just physical manifestations for a lot of people. Like, well, I don't like, you know, I don't like my body, Brendan, so I'm lacking confidence. I'm like, why is your confidence tied to your body, huh? Or they say, well, Brendan, you know, I'm embarrassed by, you know, my website. It's not as nice as other people. So I've lost confidence in my dream. I'm like, why is your confidence tied to your website? Oh, Brendan, you know, we just got divorced and you know, it's embarrassing when I walk the dog because I'm not with my husband anymore and you know, I know what the neighbors are thinking. So I just feel like I'm lacking confidence. I'm like, why is your confidence tied to what you look like when you are walking a dog? You know, there's all these things or. Brendan, I don't know. I'm so embarrassed. My Instagram thing is, you know, I only have 55 followers and it's so embarrassing. I'm like, why is your confidence tied to the number of followers? What we do is we externalize our confidence and it causes so much pain. We got to change this deal, y'. All. Listen, that's okay when you're in high school because you don't know better and you're immature. But everybody by the end of high school had better learned that confidence should not be tied to external measures or to perception of others based on our image. And I know where this is going to go with a lot of you because I've been blessed to coach so many people at high levels. I know some of you go, no, no, no, Brendon, you're totally wrong on this one because, you know, listen, there was a time when, you know, I was in terrible shape and I looked terrible. And then I took control of my health, Brendon, and I got better looking. You know, I lost some of that weight and I'm happy in my body, Brendan, and I am more confident because I am healthier. I'm, you know, lean and mean and trim, and I feel good about that. I said, oh, well, if you think about it psychologically, your confidence didn't come from the fact that you are lean and mean. Now, like what I said, confidence came from that process. The confidence came from your willingness to get in and do it, your belief in your ability to figure out, and the fact that you showed up and you did it. The progress through the struggle gave you the confidence. The outcome which you're celebrating. Oh, Brendan. But I've lost this weight. I'm better. Here it is. Okay. That is what a high schooler does. Oh, this external thing. Now I can be confident. I got an article on the front page of the student newspaper. Now I can be confident. It's like we get these external rewards or accolades and we think it's the outcome that gives us confidence. But if that's your life, you'll never have the confidence that you really, really could have. Because guess what, those external image things, the accolade, the award, how you look in the mirror, those things are going to change throughout the life, and you know it. Because guess what, you're now you're going to hit a certain look and you're going to want a different look or you're going to have a certain award and want a different award or a bigger award or a certain bank account and want the next level of bank account. Because those external things are always moving. If your confidence is rooted in those external things moving all the time because you feel like this all the time, right? A lot of your insecurities is because you're tapping. You're like trying to glom onto all these external things. Image, right? These external things. And I want these external things, but they're not solid. And because they're not solid and they're always shifting, you don't feel solid and you feel like you're always shifting. And even though you've actually achieved some amazing things, you have the image things, you have the award things, you have the accolade things, you, you have the successes, you have a bigger bank account than you used to, you still don't feel confident in self. Why? Because you are attaching confidence to that outer thing and how it felt like in terms of image in the moment, you didn't give yourself the appropriate psychological credit and identity as a striver. Who strived, who knocked it out, who made it happen. You didn't reward the effort Instead, you tried to celebrate the outcome, but because the outcomes are now shifting and shaping and you want more and more, you always feel deficient and deficient because the outward, the image, I'm just using that word image, that image thing, the accolade thing, that success thing, it's moving so much. You have to understand this. It's why I know people who are literally 40s, 50s, like, and they still don't have confidence. And I know some of you are like, but wait a second, Brendan. Well, listen to this. I have a client. She's the COVID of magazine type of person, right? Super famous. I'm working with her right now, taking her through chpc. Just started a couple weeks ago with her. And something really fascinating has happened is she's received all these awards in her life and she still doesn't have the confidence. And I said, well, what other awards do you need to achieve? And so. And she actually, well, I'd like to get this one now. And I'd like to get that one now. And I like to get this one now. I said, but you already got a trail of 10 other ones over here. If those 10 other ones didn't give you confidence, why do you believe another one will? Why? Listen, listen very closely, my friends, because I love you. If that last dollar increase in your bank account didn't give you more confidence, please don't fool yourself in thinking the next extra dollar in your bank account is going to give you more confidence. It's very important to understand right off the bat that the shifting of the external, the shifting of those things that we want, the shifting of the rewards, of the accolades of the dollars, of the houses, of the cars, because those will always shift. We'll always want a different one, a, A fresher one, a better one, including in our body, then guess what? It's hard to ever feel fully competent or confident, to ever feel within, like a sense of goodness. You've got to start rewarding yourself based on effort and not outcome. And I know many of you are aware of those very large sociological studies that have been done and replicated of children's self esteem, right? Instead of like, good job, Johnny, that final picture won the best picture over the seven other kids. Instead of saying externalizing his comp. Good job for that thing instead, good job, Johnny. You kind of pointed in your unique way, you worked hard at that. You spent a lot of time on this. In other words, we got to learn to reward our effort, not the image. And so this plays out in a lot of different ways. And I know there's some nuance here. We're going to go down into and listen, I'm starting super simple and easy because I know so we have so many new subscribers here, but I want to kind of get your head in right away and get you nodding. Okay, I can get this, Brendan, because if it's like, if you keep like hoping that you'll feel fulfilled or confident based off of something that you achieve or appear as, you're toast. So let's talk about the foundations of confidence and from my perspective, because I know we've talked a lot about this in our high performance experience and communities. Number one, I personally believe that confidence, real confidence, deep confidence, soul driven confidence is really the belief in my ability to figure things out. It's not about having or even having done that exact thing. It's I believe inherently in myself that I can learn it, I can do it, I can learn it, I can do it. And that belief and confidence in any given moment isn't notice it doesn't say I believe I look good. Could you imagine a kid with like broccoli growing out of his head? Look at this haircut. I mean, if I like literally rooted my confidence in how I appeared in my beginning videos when they were 10, terrible on stages, when I'm not at my best, you know, in the moments when I was trying to build a career and I had no idea what I was doing, that image stuff, I would have never gotten here. I just always believed in my ability to figure things out. I know you already know this, everybody, but I'm going to give you 10 distinctions here that will really dive