The CONFIDENCE Blueprint: How to OWN Your Worth

Mindset is interpretation and it is identity. That space between stimulus and response is how are we interpreting it? Good, bad, safe, not safe. Approach, avoid and identity. Am I enough? Am I capable? Am I worthy? Is it my time? People who finally feel more confident, more fulfilled, more capable, more than enough. They're able to see all the times they did okay. They became resilient, they bounced back, they were a good person. They integrate that into who they are. I am enough.

Hey guys, it's Brendan. And as you know, I rarely do sit down interviews with anybody. And so this is a special episode. I'm doing a six part series with my friend Pastor Steven Furtick, talking about how you can use faith and mindset and high performance to improve your life. This was a rare sit down interview for either of us in our busy lives. We're both New York Times bestselling authors. We both teach millions of people every single week. We have the opportunity of reaching so many people. Me with personal development and high performance training. He of course, in ministry in Christianity, in sharing his message as a pastor of faith and how to improve your life through a connection with God. And it was kind of a cool sitting down and coming together of these two worlds to talk about one thing, mindset and how you can become the new you.

What?

His new book is entitled do the New you. It's a six part series, so I hope you'll enjoy it here. It's rare that I put anything like this on my YouTube channel because most of my channel is my keynote presentations or my live cast or replays for my courses. But you're getting an exclusive look right here in some behind the scenes conversations I get to have in my life all the time. But this time we recorded. So with no further ado, please enjoy this conversation with myself and Pastor Steven Furtick, author of the new book, do the New you.

I want you to not only tap into this idea of why mindset matters as a performance coach and how that comes over into our faith and our life, but what you think about starting from a place of enoughness. Oof.

Well, the mindset piece is so important because life comes at us and we all heard that big difference between stimulus and response. Well, the space between stimulus and response is mindset.

Break that down.

Yeah. Information comes into our life and as information comes into our life, there's a space between how we respond and that response can go this way or this way, and it's determined by our mindset. How am I thinking about the situation, how am I interpreting it and what is My identity in this space. And that's what people understand. Mindset is interpretation, and it is identity. And so whatever's coming in at us, oh, you know, my boss is mean today. Interpretation. He's a jerk. This job sucks. Identity. I'm no good. I'm never gonna get paid enough.

Interpretation.

And now what's our response? Yeah, defeat.

Wow.

Quit. Stop. Speak poorly of this person. But if that same information comes in, didn't get this. And our interpretation is, oh, that's a challenge for me to go to another level. And who am I? I'm somebody who's going to keep trying until I get the result that I dream of. Next. Action. Positive action. So that space between stimulus and response is. How are we interpreting it? Good, bad, safe, not safe. Approach, avoid, and identity. Am I enough? Am I capable? Am I worthy? Is it my time? Am I mature enough? Am I whatever enough? Then if that's a positive thing, the response we put in the world will be positive. And this is why people have to study mindset so much, because your responses become your consequences. And a lot of people don't like the consequences. I don't have enough money, I'm not healthy, My marriage is bad and all. We gotta go. Okay, let's work it back to your responses. Let's work it back to your mindset.

And all of that is filtered through identity.

You think it's a piece of it usually for people, because we still have that genetic part of ourselves that is just impulsive. You know, that lizard brain, as you later call it in the book. Even though that science, it's a little sketchy, the brain isn't in these compartments where this part is the reactive part and this part is the monkey brain and all these other weird things we've come up with to explain it. It's more like a SP spider web. It's like a spider web where all these things are firing and impacting everything at the same time. However, we do have that immediate impulse as animals. We have an immediate impulse to do something, an immediate impulse to respond. And because safety is so important to us, we do tend the first part of mindset actually turns to be interpretation. I'm going to filter this through a lens of good or bad. And then I'm saying good or bad for me, Safe or unsafe for me. Right? So you walk past that alley, it's scary. I should get out of here. But it's first scary. So we understand that mindset is often interpretation than identity, not always, you know, because we do see a filter through who we are and whose we are. But often that first response is really interpreting where we belong.

