How To Build Unwavering Confidence

This is Charlie from Charisma on Command. And today I'm going to be doing a confidence breakdown. Now, confidence is different from a lot of the other breakdowns that I've done because so many of them are immediately visible in the tonality, body language and other external signals. Confidence is more of an inside game, but it does leave clues, and that's what we're going to be looking for. How do you get confident and how do you display it to other people? The person I've chosen is extremely confident. Conor McGregor. If you don't know him, he is in the UFC. He's about to fight for the title bout in just a few weeks. We'll see how that goes. But I think I want to start with showing you just a couple clips if you're not familiar with him, to show you what his confidence looks like unless he's fighting.

But that's funny because there's many occasions where he has been in the cage where he hasn't fought. Superstitions to me is another word for fear. I will break him mentally and I will break him physically. I think I celebrate number nine. You're highly mistaken, my friend. I don't give a about rankings. As far as I'm concerned, I'm number one. And when Dustin's head clatters off that canvas, they'll realize. They'll realize pretty soon. Boxing is the style of fighting that can beat Floyd. But saying that there are many, many forms of fighting that can beat him. So if we were to get it on, I would most certainly dismantle him also.

Now, you may be watching this and think, okay, what makes this guy so special? Everyone in professional sports is constantly trash talking. How do we know that this guy actually believes what he says he believes? And so I want to pause right now and show you what an unconfident boast prediction that somebody's going to win looks like versus Conor McGregor, who almost certainly believe exactly what he says. So this is a clip from one of Conor's earlier fights, and they ask each fighter how they see the fight going. First Conor's opponent, who wants to start?

Justin, go for it for me, man. You know, that's something that happens every night, every day, and every time it's different. You know, sometimes on the feet, sometimes it's submission. But in the end, my hands raised every time, and I'm 100% confident in that.

You know, I want to go back and pause that. Look what he does after he says that he's 100% confident.

My hands raised every time. And I'm 100% confident in that.

You know, his eye twitches, he flinches his head, he starts to nod as if overcompensating, and then makes this little shrugging attitude one more time, because it's really important. These are the micro expressions that belie a lack of confidence.

Sometimes on the feet, sometimes it's submission. But. But in the end, my hands raised every time, and I'm 100% confident in that.

You know.

Now, he might not be certain that he's going to lose, but he is not 100% confident. And that is what it looks like when you cannot just let it sit with what you've just said. Contrast that with everything that you just saw from Conor.

I will break him mentally and I will break him physically. Dustin's head clatters off that canvas. They'll. They'll realize. They'll realize pretty soon. Now, for were to get it on, I would most certainly dis. Dismantle him also.

Oh, wow.

He can make these boastful, aggrandizing statements and then just sit there in it, because to him, it's as obvious as I have five fingers as two plus two equals four. It is just a fact to him. So let's look how he talks about how the fight's gonna go.

You know, he doesn't have a. He doesn't have a vision of what's gonna happen. As you can clearly see. Yeah, throughout training camp, you definitely have shots that you see that you feel cracking, you know, you. You feel them shots happen, you know, but this is. This is. Trust me, this is a first round KO for me. I have no doubt on my mind his. His toes will curl and I will celebrate.

Confidence come from.

Now, they cut that a little bit short, but you see, he can just sit there after he says that, and that gives him such an advantage when he steps in the ring, because while the other guy might really think that he has a great shot, he's got to be wondering, what makes this guy so certain he's going to win? How can he know? And that's what we want to explore now. How can you develop that sense of just absolute certainty that you're going to achieve your goals? Oh, by the way, before we get to that, for those of you who don't know the UFC and are curious, this is what happened in the fight.

In the first round, talking to hands at his hips, having a conversation, looking to finish the fight. It is all over. Just like.

So how do you get that kind of confidence? Well, the Most important, and the foundational piece is relevant experience. This is kind of a no duh. If you've given 20 presentations before, you're gonna feel much more comfortable than you did when you gave your first. That is what relevant experience means. It means you've done something successfully in the past and you think that going forward you'll be able to continue to do it that way. Conor McGregor spells it out very clearly right here.

