Shaping Your Self-Confidence

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. And I give you tips that you can put into fast action to up level your health so that you can go out there and live the big life you're meant to live. Now, today's show is all about confidence because the number one question when we went out to our audience and said, what's going on? What's you know, what are your big issues? And what came up time and time again was this issue of feeling worthy, self worth, confidence. And so I thought, gosh, you know, what I talk about is how our health is holding us back. But there's something even further than that because if you don't believe you're worth it, if you don't believe you can, you cannot outgrow your self image, which all of course starts with confidence. And what today's guest talks about is the fact that your confidence becomes your emotional oxygen. Like, what a cool thing. And she's going to talk to you about how you can quickly shift, shift to being confident. And she's going to take you through three scenarios that I was like, oh my gosh, yep, that's me. Like I think of myself as a confident person and I realized that there's still some room to grow, which is fantastic. And so she's going to walk you through that and then share with you a resource to help you quickly make that shift. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest today. It's Dr. Sharon Melnick. She's a leading authority on business psychology, stress resilience and women's leadership. Her practical tools have informed by 10 years of research at Harvard Medical School and field tested by over 17,000 training participants. She speaks all over the place, including the White House. And she's also the best selling author of Success Under Stress. And she has a new book, Confidence when It Counts. She also serves underserved populations as an advisor to smart women and mobile application in 47 countries partnered with Facebook and UN Women. She's been featured on Forbes.com, fox News, New York Times, Huffington Post, CBS, Amex Open, and others. And she is amazing. I cannot wait to share you. Share her, rather with you. Okay, so let's do it. Dr. Sharon Melnick, welcome to the show. You know, I am so excited to have you here with me today on this topic.

Thank you so much.

I'm excited, too, for everyone listening, because this is such a big one for the community and no one's talked about it. So why confidence?

Okay, let's just get the obvious things out of the way, right? So, you know, this is what makes you successful in business, likable, happier, attractive in dating, more productive. This is the fuel of successful business women owners. It's the number one thing that professional women want in order to advance their careers. And what the research shows is that though you need both, confidence is even more predictive than your competence of your career advancement.

Wow. Well, okay. And someone who's not a career woman or a professional woman. What about them?

Well, you know, it's just, it has everything to do with stress as well. So when you don't have confidence, you don't feel like you have control in your life. And that is the very thing that activates a stress response. Now, let's just like, maybe start with the basics here. So, you know, you know, how many thoughts does a human being have a day? You've heard this, right? Scientists estimate about 60,000 thoughts a day. About 60,000 thoughts a day. Now, I've asked thousands of women this, and I asked them, so how many of your 60,000 thoughts a day are like, kind of toward you, Feeling like kind of a confident person, you know, kind of having what you want in your life, the, you know, feeling in yourself that you want to have, and how many of those, percentage wise, take you further away? And what do you think I can do?

Yikes.

I was just thinking, I think I'm a positive person. I was going, huh? How many times a day have I thought, gosh, everything is great, I love myself? I don't know, what do you think? Like 95. Five?

Yes. Well, for you, that is probably the case, but for most people, no, I.

Mean, 95 the wrong way.

Oh, away from.

Yes.

Well, actually, unfortunately, this is sort of in the realm of what I hear. I mean, the first kind of response out of people's mouths is usually like, you know, 50, 50. Or I often hear, you know, 70, 30 or 80, you know, similar to what you said. And I say, okay, so about 70% of your thoughts towards kind of that confident person that you want to be, the experience you want to have and 30% away from and sort of just like you, people start shaking their head like, oh, no, no, that's not what I meant. But even if we took a conservative estimate, just check this out, right? So even if you said, yeah, I'm a pretty sort of confident, productive person, 70% towards 30% away from even still, that's 20,000 thoughts a day, right? You multiply that times one week, that's 140,000 thoughts. And the reason that I say that is women. We're always like, oh, I need an extra hour in the day. But it's like, what if you had an extra 20,000 thoughts a day to really, you know, sort of be believing in yourself and furthering your life and kind of showing up with the experience that you want, like, what could you do in the world?