deep. But here's the thing I want you to know and just be thoughtful about. If you don't have confidence right now at the level you need to lead, serve and earn at the next level, it is not based on what you have currently achieved right now because you've already achieved things, because you've already struggled through things. The problem is you never gave yourself sufficient credit on the struggle, on the effort, on the heads down, on the working through, on the belief, on the desire of the hunger, on all of the stuff that was going on to get you where you're at. Because what you're doing is you're discounting where you're at. You're like, well, I'm only here, Brendan, and I want to be here. So I don't feel confident yet. And I'm like, oh, be careful. You're slipping into tying your confidence to identity. So let me put it up again. Don't tie your confidence to image number two. And I know you all know this one, but since we did have a little conversation about how silly we can be in our high school, we better talk about this one. Don't tie confidence to others attention or approval. Don't tie your confidence to other people's attention. That's what ATTN stands for, attention or approval. Okay? Don't tie confidence to other people's attention or approval. Now, if this one isn't as high school as it gets, I don't know what is. My friends, however, isn't it so true? It's just like if. Imagine you walk into a room. I want you all to imagine this for a minute. You walk into a room tonight. And in. In that room, gathered around like a bar, is all of your mentors and your heroes, people you look up to, who you wanted to meet or interview or do business with, like you are. It's like a serious room to be networking in. And imagine that as you walk in that room, no one pays attention to you. No one pays attention to you. And as you talk to everybody there in that room, not only do they know how to pay attention to you, when you do get someone's attention and you have a conversation with them, it doesn't seem like they really give you the vibe that you belong or that you are approved of. Now, how do you feel about yourself when you leave that room? How do you feel about yourself when you leave that room? Now, isn't it true most of us would feel kind of bad? We'd be like, ugh, you know, I don't. I don't feel good about myself. I'm kind of sad. I'm kind of down. You know, I must have made a big, you know, embarrassment of myself. You know, these people don't like me. Isn't it true that most of us would kind of get down on ourselves? But there's an aspect of spiritual maturity that would ask this question, why? Why? You know, we are so desperate for other people's approval because we all want to belong. We all want to feel like we are capable, like we, you know, fit in like other people, you know, approve of us. You know, it's just part of the human story that we want that sense of belonging and approval from other people. And that's okay when you're really young, as you get older. It's not that I'm saying don't try to connect with people. It's not that I'm saying, you know, don't try to Be your best. But here's what I'm saying. Learn to walk out of that damn room with your head held high, your confidence instilled in who you are. Even if you didn't perform well, even if you had an awkward conversation, even if you weren't your best, you still hold your head high because you're like, okay, I got it. I didn't fit in here, but I don't have to fit in everywhere. Or, you know, I didn't fit in here because I kind of said this and it wasn't appropriate. It wasn't kind. I will change my behavior. Lesson learned. Because, see, learning can give you confidence, but so can discerning. You don't have to be confident in every room and in every situation and do perfectly all the time. You're allowed to have a bad night. And you having a bad night should not take down your confidence. Write it down. You having a bad night or a bad performance or bad speech or a bad zoom call or a bad broadcast or a bad conversation with your spouse or whatever else you deem bad should not take down your confidence, not in yourself, because you can believe in your ability to figure things out. You have the willingness to try again. And even if it wasn't what you wanted, that willingness is going to fuel you. That desire to improve is going to fuel you, but it's not going to take away from your confidence in self. And this really bothers people because they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Brendon, come. Brendon, how could you say this? Are you saying people's results should not affect their confidence levels? You know, and I'm like, no, I don't believe your external results should affect your confidence levels in self. I think they can be great indications to learn to improve, to be aware. I think I would say, listen, I don't want it to decrease. Listen, please, carefully listen to me because this is a coach's major distinction after literally delivering thousands of coaching sessions. Here's the distinction. If you have a bad performance, I don't want it to decrease your confidence. What I want it to is increase your self awareness. Oh, write that down. I don't want it to decrease confidence. I want it to increase self awareness, to say, ah, what were the factors that led to me not performing as well as I could? What were the factors in that moment that tore me from my own presence? Authenticity or confidence? What could I learn to do better, to have more confidence next time? But I don't want you to deplete the tank of Confidence based on whether or not in that particular situation, on stage or in that networking situation, they gave you the attention or approval that you want. And let's have an honest conversation right here because I know many of you are incredibly successful, mature, capable people. And I just believe that the excellence driven nature of this high performance community constantly astounds me and Denise. Like, we are always super impressed with each of you and what you give and how you serve and how you show up for your own personal professional development. I mean, the fact that you're here says so much about you and I applaud you for that. And I also know though, one of the reasons that many of us are set out into the world of personal development is because too often, too many times we know we took other people's opinions about us too seriously and we allowed other people's attention or lack thereof to hurt us. We, you know, when we were kids, we, if we didn't get the attention of the parent we idealized, it hurt our feelings and it could hurt our confidence if we let it. When we were, you know, in a job and our manager didn't like us, we could let that hurt our confidence and our feelings. We take things so personally. But I also think that we're often unaware of how little people care. And not a lot of people, like when I say this, especially the higher achieving you are, it doesn't sound very good because everyone watching something like this, you deeply care. But I'm here to tell you, most of the world is not thinking about you, not observing you, about you, not interested in you. And as much as you are like hoping that they will give that attention and those accolades, they're not. And it's not saying anything about you at all. Listen, the fact that other people aren't giving you attention almost has zero to do with you. It has to do with the human story in which each person, almost all of us, are more concerned about our own selves and our lives, our families, our goals, our dreams, our obstacles. We're so concerned in ourselves, we don't even see other people. I mean, if you don't believe it, go walk down a major city and see how many people are paying attention. No, here's what the world looks like now. They just walk around like this. They're not even looking at you. And you think, you think that, oh my gosh, they're not paying attention to me or I don't fit in or I don't belong. You think that matters? Most of the world could care less about you. And I know that sounds terrible, but there's 7 billion people on the planet. Most people in your town, they really don't care about me. I know that sounds funny, and I'm teasing on this a little bit. However, I'm conscious enough as an adult, and you should