3 Levels Of Confidence That Define Your Life (W/ Ed Mylett)

What'S up, everybody?

Welcome back to the love life podcast.

I wanted to do something a little.

Bit different for the month of December, where I released a series of episodes making sure that you heard key parts of conversations that I had over the course of the year that a lot of you missed out on. I was out there talking about my new book, love life a lot this year. I had a lot of conversations on other people's podcasts and some of the important ones many of you never got to listen to or just never came across. So expect a few of those this month, handpicked by me, things that I think will really help you to listen to. Today's conversation comes from one I had with Ed Mylett on the Ed Mylett Show. This conversation with Ed was one of my favourites all year. I actually think it's like top five most powerful conversations I had in all of 2024. So I think you're gonna love it. Check it out, and I look forward to hearing what you think.

Thank you.

And you talk about three levels of confidence. This is awesome stuff right here. So could you give them the gift of that? Yeah.

I always think that confidence is this sort of oversimplified umbrella word for all sorts of different things that don't necessarily have a lot to do with each other.

Yeah.

I developed a model for confidence that. That said, okay, there's the surface level, which is level one, and. And that's. how we portray ourselves and how we're perceived based on the way we walk, talk, and act. Hours and hours of content on that alone, but we all know what we're talking about when we say someone looks confident on the surface. Then there's the identity level of confidence. And this we might think of as the legs under the table that underpins the confidence so that the moment it's tested, it doesn't just fall apart. And, and that's, you know, there are plenty of people that have bravado that the moment it's tested, it disintegrates. You know, you have a, someone has a hard conversation with you, and all of a sudden.

Yeah.

You, it goes up, goes apart, falls apart. The identity level is, I like, I like to think of the identity level as everything that we use as a source of confidence in our lives. And they can be many. It can be the skills we have, it can be the life we've set up for ourselves, it could be the relationships that we have, it could be the family support system we have, the contacts that we have. For some people, it might be the fact that they feel like they're well travelled.

Yeah.

Or that they have, they know three languages, or they can play an instrument, or, or they're a very good conversationalist. We all have these things that create what I call identity confidence. And I think of that as a kind of matrix with a bunch of squares in it, like a tic-tac-toe box. And inside are all these different things that give you confidence. And no one's matrix looks uniform where all the squares are the same. In reality, what happens is we come to identify, and some would say over-identify, with certain aspects of our life that give us Confidence. You know, why is it that in a recession, someone who wasn't going to starve decides that they need to end it all? Why? It's not because they lost all their money, it's because they lost their identity.

Wow. Yes.

And the same can be true of a relationship. You know, someone comes out of a marriage, well, maybe they fought so hard for that marriage for so many years that they lost themselves. They lost all the things that made them them, all the things they enjoyed doing, all of the hobbies, the friendships, the close relationships, and they just poured themselves into this marriage. And then when divorce happens, that was the giant square of their matrix, and anything else in their life had been reduced to these tiny little squares around it. And so when they lose this square, it's not that you lost a marriage, it's that you lost your identity. It's not the death of a part of your life, it feels like the death of your soul. And so, In that moment, people feel like, I can't survive. When we lose our identity in that way, it's terrifying for us. You can get the same thing with a bodybuilder who gets injured and all of a sudden they can't train. And they've made that 90% of their matrix was their ability to define and sculpt their body. And now life can't be about that because they're injured. So all of a sudden, life has to become about something else. So that's the identity level. That's level two. And what I always say to people on that level is you have to look at the way your matrix is engineered right now and say, where am I exposed? Because the, and if you wanna know where you're exposed, ask yourself, what area of my life, if I lost it, has the potential to destroy my confidence? And that will allow you to go, where do I need to diversify? where I get my confidence from. And, and, you know, of course, the areas where we identify with the most, they tend to be the things that we use for validation or the things that we think are the most important in life. And I always say our validations become our mutations. You know, if you, if you get really good in business and you keep making more money and making more money and making more money and everyone rewards you for that, it's really easy to let everything else fall by the wayside. But now you've got you know, a parent who spends no time with their kids because it's like, this is the big part of my matrix that I need to keep feeding. And it's scary to diversify. When you diversify, you go back to being a toddler in a new area until it becomes a source of confidence. You know, you could have someone who's incredibly, you know, their sarcasm, which they call their wit, may be a huge part of their matrix. If you say to someone, Hey, look, this sarcasm is getting in the way of your relationships because there's a time when sincerity is called for and people are not going deep with you because you have, you throw too many barbed comments in in a conversation and no one feels like they really get to connect with you. It would really behoove you to start having more sincere conversations. Well, you have a problem here. This person has been using this sarcasm probably their whole life. Yeah. And if they're going to suddenly switch to a different style of speaking to people or conversation, well, that was working for them in many ways. It was a, you know, it made them feel witty. It gave them power in conversations. It made them feel like they knew how to handle difficult people. It made them know how to break a silence. If you take all of that away, they're back to being a toddler in conversation who doesn't know how to walk yet. And that's okay, but we hate having to go back to suck at something.