So, okay, why are we doing this? It just seems like we're our own worst enemy here.

Right? And just one more thing about that is, in terms of, you know, the health implications, is that every one of those thoughts has an energetic consequence. So the opportunity is huge here.

Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, you know, I mean my whole story with my son who was hit by the car, it was like our decision as to how he was going to be. You get what you expect. So. And the biggest thing I did during his whole accident, when those thoughts came in, I was like not letting them in because I was just so afraid they become reality was like, oh no, everything was stayed towards. He's going to be 110%. Yeah.

And you literally see the power of that and we're so, you know, glad about that. So how do we get in our own way? So here's the thing is that sometimes the ways that we try to become more confident are actually the very ways that keep us at our current level of confidence. So it's almost like what you're doing, right, is getting in your own way. Let me explain this. See, in order to have that next level success, you need to feel confident, secure in yourself. You know, know your work, you need to act from that place. The first sale, of course, is always to yourself. Yet if you criticize yourself and hold yourself back, fear what other people think, you know, judge and compare, you don't have that rock solid feeling inside. So what will you do to get it? Here's what you'll do. You'll put your time and energy into acting towards Other people in order to get other people to act towards you so that you can have that feeling within. So you'll involve other people. Your energy will go towards managing their perceptions as a way of knowing how you feel about yourself. Now one way of kind of getting that confidence is sort of, you know, sourcing it from within and getting it from the sense of reward from your contributions and meaningful connection. So that's the way that we want to do it, but let's talk about the way that most of us do it instead. So I'm going to go over three patterns and kind of think of people you might know or to moments when you might have even thought this way yourself. Ready?

Okay.

Okay. So the first pattern is where you kind of seek others approval. So you're going to put your attention into getting other people to think well of you so that they will validate you, reassure you, compliment you, appreciate yourself. And the idea there is that it's sort of like, well, I don't totally feel it in myself, but if I over prepare, pressure myself to be perfect, micromanage, fish for a compliment, you know, ask for everyone around me for their opinion rather than trusting myself. Or maybe do favors for everyone, which like, I encourage you to be generous. But are you someone who's sort of giving to get back that compliment? And are you doing this all in the hopes that if you get that other person to think well of you, then you can say, well, my boss said I did a good job, so then I must sort of be good at what I do. See what I'm saying? So you just gotta kind of get that approval. But then a lot of time and energy is going there. And the problem there is that you might get that boost for a moment, you know, an hour or a day, but then you have to go out and re earn it and re earn it. So that's the first way. The second way is just the opposite. So instead of trying to get that approval, you're trying to prevent disapproval. So that's when you won't add your thoughts to a meeting. You won't speak up about what you need. You might put, you know, put off putting yourself out there, like, well, who am I to speak in front of the room or raise my fee or ask for a raise? So essentially you're trying to hold on to the confidence that you have by not doing anything to lose it. Got it. And the third thing that people do, and this is very common, is to sort of put your attention in a loop of criticizing yourself and other people. So I have an assessment in which I ask about kind of, what type of leader are you? How do you respond in common workplace situations? And I've already had a thousand women take this over the last few weeks, and 50% of them say, as soon as I finish a presentation, the first thing I'll focus on is my flaws.

I do that. So, like, oh, my gosh. And that is the most amazing thing. And here's one that's an example. Sharon. I remember doing this talk that I thought, it is rare I ever think I nailed it. Like, I get off and I start this whole inner dialogue of what I could have done better, right? Then I get these. Everyone sends in their surveys. I get glowing reports except for one person who is just negative and sending all this mean, like, just writes all this mean stuff down to, I don't like your shirt. I mean, you know, it's one of those. Do I focus on the hundred beautiful? No, not at all. All I am focusing on is this one woman who complained about things that, honestly, I'm always looking for, you know, like, what can I do to get better? This was just mean, right? You know, especially when you pull in, like. And I didn't like her shirt, you know, and her shirt was too tight. And I'm like, my shirt was too tight. Like, what? You know. Yes, but it is. That's such a. I still remember to this day, I focused on the one person who criticized me, not the hundred who said, you were awesome.