be, too, that most people are really interested in their own lives. They're not even paying attention to you. So why are you so upset that you don't have someone else's attention or approval? Why? Your confidence should not be tied to other people's attention or approval. Right? I mean, if I think of my life, and I tied my confidence to other people's attention or approval, I would be toast. I mean, imagine I go to speak, you know, to. You know, just a couple weeks ago, I was in front of another four or five thousand people, and I think I spoke to whatever was over 75,000 people in the last year and a half or so live. Let me give you an example, what most of these arenas look like. Like, I go out on the stage, it's dark out there. There's usually like. Like lots of lights and everything. But as I'm talking, if I look down at people, a lot of people just kind of. That's it. They're just kind of. They're not like, yeah, tell me more, Brendan. Yeah, yeah. They're just kind of like, this is how most people observe the world. And their eyes are vacant, not because they're not smart, not because they're not capable. It's because their eyes aren't out towards you. I know that. They're in their head. Most people are in their own heads. So it would be a dangerous thing to tie your confidence to whether or not other people engage with you. Other people care about what you're doing. Other people approve of what you're doing. Other people give you the attention that you want. You can be a fully confident person even if you don't get the attention you desire from your husband. You can be a fully confident person even if you don't get the attention you desire from your boss. You can be a fully confident person even if everybody makes fun of you. And that's so important. You know, I love the stories of, like, an Elon Musk or a Sarah Blakely. You know, here's Elon Musk failing and failing and failing over and over and again to create and successfully launch a rocket, put all his money into it, rocket company. And for three or four of them, they're exploding the. Everyone in the world is making fun of him. Saying, what a dummy. He spent his money on this. It's never going to work. And then what? That fifth one, all of a sudden, boom works. And within 18 months, he has what it was, $2 billion of booked revenue. It's like what? It's like. Imagine if he stopped his belief in self and ability to figure things out because the first couple ones blew up and you're worried about what your neighbor thinks of you. I mean, think about Sarah Blakely, who many of you know, started Spanx and one of, I think the most like inspiring and balanced female leaders today, who I really just think came through so much, you know, questioning and hardship in so many ways. And it's a beautiful thing that, hey, everyone thought she was crazy, but her progress did not depend on other people's approval, understanding, cheering on at all. And that's what I want to give you that gift of. I know these are two basic ones, but it's almost impossible to start a thoughtful conversation or even a constructive conversation unless we can get you untied and some resources for that. I mean, if you haven't read the four agreements, read the first agreement. What's it say? Don't take things so personally. I think that's a good one. If you are constantly being offended or hurt 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 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. Trust me, because let me go back to that woman I was sharing with you earlier. She got an award, she felt confident, she felt good. But then she wanted another award, didn't feel confident anymore, wanted another one, or had a failure over here with this business or this show or this thing and didn't feel confident anymore. And it's like, what does. Like, if you are a bottomless pit that cannot be filled with the appropriate levels confidence, what do you do you blame everybody else? Well, I'd be more confident. My husband loved me more. I'd be more confident if my children like me, I'd be more confident. 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 going to 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, 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 dot, dot, dot, dot. And I would love for you to write that. Dozens and dozens and dozens of responses throughout tonight's session. Just keep thinking about it. I acknowledge myself for having survived that difficult childhood, 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 know, 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 gotta, 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. I know that you've all heard that saying that, hey, if you won't invest a dollar now in finances, don't think you're going to Invest, you know, $100,000 when you make your first million. It's just not how it happens. If you won't give yourself things now and discipline things now, they don't show up later magically. I know you all know that. I just feel like you're so hard on yourselves. I just want you to know, you know, if you're not confident now, when and whatever your answer is, if it's not an allowing a gift now, we're in a lot of trouble. We're in a lot of trouble. Now, I'm going to walk you through a lot of different ideas, but like I said, I just want to begin with the basics because if we can't unhook these first two, then it's going to be hard to go to another level. So let me recap the first two because I know I'm going all over, but I'm trying to just be honest and be in your face a little bit about this. Number one, don't tie your confidence to image. And number two, I said don't tie your confidence to other people's attention or approval because remember, most of them aren't even paying attention to you. So all your concerns. Oh, my God. What do they think? They're not thinking about you. Brendon. What do they think? They're not thinking about you. What do you think? They think? They're not thinking about you. What? What do they think? They're not thinking about you. And if they think about you or judge you, they do it for literally a day. And guess what? The next day, they're thinking about their finances, their kids, their career, their dreams. So if you get a moment of judgment from other people, please realize their attention or their approval is completely, completely superficial and not long lasting. I'm telling you. What, Once you realize that, oh, other people's judgment doesn't last you. Nope. They forget about you tomorrow. If I go on a stage and I have a bad night, no one remembers it. Three days later, I'm the only one laying awake at bed three days later, like, thinking through how I can perform at the next level. But I'm not laying awake in bed. Regret. Oh, I suck. All these people. I'm so embarrassed. I feel so shamed in front of them. If you're a person who still lives in embarrassment and shame of what other people think, you're not a person who studied anything in psychology or sociology. You just haven't been paying attention because they're not thinking about you no more. They literally are not. Why are you still so upset about this person who hurt you 15 years ago? They're not thinking about you no more. Once you can accept that, like, whoa, that's cool. Hey, they're not even thinking about me. Let me cut off the meaning I have attached to their approval because they're not even. They're not even actively approved. They're not even paying attention. Move on, baby. Sometimes realizing where you have attached meaning to your confidence and saying, I move on today, Yes, I used to tie my confidence to her, but not today. Today my confidence is mine. It is not hers. I will not give that person my own confidence anymore. There is no more you doling out your confidence to other people based on how they treat you, how they think of you, how they are in the moment. No, your confidence, that's yours. They can't take it. They can't fuel it. You are the single and sole granter of your confidence. When you get that, we can move on. Let's go. Now, the magical equation. Write this one down. C equals I plus A plus C. Good night. Write it down. Let me break it down. C equals I plus A plus C. Write it down. Write it down. I'm here with you. Write it down. C equals I plus A plus C. Okay, now let's walk through what these mean. Confidence. Confidence. Where does it come from? Let's go. Confidence. Where does it come from? Where does it come from? Well, we know it's our belief in our ability to figure Things out. That's one level of confidence. But we can go way deeper. That's why we're here. So let's go. What does this mean? C is confidence, I is intention, A is action, and C is consistency or congruence. Let's go through this. Confidence more often than not is actually coming from both in the moment, but over a duration of time. Your confidence is tied to these three things. I want you to really get this. This is going to blow your mind. Okay, here it is. Intention, action, consistency or congruence. Intention, action, consistency or congruence. Now let's walk through this. This is going to blow your mind. So please, like literally this is something you want to teach your children. This is something that can change your life forever. 