You're right.

And that, inability to go back and be bad at something so that we can actually build it as another source of confidence and diversify it is crucial. So all of that is happening at the identity level. But people in, there will be no shortage of people in mindfulness circles who will say, all identification is the problem. Like that identity level right there is the problem in itself is that we identify. I identify as being great in business. I identify as being someone who is always there for people. I identify as a pro athlete. Yeah, this identification is the source of your unhappiness and you have to stop identifying and create space between your consciousness and the identification that have become one. I think that's, I'm a big fan of all of that material, but I also know that every day we are facing out to meet the world and we have to decide how to spend our time. And if you can spend your time and allocate your energy in ways that diversify your confidence on the identity level, it still makes sense to, you just have to know that anything on the identity level will still leave you vulnerable ultimately, because Friends can leave, relationships can end, your health can go away, you can get injured, your business can go under. Anything can happen at any point that will rock you in that moment. Having diverse sources of confidence can help you manage those moments where you get rocked, but you can get rocked on that level all the same. And God forbid, four or five big areas for you go down at the same time. Now you've got a confidence crisis and that has to be solved at the deepest level of confidence, which is level three. And that's core confidence. And core confidence is if surface level confidence is the relationship that is the way that other people see you, core confidence is the way you see yourself. And this is the cliche about what I call core confidence and the way other people talk about this kind of depth of confidence. The cliche is that you have to learn how to love yourself. And that sentence there, I think, is the beginning of all sorts of trouble and inadequacy that people get themselves into. I think that this concept of self-love that we have...

So it needs a rebranding.

It needs a huge rebranding.

In what sense? By the way, can I just interject one thing? What you're doing here is magic and profound. What you just did. these three levels of confidence. That's cutting edge work right there. Thank you. It's outstanding work. Like stamp of approval. Awesome. As is this next thing you're going to talk about, which this, by the way, this core confidence is huge, but also this idea that self-love needs a rebranding. I told you, I read every word of the book.

So let's talk a little bit about that. I'm honored. I'm honored that you spent the time. I, I, I know this area intimately because I struggled with it. for so much of my life.

Okay.

This idea of loving yourself, it's become a kind of bumper sticker Instagram meme.

Yes.

And I don't think. I think so much of the advice out there is so unhelpful. And that's not me knocking the people giving the advice. I just think that, again, I'm a hyper rational person. I. Something needs to be bulletproof in its logic for me to be able to take it on board and. Whenever I would hear about self-love, I would go, well, okay, then why should you love yourself? And people would come up with answers like, well, because you're kind and because you're loving and because you're an amazing human being and because you're always there for people and because you work so hard. And to me, that would always, in a way, keep taking it back up to the identity level.

True.

Because it was like what you're listing about If you're giving those as reasons I should love myself, it's like you're listing all these traits.

