Micro Class - Confidence 101: How to Create Indestructible Trust in Yourself

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. I am sitting here prepping for my upcoming class confidence 101. How to create indestructible trust in yourself. These are my notes for the class. 90 minute class, probably about 60 minutes presentation, 30 minutes Q& A. We'll see how it goes. And I thought I'd throw on my phone here and do a quick video. So top 10 big ideas on how to rock it. Basically this is if you're part of my membership program already. Watch the optimism section in the Optimal Living video and the courage section. Combine those two in these kind of new ideas to get to confidence 101 and creating indestructible trust in yourself. But we're going to kick the class off with a look at what is confidence even mean? Well, comes from the Latin word confidere, which translates as roughly with full trust, with intense trust. That's what confidence means. Intense trust in what? In yourself. Science calls it self efficacy. That's basically science speak for self confidence. It's your belief that you can achieve what you want to achieve. It's one of the most important aspects of human behavior that psychologists study. Albert Bandura, Stanford professor who created the field of self efficacy. Amazing guy. In the class we're going to go into detail, but basically he said that there are four ways he's discovered, scientists have discovered, to cultivate your self efficacy confidence. One is through mastery. That's the number one way is to be good at doing something. You're going to be confident if you've had past experience that you're capable. You can also learn via vicarious learning, pardon my writing here, which means you're inspired by other people and you model their behavior. That's one way to believe that you can do something. You see other people doing it and you're like, hey, I can do that too. Third way is through social persuasion, basically people telling you I believe in you, etc. We'll talk about that more another time. And then your physiology impacts your self efficacy, your moods, your emotional state and your sweaty palms and your racing heart. How you respond to all that contributes to your self efficacy. So that's the basic frame of what confidence is. And then the top 10 big ideas that we're going to walk through on how to rock it include and start with mastery. Just as Albert Bandura says, mastery is where it's at. We've got to start there. What does that mean? How do you master both yourself and your Craft, Both are important. You need to have intense trust in yourself. Well, how do you build trust in any relationship? You learn that you can count on the person. If you can't count on yourself to do the things you know are right for you and you don't master yourself, good luck getting a deep level of confidence. We're going to talk about that. And then. And that means, you know, you're living with Arete, you're rocking your fundamentals, you're mastering your physiology. That's a big thing we want to master. These two go together. Mastery of physiology, exercise, nutrition, rest your breath. We're going to talk about all those things in detail in the class. But in addition to mastering yourself, you need to master your craft. What is it you're committed to being good at? If it's writing, Stephen King says you need to read a lot and write a lot. Are you deliberately working on your craft? If not, get on that. That's how you cultivate mastery, which supports self efficacy, which is the core of confidence. You got to get good at what you do. You got to put in the time. You can master that in part through vicarious learning. You can get inspired by people who are rock stars and show you what's possible. You can copy their work and actually start doing that whole long conversation there. And then what are your keys? Whatever your craft is, whether it's parenting or teaching or cinematography, what are the key things you need to master in your craft so you develop your confidence, then go put in the work to do it. Number two big idea is you need to persuade yourself. Social persuasion is huge in self efficacy, but it starts with our self. Basically, you need to get your mind right. This is why this class is really an extension of my optimism class and not allowing negative thoughts to get into your mind. We're going to talk about that a lot and substitute them for a vision of what you believe you're capable of. That's the second big idea. Third big idea. We need to go in this identity. Actions, feelings. Most people say, what do I feel like? Then they don't do anything. And then they feel bad. I'm tired, I'm depressed. Okay, so then just stay in bed. And then you'll feel like a depressed person. Or if you want confidence, you need to identify who your ideal self is. What would the highest and best version of you do? Have that identity in your mind. Take actions consistent with that and you will feel fantastic. We're going to talk about that. And also acting as if that's throughout the literature. But moving on, in our brief time here today, Targets. If you want to have self confidence and trust in yourself, you got to have a target. Aristotle in the classic Greek philosophers taught us that we are teleological beings. Telos means target. You need to have a target in your life. If you don't have a target that you're aiming for, well, of course you're going to be aimless. Aimless people aren't confident people. People with purpose, people with goals are happy, confident people. An archer without a target is just shooting arrows. He's not going to be happy. He's not going to be confident that he's going to hit his mark. Imagine a bicyclist. When you're stopped on a bike, it's really hard to balance. But when you're riding, it's really easy. You need to move. A tightrope walker is moving towards something. Just standing there on a rope is much harder than walking across it. The bike balance, the archers, etc. And then acting backward. We'll talk about that. Seeing your ideal vision and then playing it backwards. This is a big idea. Number five, you need to play poorly. Well, I think it was either Jack Nicklaus or another old school golfer who said, you need to learn how to play poorly. Well, no great performer in anything is