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, just like push. And all of a sudden so. 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. 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. 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 turned that intention into initiative, action. And how often you stayed with it. Consistency or congruence, it's your confidence. Is often your mind rewarding you for initiative, intention, action and consistency or congruence with that initiative. Right? Or that intention. So if, like, 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 of confidence. Those three things have filled your confidence tank, whether you knew it or not. But here's the incredible, powerful, beautiful thing. 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, 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 are 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 punchbowl by myself. And I go, okay, what was your intention? What do you mean? Well, I. What do you mean? Well, 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 say 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, 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 there of. Omg. See, I used to just go show up and I was super awkward and I've got no problems. 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, eh. 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, well, 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. And I need you to get this tonight because once you have this, everything can change. I want to double my confidence. I need to do that in my life right now. I'm like, great. Okay, let's look at the next seven days of your calendar. How can you be more intentional each day? What's your intention for that day? Okay, great. Now what actions would you have to take to fulfill that intention? Great, take them. And what would you need to be consistent about? Great. Be consistent. And in a week we've improved your intention. It's all we have to do. I know, it's super simple. It's super simple, but start there, start there because I see you know. And then we're going to have this conversation. Is confidence something that comes from our childhood? And there's a lot of conversation about this. Now here's the easy answer. Sure, of course it does. But it also comes from how your teachers were. It also comes from what kind of car you drove. It also comes from what your bank account is. It also comes from how you treat other people. In other words, there is no one source. And that's why this is so powerful, because this puts you in control. I always tell people, and they don't like when I say this, I say, I think what's really fun to do in seminars. Say, okay, tell me about your childhood. Oh, that's the reason why you are the oar. And I think that's. I think that's a cheap shot. And that's an easy answer. I really do. I think it's too easy to say, oh, this parent caused this in me. Hey, I get that our parents shaped us, but so did everything else. We're the meaning machines. We're the ones that gave meaning to all these different things. I know people who literally, and I'm not being facetious, I know people who are paralyzed who gave less meaning to that situation in their life than other people over here who had somebody break up with them one time. And they're more paralyzed than the person who was actually physically paralyzed. And I know that sounds obnoxious to say, but it's actually true. It's two stories of two friends of mine. And it's like, whoa, this person is confident, moving on, doing great things. This person just lost a relationship and they're acting. They're like, they're more paralyzed in life than this person is physically, mentally. They're just frozen in their home and sadness. And so here's the thing. It's not about what kind of parent did you have? It's about the meaning you're giving things. And we're going to talk about that later on. And yes, there's a tremendous amount of study of studies that say, hey, there's a lot of these things in people's past that shapes them. I'm like, yes, but most of those things that shaped us were when we were unconsciously defining and giving them meaning. And now if we want control as adults, we need to start consciously giving things meaning each day. And we can rewrite those stories by being more conscious today and being more thoughtful about how we think of ourselves, not just from one or two or three critical incidences when we were children, but rather how we are showing up today and where we want to go. 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 progressmo.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 into in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progressmode.com make confidence a conversation in your mind more often. Make it a conversation in your mind. It's like, you know, I have a lot of corporate clients and I often tell them, you know, if you don't make performance a conversation in your culture, then your culture will never become high performing. If you don't make your confidence a conversation in your mind, that's an active conversation versus just a passive one. I feel this bad versus no. What is my intention? How do I want to feel? What level of confidence do I want to feel? What would I have to activate in myself to feel that? And let me do that over and over and over again and I'll be more confident. And that's exactly what I did with this simple little formula. I started saying, okay, what's my intention for the confidence I need right now? I'll give you an example. When I speak on other people's stages, like big names, famous celebrities, whatever, I'll go in there and there's a lot of times I'm a very, very humble guy. I don't want to talk to people backstage. Sometimes I just want to be in my place. I'm very internal thinking about my things. But yeah, I mean, I'll see someone walk in with their big entourage and their behind the scenes cameras and they'll be famous. And I'll be like, oh dear, I didn't bring it. I don't even have an assistant here. Now just be standing back there watching all these people who are super famous going by. And instead of allowing that to in any way touch my confidence, instead the conversational confidence is in my head. I say, what is my intention? How confident do I need to be if I'm going to serve here? If I need to be that confident, what would I do right now to give myself that gift of confidence? Oh, I'd give myself some credit. Oh, I'd tell myself, you're going to figure it out. Oh, I'd recognize all those miles I have run. Oh, I'd focus on these people. Oh, okay. I would do this. I would do all these things to give myself confidence. And then I walk out on that stage confident because my intention was the conversation in my head. What level of confidence am I right now and is it sufficient for the performance I need to have? And when I say performance, I want you to think about that in a generality. So, for example, you might need to go have a difficult conversation with your spouse. You got to ask before that. Put in your head the conversation of confidence. Okay, what should my. How do I need to feel about myself? What's the level of confidence I should have going into this conversation? How can I protect my own confidence in this conversation? Not to let this person throw it off or make me feel bad about