Harness Your Inner Confidence: 7 Steps to Overcome Self-Doubt and Achieve Success!

Your new definition of confidence embodied by the research. Confidence is the willingness to try. Confidence is an action. That's what it is. And this phenomenon has been heavily researched by social psychologists, and there's even a term for confidence being an action. See, there's this positive feedback loop that happens when you're willing to try something before you feel ready, when you're willing to step into that leadership role and put yourself out there and take risks and make mistakes and shove that self-doubt to the side. When you're willing to try, neuroscience research says that you create something called a confidence-competence loop. Every single time you try something new, you're either going to be really good at it or you're going to be terrible at it, but you always learn something. But you have to try.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I make these videos because I need them, because I want to wake up every single day and get pushed by somebody who's doing a lot more than me. And in watching their videos It inspires me to be bolder, to have more courage, and to go chase down the life of my dreams. And I hope it does the same for you. So today let's learn the 7 steps to build massive confidence. Enjoy.

If you try something for the first time, you're either going to fail or succeed, but you always learn something. And that's where this confidence-competence loop and the neuroscience research comes in. Because even when you try, when you learn a little something, you gain a little competency, right? Because of everything that you learned the first time around, it gets a little bit easier. It gets a little bit better, but it all begins with being willing to try no matter where you're starting from. Because if you are the kind of person that's always willing to try, you will always grow. And you will always learn. And the more that you try and the more that you learn, the less you doubt yourself, the less resistance that you have, and bada-bing, bada-boom, all of a sudden you feel confident in this new role. All of a sudden you feel confident doing a backflip off a boat because you tried 1,000 times and you belly-flopped and you embarrassed yourself and you got a wedgie. And then what do you know? Because you were willing to keep trying, all of that competency that got gained of trying over and over and over and over again, It's how you gained mastery. See, feeling confident is kind of— it's almost like the wrong way to say it, because that's what you feel after you've done it over and over and over again. But true confidence begins the moment you're willing to try. Okay. And so I really think it's important. I can give you another example. The first time somebody handed me chopsticks, I had no idea how to use them. Was I nervous about picking them up and I couldn't get like my fingers to twist in the way that you're supposed to and it was super embarrassing and they kept like flipping across the table and everybody— Here's the thing. I didn't know how to use them. But isn't it common sense that there's no way I was going to learn how to use them if I wasn't willing to try? See, being confident and the skill of confidence is the difference between saying, sure, hand me the chopsticks. I'd love to try. I'm willing to look like an idiot. I'm willing to be a beginner first versus going, can you get me a fork? I don't know how to use those. Do you see the difference? The skill begins with being willing to try.

Step number 2 is reveal uncertainty with Brendon Burchard.

Reveal uncertainty. This one is the opposite dynamic of how I used to think of confidence, right? We think of confident people as people who are just like, ba-ba-bum, you know, it's like Wonder Woman, right, is confident. We think of Superman is confident, who just knows everything. Really what it turns out to be, high performers are a lot, listen to this, high performers are a lot less Superman and a lot more Clark Kent. That's what it turned to be. In all the research with millions of data points, in all of my conversations, high performers were much more likely to reveal things like, I don't know, things like, I'm unsure, things like, how do you think this should go, things like, could you kind of help me with this? Like, high performers literally explicitly share that they don't know how it's going, they don't know how it's supposed to go, that they need some help, that they need some mentorship, that they need some guidance, That's confidence. Confidence is not holding back the deck of cards of your weaknesses. Confidence is a comfort with vulnerability. And when people say vulnerability, they often don't know what they mean. When we're talking about vulnerability specifically related to confidence and high performance, like measurable outcomes, the thing that we can measure and see is that high performers in group meetings, in team meetings, in social situations, more often share their insecurity. They more often say, "I don't know how this is supposed to go." Or, you know, they'll be the person, you know, at that fruit punch bowl who says, "You know, I don't really know anybody here. I don't really know how to start to meet some of these people. Could you introduce me to somebody?" And that's how they handle the social networking, where they're awkward. Instead of just sitting back at the punch bowl, drowning their sorrows and feeling bad about themselves, they engage the person next to them and say, "Hey, you know what? I feel kind of awkward here. I don't know a lot of people. Could you introduce me? That's how high performers are handling little situations in life. They're not the most confident person in the meeting who goes, I know everything here. They're the most confident going, you know what, I don't know this. Here's my question. What do you guys think? And that is how you lead confidently. You reveal that you don't know everything. Saying I don't know is power, not weakness. But you've been trying to do too many things on your own. And that's one reason you don't have the confidence you deserve at this stage of your life. Because see, I didn't want to start with my definition of confidence for you, 'cause I want you to be thinking about it, but I'd like to share it now that we've talked about defining and measuring it. The way I look at confidence is I think the confidence that matters the most is the confidence in one's belief in our ability to figure things out. That's what I believe confidence to be. Do I believe in my ability to figure things out? Not do I know things, because it's not always true. There's a lot of things I don't know. But do I believe in my ability to figure things out? Now there I'm confident. Not because I'm smart, because I'm good at asking I'm good at saying, you know what, I don't know how to do this. What do you guys think? And I hope this is settling in for you because sometimes your confidence is so low because you think your confidence is correlated with what you know versus what you're willing and able to go figure out by revealing that you don't know. Got it?