You're right.

Like I'm a top Trump card. I don't know if you have a version of that in America. Like I'm a card that these are all the attributes. And because I score kindness at a nine out of 10, that's why I should love myself. And then I was like, but then what about days where I'm not kind? What about days where I'm selfish? What about times in my life where I screw up? What about times where I don't work hard, where I feel lazy? Are you saying I'm not lovable on those days, but I'm lovable on the others? And then people would go, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not like that. And I go, well, then why should I love my... if it's not based on those things? And those things are really just another version of, I love you because you get straight A's.

That's right. I was literally just gonna say that. If you bring home the report card, we love you. Exactly.

I was literally just gonna say that. So I was like, how do we get out of this system we have for ourselves? And by the way, the way they're saying it is also a reflection of what they're doing to themselves. and the way they're judging themselves. So how do we get out of this report card system? And by the way, those things might be why you're proud of yourself. But if you're talking about a bulletproof recipe for self-love, then you can't be talking about attributes that I have on my best day and not my worst day. Because then you're saying, I'm not lovable half the time, or I'm not lovable the times when I do wrong. And by the way, the time I'm in need of self-love the most, It.

Was all those days.

When I'm doing everything wrong, and when I've screwed up, and when I feel shame, and I'm judging myself and hating myself because I've hurt someone, or because I've made a mistake that's hurt me, because I've done things in my life that I'm like, oh, I really damaged my life with that mistake. Oh, I've really hurt myself with that mistake. I can never go back from that. And I've spent years beating myself up about mistakes. So I went, I need a better recipe for self-love than this. and I had to start looking for other models. What's up, guys?

Before you keep listening with this conversation, I wanted to make sure that as many of you as possible are currently signed up to my weekly Friday email, the three relationships. I am so proud of this thing. This is not your regular newsletter. This is something that every week I sit down and painstakingly write, because God, writing is never easy. But I put together my thoughts, my ideas, any philosophies or strategies that I think could help you in the three relationships in your lives, from your relationship with yourself, your relationship with other people, and your relationship with life itself. It is an email that people have come to look forward to every week. which is not common for emails these days, but I get people who are my subscribers saying, I literally wait for Fridays to get this email every single week. And I sit down with a cup of tea and I read it with joy. So if you haven't subscribed yet, go to thethreerelationships.com that's the number three thethreerelationships.com and sign up for free so that this Friday you get your first email in your inbox from me.

If you look to the romantic model for love, that doesn't work for self-love. The romantic model for love is, you know, you fall for someone, right? And Esther Perel puts it beautifully in her work, you know, the difference between love and desire. That love is the coming together of two people, but desire, that thing that makes you want to fall in love with someone, that exists in the space between two people. You need space for there to be desire. Love wants to bring you together. Space needs room to breathe. And by the way, the inverse of that is the saying, Familiarity breeds contempt. So if you look at the relationship with yourself, the one where you spent every waking moment in that relationship, your entire life, for instance, the day you were born, You've been with yourself. What relationship are you more familiar with than that? There is no room for desire with yourself. So... The romantic model doesn't work. The romantic model doesn't work. And that's why we have, I believe, that's why we have so much contempt for ourselves, because who are we more familiar with? So I said, okay, the romantic, we're not narcissists. We can't look in a pool of water and instantly just fall in love with ourselves, right? That's what happened with narcissists in Greek mythology. For us, we look in the mirror every day and we're like, I hate myself. I can't get myself to love myself. What are you talking about? I barely like myself, let alone love myself. So, okay, romantic model doesn't work. What could work? If we could look at other places in life where there was a different kind of model for love, what would it be? I started looking at the parent-child relationship and saying, if you ask a parent, why they love their child. How many, maybe some would, but how many parents as a percentage would start reeling off qualities of their kid? If you said, why do you love your kid? How many of them would go well because they get straight A's and because they're kind and because they're loving and because they're, if you ask most parents why you love your kid, they go, Because it's my kid. They give you like, almost a strange expression.