Of course. And here's the, like, totally ironic part, is that. Do you even trust this woman's opinion? Like, do you even respect. Do you think that anything she says has any objectivity? No. Right. But still, that's what we do, is that we focus on our flaws. And, you know, we tell ourselves it's in an effort to try to improve ourselves, but it's really just inflating ourselves. And then if we're never enough, sometimes that can leak out to the people around us who we make them never enough either.

Mm. Wow. So what do you do about this, you know, and why. Why are we going there? Because I, like, as you started to talk about this, your very first part, I thought, well, wasn't that how we were raised to behave in school from an early age?

Well, here's the thing, is that it's true that as we are growing up, we come to see ourselves through the eyes of others, right? So it is important to us then kind of how we act towards other people. And it makes sense. Like, we're gonna act Perfect. In order to get what I call that emotional oxygen, you need your emotional oxygen. Just like we need to breathe in physical oxygen, we need to take in that for our self worth, love, the attention and the praise. So we learn to act perfect so that we can contingently get that response of praise. Similarly, it's hardwired within us to prevent harm or something that could make us criticized or abandoned. So we learn these behaviors. They absolutely make sense in terms of how we come to know ourselves. The problem then is that then this might be the only way that we come to know ourselves, right? So here we are at a later point in our life and what happens is that, and this happens for a lot of women is that we kind of, we know in our minds that we're really good. Like we've been praised, we get results for people, we get feedback, you know, on our evaluation. So we know sort of in our head, I know I'm really good at what I do, but it's confusing because we don't feel it in our bones because we do behaviors in order to get a response from other people. But those responses aren't about like just who you are as a person, they're about your behaviors. And that's why we have that split. And so that's why at this point, the opportunity, right, instead of involving other people in the way that you kind of get your confidence, it's to know how to do it kind of autonomously and independently. And that's really when you're unstoppable.

You know, I hear this and what's occurring to me because as I talk to you offline, the biggest thing I've heard from my community is this feeling of like, what's hold them back is this feeling they weren't worthy. And I'm listening to this and I'm going, you know, this impacts every single area of your life, but it also seems like something that you always have to be working on.

Yeah, well, I think that's right. But I think that you can pretty quickly actually come to a point where you just kind of gracefully, you just kind of don't go there so you.

Can get above it and pass this. Because it just feels like the examples you gave, I think everybody can relate and go, oh, oh, that's me, right? I mean, I'm just listening, going, and I think I'm a confident person who's got good self worth. And I'm like, oh, that's me. Oops, that's me. So I'm listening to this going, wow, this really does. This is. If you're going to flip things to make such a massive difference in the world, like, here it is. So how does someone now. And it's like, okay, we're out of time, so I'm going to ask you this question. But everyone listening, I'm sure, has gone, that's me, in some case of this. And I see that mastering this will change everything in your life. So how does one go about doing that? And you said this is a quick process to turn around, really?

Oh, absolutely. Well, there's many, many things that you can do. And I might just put this in the context of sort of righting some wrongs that I think are out there in terms of advice. Right. So, you know, one of the things is, like, if you, you know, you break up with your partner or boyfriend or something like that, what's the first thing you're going to do? Your girlfriends are going to be like, let's go out for drinks and let's tell you how great you are. Right? Well, that's really good at reducing your stress levels, but that's just perpetuating that paradigm of sort of getting other people to tell you that you're great in the hopes that you will internalize it. Right? And then you have to keep going out and filling it up. So you really want ways of building up that emotional oxygen from within. One of the things that I think is very important is that, you know, trying to control what other people are going to think about you or speculating what they think or trying to be perfect, that's all. Like, small game. That's all about how you think about you or trying to control other people. What you really want is to play the big game. And I can actually give you an example. Like, ripped from the headlines an hour ago. So I was thinking that we were going to be doing this interview, and I went to a store yesterday, and we picked up this artisanal chocolate that looks so good. 72% dark chocolate with sea salt. This is my weakness, right? And I'm thinking to myself, oh, like, I'm a little nervous. I really want to, you know, give good stuff to JJ's people. And so I'm tempted to eat it, right? But that small game, that's all about, like, trying to control what JJ is going to think about me. And you know what I mean? The big game is like, don't eat something that's going to put me in a sugar and, like, fog up my brain. The big game is like, who do I want to be and how do I want to feel and what's my message and what's my purpose and act in the service of my big game, you know what I mean? And you always have that opportunity, so that's something that you could do at any moment. And every moment of the day that I feel like I'm on my purpose and I'm sort of, you know, bringing forth my best, I just feel good and right in me.