Step number 3 is reframe anxiety as excitement with Amy Cuddy.

This was research done by a woman named Alison Woodbrooks who's at Harvard Business School. She's a professor. And she was like a wedding singer before she went to grad school. And she just didn't get nervous. And she was really interested in stage fright. Like, she was like, why do— I know it's kind of funny. She's like, this isn't hard for me. Why is it hard for you? But she's very confident. But she was really interested in stage fright. And she realized that—

And learning why people have stage fright. Right.

And she's a very positive person. And I think that what happened, and I don't wanna tell her story for her, but my understanding is basically that she realized that for her, the nerves, the, so basically, emotions have two dimensions, arousal level, like it's a high arousal or a low arousal, right? Exactly, and positive negative. I mean, there's more than that, but like think of it, Those are the two dimensions, and emotions can be clustered around those. So she realized that she was having the same high arousal feeling in her body before she sang, but for her, she interpreted it as excitement, not anxiety. And so she realized that it's not that she really was having a totally different experience, it's just that she was like, I must be excited to do this.

It's the interpretation.

Exactly. So she did experiments She had people do singing contests using like, what was the video game? Rockstar? Rockstar?

Might have been Rockstar, yeah.

She had them do like debate competitions. I think they did a math test, maybe different studies, but she assigned them to say to themselves before they did the thing, I am anxious or I am excited. And the people who said I am excited just said I am excited to myself. They did much better. So she calls that reinterpreting anxiety as excitement. So reframe it. So before you go on, her name is Allison Wood Brooks, hyphenated. And yeah, so anxiety is, reframe anxiety as excitement. And this is definitely one of my favorites. And I think that that helps a lot of people.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there. Step number 4 is shift your thinking with David Goggins.

You have to remind yourself, we all have a story. We've all, all of us have gone through very hard times. Mm-hmm. But when we're, when we're in a hard time, our mind has a way of forgetting what all we've overcome.

Mm-hmm.

I have a way of taking 1 second when I want to quit. And saying, okay, you endured this. So I look at my life and how I came up as the ultimate training ground versus most people look at it as why, woe is me, God, why, why? I had to flip this upside down and say, hang on a second, God was training me to be one of the baddest men on the planet. That's how he— this was, this was my journey.

Do you begin to realize in this moment how mentally strong you are?

Yes.

Because those things beat me.

Sure.

But they didn't kill me.

No, not at all.

And I was able to work around them and figure out ways through it. That's right. So when I was in the worst time of my life in Hell Week, I looked at everybody and said, I'm the most trained person here.

Yeah, well, that's the truth.

I've gone through more mental torture than any of you all can even fathom.

Yeah.

So I'm looking at the baddest people on the planet. I'm looking at them like this. You guys can't hold a stick. So I started looking at versus like, I don't belong here versus like, I might be the best person ever come here.

Wow.

Who could have pulled this off? Who could have been given a sewer to live in, in their mind, and say, okay, at birth I'm gonna put you in the worst place on the planet Earth, and let me see if you can go to the top of the mountain, right, with nothing, right, but just hard work, grit, and figuring it out, and not putting yourself back in the dungeon every time something got hard. So that's what became my daily voice, was, "You really are the baddest person on the planet." Step number 5 is develop skills with Jay Shetty.

Anyone who feels weak or has that self-doubt, it comes from not a lack of belief or a lack of quality. It comes from a lack of ability, and abilities can be trained and learned. And I always say this to people: if something makes you nervous, if something makes you unconfident, if something makes you scared, you can't just believe in yourself. And I think a lot of people talk about self-belief, and really it's about self-respect. And self-respect comes from doing hard things. And so if you're dealing with something that you don't feel you're good at, go and try and get decent at it. Go and take a course. Get a coach, get a mentor, go out there and read a book about it, listen to this podcast, right? Like, when you're, when you're searching for the answer, all of a sudden your skill starts to develop, and now the problem starts to feel easier to solve. And so as a dependent, especially if you're single, start solving problems yourself. And guess what? You're going to feel so much self-respect, and now your self-doubt goes away at the root.