myself? Like just being aware, moving it from back here where it's super unconscious and just happening to you to forefront. Let me be more conscious about my own confidence. Change your life. Number four. I know this is. It's a little bit going back on something I said earlier, but it is the nuance of confidence. Project completion increases confidence. Project completion does increase confidence. This is a really big one, y'. All. I hope you wrote it down. Project completion does increase confidence. Now we're going to go into relationships in your past and skill and all these other things in a bit. But listen, why does project completion increase confidence? Why? Why does project completion increase confidence? Because the formula, consistency, congruence. If you had the intention to do the project, you did it. You did it till it was complete. Your mind rewards that action. But I really want to do this for you. Many of you, listen, Please listen. Many of you get a lot of tasks done all the time. You check lists off, you have to do lists, and you're doing a lot of random things. But random things don't always give you the sense of confidence at the same level as completing a major project. I know you know this. Write it down. You've got open projects, my friends. We correlated productivity with confidence. The more productive you are, the more confident you are. And I don't mean productive in just like the number of items you do, but it's the significant number of things that you actually achieve or accomplish or finish. Finishing, my friend, is important. Finishing major projects in your life are milestones of the mind. Finishing major projects in your life are milestones of the mind. It's like, oh, I did that. And it's not about doing it because, you know, you wanted the external approval or just the image of that. We talked about that. It is the sense of self that says, I finish things. I'm a completer. I get things done that are important. And here's the simplest thing. Tonight, write down all your big open projects and finally determine when you're going to finish them. Some of you are like, well, I'm working on this big project. I go, what? Well, I'm writing a book. When's he going to get that done? You know when it happens. Luckily, I wake up one day and I look at my desk and it's just written. No, no, no. When, when, when? Please finish right now. What are the open projects like? Literally right now, I'm here with you. I'm coaching you now. You and I are sitting across the table. That's why we do this together. We're right here in your journal. What are your open projects? The major projects that you've been wanting to complete. What are they? Finish them, write them down, pick that date and mobilize yourself to finish the major projects of your life. Trust me, it is not easy. And that's why you have this coaching. We keep you on your A game. We've got a lot of tools and resources for productivity, for staying on your A game. You got a supportive community here. We've got everything at hpx from you know, your supplements to your planners, to your courses, to your trainings to your live events. We got everything here for you. But at the end of the day, you got to finish those projects, my friend. It's funny, the more open projects you have, the more it creates self doubt. That's why I tell people two things. Number one, don't take on too many projects at once. You can have a lot of projects lined up, right? Have them all lined up. Know when you're going to do them, but only be working a few major projects at once. That's number one. Work just a few major projects at once. Just a few. Don't overwhelm yourself. Don't try to take on 5, 10, 15, 20. Just a few major projects at once. Your mind and your psychology will be improved because of this. Number two, finish those projects. Finish them. Finish them. I think. Listen, it's not about necessarily the exact date that you will finish them. It is to know a time frame. Like if it's your project. Notice I'm not saying a dream here because your dream might be. My dream is one day to stand on the moon. Well, we might not be able to pick that date, but projects, those are specific things you've chosen. Let's figure it out my friends. When are you going to finish those projects? Because when you got a bunch of open projects. Oof. Here's the worst thing for your psychology. Tons of open projects. Busy day. Getting a lot of things done unrelated to open projects. How many? Know what I'm talking about? Who gets a lot done during the day but none of it is related to the major projects that would move your life forward. That creates a misery of the mind. It makes you go, oh my gosh. And you start to lose confidence in yourself because you never finished something. But it's just like when you finish a marathon. You're confident in yourself because you did the effort, you put in the miles and you know, you pushed through what was difficult, but you finished. Do you know what would be the most misery of all time? Endless marathons. Do you know why they don't have any? Because they would be pure misery. You must finish, my friends. Finish, finish. Next up, this one you all know, and I teach this so much in all our work. Skill increases confidence. The C stands for confidence. That's the universal sign for increase Skill increases confidence. The more skill, the more confidence. And so this is why I will always come back in every one of my trainings to you. I will encourage you always, always, always. It's so critical to high performance to write down what are the major critical skills you need to master in the next couple years of your life and to be actively working towards developing those skills, actively develop those skills. Like, I'm constantly developing my skill. And as you develop your skill, guess what? Every new development in your skill, your brain goes, good job. Here's some confidence. Got better at this. Here's some confidence. Got better at this. Here's some confidence. This is the stuff of self efficacy. I've done it many times before and so now I have confidence doing it. Now this is situational confidence. This is skill based confidence. And your skills are critical. But I know that many of you just in conversation, many of you, sometimes you don't even know what skills you're working on. You're working on a lot of tasks, but not skills. You know, it's almost like something got stolen from many of us. We used to think, oh, well, I'm, you know, I'm playing piano when you were a kid, or you were swimming when you were a kid and there was a skill, you were trying to get better at it. And then you went to school and everything became conceptualized and you're just actively learning, but you're not trying to learn something specific. And that is where a lot of the confidence is lost, is you're working in generalities of doing but not mastery of skill. And in the active pursuit of mastery of a skill, we find deeper levels of confidence. And the good news is we don't even have to try to do it. Just mastering something alone. We don't have to sit and meditate, oh, I mastered that. Got better. It unconsciously happens for us, it's a beautiful thing, because with mastery, what's happening is those new distinctions and more progress. And new distinctions and more progress. Our mind goes, Good job. Nice work. Here's a little bit more confidence. Next up. More presence leads to greater confidence. More presence leads to greater confidence. Got it. More presence. What does this mean? Presence is when. Presence is when. Right now. Presence is right now. Presence is in this moment. It's alive, alert, fresh, noticing, feeling, sensing right now. Not trapped in the past. Your mind is not yesterday. Your mind is not on your parents or your high school or your old friends or your old girlfriend or the people who broke up with you. Your mind, your whole body, your whole soul, Wham. Right here, fully present in this very second. That is a superpower. Presence is power. Presence is power. Learning to direct the mind in the moment and just be alert in the moment. Not trapped in your head of old stories, right? I know a lot of you asked this Brendan boy, this networking thing is so intimidating to me. I'd really like confidence there. I'm like, okay, then go be at the party. Because