And this is the kind of nuance that I wanted to bring you in for. And this is the kind of distinction I wanted you to get, because we talk a lot about identity in Christ, and you probably heard that phrase or something like it, like what Brendan just said. You know, I know who I am, I know whose I am. But that's not just a sentiment. Okay? And one of the things that I wanted to get across in this book is that until my identity in Christ starts affecting how I interpret my life, I really still don't get it yet. And if I see myself just as somebody that God loves because, well, Jesus died on the cross and there's a group insurance plan, and I got in on it because I accepted Jesus, and now God kind of has to include me with all of my preexisting conditions, then I have missed the point of what it means to say that I am a masterpiece made by God. I am. In the Greek, it literally says a poema, like a poem, like God's poem. And the idea that Christ is in me means more than just he died for me 2,000 years ago. That is huge. I'm not downplaying that at all. I'm just saying that the fact of Christ being in you has to do more with your everyday life than you might think. Because as long as we look at God as being out there somewhere, you know, I'm throwing up a prayer to the big man upstairs, or man. I'm looking for God to kind of come down and fix this situation and don't shift it to the internal, then we're basically living our life with no agency.

Right?

We're living our life. If I understand my basic psychological terms correctly, we're living our lives at the mercy of our impulses, stimulus, response, and no Christ in the middle to say, wait a minute, I'm a child of God, wait a minute, I belong to God. I have faith, I have the grace of God. I get to appropriate God's power in this situation as I surrender to him. Right.

So good. So good. Yeah. The way I think about it is often a lot of the trouble we have in our mindset is we go to identity first. And, you know, in what I love about faith and religions of the world, it says actually interpret things through the word, interpret things through him and what he intended versus just how you feel and who you think you are. Because if I ran my entire life based on identity, who I think I am and how I'm feeling and how I identify in these groups versus a higher moral ethic versus spiritual guidance, we'd be a hot mess. And I think that's one of the things we struggle with in the world right now. That's why we have a. I always say we have a selfie culture versus a service culture. We have a selfie culture because we're all focused so much on identity and we're sometimes missing the higher calling, the higher service, that if we interpreted life in a different way through faith, through spirituality, we'd probably act differently. And so it sounds like when I say mindset is interpretation than identity, sometimes people think that's. Oh, that's a negative thing, because you're saying impulse and then self. But I'm often saying, too, interpretation is connecting to a higher cause or higher moral ethic, higher spirituality. And I'm within that. I am within, like Christ is in me.

That's where it starts.

But I am part of this. This is a bigger thing than just me. And I think that's actually empowering because I can understand. I'm enough because I'm, you know, he's in me, but I'm external, too.

Since you're already there, I think we should just dive on down a little deeper into this. Cause I know you wonder about this too sometime. Sometimes self esteem, like self worth, like, I'm enough. It's sometimes just so flippant, right? And yet I know me. I know the dark parts of me. I know not only the mistakes I make, but the mistakes that I want to make that I hold myself back from that are even worse than the ones that I make. And knowing all of that about me, I once shared with our church, and I share it a little bit in the book, that accepting Jesus wasn't that hard for me. Like, we have this phrase, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, or receiving Christ, well, accepting him, I get forgiven, loved, get to go to heaven. Great. Sign me up. I'm accepting Jesus. He has the way that I should live. He has all wisdom, all power. I'm accepting Jesus. That took me, you know, just opening my heart and accepting him. But accepting Stephen, that's a little harder. And I have a real passion to help you with this because I think it's possible for you to accept Jesus and not accept you. In fact, this mindset in the book goes with an action step. They each do. And this action step is accept yourself. And I put it with a capital S. Not because you're God and God is you. I Don't believe that. I believe that basically the self that God wants you to accept is your spirit, which is made perfect and complete in him, which is cleansed, and then it's covered up by all of this other stuff. So I want to know, as you've studied it, because, man, you've looked into this from every different angle. And the terms that we throw around sometimes about self worth and self esteem and identity, sometimes it's a moving target. It's not like I just either accept myself or I don't. It kind of depends on the time of day or what just happened or what stimulus I just ran into. So talk to me about how that self worth, self esteem thing can be a moving target for us.

I think you nailed this. In the book. This, you know, I am enough comes back down to recognizing that we are more than what limits us and we are more than what's missing. As you say in the, in the first part of the chapter, you say, you know, you're more than just what's missing.

Yeah.