Step number 6 is believe with Marie Forleo. How do you get the confidence to make the decision to do what your soul's purpose is telling to do.

Yeah.

So how do you get that confidence to then actually take that next step?

So for me, it was less about confidence and more about I had hit the wall so many times and there was so much pain in terms of trying these particular jobs and essentially failing and quitting, right, that I just couldn't do. It was like a pattern, right? And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting a different result. I was like, so I need to change something here. And the whole thing about coaching it just felt right in my bones. So it was this combination of massive pain, can't take it anymore, and seeing an opening to something that actually felt right. But I had so much insecurity and so much self-doubt. So it wasn't like I quit to start my business and I'm like, I know what the hell I'm—

I knew nothing.

I was terrified. I was so scared and I was terribly insecure about my age. So I actually got headshots done that made me look about 15 years older than what I was at the time and created this website. And I didn't lie, but no one ever asked me my age. So I just pretended I was older than I was, and that was like, I borrowed a little bit of confidence from older Marie to be able to just start communicating with people and to start working with people and to start creating content where I was focused on creating value for others. Because anytime I had that spotlight on myself, man, I was a hot mess.

Hot mess.

Yeah, you talk a lot about taking the next step, just doing the work to get you there.

Everything is figureoutable. Right? That's a mantra I live my life by. I don't wanna interrupt you, but it's like this core belief that I have in my bones that served me ever since I was a kid was this notion that everything is figureoutable, including starting your own business, finding that first client, figuring out how to get a website up or whatever it is that's in front of you.

And step number 7, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is set up good routines with Dean Graziosi.

How many times have you been doing something you didn't like and then someone says, hey, do you wanna go do— I watch this with kids, right? My son can be like, ah, Dad, I'm bored. Bored, I'm a little tired, I'm like, you want to go outside and play basketball? Heck yeah, let's go do it, let's play horse, I'm gonna beat you. Immediately his energy went through the roof. I didn't feed him anything, I didn't give him any coffee, I didn't give him a speed pill or a Red Bull. I just changed what was on, and his energy immediately changed. Guess what? That energy lives in us. It's always there. We just have to tap into it. And what I'd say, just start practicing tapping into that energy. Just like, be doing something in your house or or at work and just say, right now I'm gonna crank up the energy. And you can think about what you're cool at, you can think about your state, change your physiology, change your words, do what it takes to like snap into a different place and watch the confidence go up. Watch it go up immediately and watch your energy go up. Again, I do it as like little tricks to myself. I'll find myself low on energy, I'm like, create some right now, just make it. And the more you do it, the more you train yourself. It's like going to a gym. You don't go to the gym once and work out and come out ripped. You gotta go to the gym all the time. Where in your life can more confidence take you to another level? Where in more— can more confidence give you a breakthrough? If that's the case, then you need to watch this again and you need to go through these exercises and you need to find that confidence to just go for it, to just do it. It is better to try and fail than to sit on the sidelines. Sitting on the sidelines, you know, when you talk to older people, you watch, you read all these articles articles and magazines, when you talk to somebody older in life, they're always regretting the things they didn't take action on. Lack of confidence will keep you right where you are. Routines help build confidence, right? So there's a million things I could talk about when it comes to confidence, how you have to be courageous. That means taking action. Courageous is just doing it. It's jumping out of the plane and hoping the chute opens, right? You need to be courageous. Then you need to gain the capabilities, right? You need to learn from people playing at a higher level. You're here, you're learning the right stuff. Then you got to be committed. Nothing works without commitment. I mean, diets don't work, relationships don't. We got to commit, right? So when you, when you have the courage, the capabilities, and the commitment, that's when confidence ends up showing up. The 4 C's. I go deep on that in my book. But what also helps that is a little hack is routines, right? So you want to know the best way for me to kill my confidence in a day is to wake up and roll over and check my email. Yes, I have so many businesses going on, one of those emails is not going to be great. So if I want to ruin my confidence for a day, I roll over and I'll check my email. I'll go, oh man, I got to deal with that today. Okay, I'll be all right. Like, I'm gonna talk myself out of it. You want to know how I can definitively know I'll have more confidence in a day? Is I put my phone on airplane mode and I don't touch it, I don't look at it until until I go work out, until I think of some things I'm grateful for, until I drink my green drink with some oils in it. If I do those things and then I practice a little gratitude, I set my day up for just confidence. So sometimes routines can be your hack to be fine. Again, use everything in your power to find a way to gain confidence. Hacks are fine as long as you're doing it.