It's unconditional. There's no condition to their performance on straight A's.

Yeah, they're mine. What do you mean?

It's my kid.

That, for me, held a clue.

What's the clue?

That there are people in this life that we love for no other reason than they're ours. I feel the same way about my brothers. On their worst days, you ask me why I love my brothers. I'm like, 'Cause they're my brothers. Now, not everyone feels like that about sibling, but... But it's common in the parent-child relationship. You can find it in other places too. You can find it in the child and the stuffed toy relationship. Tell a child to get rid of the stuffed toy 'cause you've got a better looking one. I've got one that hasn't got fluff.

Coming out the seams. That child will be like, what are you talking about?

That's my rabbit.

It's true.

Sounds crazy, but I'm thinking of my dogs. I know that sounds crazy. No, the dog is the perfect example. You can walk down the street and see someone walking the ugliest, scraggliest, mangiest dog, and try walking up to that dog owner and saying, I've got a more stately, beautiful dog for you if you wanna swap. They'll be like, what are you talking about? This is my doc. So now imagine something. This is the part that changed my life. What if when someone said to us, what if someone said to you, Ed, why do you love yourself? And instead of going to any of those traits or things you do on your best days or things you think make you unique or special or all of that, because all of that is just, another way to judge yourself when you find someone who's better.

You're right.

What if instead someone said, Ed, why do you love yourself? And you said, what do you mean? Because I'm mine. I'm mine. I'm my human. Think of it this way. Out of 8 billion people on this Earth, you're the only person that's there to truly take care of this human. There's no one else. I think of it like our parents, whether they did a good job or not is irrelevant. They just had the responsibility for keeping us alive until a point where it was like, over to you. This is your job. Your job is to take care of this one human. And I sometimes think of it like the Lion King when Simba leaves the pride. I think of it like he left himself, like, The pride is him. It's his job to look after the pride. The pride is you. You're the one human that you have been given to take care of. Nothing else is certain. The one thing you must do in this life is take care of this one human that you've had since the beginning. And anytime I'm being horrible to myself, beating myself up, anytime I'm telling myself I'm not good enough. I go, Matt, what's wrong with you? You had one job. You had one job, take care of this human. And by the way, through that lens, comparing ourselves, because this is what makes us not like ourselves, is comparison. I'm comparing myself to this person, this person, this person. They've got more than me. They're better looking than me. They're more intelligent than me. They're whatever. Comparison makes no sense through that lens because you realize, It's irrelevant. I can't exchange my human.

Yes. Right. You're right.

I can't swap my human out for another human. I got given a human.

It's me. Right.

My only job is how happy can I make this human? And if I was treating it like that, like it was my job, it's not, I don't have to love myself as a noun. I have to love myself as a verb. It's my job to love this human. That changes everything because here's the big part that that I think would help a lot of people is help me. When you look at it through that lens, you don't even have to like yourself to love yourself. You might not like yourself today, and that's okay. You might be frustrated with yourself. You might have a lot of mistakes and things that are hurting you or things you wish you'd done differently. You might not like the way you're living right now, whatever. You might not like yourself, but you can still love yourself and you can, the liking part can come later.

Oh, brother, brother. Whoa. I introduced you today by saying, I'm really proud of your evolution. Bro, you're on a profound magic streak with your work right now. And you made one distinction there, 'cause the self-love thing, the other way, for me, I have a hard time with is when someone's not, yeah, I just love myself the way I am, and you know that they're capable of being healthier or not, you know, someone's shooting heroin and I've always thought like, yeah, I love myself the way I am, but what you've just made a distinction on that is so profound is you can love yourself and not like yourself. and that not like yourself part is the part of you that can create change that can say, look, I don't, I love myself, but I don't like the way that I, my nutrition is, or I don't like the way that I am treating myself. So there's that distinction. Because that other, the other side of the self-love thing that I think is negative is like, it's just accept everything you do and you're, but you've made the distinction between love and like. And that is a huge distinction. You must always love yourself because you're your only human.