what people do is they go, okay. Their mind is like, okay, Last time I went to the party, I sucked. I was, you know, not. I was stupid. I was awkward. I was, you know. And then they walk in the party, and they're really thinking about their job. They're really thinking about their money. They're really thinking about this guy might give me this deal and this deal, and they're trying to, like, look into the future. Oh, if I could meet her, then she would lead this, and this gate would open, and they're not even there. Like, learn to be. You want to be confident with other people. Be right there with them. Bam, in the moment, right here with them, fully energized, fully alert, fully right now, right here. Whatever that means for you. Whether it's an enthusiastic. For me, I know I'm being present when enthusiasm is there. That's how I know for me personally. But yours might just be like, wow, I just feel really deeply connected. I feel connected with myself, with them. What I want you to do is really, really start practicing mindfulness. And I know you already know that, but as you are more mindful in the moment with others, what happens is you get a stronger capability socially. People recognize that. They see that. They're alert and aware to the fact that you are alert and aware. And all of a sudden, the connections get better. And all of a sudden, because of your presence, confidence can happen. Because here's something you should Know, and this is really important, that at a psychological level, that presence is sort of the vehicle for authenticity. Presence is the vehicle for authenticity. And when we are being authentic, real to who we are, guess what that means. Psychologically, we're being congruent. When we are congruent, our confidence grows. And so just by the act of teaching ourselves to be mindful in the moment, when we're really there, we'll be more authentic and spontaneous in the moment, when we're more authentic and spontaneous in the moment, we're being more of who we are. Without the constructs of yesterday or the worries of the future or the strategies of next year. We're just right there. And when we are right there, present and activated in the moment, authenticity comes through, which tells our brain, hey, I'm being me. I'm congruent. And confidence doles out like that. And so think about that. Presence is like this, like it's a vehicle for authenticity. And authenticity carries along with it that confidence. So just be thinking about that. Are you really being present? Simple tools for that. And I always tell people like that who worry when I start talking about confidence. Well, Brendan, I'm just, I'm going to be perceived as I'm, you know, egoic when I have lots of confidence. Because a lot of people think, listen to this. I want you to hear this. Lots of distinctions today. Confidence does not mean the same thing as aggression. Many of you are worried, like, oh, I don't want to go be confident because as we heard earlier from Sarah Johnson, well, I might threaten this person. Know what threatens people is aggression. Don't think confidence is the same as aggression. Okay, it's not the same because you can be fully confident, but you can also be the quietest person, the most thoughtful person in the room. Because here's how you be confident with other people without over ego. It's very simple. You increase how much you listen, you increase how many questions you ask, and therefore you increase confidence. Because the more you ask questions and the more you listen, the more your ego goes not needed here. It's not about me. It's not about me. It's about these other people. So let me ask more questions. Let me listen more. And as I learn the skills of listening and asking more questions, guess what happens? My confidence goes up. Makes sense. My confidence goes up when I focus on other people, right? When I give other people attention, even though they might not need it, but they feel good when I do. I know that when I'm listening and asking questions, I'm Confident, because guess what? It's not about me now. I'm just practicing a skill of listening, of asking questions to help them explore things. Because guess as you learn to ask better questions and you learn to listen better, you're a better coach with people. And then they start to want to be around you more, because it's not about you all the time, it's about them. Now. People want to be around you, and you didn't have to go, blah, blah, blah, look at me. Instead you said, oh, look at you. You know, it's that old thing I love to teach is like, there's two types of people. Some people walk into a room with others and they go, here I am. And other people walk into the room and go, oh, there you are. The people we tend to want to be around are the people who are interested in us, because those human drives we talked about earlier. And so it's important to realize that if you can increase your listening time and the quality of questions you ask other people, your confidence will go up. See, I'm confident in every single situation in the world because I believe in my ability to figure things out. But I am also confident I will learn, I will ask questions. I don't think I have to know how to figure things out because I'm not inherently a quick study, if you will. I'm just going to go in and I'm going to be the guy. I will ask a lot of questions. Like, I got literally. I got asked this one time from a college student at a college speech, said, brendan, you say you can be confident in anything. I said, I can be confident at anything. Not that I can do it right now, but that I believe in my ability to figure this out. Okay, well, Brendan, and this town had a nuclear reactor, like, literally, and said, well, what if you were asked to go run the nuclear reactor? Would you be confident in that? I said, I'd absolutely be confident in that. I don't think I can go do it right now, but put me in the room with everybody there. I'll be confident in that situation even though I don't know what I'm doing, because I will ask everybody, because I don't think I have to know everything, right. If you think you have to know everything, you got an ego. What I believe is that I can ask and I can learn, but also that I don't have to do everything. I could say I could literally. He said, well, how could you be confident? I told the kid, I said, well, because I would walk in there and I said, who's the smartest person who runs this plant? This person. And I would walk up to the person, I said, you know what? I confidently believe you should keep running this plant. Nice to meet you. I'm Brandon. I just leave. You know, it's like, I don't think I have to do everything. Once you stop thinking, your ego has to control, do and win it. Everything. And you can put other people in the spotlight. Your confidence grows. Your confidence grows when you learn to put other people into the spotlight. Okay, here's one that's really important. This one. Emotional instability leads to less. That's the less than sign, right? Yep. Less confidence. Emotional instability leads to less confidence. Please write this one down. Emotional instability leads to less confidence. What do I mean by that? Here's what I mean by that, is that the more days you go by and you don't have a handle on your emotions, the more you lose confidence. But here's what happens. People keep saying, well, these events make me feel this way. These events make me feel this way. My bank account makes me feel this way. My spouse makes me feel this way. My thing makes. And we keep giving our emotional power to other things, and we keep living in reactive emotional lives. And the more we're in reactive emotional lives, where we just take the emotion that comes to us because we take things personally, or we let people run all over us and then we feel bad about ourselves. Guess what? Our confidence goes down. Emotional instability. Now, here's the deal. We can't always have stable lives. Not externally, but we can have stable internal lives. See, the world really does belong to those who master their internal world. And it's necessary for each of us to start taking back control of our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our moods to create more stability emotionally. Right. So as an example, could