Self-confidence comes from doing difficult things. Self-confidence, self-love, self-respect— it all comes from deciding to do something difficult. Here's what happens when, when something hard comes up and you find a reason why you can't do it— it's too hard, it's too difficult, it's too scary— most people will let you off the hook. The people around you will say, yeah, that's way too hard. I mean, the fact you even thought about it was crazy. You let yourself off the hook, but then you realize, ah, I could have done it. You know, like, that's the worst feeling in the world, that you could have done something, but then you came up with an excuse as to why you can't. And that will eat you up. And even if the world lets you off the hook, Recognize that they have lower standards than you. Recognize that the people who are giving you that advice and patting you on the back and saying it's okay, you don't need to do it, they don't like their life either. They're stuck. They're trapped. They're not pushing hard. They're not being aggressive for their goals. They're not tough either. And we're reinforcing that comfort loop every day Comfort you versus growth you are in a fight. There's a war going on inside you. Comfort you versus growth you. Comfort Evan versus growth Evan. Every day there's a fight, there's a battle, there's a war going on, and you need to decide who's gonna win the fight. It's a daily thing, and the more growth you wins against comfort you, the more you start to grow, the more you start to hit your goals, the more you start to have an impact, the more you start to love yourself. Because again, even if the world would let you off the hook, you know it's just an excuse. I think most people think of it as a giant step that you have to take to build that self-confidence. It's not. I think it's much more about the daily battles with yourself that then builds up to major things. Just like you don't go to the gym and lift 400 pounds You start by lifting 5 pounds or 10 pounds or 20 pounds or 40 pounds, whatever it is. That's how you start to build the muscle. It's much more about the daily building of the muscle to show yourself who you are, much more than the one-off heroic moments. Here's an example. So yesterday we had an insane snowstorm here in Toronto. I don't know if we can— it's kind of blurry, can't see. We had— I can see some here behind me. It's like, look and see that mountain enough snow behind me. We had an insane snowstorm. We had probably the worst snowstorm in Toronto, Canada in a decade. I have not seen this much snow in a crazy amount of time. And so I'm going for a walk, rucking, and rucking is where you carry a backpack. So I'm carrying a backpack of 20 pounds as I'm walking, doing my normal walk. And it's, it's crazy outside. Normally the rucking alone is hard enough. And I just increased the weight in the backpack. Now there's no path to walk on. And this morning I was walking through an area and there was zero path. The snow is up to my knees and I need to get through. So what are my options? Well, I could complain and turn around, right? Like, I could look out the window and say, ah, so much snow, I'm not gonna do that. I'll do it when there's less snow, you know. And then the next day there's less snow, there's still snow, and the next to the snow, and then all of a sudden you just gave up on the habit, right? Like you let yourself off the hook to say, I'll do it tomorrow. And then, and then you never do it. And then the habit's gone. And that's what you're teaching yourself. This is why it leads to identity. This is why it leads to negative self-worth and negative self-confidence, because the next time you come up with an idea, you've already reinforced the training. You're training yourself that when you come up with an idea, you don't do the thing. When you say you're going to do it, and you're going to start tomorrow and then you don't, the next time you come up with an idea, guess what? You've already reinforced the pattern. Like, I don't follow through. I'm not going to do that. I'm excited today, but tomorrow I won't follow through. So this is snow up to my knees, right up to my knees, and I'm 6'1". So it's some serious snow. Like, I got to walk through— not quite that. That's probably taller than me. I don't have to walk through that much, but up to my knees. I'm looking at it and I've got to go, I don't know, 100 meters through this thing. And initially my thought was, why is there no path? Why has nobody shoveled this? Why is nobody snowblowed this? Like, gotta get over there. I got a backpack on, I'm rucking, I'm sweating like crazy, I'm already exhausted. Now I gotta go through this. This is when we need to catch ourselves, right? Everybody would have let me off the hook. And another me would have let me off the hook, right? Comfort Evan would have let Growth Evan off the hook. So it's okay, go back home, or go the long way around where there's a path. Don't go through that snow up to your knees. And as soon as I caught it, now what? Most of the time you won't catch it. Most of the time you'll just do— you'll do the automatic thing, and usually the automatic thing is the comfort thing. So usually play small by default. Usually you, you'll look outside and see the snow and not go just by default, not even catching the conversation with yourself. But when you catch it, this is a really important moment. What do you do? Do you do the difficult thing or do the comfort thing? Because when you catch it and you make a conscious choice, this is how we start to either change our identity or reinforce our identity. So I looked at it, I caught it and said, I'm going through. Let's