That sometimes the reason it feels like a moving target is because in every given situation, we go, am I capable to handle this? That's at that moment, that's what we were saying. Am I enough? Am I capable of handling this? Then we say, oh, am I doing it right? Am I perfect? And we consider perfect enough. And then we say, do I have as much or am I as good as them? That makes me enough because I compare well. So we usually say, am I capable? Am I perfect? Am I comparing well? Well, those are the three moving targets, okay? And you're never gonna hit all three of them, so you're never gonna feel enough. Because if that's how you equate enough, you're in trouble. So in all of psychology, always comes back down to definitions, right? So what does it mean for you to be enough? And that's how we'll start in coaching sometimes. What does it mean for you to be enough? Maybe you put that in the chat.

Yeah.

What does it mean?

What is enough?

Yeah, because most people say, well, what does it mean to be enough? Well, I got to be perfect. I got to be capable to handle all the complexity of this new business or this new challenge or this new issue I'm facing. And, oh, yeah, I got to compare well, next to my neighbor. Well, if that's what enough to you is, you're never gonna achieve it. You'll never get near it, because those three things are always moving in every given new situation. So at some point, just like happiness in our life, we discern what is happiness to me. And in this case, we have to say, well, what is enough to me is me being enough. Does that mean I'm confident? Does it mean I feel capable? Does it mean I'm worthy? Like, what does it mean? And people often only explore that once they get to the point where they feel like, oh, wait, I am doing life kind of good. I am measuring up pretty well to the Joneses.

You know, you taught something one time. I think it really fits with this mindset. I would love for you to hear this game changing teaching that Brendan has on integrating your wins. Now, I've shared some of this before, but I can't share it the way you do. And I realize that maybe part of the reason I can't share it is because I'm scared sometimes to give myself any credit because it's like, no, it was all God. I like the joke that sometimes we'll tell a singer in church, you know, wow, you really did great today singing. And they'll go, no, it wasn't me. It was all God. To which I always want to say, no, it wasn't all God. It wasn't that good. It sounded better, but it was just a lot better. It was good. You did good. And this idea of integrating your wins. Yeah, talk about that. Because I think a lot of us are confused and we're like, well, I don't want to have pride. Well, no, you don't want to have pride. But this idea that I can never really feel good about what I did, that doesn't please God either. So give this teaching. I love this.

Yeah, it's kind of like if you think about, are you enough? It's kind of like a gas tank a little bit. It's either full or it's not. And for what most. What's happened for most people on their journey of life is they depleted it over and over and over and over in terms of not giving themselves credit. And so they never integrate the win. Every time they screw something up, they take such a huge chunk out of themselves. They're just like demoralizing themselves. They're just like self hatred, they're angry at themselves, they have guilt and shame. And every time something goes bad, it's just like they take something out of themselves. They drain the tank. And people who finally feel more confident, more fulfilled, more capable, more than enough, they're able to see all the times they did okay, they didn't screw up, they managed things well, they became resilient, they bounced back they were a good person, they got the award, they did achieve something, they did feel good at the end of the day and they integrate that into who they are. I am enough. I did these things. And they added up inside the character, they added up inside the strength. And there's a stacking that happens in our psychology after enough integrating of the wins. Because I work with athletes who've lost their confidence. They lost their like they're literally top of the game.

Yeah.

You know, they're top 005 of the world and they've lost their confidence. So they'll have me come in, I'll just sit down with them talking for 30 minutes and I'll realize they're telling me everything they have done wrong. Lost that game, dropped that ball, sparked over here, got this fine. I mean they're telling me everything that went wrong and they're not saying anything about what they're doing. Right. And so their self talk is always diminishing versus additive or recognizing their strengths. So integrating the win means what if at the end of each day you thought about the things you did do well, the things that did turn out okay, the things that you were proud of, the character you showed, the patience you showed, the love that you showed, the resilience you showed and you said oh, that's part of me. And you just kind of. And you allowed yourself to take some peace in the goodness of who you were that day. And if day after day, year after year, you allow yourself to take some peace in of the goodness that you did and the goodness that you are, suddenly one day you feel more full. Now you can feel more fulfilled, you can feel like you're enough because you're adding in versus taking out all the time.

I love this.

And most people have never integrated the good things they've done in their life into their identity. So they still feel deficient. Like they were a 15 year old kid who beats themselves up and doesn't think they fit in. But you're talking about a 30 or 40 year old woman or a man who has not yet ever breathed in the good that they did. So their confidence is of a high schooler versus a 30 or 40 or 50 year old person because they never integrated those wins.