you be happier and more joyous and more even keeled throughout the day? Absolutely. But most people don't have that intention. They're not forging their thoughts to make it happen. They're not doing it consistently. So they're lacking confidence. It's like your ability to generate more emotional intelligence in your life is so critical to your confidence. And when I say emotional intelligence, I might mean it a little differently than Daniel Goleman as an example. But I think this is really key in that you have to stop letting the world emotionally throw you off all the time. You being so reactive, hurt, stressed, freaked out all the time is teaching your body and your brain that you don't have a handle on life. Stop being so reactive Start being more intentional about the energy you want to create. This is why in what we do here at hpx, we're always telling you the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates it. You need to start generating on a consistent basis. Even if it's hard cranking, just, like, make that more positive emotion happen. Make it happen. Like, even sometimes when you're trying to make more happiness happen, you might have to spend like, you know, two, three, four hours just thinking how to, like, get your mind going. You might have to take like 40 minutes of meditation. You might have to do all these things. It's so hard at first. Oh, my God, I got to go to yoga to calm my mind. Oh, my God. But you do it over and over and over and over and over again. And now things don't throw you off emotionally. See, I speak to this personally. I used to be an emotionally unstable person. And I mean that in pretty much every sense of the word. But for me, the main emotion that really dictated a big part of my life was anger. And anger happened a lot. I would say to me, I would always say, anger keeps happening to me. I keep feeling anger. And no, it was that I was an immature kid who got personally offended by things that I attached meaning to. And I didn't have to get offended upset about them. It was the meaning I was giving them. Lots of other people had the same things and didn't get so upset, but I got upset. I was attaching the meaning to it and it was really upsetting and wrong that what I was doing was I was getting angry all the time. And the funny thing is, sometimes we think angry people are so strong and have confidence, but they're not. In fact, they're emotionally weak. And I'm not saying you should never feel anger, but nine out of ten times, anger, it's kind of a silly emotion. It can mobilize, yes, but so can passion. Passion's a better mobilizing emotion than anger is. So here was this immature kid who got angry all the time. If you're a person who's angry all the time, I just want to let you know this anger thing is hurting your confidence and your overall enjoyment of life. We've got to find those times in our life where we say, I'm not going to be an angry person anymore. Instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to learn to take control of my own emotions, my own thoughts. So how do you do it? First, you begin with your thoughts. You literally say, okay, what should I share or say to myself right now to put myself in a better emotional state to deal with this anger is not going to serve. So what's the emotional state? I need to peace and patience. How do I do that? Okay, I need to go outside, take a couple laps, breathe in really deep and just calm myself down. Great. Take that action. Intention, be more peaceful. Action. Go outside, calm yourself down, Breathe. Consistency. Confidence comes back up because you having the intention to take control of the emotion. You've got to do this right. A mosin really matters towards confidence. The more unstable your emotions, the more like they're always all over the place. No wonder you don't feel like you're in command of your life. No wonder the confidence isn't there because it's time to take control of your emotions again, my friends. It's so critical, so critical. The number one thing, I'm sorry, The number one and two things I really believe that make people emotionally unstable is number one, they take things too personally. Everything. Oh, it's so offensive. Everything. Outrage, everything. And there's like ah, all the time. It's a reactive thing that happens because they take things too personally. And number two, related but somewhat separate. Related but somewhat separate is the sense of just like sadness or dread emotionally that they get sad about all these things all the time and they're not being thoughtful because listen, it's very wonderful today. Oh, it's okay that you're sad. That's authentic and that's real and that's being vulnerable. And I was like, well if sadness is not helping you, sadness is then on the same equivalent as anger. Let's just be honest. If it's an emotion that is not serving you and helping you be better, then let's get a handle on it. I'm not saying you should never feel sadness or anger. I am, please listen. I am not saying you should never feel those things. But if you constantly feel those things and they're creating an instability in your life, then that instability is knocking you off of your confidence and it's time to be aware of that. Some of you seek that support. If you're always sad, always depressed or always anger or you're having any extreme emotions all the time and that volatility is hurting your sense of self or your progress or your enjoyment of life, please go see a therapist and I mean that, go get some help and support. If you are a mature adult, meaning you're above the age of 18 years old and you are still emotionally all over the place all the time, you need some skill based training on this and it's time to go get some support, right? There's so many great books on this of how to get better control of your emotions. One book we recommend all the time is a book called the Tools, just called the Tools. T O O l s the Tools, like start, start somewhere, read something. But don't let yourself be all over the place emotionally all the time. I'm not saying you have to be steady all the time because some of those pops and joys that makes life real. But if your instability emotionally is hampering your joy, confidence or progress in life, that's something to think about. Next one. Deeper relationships. Deeper relationships decrease stress. Now this is just a truth. Deeper relationships decrease stress. Why is this important? Because sometimes our confidence is constantly being dinged because we don't feel a deep connection with other people. And because sometimes we have superficial relationships with people. The more superficial the relationships we have, the more those relationships are likely to cause us stress. The more deeply we know somebody and connect with them and that they know us, the deeper our relationship is with them, the more that their actions tend to not cause us stress. Because we have empathy, we have understanding, we have connection, we have acknowledgements, we have acceptance between each other, we have an awareness of one another. So the more superficial relationships you tend to have, the more you take things in a personal way, the more superficial relationships you have, the more they don't understand you. So they don't understand your triggers. And so what ends up happening is superficial relationships lead to increased stress, lead to increased drama, which all steals away from our confidence. You want to be more confident, form deep, meaningful relationships in your life. I am steady because of the relationships I have with my family. I am steady because of a relationship I have with my wife. I am steady because of relationships I have with those peers in my industry. I am steady because the relationships I have with my team, those who I lead, serve and care for, I'm steady because of you guys. And so this is a really important concept, right? If you have a lot of stress, remember our last point, emotional instability. And talk about emotional instability when you're stressed all the time. Ah, there's all this anxiousness all the time, all this stress all the time. That's emotional instability. How much of that emotional instability is coming from your relationships with other people? Now think about the depth of those