Well, I don't know. My, my confidence comes from my, my performance, my work in the gym, my work ethic, you know, they don't work harder than me and they don't want it like I want it, you know? So my confidence comes from looking around at the division. I don't see anything in the division that troubles me, not one of them. They don't move like I move, they don't think like I think, and they don't talk like I talk. That's. That's my confidence.

Okay, so that's all well and great, but how do you be confident before you've got the experience? Right? Because there are people like Conor McGregor who, for no reason at all just came up and seemed to believe that they were going to be great when they had no reason to. Just check this out.

I'm a professional MMA fighter with a record of 4. 1. I'm an up and coming fighter, and without a doubt, you will see me on the UFC in the near future. Without a doubt.

So that's in 2008, before he really has any good, credible reason to believe he's going to do it. So how does that happen? And this is step two. Step two is to focus on the things that you have control over. People who lack confidence tend to focus on the things that they don't have control over. Will the people like the presentation is the guy that I'm going up against going to be training Conor very singularly when he's looking to be confident, focuses on the things that he has control over. Will he plan against the certain person and create a strategy that's going to be effective against them? Absolutely. But when he draws on his confidence, he doesn't go for anything that is outside of his control. And that's how it's 100% certain. Just check this out.

There is no opponent, there's no Jose Aldo. Who the F is Jose Aldo? There's no known. You're against yourself. You know what I mean? You're against yourself.

So we've got two pieces so far. We've got relevant experiences and focusing on the things that you control. But I think it's this third piece that really separates Conor McGregor, and that is visualization. Visualization is how you can gain relevant experience, that first piece without actually having to do it. Because the truth is, you might only get one shot at your UFC title fight or whatever big presentation that you have to give or any chance chance that you have. So this visualization piece gets you a chance to build relevant experience inside your own head and to see it going the way you want it to. So you just got to catch some quotes now from Connor talking about how exactly he does this visualization.

All that matters is how you see yourself. If you see yourself as the king, you know, you see yourself with all the belts and all everything, and no matter what no one else says, as long as you see that, really believe in it, then that's what's gonna happen. Who can tell you otherwise? Who says what way you see things? Who says what you see out of your eyes? And then I just had that kind of. I saw myself in that light. I saw myself as the. As the number one. I saw myself as the champion even before anyone else did. I just kept that in my head. John always put it to me as well, we can change this and do something that people haven't seen before. You know what I mean?

So this is really interesting because when you hear Conor McGregor talk, it might come across as boastful, but he oftentimes makes incredibly accurate predictions of how his fight will go down to the round and how his knockouts will occur, whether it'll start with a jab and then be a right overhand. He's incredibly specific, and it's because he has these vivid, ongoing visualizations in his head of exactly how he's going to win. Now, right here, he talks about seeing the belts, and that's important, but when you're visualizing, it's not just about visualizing the end award that you're going to get. It's about visualizing the struggle and how you're going to overcome that. So you better be sure that Conor sees his fights. When you ask him how they are going to go, he tells you second by second, how he has seen it play out in his head dozens, if not hundreds of times. So I'm gonna go now to a compilation clip that I found on YouTube. It's awesome. I'm gonna put a description up here, and it shows Conor McGregor making all these amazing predictions. But notice how in his most recent fight versus this guy named Chad Mendes, who is an excellent wr, he doesn't have this weird visualization where he just coasts to victory easily in the first round. He recognizes that, yes, he's going to get wrestled down to the ground, he's going to be put on his back. But in his visualizations and when he talks about the fight, it is a realistic victory. It's about getting up from being on the ground and overcoming that challenge. This is what you need to put into your visualizations. What are you going to come up against? How are you going to overcome it when you get put on your back? That is going to make them much more powerful.

