Brian Johnson walks through a journaling exercise from Nate Zinser's The Confident Mind: write down your top 10 achievements related to your next big goal, then post them where you'll see them. It's about making psychological deposits to build confidence before you need it.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last plus one, I started to tell you about how I've changed my journaling since reading the Confident Mind by Nate Zinser. Then my context setting prelude redefining confidence became a one in and of itself. So today we'll talk about how my journaling has changed. First, a little more context setting. Now to help us cultivate our absolute certainty or intense trust to to do what we aspire to do at the highest possible levels, Dr. Z encourages us to constantly make deposits into what he calls our psychological bank accounts. We do that on three time horizons, the past, the present, and the future. To make big deposits in your confidence boosting psychological bank accounts in the past, he encourages us to take the time to think about 10 of the things you have achieved in your life that you are most proud of that are related to the next big thing you want to do. Note Insecure individuals spend time ruminating about all the things that went wrong in the past. Confident people think about the things that were awesome. Now, once you've squeezed the win or learn juice out of those mistakes, it's not helpful to forge the confidence you want and need to perform at your best when you need it the most to keep on ruminating about those negative experiences. If you have a problem ruminating about failures, stop doing that. Create instead a pantry of hero bars, a highlight reel of you at your absolute best, and obsess about that. And we're actually going to make that today's plus one and make this whole heroic confidence journaling practice a series of micro plus ones so I don't make this a plus 11. Here's the focus for today. Bust out a piece of paper. Yes, I want you to write this down, not type it. Science says writing makes a different, deeper imprint in our consciousness. Now take a deep breath in through your nose, down into your belly, back out through your nose. Exhale slightly longer than your inhale. Shake out any tension that might be present. Chest up, chin down and smile. Do that a couple more times to ground yourself if you feel so inspired. Now, what are the top 10 things you are most proud of in your life? 1, 2, 3. 10. Write them down. Put them up somewhere. You will see them all the time. And if you feel so inspired, do it with your kids if you have them. I've done it with Emerson and informally with Eleanor. I got to have her write them down too. Do with your spouse or partner if you have one. Do it with your team, colleagues, clients, et cetera. If you have them. And know this. You have activated your heroic potential countless times in your life. You can easily flip the switch and get yourself to believe you can do it again at will in the moment we need you to. We just need to relentlessly remind ourselves of who we are at our best. Making deposits in our psychological bank accounts over and over and over again, such that we know we have what it takes to show up like that. Over and over and over again. Let's do that all day, every day, especially today.
