Why CONFIDENCE is the Key to Success | The Truth You Need to Hear

Building self-confidence.

Develop self-confidence.

Building confidence.

Want success? Model the best.

What's up, Believe Nation?

It's Evan.

I believe in you, and this channel is designed to be a part of your daily success routine. So today, let's learn one of the most common rules that successful people follow: build confidence. Also, if you want to know what Michael Javert, Damon Dash, and others have to say about confidence and excellence, check out my 254 series where every day for the next 254 days, I will send you a morning video for free to help you build your confidence. The links to join are in the description below.

Most people believe that confidence comes from past success, and that's not accurate.

I was reminded this morning of a question I'm often asked: how do you eliminate fear from your life?

You know, and the one thing you have to really never do is compare yourself to other people. Absolutely. That's the one thing you can't do, is judge your success to someone else's.

I think the first key in building self-confidence, it comes from a foundation of something people don't talk about, which is keeping promises that you actually make to yourself. In other words, self-confident people really are self-trusting people. So they have this habit over time of when they tell themselves they're going to do something, they actually deliver on it. And if you stack up those wins over and over again, if you say I'm gonna get up at a certain time in the morning, or I'm gonna go to the gym, or I'm gonna make a certain amount of phone calls, or I'm gonna eat a certain way, If you begin to keep those promises you make to yourself, you begin to build that trust within yourself that you can rely on you. And that's really what self-confidence is. And so typically in personal development, they don't tell you this, but it really starts with keeping the promises that you make to you. And that's the foundation all confidence is built on.

Were you confident before soccer or is football what brought you confidence?

No, no, before soccer, because from the area where I came from, you needed to be tough. I mean, it was a rough neighborhood. I like it. For me, it's paradise. People call it ghetto. I call it paradise because I feel home. I feel I can be myself, even if I'm doing that now also. But in that area, it was like you don't ask for respect. You take your respect. That is the attitude was you don't ask for, let's say, signature when I go back there now. They don't ask for pictures, they take the pictures. So that was the style, that was the attitude, and you needed to show that you could stand up for yourself and be there, dominant. So that came from there. Then the football was just a thing I like to do.

We like people who say, "I've got something to offer the world." And it's very— people are very reassured by confidence. You know, we're all scared that we're going to come across as arrogant, but if If you're on a flight and you hit turbulence, you want a confident pilot. If you're sick, wouldn't you like a really confident doctor to go, oh, I'm the best doctor in New York, I'm going to make you better. You wouldn't want one who goes, well, I don't want to brag, you know, I'm sort of okay sometimes, but you know, he's better than me. We don't want our kids' teacher to go, well, I'm not the best, you know, I have good days. We want them to go, I'm the best teacher, and I'm going to give you back your kid in a year's time radiating confidence. Confidence and talent. You know, we pay for that, and yet we're so scared of saying, I've got a gift, I've got a skill, this is what I'm good at.

And one of the greatest hang-ups that people have is the belief in themselves. They, they suffer from something called self-doubt. Many years ago, I read something, um, it was by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was his essay on self-reliance. That's what we want to do. We want to rely on self. And in that, he said there would come a time in every person's education when they'd realize that envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide. So many people look at someone that's doing very well, possibly in the same field they're in, and envy them. Do you know what that's saying? That's saying, I don't know that I have the same mental faculties you've got. I'm drawing on the same potential that you're drawing on. There is only one mind. I don't know that, so I'm going to envy you thinking you can do something I'm not able to do. The truth is, if you can do it, I can do it. Envy is ignorance. It's not knowing that. And he said imitation is suicide. Do you know that nothing in this universe would move in the precise order it moves in your absence? That's true. Everything in the universe is essential. You take any part away from anything, it's not complete. And everything in the universe moves in a very precise way. So do you see, we shouldn't even want to be like anybody else because we are unique. We are truly unique. There's something about us that you'll never find in another person. We're unique and we've got the God-like ability to think, think. Now, what is self-doubt? Self-doubt is the opposite of self-confidence. Confidence comes from understanding. Like I would imagine you're confident you can drive your car. In fact, you're so confident that you'll be talking to somebody on the phone, you'll get in the car, you'll start the car, you'll drive, and you'll drive maybe 4 or 5 blocks, not even be aware of what you've done. It's all done automatic. Your concentration is on the conversation you're on. Now when you first got in a car, you couldn't do that. The car was probably jumping all over the place and you thought you'd never learn how to drive it. But you learned how to drive it, now you're quite confident. You're confident that you can get dressed when you get up in the morning. When you were a little boy or a little girl, you couldn't do that. You had to be taught to do it. Well, do you know, self-confidence comes, like all confidence, it comes with knowledge. And the more you study you, The more you understand who you are, the more confident you'll become in your ability to do whatever it is you're doing. And you'll know that if you lack confidence in an area, it's because you lacked information in that area. Never doubt yourself. And when you do, understand that the cause of that doubt is not lying within you, it's in wrong thinking, it's in not understanding who you are. Study yourself. Self-study will develop self-confidence, and self-confidence eliminates self-doubt.