When I'm pressing him, I'm pressing him and we have these exchanges and these scrambles, and his belly is going to be breathing in and his body is going to be screaming for oxygen. Chad's breathing heavy, and I'm going to be still there in his face, cracking him with everything I have. Every shot, the heel, the knee, the fist, every shot in the book I have.

I don't know how you're going to be pressuring anything from your back.

Dude, trust. Listen, what you going to do? You can't. You can't even pass guard. You're a white belt on the map. Well, you get me down, you hold me down, I'll butcher you from the bottom. I'll get back up and I'll butcher you on the feet.

Dana McGregor has attracted a lot of buzz because he's this incredible showman. You want to know how confident this kid is?

He.

He told Lorenzo and I the other day, I'll bet you $3 million I.

Knock him out the second round. So that's how Conor McGregor purposely visualizes his victories with the challenges he'll overcome. But what do most of us do without realizing it? We see things going terribly right. We imagine everything that could go wrong, play these scenes over and over again in our head, and then almost guarantee that that happens to us. And Conor talks about this as well. This is what he did early in his career when he lost some fairly easy fights, Certainly easy compared to the guys he's facing now.

So a lot of people come out to see me and, I don't know, I felt a lot of pressure. It was funny because the way my mind was then and I was kind of anticipating a loss. You know what I mean? You need to know when you need to tell yourself if you're going to win or lose. And these are the first time those losses kind of helped me realize about the mental side of things and how compared to what way I am now, compared to what way I am there.

So this isn't the secret. This isn't about just going out there, putting what you want into the universe and then magically receiving that back. This is about actively engaging your own imagination so that you are getting practice experience. Except it's all in your own head. Because the truth is, our nervous systems do not do a very good job of differentiating between experiences that we have out in the real world and experiences that are vividly imagined. This is why you can get scared of things that don't happen. This is why we can go to movies and be terrified even though it's not actually occurring. Use this to your own advantage. Go through, see the specific concrete challenges that you might face in something in some area where you want to be confident. I've seen Conor talk about one opponent he had who was a great wrestler, and he talked about how, yes, he was going to get taken down, but how he would beat him from the floor and get back up. And it was very clear he'd seen that happen and practiced it in his head over and over and over. And after seeing something play vividly so many times, you too will have the certainty that it is going to happen. That is the secret to Conor McGregor's confidence. So, in sum, the things that you can learn from Conor McGregor about confidence are one, get relevant experience. You need to practice. To be frank, all of the visualization in the world will not help if you cannot execute on the basic mechanics of what you're trying to be confident in. If you gave someone a basketball that had never seen one and then had them visualize making it, but they didn't know how to shoot, all that visualization would be for naught. Because the idea of visualization is that it is a substitute for refinement and practice, but it cannot get you those basic, basic skills. It's for refinement. Second thing, draw on what you can control. When you are trying to see why you are confident, obviously you're going to want to strategize for things outside of your control, your opponent, the weather, whatever it is. But when you're thinking, why is this going to work for me? Go back to the things that you control, the time you put in, the skills you have, the abilities that you developed, those are all going to help you. And then third, vivid visualization, not just of the victory that you want, but of the challenges that you will have to overcome to get there. You cannot leave the challenges out. This isn't about just wishful thinking, it's about winning over and over and over again in your head, despite the trials and tribulations, because again, that, that goes back to that relevant experience that your brain is going to go, oh, guess what? I've actually done this a hundred times before, which is going to give you the confidence to go on. So all of these things are things that you can do in advance to be confident. If you want to know something that you can do basically within five seconds to one minute, when you're in that situation where you really need to execute, go ahead now and click the link. It'll take you to a page where there's an email sign up and you can get that video immediately. This is part of a larger course on how to be confident. There's lots of different strategies, but this is the one that is by far the quickest acting and one that I use every single time I'm in a situation where I need to be confident. So if you want to get that, go ahead and click the link. I hope that you've enjoyed this video. It's been a bit of a departure for me, so let me know if you liked it. Subscribe, of course, leave in the comments. Anyone else you would like to see me do a breakdown of and I'm excited to see you in the next video.