relationships. Are they truly deep, meaningful, fulfilling relationships where there's a lot of sharing, vulnerability, truth, authenticity, passion, vibrancy, intimacy there, or is a lot of that Emotional instability happening because of reactions that you're having to and because of or through superficial relationships. I think there's the most important thing we could talk about in terms of confidence at a social level. You want more confidence, don't go seek approval from a bunch of new people. You want more confidence, don't seek a bunch of approval from a bunch of new people. Go repair and deepen the relationships with the people in your life who matter, who you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think that is the most important thing. I can't share you how important this is. For those of you who do feel a lot of emotional instability in your life, if that's where you're at, and you can identify that with some relationships in your life, work on those relationships. They're so important. And I know we've all been part of relationships before where our emotions were all over the place all the time because of somebody in a relationship. It wasn't just we didn't have control of our mind or we had this biochemically going on or this situation. Because as you've heard me talk about so many times before, I often tell people who have a lot of emotional instability, hey, first, that's okay if you've never had any training for that, or that's okay if that's where you're at in a physical manner. That's why I'm always telling people, if you're constantly struggling with something, go see a professional, go see a doctor, go see a therapist, because maybe there's a reason that you're so emotionally unstable. For me, I was emotionally unstable because of a brain injury. So I'm not saying that emotional instability is a bad thing, but I'm saying you got to determine the cause. That's your job. You got to determine the cause and you got to improve it. And what I've seen over and over, the older I get and the more I coach that highest level of people, a lot of their dramas, traumas, challenges happen because they're so worried about or so stressed about superficial relationships they have in their life. So go deep in the relationships you have in your life, and that can truly improve your life. Now, if this is a little heavy, I get it. I know I had a lot to talk about tonight, and I think that's really important. Last two ideas. Sorry. Last two ideas. Better community means greater confidence. Getting around a better community leads to greater confidence. Better community. The value of a community of other people who are seeking high performance cannot be given like what we experience together every single month. I grow because of these conversations and I know that you are, too. So I appreciate and I cheer you on for your dedication to personal development. It's so inspiring. Importantly, my friends, I want you to do this. I want you this year to say, you know what? I am going to get around three friends this year. Three friends this year who are confident and who do, like, seem to be high performing and successful in what they're doing. And I'm going to hang out with them more this year. I want you to identify three people and some of you might be like, I don't have three friends like that. I'm like, go find them from now on. Like, I want you on a more consistent. Like, this weekend, I'm going to go hang out with two inspiring couples who I'm just like, they're impressive. I just want to go have dinner with them, sit down with them, just get it. Why? There's nothing I need from them. It's just that I know when I'm around extraordinary people, something activates in me almost unconsciously. Yes, I might be inspired in the moment. Yes, I might be, you know, thrilled in the moment, but I also am like, ooh, something. You know, I wake up with a bigger idea or I'll be more motivated, more and more resilient. Like, something is happening. Especially in North America where people don't have deep friendships anymore. It's so strange. I know that might not be you, but I'm here to tell you it's not like one day you're going to wake up and the perfect community is there. You got to go shape it. You got to take people out to lunches and dinners. You got to go networking events. You got to do this crazy thing called call people. There's a difference between calling people and texting people. People like texting is not the same as keeping in touch. Okay, I need you to pick up the phone or go out to lunch or dinner with inspiring people. You want your confidence to rise, get around confident, successful people. Just do it. Just force it. Just schedule it. Just get there. On your deathbed at the end of your life, work is not standing there supporting you. Your loved ones are standing there. Your friends are standing there. Your cell phone is not standing there. What you have at the end of your life is the relationships you have built. And I want you to be surrounded by extraordinary people because you live an extraordinary life that won't happen by accident. I want you to have three friends that you hang out with who are high, performing Inspiring confident, awesome people because they will lift you up. So prioritize your friendships. Don't say I, I don't have time for friends. Never say that because at the end of your life, at your deathbed, your phone isn't there. It's not like your phone is cheering you on. It's your loved ones and your friends who lift you up. Create great friendships. Last one. I know, I know. Last one. Overabundance can increase your confidence. Overabundance leads to greater confidence. I love this idea. Overabundance leads to greater confidence. Confidence. What does this mean to me? Overabundance means, can mean a couple different things. One, it just means, you know what, Go achieve things you never knew you were going to achieve. Just be like, just because your mind will go, hey, I can do that. And that can be good unconsciously. But overabundance to me is a spiritual thing. I believe there's so much abundance in this world, I'm confident. You know what? Because when you believe in scarcity, you don't have as much confidence. You're scared things won't work out and that scarcity slows down your performance. But listen, you can not have a lot of money but still have so much abundance belief in your life. You might not have a lot, but you can be generous with people. You know, generous with your energy, with your time, with your love. I think that's really important. My friends like, for me, I'm abundant and I try to be generous with people. And the more generous I believe that I am and the more like abundance that I have in my life, not things, but just abundance mentality, the more confidence I am. Because you know what? When you believe in abundance, you know that things will turn out. When you believe in abundance, you know, you'll get yours and they'll get theirs too. There's plenty to go around. When there's plenty to go around, you're not so scared anymore. And so maybe you could start approaching life. Like, you know what? There's going to be plenty. I'm good. I'm fine. I can, I can help. Maybe you can approach life and say, how can I be even more generous? Because if I can be generous, I can be confident in any given situation. You know, I remember there was a moment when I, even when I was broke, it didn't mean there wasn't much around me, but I didn't have scarcity in my heart. Does that make sense? I had abundance in my heart. And by having abundance in my heart and in my beliefs, I had confidence things would work out. When I didn't believe there was enough, I didn't believe things would work out. I'm asking you to put that confidence conversation in your mind. Listen, you have the servant's heart. You want to make the difference. Go be confident in that. Allow yourself the confidence. Show up with confidence. Be confident. Because it's only you granting it to yourself. So grant it to yourself. Be good with yourself. Acknowledge yourself. Go put yourself out there so you develop the skills. Get more competent, get more confidence. Go contribute. Go be generous, my friends. And as always, you can choose to be average each day or can go choose to be extraordinary. Please go be extraordinary.