PNTV: The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser

You need to increase your belief before performance and during a performance such that you can decrease your thoughts. You do not want to have an overactive prefrontal cortex while you're doing that which you have trained to do. How you hold yourself physically, how you're breathing, is going to affect your mind. It goes both ways, right? Your mind is going to influence your body, but your body is also going to influence your, your mind. We'll start by defining Confidence. What is confidence? Well— Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Philosopher's Notes TV. Today we've got another great book, The Confident Mind by Nate Zinsser. Nate Zinsser trained 3 generations of soldiers at West Point. They're mental toughness, peak performance coach. He's also worked with guys like Eli Manning and other Elite Performers, and this book is one of my all-time favorite mental toughness peak performance books. I highly recommend it. As always, we've got a philosopher's note in which I pull out a handful of my favorite big ideas. You can get that for free. Click on the link in the show notes to get the seven-page PDF and the accompanying twenty-five minutes or so MP3. Listen on the go. We've got about seven hundred and seventy something philosopher's notes as I record this. We've got five ideas. gonna walk through. Let's get to work. We'll start by defining confidence. What is confidence? Well, Nate has an answer for that. I'm actually gonna read to you his definition of confidence, but before I do that, I'm gonna read to you a quote that he starts the book with, ends the book with. It is a Sun Tzu quote from The Art of War. Sun Tzu said, The Art of War. Sun Tzu says, victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. We must win the first victory in our minds. We must cultivate a confident mind and confidence if we want to put ourselves in the position to have the best opportunity to win. Mark Divine quotes Sun Tzu over and over again as well in his great mental toughness book, Unbeatable Mind. So Nate Zinsser tells us, so my operating definition of confidence, one that will actually help you perform well, is this: a sense of certainty about your ability which allows you to bypass conscious thought and execute unconsciously. And he breaks it down. Number 1, a sense of certainty, that feeling of having complete faith Number 2, about your ability that you can do something or that you know something. Number 3, which allows you to bypass conscious thought so well you don't— so that you don't have to think about it. And 4, you can execute unconsciously so you perform it automatically and instinctively. What you need to know is you need to increase your belief before performance and during a performance such that you can decrease your thoughts. You do not want to have An overactive prefrontal cortex while you're doing that which you have trained to do. We talk about it in the note, in another book that I reference in this note. The book is called Overachievement by John Elliott. He says you need to have a training mindset, and then you need to have a trusting mindset. In the training mindset, you're thinking about what you're doing. You're trying to train a certain set of skills. But that mindset needs to be left in the training domain. When you show up to compete, you need to go from the training mindset to the trusting mindset. I literally just talked about this with Bob Bowman's 2-time defending national swim team champions at the University of Texas. Training mindset, trusting mindset. Whatever you brought to, for me right now, to this talk, quote, performance with you is what I brought. I can't be overly thinking, how am I coming across right now? It's a good way to make sure that I don't perform particularly well. We talk about this in another note on a book called Choke by Sian Beilock. She says, an overactive prefrontal cortex will get you in a lot of trouble. Again, training mindset, trusting mindset. You have a deep sense of certainty that you have what it takes to perform at your best when it matters most. Awesome. Again, the whole book is about how to actually operationalize that wisdom. I also in this context want to share the etymology of the word confidence. I'm the kind of kid that enjoyed, or I was the kind of kid that enjoyed reading from the dictionary for fun. Meaning of words, I love. Etymology of words, I love. Confidence comes from 2 little ancient words, confidere, 2 little Latin words, right? Confidere, with intense trust. That's what the word confidence actually means, with intense trust. In what? Well, in this context, in your ability to perform well. But I would offer another facet of confidence, which is it doesn't matter how your performance goes. It doesn't matter what happens to you in life, because you can't control outcomes. You can't control unexpected events in your life. It's a deep sense of trust in knowing that it doesn't matter what happens. You have what it takes to show up as your best. Phil Stutz helped with that distinction. Many other people talk about that. That's deep. Deep, intense trust, deep in confidence, deep confidence. And again, I talk about antifragile confidence. That's the theme of my next book. Can't wait to share more on