Every fight you bring a different person out of you. Why? Because styles make fights. Everybody don't have the same style. And I know me, I'm the most awkward fighter in the division. You think Tyson Fury awkward? Wait until you see. You ain't seen nothing yet. You know, that's what's gonna make it an intriguing fight because our styles is so crazy. It may complement each other. You just never know, you know. But the unfortunate thing about Fury, that he don't have power and I do. The possession of power is real, you know, it's very real. Sometimes scares me and I'm the one possesses it. I don't know when I'm gonna get you, but I'm gonna get you. And when I do, oh boy, bam, baby, goodnight.

Confidence and not giving a fuck, it makes you so lean. Like the don't give a fuck factor, that makes it where you don't care what people think. You never feel like you're being judged. You never want to be a part of a crowd and you just, You know, you're just fearless about the way you feel about things, you know, and then also you got swag. You know, you just do what you want regardless of what people think, and it feels good.

I remember doing a photo shoot my first year right before we launched, and they took a studio down here to something called the Polaroid Studio. I don't know if it still exists, these big Polaroid shots that they take, this size. To put up, I don't know, billboards and stuff. And the person, the marketing people were in Los Angeles, and this marketing guy sent his son, who was about 26 or 27, dressed the part, you know, looked perfect. And he was sitting there and going something like this, trying to do something, and then he said to me, no, I don't think you should wear that, I think you should wear this color, and I think you should move And I said to him, you know, I have food in my refrigerator older than you are. And I've managed to get by knowing what my good side is. People aren't really— I mean, I'm not a glam person, so people aren't really interested in the glamorous side, the unglamorous side. They're just happy they get me vertical. If they get me vertical, they should be happy. So what you get at age 52, coming in even to a new business, is if you've had a good career, you come in with confidence. And that's what it's all about. That's what business is all about— confidence. You, you know, the song says you can be a hero or a zero. and the difference is confidence. And if you have created a portfolio for yourself, even in your own head, that you are really special and you know your business and nobody knows whatever part of that business that you do better than you do, that gives you confidence. I knew nobody knew more than I did about family court. And about judging. A lot of people— I mean, I could only guess 1 or 2 answers on Jeopardy, so you have some idea of my academic credentials. But nobody knew how to be a tactician in the court better than I did.

Understanding the mechanics of confidence is really a great understanding. And so if we unpack how confidence works, it's really actually pretty simple. Confidence comes from one place and really one place only. Most people believe that confidence comes from past success, and that's not accurate. It comes from what you say to yourself. And so at any given point in time, we're having a conversation, we're having a dialogue with ourself. And if we're saying things that are beating ourselves up, it might get us good. It might. You might get good at something, but you might not enjoy who you are when you arrive there. So at any given point in time, the dialogue that you have with yourself or with myself, that what we're doing is we're speaking in ways that are either building confidence or destroying confidence. So confidence comes from what you say to yourself, and becoming aware and mindful of your inner dialogue is really at the center of being able to grow, to be able to develop, to be able to pursue potential. It's a skill that we can teach, it's a skill that we can develop, and if we have a better sense of it, we can guide our own minds towards those conversations that build. So when we are asking people to increase their awareness of their own thoughts, great, now what do we do with it? It makes sense that we want them to guide towards a positive direction, but that's not always intuitive and easy once, you know, we're familiar with our own patterns in our mind, and sometimes it really takes a coach to coach how we think. To coach properly, to adjust our own thoughts, and/or a parent, when we hear our children or the athletes that we're working with, and we hear how they're thinking about something, and we have a grounded perspective in life, we have, we can recognize it, we can hear that, ooh, that's not a great way to think about something, then we can take a moment and take a beat, if you will, and help them think about it in a different way. And that's perspective shifting. It's giving them a very specific way to change or shift the way that they see themselves in the world.