go. You know, I caught the negative thinking. I caught the comfort Evan coming over, walk around, go home. Nope, not happening. We're going through. We are going through. We are going to make it through. And it was rough. Yeah, I'm walking through. I'm freezing. I'm taking one kind of giant step at a time. Snow is getting all through my boots, all down my legs. I almost slip and fall. I have a coffee that I picked up. It's dripping all over the place. And in my head as I'm going through it, it's like, this is the best. Let's go. Let's go, Evan. You got this, man. Let's go. You do difficult things. That's the thing on repeat in my head. Combined with that, I'm also telling myself that, you know what? Not only am I doing this difficult thing for me, I'm also creating a path for other people that the next person who comes up against this 100 meters or so, that now they will have not an easy time, but an easier time of crossing the same path so they can get across. So it's going to service. If you're ever having a hard time getting yourself to do something, it's one, you When you do difficult things, remind yourself. And 2, default to service, that it's not just about you, it's for other people. Now, that may not even be true. Maybe nobody ever comes across that path. Maybe I didn't make it easier for the next person. Maybe somebody comes 5 minutes after me and snow blows the whole thing. And so there was zero service. It doesn't matter. It's the story that I'm telling myself that it will serve other people, that will get you to then do the difficult thing. So in order to make it happen, there's two triggers that I use. One is language. So scary, difficult, or hard. If you say those things, if you feel those things, if you text those things, if you write those things, if you're talking to yourself and you catch those things, then you have to do it. You can no longer accept scary, difficult, or hard as reasons for you not to do the thing. Because your great life is on the other side of scary, difficult, hard. Everything you want, the business you want, the relationships you want, the help that you want, everything, everything, your great life. If you wrote down a list of everything you want out of life, everything on that list comes on the other side of you doing scary, difficult, and hard things. Growth you, that's growth you fighting comfort you. So when you catch yourself saying, speaking, writing, thinking scary, difficult, or hard, that's a trigger. It should be a trigger. It's a trigger for me. It should be a trigger for you to go and do it. Do it. Go walk through the giant snow. And you might be thinking, well, how does that help me with my business? It's just walking through snow and I'm going to be cold and have snow in my boots. How does that help me? It's an identity thing. Because as soon as you start to teach yourself that you're the kind of a person who follows through on those scary, difficult, hard things, then the next time that shows up anywhere in your life, in your business, in your relationships, in your health, anything that actually helps you accomplish your goals, you're going to be ready to show up for it. You're going to be more likely to actually do the thing because you've been training and conditioning yourself to do the thing. That's why walking through 100 meters of snow matters. So the first is scary, difficult, hard. Those are verbal cues or thought cues. The second is the boom boom boom test where your heart is beating quickly. It's like when your heart is going crazy like that, it's usually because you should be doing something. You're afraid right now. Don't again go— don't go— don't go standing on the highway because it's scary and it makes your heart race, right? Don't be stupid. But most of the things that you're afraid of aren't actually things that are going to be life-threatening, right? They're not. They're usually— it's other people's opinions. Usually you're afraid of not failing, but somebody watching you fail, right? You're going to fail at something. Who's going to see you? That's what we're actually afraid of. And that cannot be a good enough reason. It can't. Not anymore. If you're afraid of losing in front of somebody, if you're afraid of other people's opinions, if you are living your life based off of the expectations judgment of other people. You will never do anything great. You will never live your great life because somebody always has a plan for what you should be doing with your life. You will never please everybody. It's not possible. You have to start to learn to please yourself. And it's not doing something just to show off and just to prove somebody wrong. I'm not a big fan of tapping into that energy. The reason to do something is not to prove somebody wrong and make somebody else look stupid. The reason to do something is because that's who you are and that's what you want to do. And so learning to do difficult things, teaching yourself step by step, brick by brick, one snowstorm at a time, teaching yourself that will change your life. You deserve a better life. You deserve a great life. And that comes on the other side of you doing the things that are scary, difficult, and hard. Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So it's a special celebration. If you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. To see how Tony Robbins builds confidence, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

And it's all consistent with the fact that human beings Our strongest drive is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves. If your self-definition is, uh, I'm a situation where I'm kind of— what was the word he used?