that. But that's confidence defined: trusting mindset versus training mindset, etc. Now, how do we build a confident mind? This is one of the many reasons why I love this book. There's a ton of practical, really powerful, big ideas and tools we can use. To craft, to cultivate, to forge a confident mind. Here's one of my favorites. Nate tells us, Dr. Zinsser, Dr. Z tells us we need to pay attention to our psychological bank account. Like any bank account, you make deposits and you make withdrawals, right? You wanna make sure you're making more deposits than withdrawals such that you have a really confident mind and stacked psychological bank account when you need to draw on it in performance. Right? So if you're constantly thinking about all the things you've done poorly in your life, you will make withdrawals in that psychological bank account, and you will not have the confidence you need when it matters most. On the other hand, if you're making deposits all day, every day, you have a shot at building a really strong, confident mind and having a really powerful psychological bank account. Now, Dr. Z tells us there are 3 Ways we can make deposits into our psychological bank account. We can mine our past, we can use our present, and we can use the future to make deposits. The past, he talks about your top 10 that we're gonna talk about in a moment. One of my all-time favorite exercises, I'm gonna help you think about the 10 things you're most proud of in your life. And I'm gonna remind you, those things came with a lot of challenges. You had a lot of blood, sweat, tears, etc., but you transform that into highlight reels that you want to think about. Your past, we got to mine it for things you're most proud of. Think about those things often. Don't think about all your failures. Those are withdrawals. Learn from them, then let them go. Focus on the things you've done successfully. Then you got the present. The way that we cultivate that is through affirmations. Present. Present. Positive tense. Nate has a practice, and he says, "Look, anyone serious about we talk about it in the note. Anyone serious about this stuff is going to make get clear on what they want to see in the future." Let me write that down. You want to see it. You want to have a clear target of what you want to achieve in the future. You want to connect that to your past, the top ten things you've crushed, and then you want to affirm. Positive present tense statements, who you are and who you're becoming in order to hit that next most important thing in your life. He has you come up with 3 different affirmations and write those down 3 times. 3 affirmations written down 3 times, last thing before you go to bed. Get this into your conscious mind, make conscious mind into your subconscious mind, make deposits in your psychological bank account from the past The present and the future. And then you want to think about building a fortress, he says. How do you build that? The Stoics would call it the inner citadel. It's what Marcus Aurelius and Pierre Hadot talk about. Pierre Hadot wrote a whole book called *The Inner Citadel*, the great Stoic scholar, about Marcus Aurelius's meditations. *The Inner Citadel*. So imagine having an inner citadel, a fortress where nothing can penetrate it. You have a sentinel. On guard, making sure that the negative thoughts, the negative, um, well, thoughts and interpretations of your life cannot be penetrated. You're sitting there with a fortress. Well, if you want to build that fortress, Dr. Z tells us you need to think about 4 things. The first thing— let's see if we can make another list— is the mind-body connection. Obviously, how you hold yourself physically, how you're breathing, is going to affect your mind. It goes both ways, right? Your mind is going to influence your body, but your body is also going to influence your mind. Be mindful of that as you cultivate a confident mind. The second thing is human imperfection. That's imperfection. It doesn't quite look like it. Imperfect. Let's go. Imperfect writing. That's fantastic. Human imperfection. We're going to talk about this in the last idea. Your sense that you need to be perfect is your kryptonite. I will read for you another passage from the book. You gotta embrace the fact that nobody's perfect. You're not gonna be the first perfect human being. Allow for that to be present. The third thing is more nervous system stuff. I'm not gonna go into right now, but same basic idea. Flip the switch, mind-body, etc. And then the fourth one is delayed gains from continued practice. And this is a really, really powerful idea. Too many people start something, whether it's a self-development program or whatever, they don't see the results they want In a day or 2 or 3, or even in a week or 2 or 3, then they give up. I'm literally talking to my son about this. As you know, if you follow along, my son's really into chess, 13, almost 14, wants to be a grandmaster. Well, that's really hard to do. He's almost a national master, but he's on a bit of a plateau right now, right? And George Leonard, in his great book Mastery, says, look, most people want their progress to look like that. Straight up and to the right. That is not what mastery looks like. And this is what both of these things that Dr. Z is talking about