always consistently great. But what they've mastered is how to play poorly. Well, when you're having an off day, you've got to know how to make that a pretty good day. You need to have good, bad days. I had one earlier this week. I just was a little bit tired, couldn't quite turn it on, but it was still a pretty good day. Now, the old me had bad habits that would make a bad day really bad. And this is tied to our next big idea, which is stop. You need to quit doing the addictive things that you do when you're not feeling well. When you're playing poorly, you can't let it unravel. You got to know how to hold it together. And one way to do that is to eliminate your addictions. Do you trust people in your life who have strong addictions? Of course you don't. They're unreliable, they're inconsistent. Well, so is the relationship with yourself. We all have addictions. Not a matter of being perfect. We've all got little ones and big ones. But we need to identify them and work on them. We also need to stop overthinking, we need to stop ruminating, and we need to stop comparing ourselves to people. That's big. If you want to Cultivate your confidence and then moving on. The seventh big idea we're going to explore in the class is reloading. This is genius. So you need to persuade yourself before an event how how you talk to yourself during events is important and how you talk to yourself after you do something is huge. The Bashams who wrote with winning in mind, Lanny and his son wrote attainment. Talk about what you say to yourself after you do something. If you want to have confidence, you've got to pay attention to this. The short story is if you do something great, you've got to say to yourself, great. You hit the mark, you hit your target. Awesome. That's like me. They say that's like me to crush it. You feast on your wins, on your victories. If you just do something that's okay, you say okay. If you do something that's totally off the mark, you kind of suck. You don't get upset with yourself, you say, needs work. You have a neutral, non judgmental, pure awareness of the event and then you quickly visualize what would have been a better performance. So rather than bemoaning a poor performance and wiring that into your brain, you quickly address it and you wire in a positive performance. This is huge. We're going to talk about that quite a bit. The eighth big idea is the Stockdale paradox. James Stockdale is an extraordinary human being. Recently did a video on Courage Under Fire where I talked about this. James Stockdale was in a prison camp for seven and a half years. Four of those years were in solitary confinement. Never gave up hope. Extraordinary human being. But Jim Collins asked him, well, what about the people who didn't make it, who didn't survive? And he said, those were the optimists, I would say the naive optimists. The people who believed that they would get out by Thanksgiving, be really quick. If they didn't make it by Thanksgiving, they'd get out by Christmas. If they couldn't get out by Christmas, they'd get out by Easter. Well, Thanksgiving would come along, Christmas would come along, Easter would come along, and they weren't out yet. They had unrealistic expectations and we have unrealistic expectations. So what paradox? The paradox here is we need to have absolute belief that we can optimize our lives and we need to think about it over the long term. James Stockdale, when he was landing knowing he was going to be imprisoned, he said to himself, five years at least. Five years at least is how long I'm going to be down here. He did not delude himself by ignoring the harsh facts of his reality. Nor can we. If we want to have confidence and if it's taken decades for us to get where we are at, we're not suddenly going to become enlightened human beings in a snap of our fingers. That naive optimism leads to burnout. It leads to emotional death. You need to have absolute belief that you can crush it. And a long term orientation around how long it will take gets me excited. Ninth big idea here is systems C prior class habits 101. We're going to unpack that some more. You need to create wins for yourself throughout the day. If you're constantly obsessed about goals, you're basically losing all the time. So it's Scott Adams, Dilbert creator tells us, create systems. Create wins for yourself throughout every single day. Great way to build confidence. And then the 10th big idea is service. Ultimately, none of this has anything to do with us. And if we're sitting here thinking about how I'm looking and how I'm showing up and am I looking cool enough, we're forgetting the essence and the meaning of life, which is to serve, which is to give our greatest gifts and greatest service to the world. And if you're self conscious with a little S, you're going to be afraid. You need to capitalize that S to your self conscious. You have connection to something bigger than yourself. Then you just let it rip, you let it shine and you serve as profoundly as you can. You astonish optimally with service. Those are the 10 big ideas. I cheat. Confidence Gym is what you need to hit and you need to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. All of this stuff. If you want to create truly indestructible trust, which is not never having doubt. It's not about never having doubt. Sorry about the double negative, but we're always going to have some doubt. That's not a big deal. What we need to know is in the source of our indestructible trust is we know how to recover, we know how to get better. And we're focused on ideas like these such that we can handle whatever doubt and whatever challenges life gives us. So there you go. Confidence 101. I hope you enjoyed this quick overview. And if you're feeling it, come join us. 90 minute class. We do one of these classes every month along with the Philosopher's Notes. Ten bucks a month. Hopefully you'll find that to be astonishingly awesome as we work together to optimize your life and actualize your potential. I'll put a link to that in the video and hope you're doing great. Excited to share this with all of you who join. See ya. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me. Two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome and 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.