Everyone has what's inside them called a confidence account, and here's the scary thing: at every moment, you're either helping or you're hurting your confidence. There's no in-between. Every decision you make is either helping the account or hurting it, and every accomplishment and everything you've done up to this point is because of that account. So I didn't realize that a lot of things I was doing, whether it was sleeping in or validating or making excuses, they were hurting my confidence. If you don't have confidence, you're always going to find a way to lose in entrepreneurship. You always got to understand how important confidence is and protect it at the highest level. How do you build confidence? Well, confidence is just certainty, right? What's the number one reason people won't leave corporate to go to entrepreneurship? They're scared because they have what at their other job? They have certainty. It's like, well, the paycheck's coming. In this new economy, the only certainty you have is the confidence in yourself your ability to make it happen. So you have to create certainty for your life and business by doing your due diligence, by studying, by reaching out to high-level people, and by making sure that you have an identity that whatever you say, your actions follow. Because when you get results, that's the ultimate confidence booster.

What was your first reaction when you read Tracy Flick and saw what she was going to be doing?

I was like, I have to do this. I have to do this part. And I remember going in, I read the script and I just thought it was amazing. And then my boyfriend at the time, Ryan, said, have you seen Citizen Ruth? And I hadn't seen Citizen Ruth. So we were at Sundance and he had seen it.

And starring Laura Dern.

Starring Laura Dern. And it was called Meet Ruth Stoops. And then it was Alexander Payne's first full-length feature. And I saw it and y'all, if you haven't seen that movie, it is is so good. She, and it's classic Alexander Payne where it's middle of America, they're dealing with both sides of abortion, pro-rights and pro-choice and all that stuff. And then it's just great. And I was blown away. And then I, so I went in to meet with him and I just looked at him and he said, "Hello." He always wears a suit on Tuesdays. I don't know why. I know what day it was 'cause he was wearing a suit. And he said, "Hello." And I said, "I just wanna let you know I'm the right person for this part. You can cast somebody else, but you'll be wrong." Oh, that's so Tracy Flick. And I don't even know why I did it. I was just like so in the character. And about a week later I got the call and I got the part.

Wow.

But I will say, I feel like a lot of the times people audition and I know this is a reflector, so it's important for— I say this to actors all the time— people just want to be told what to do. You know, sometimes they have so many decisions to make, they just want the decisions to be taken away from them and just to go, give me the ball, I'm not going to disappoint you, I promise, and I'm going to work to the best of my ability, and I'm going to work hard for you. You know, and sometimes that just— it's such a relief to somebody who has to answer 200 million questions a day.

You're there to make their life easier.

Yeah, I was like, I got it, don't worry about it, I got it.

Now I've got a special bonus clip from Dean Graziosi on how to protect your confidence that I think you're gonna enjoy. But before that, it's time for the 3-point landing questions. Time to move from just watching another video to taking action in your life or business. And if you're feeling bold, leave your answers in the comments below. Here we go. Question number 1: How will you commit to building your confidence? Number 2: What can you do right now, today, to get get started on it. And number 3, who will hold you accountable to staying consistent?

You have this concept of protect your confidence. I've never heard anybody say it like that before. Why is that so important?

Because I think, I mean, in all the big decisions you've had to make along your way, have you ever made a good decision when your confidence was down?

No.

Once? Like, can you say, I walked in, my head was down, your physiology's changed, you're like a little nervous? Like, you just don't make good decisions when you're confidence is down. And I don't think it's like we're either confident or not confident. I think it's like if confidence is 100%, if our confidence is 95%, we play smaller. I know with me, like, big opportunities come, if I'm not in that, like, space, I'm like, you know what, guys, let's just, let's hold, let's not, like, I won't make smart decisions. So I think we have to do everything in our power to protect our confidence.

If you want to learn from Tony Robbins on how to create massive confidence, check out the link there right next to me. I think you'll enjoy that video. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

I know the way you move to some extent. I know the facial expressions, the gestures, the way you use your body, and it's all consistent with the fact that human beings