are related. What it looks like is this: you go up, and then you go down a little bit, and you have a plateau. Then you go up, plateau, up, plateau. Oh oh oh! It looks more like that, right? So my son's on a little plateau right now. Actually, it looks more like this. He's on a plateau. But what he's done every time before that is he's had a breakthrough. Now James Clear talks about plateaus in a brilliant way. Again, Atomic Habits. His whole thing in that book is do the little things and don't focus on where you are right now or where you think you'll be tomorrow. Look at the trajectory of your life. If the trajectory of your life is going like that, you're doing well. If you're kind of going the same way, maybe you're going to go like that, right? Or maybe it's kind of just a meh. But pay attention to the trajectory and then realize that when you're on a plateau He calls it the plateau of latent potential. You can't see anything happening. It looks like nothing is happening, but then all of a sudden, boom, you get this additional gain, right? Well, George Leonard, to go back to his work in mastery, says the master knows that there's going to be a plateau. Then they fall in love with that process. And they're so committed to the process of mastery that for every mile they take, steps toward their goal and their destination, they hope the destination gets 2 miles further away. They don't want to get there. There is no there there. There's always an opportunity to get better. But, you need to embrace the fact that your gains are going to be delayed. Continue practicing. Continue cultivating your confident mind. Continue showing up, doing whatever you do at the next best level. That leads us to the next idea, which is your top 10. I literally did this as I was preparing for the note for this PNTV. I reread the note, kind of got my mind wrapped around How I wanted to talk about it, etc. And I paused and took a moment to do my top 10 list. And I want you to do it right now. If you have the time and the space and you feel so inspired, after I share the exercise, press pause and do this exercise, even if it only takes you 60 seconds, 90 seconds. If you got more time, take more time. This doesn't need to take forever. But I want you to think about when we look at making deposits in our psychological bank account, I want you to mine Your past highlight reel style. What are the 10 things, the top 10 things you are most proud of? Top 10 things you are most proud of. I've done this exercise with my kids. It's awesome. What are you most proud of? Think about those things right now. Did you do it? If you didn't, what are you waiting for? Go do it if you got the time. Press pause if you're driving and you can safely reflect on these ideas. What are 10 things? 1 thing, 2 things, 3 things, that you're really, really proud of. Think about that. Have that in your mind. Have them push out all the things you might be ruminating on. Oh my God, why did I do that? Or why did I say that? Or how did I fail at this or that? Fine. I've failed. You've failed. We've all failed countless times. But what are you going to be thinking about all day, every day? You will not show up with the confidence you need to perform at your best today or tomorrow if all you're doing is thinking about your failures. Learn from them. Not saying you should ignore them, but— Learn from them, then throw them away. Then focus on what you've done in the past that's been successful and what you want to do in the future. So the way Dr. Z has you do it is write your number one goal that you want to achieve in your life right now, then write the 10 things you're most proud of. And, and notice that, uh, if you can do those things, you can do this next thing. But what I want you to do when you do that, um, is think about one other facet. When you look at the things you're most proud of, My hunch is, and I can say this with near 100% certainty, that every single one of those things you're most proud of, the main ingredient— we call those hero bars, the things you're most proud of, hero bars. David Goggins says he has a cookie jar. When he's feeling beat down by life, he goes and reaches into his cookie jar, pulls out a cookie of one of his past successes. We call them hero bars, right? But the main ingredient In your hero bars is what? It's a challenge. It's something you wish didn't happen. I guarantee you the things you're most proud of, you didn't, you didn't achieve them with ease. You had to go through obstacle and over the obstacle and, and, and conquer all kinds of different challenges in order to ultimately succeed. So the main ingredient is a challenge. Guess what that tastes like? It's bitter. It's salty. The blood, the sweat, the tears. But if you if you cook it long enough, right, and you chew it long enough, it becomes sweet. Eknesron, the the great spiritual teacher from India, on whom I've done I don't know how many notes—a lot—he says his grandmother, who was his primary spiritual teacher, would would have him chew from a particular piece of fruit or something that started out tasting really bitter. He's like, Grandma, this is terrible! I want to spit it out. She said, "Don't spit it out. Keep on chewing it. Keep on chewing it. Keep on chewing it." Keeps on chewing it. And the bitter