This is amazing. So just for everybody listening, I've known Sharon for, gosh, a couple years now, but I've never heard you present or talk, right, about any of this stuff. You present a little bit in our groups, but never, never in depth. And I'm like, going, all right, I need more of this. So for everybody listening, because I'm thinking, I'm not alone here. There's probably a mob scene going on. How do we get more from you and how do we like the next step here? Because now you've made it. Not only you've made it attainable, which I really love, because a lot of times people get these big topics and you're like, okay, well, that's great, but, like, you know, I don't have the next 20 years to do a full immersion and have this change. But, you know, I see this now as something that if you can make that shift, which it sounds like you can, it's going to impact everything. So where do people go next to be able to go deeper with this with you?

Well, the very first thing is remember those 60,000 opportunities that you have.

So.

So what you want to do is that you really want to define kind of like who you want to be and then make every one of those 60,000 thoughts a day in the service of being that person and getting out of your subjectivity, like what you think about you and being objective about what you can bring, you know, kind of the value that you can bring and the contribution that you can make. So you can get started doing that@sharonmelnick.com.

DJ let's spell Sharon Melnick.

Sure.

It's S H A R O N M E L n I c k sharonmelnick.com DJ and what DJ stands for is that this is an audio training that's going to teach you to be a better DJ of your own. Mental ipod.

Oh, I love that. That's so cool. All right, so be sure that you grab that. This has been fantastic. I love the message this has been. I mean, this is one that it was so needed and your work needs to get out there. Massively in the world as we all know. So thank you so much. And after the break, I'm going to be answering listeners questions, so be sure to stick with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question comes from Christine in Bellevue, Washington and she writes in JJ Help, I've started and stopped your virgin diet over and over again. I just can't seem to get through it. What do I do? All right, Christine, I'm going to take you back a couple of steps because whether it's the virgin diet or the sugar impact diet or you're making other changes in your exercise, your stress management, whatever, you have to have the reason why, you know, you can never outgrow your self image of yourself, which is what we were just talking about with Dr. Sharon, is that if you don't believe you're worthy, then you're going to sabotage yourself. So I always say let's back it up. And I say with okay, you got the program, you got the book or you started the online program for a reason. What was it? What is that? Why? And maybe we need to make that why a little bit bigger. And what if we even backed it up a little bit more and we started to look at who you are and that you're worth it. Because when you step into this and you take control of your health, what's the ripple effect going to be with your family, your friends, your co workers on down. And I always like to say if you can't get enough to do it for yourself, then do it for your family. But I'm going to take a step further now. Just working with Dr. Sharon and listening to Dr. Sharon's talk today, which I thought was just amazing and I am personally going to go deeper with her work, is let's go into that whole idea of you being worth it and let's go into what will change for you when you do this program when you have more energy, when you uncover any hidden food intolerances. If you need to lose weight, you lose that. You've got better focus. Maybe if you have any disease processes going on, those start to subside. Or what's that going to change? How's that going to impact your life? What's your big why behind that? What makes you worth it so that you will do this? That's where I want you to come from. Because that's such a different conversation than, okay, I have to do this right now. Make the why big enough and then you will be able to do the how. Now, if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way, I'd love to hear from you. I would hugely appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or iTunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch and be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy Dare to Live a life that matters.

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