George Kao explains how to build self-confidence by keeping appointments with yourself. Treat yourself like an important client: show up on time, follow through, and honor your own commitments the way you would for someone else.
How do we build self confidence? Let me share with you a technique that seems so obvious, but I didn't learn this until I was well into my adulthood. And it has really changed who I am over the past few years. I built self confidence and self trust and authentic power by doing something as simple as this. I make plan. I make a plan to do something that is important in my business, something that I might be resisting, that I might feel some trepidation about. I make a plan with myself to do that important project and then I show up for that appointment. And by doing that simple thing again and again and again, two things happen. One is that I build self. I build. I start to trust and be able to rely on myself more and more. I know that when I make a plan, I show up for it. Okay? And number two, the thing that I show up for again and again and again, it loses its emotional charge. Let me explain. When something is hard for you in terms of a project, when a project is a hard thing to do, it's not really that it's technically challenging. Yes, there might be some technical things, but technical things you can always figure out step by step. If you just slow down and do something step by step, you can figure it out. But it's usually hard because you have connected that project's success to your self worth and to your identity somehow. So that if you don't do that project successfully, it has some deleterious effect on your confidence and of your self identity. But to get rid of that connection between a project and your self worth, you can. Of course there's spiritual practices, there's reminders to yourself to detach yourself from the outcome. But really a certain way to do it is to do it again and again and again and again. You expose yourself to a project or a task and it loses its emotional charge. You resist it less and less and less. Think about something that you do right now in your life that other people say, wow, I'm pretty amazed that you can do it. It's hard for me to do it. But it looks easy to you? Is there something like that for you? Some people say, oh, it's easy for you to do that. It's not easy. You're like, no, it's easy for me too. And it's because you've done it again and again and again and again, so it's no longer a big deal for you. Well, when you make a plan to show up for that thing and you show up for it, you boost your self confidence and self trust. And you start to remove the emotional charge from that project. So let me give you. Well, let me first explain what happens when you don't show up for that thing. Right? A common reaction is you just ignore the fact that you didn't show up. Let me ask you to do a thought exercise. Imagine that you had such an important client, someone you respect so much, who is a client of yours. You make an appointment with them. You don't show up for the appointment. Would you do that? Of course you wouldn't. It's such an important client. Now second thing, if you don't show up for that client and you have a sincere reason, it's a very rare situation and you apologize profusely and you give a good reason and you say, I will make it up to you and I, and I won't do it again, or this is a very rare situation. Do you think your client would berate you? If it's your ideal client, they wouldn't. They would show you compassion and they would show you understanding. So guess what? You know who your most important client in your business is? Yourself. Right, Yourself. You are the most important client in your business. Who else? To be able to show up for anybody else, you have to first show up for yourself. You have to prioritize your self care. You have to prioritize getting the important things done in your business. Otherwise you wouldn't have a business. And therefore how can you serve any other client? So you are your most important client. So when you make an appointment with yourself, of course you should show up for it. You should have prepared for it emotionally, logistically, and you show up for it just like you would with an important client. And if in the rare case you can't show up for your own appointment with yourself because of a rare situation, you show yourself compassion as well. Now you might say, George, what if I often don't show up for my own plans? Then what you're doing is you are trying to practice a skill where you're at zero right now with a skill which is showing up for your own schedule. You're trying to go from 0 to 60 in like 1 day or 1 second or go from 0% success to 100% success rate in one day with a very challenging thing which is scheduling a bunch of appointments. That's giving yourself way too much pressure. You wouldn't do that to a client. Why would you do that to yourself? So if you are not showing up for appointments right now with yourself, you need to schedule one per week. Just like an important client would schedule one appointment with you per week. And then you prepare emotionally and logistically for that appointment and you show up for it and you just try. I know it's a difficult project because you've tied your self worth and your identity into it subconsciously, but you simply try and you start out maybe with an energy reboot and then you. You go for it. Now one more thing. To make it easier for yourself, you schedule a Focus Mate session as well. That's what I do. All day long. I use Focus Mate when I have an appointment with myself. I am on FocusMate. If you don't know what Focus Mate is, look it up. Focus Mate. All one word. I do that all the time and that helps me to show up and then I do the thing that I planned. So build your self confidence. Make a plan to work on an important project and then show up for it calmly, joyfully, and just try. And over time, as you try again and again, that important project, that important activity loses an emotional charge. You no longer think it's a big deal and you grow your skills because you keep showing up for it. I hope this is helpful. Thank you for joining for this. I'm always open to your questions and your comments. And if you have anything else to share that's helpful for you on this topic that others might benefit from, let us know below. Take care.