turns into sweet. Same thing with the thing, the things that you are most proud of. They almost certainly were bitter, salty, then the sweet came in. Appreciate them. Think about these things rather than your top 10 failure list. Now, all of which leads us to the final idea. I promised I'd read from the note because it's wonderful. You got to remember, if you want that inner citadel, you want that fortress, you have to embrace human imperfection. Abraham Maslow, great humanistic psychologist, on my wall, one of my heroes, says there was He studied all the great people of his generation and other generations. And what he found was there was not one single perfect human being. Not one. And I playfully say you and I aren't going to be the first perfect human being. Embrace your imperfection. Embrace the imperfection of life. Final idea in the note. Dr. Z tells us nothing— and when an author like him says nothing, PhD, he's aggressive in this stuff, but he's also conservative— Nothing will drain your confidence account faster Or prevent your first victory more surely than your refusal to accept and work with inevitable human imperfection. If you punish yourself for each and every mistake, error, and imperfection, it is impossible— it is impossible to be confident. Destructive perfectionism is different than striving for perfection. The discipline and dedication necessary for sustaining your efforts toward improvement. So you need a small amount of perfectionism, but it cannot be the main ingredient. Tal Ben-Shahar wrote a whole book on this. Check out the Philosopher's Notes. It's called The Pursuit of Perfect. In it, he says, look, perfect— perfection— is that a star? There it is. Now it's a star. Perfection is like a distant star, not a distant shore. It's like a guiding star, right? It's not a distant shore. You're never going to get to A guiding star, right? So quit thinking of your goals, of you at your absolute best, as someplace you're going to get to and just stay at, right? Embrace the constraints of reality is what Tal Ben-Shahar says. He juxtaposes 2 different forms of perfectionism. One is actually healthy, the other is not. Unhealthy perfectionism fails to embrace the constraints of reality. That's what leads to all the things you don't want to experience— the anxiety, the depression, the shame, etc. Right. Now what you want to be, he says, is you got to have your high standards. Both the unhealthy and the healthy perfectionists have high standards. But then the healthy perfectionist that he calls an optimalist— optimalist. The word optimal means the best, not perfect, the best. The optimalist knows they're never going to be perfect. They embrace the constraints of reality. Whereas the unhealthy perfectionist doesn't, right? Then you have those high standards, you go for it, but you know you're never going to attain perfection. But in the process, you get excellence, right? So having those high standards, going for it, but never thinking that you need to be perfect, never shaming yourself or making sure you don't consistently— all of us will at times— consistently shame yourself for every single mistake. And shortcoming, etc., etc. It is your kryptonite. Have a healthy relationship to your standards. Go give your best, but hold those high standards with high warmth. Know who you were at your best and know those came on the other side of challenges. Why you want to remember that, to make it explicit, is you're probably facing challenges right now. If you're human and you're trying to live a great life, which you probably are if you're this far into this episode, you're facing challenges. Well, remember that all the things you're most proud of came on the other side of challenges. You're now out of your comfort zone. You're feeling uncomfortable. Perfect. That's where you want to be. Get back to doing the work. Build that inner fortress. Embrace imperfection. Know that your gains are going to take time. Have your physical posture, your nervous system regulated. Make the deposits into your psychological bank account. Your past, your present through the affirmations, and your future having a vision you're excited about. As you create that deep, deep sense of trust that you have what it takes to show up powerfully in any given moment. And I'd say even more importantly, to deal with life's adversity with as much antifragile confidence as possible. That's a quick look at this great book. If you enjoyed it, get the book, get the note, again, free in the little show notes here. But most importantly, what's the idea that jumped out and landed for you and how can you apply that wisdom to your life today? As always, we want to move from theory to practice to mastery together today. It's an honor to spend time with you. Look forward to sharing more soon. See you. Hey, this is Brian. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. If you enjoyed it, please hit subscribe so that the best of the show keeps landing in your feed. Then head over to heroic.us. That's heroic.us, where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last 20 years, as well as the app, advanced training programs, coaching, and everything else we've built to help you optimize your life, actualize your potential, and live heroically. It is day 1. We are all in. Let's go.