When you really love yourself, it starts from a place of total acceptance. And again, acceptance isn't, I like everything about myself. Acceptance is just, I'm making peace with my starting point.

Oh, it's so good.

And that changes everything because there's a big difference between self-acceptance and self-esteem. Self-esteem is built by what we do. Self-esteem is built by sticking to your promises and all of the things that you talk about all the time that that build that pride and that knowledge that you can make things happen, that you need reference points for. And when you do hard things, you build reference points, and that builds that self-esteem. But self-acceptance on this deepest level is about making peace with where you're starting from. And that is one of the most beautiful things you can ever do for yourself. It, and by the way, all self-esteem, I believe, starts from that ultimate acceptance of what our starting point is. Because if you don't accept your true starting point, and if you're lying about your true starting point, you won't even feel good when you do things that should give you self-esteem. Like, if, if, here's a, here's a fun example. if I had, let's say I'm a hundred grand in debt, but I've told the world that I have a hundred grand in the bank. Everyone, my friends and family, they all think I have a hundred grand in the bank, but really I have a hundred grand of credit card debt. Now, if I do something wonderful, every day I wake up and I work and I save or I invest and I am sensible with my money and I start paying it off. And let's say I pay off 20% of it. I'm now down to 80 grand in debt. That's amazing. You've paid off a fifth of your debt. It's amazing. That should be celebrated.

Yes.

But you can't celebrate it because everyone thinks you have 100 grand in the bank. And so something that actually should have given you a true milestone in your.

Self-Esteem you weren't honest about where you're really starting from. No.

And so no one can celebrate you. No one can support you. You feel alone in it, and you feel like I. You don't feel like you made any progress.

You.

All you feel is I'm still 80 grand in debt, and everyone thinks I have 100 grand in the bank. And that happens, by the way, at the end of so many marriages where someone is getting divorced and the world has felt like that was a great marriage from the outside, and you've been talking about it as if everything is fine, because you've been afraid to talk about just how bad it's been and just how unhappy you've been or your partner's been or just how, in some cases, abusive that relationship has been. And now you find yourself on the brink of divorce. Again, it's that I'm losing my identity here because everyone on the identity level, everyone has thought that I'm in this happy marriage. But when I work with people, the moment they can accept what their true starting point is, which is that I haven't had the marriage I've been telling people I had for the last 10 years. I have not been happy. This has been crushing my soul or my confidence. I am starting again in this area of my life. Maybe in some ways I'm starting again financially because this divorce is going to devastate me financially. Maybe I'm going to have to truly, like, I'm gonna have to go and get a job I never thought I'd have to go and get. I'm gonna have to fend for myself again in ways. I'm gonna have to move out of this house and into an apartment. I'm gonna like all of these things that. That have to happen. You have to strip back all of the layers of what everyone thinks I am and just say, this is my actual starting point today. And people are so afraid to do that. And I understand because we're terrified of the loss of ego and the reputation and what would happen if people did realize I wasn't where I I was. And this identity I've constructed for myself. But if you can start from that place of total acceptance and almost imagine, like, okay, let's just play it and experiment for a moment. Imagine I just got given this human today. And this human starting point was like a video game. This human starting point is they're starting at newly single again at 50. They are financially, they. they have this much in the bank, they have to go and get themselves back on their feet. If you saw that as like a video game and you just got given this human starting today to play this game, you'd be excited. You'd be like, what fun thing to get to do? But it's all that baggage and that identity that makes it all seem like it's the end of the world. And the beautiful thing is when you take even the tiniest step forward from that place, But now the world, now you're honest with the world and yourself, most importantly, when you take a tiny step forward, it may, to your previous self who was putting on the mask of where you were, it may have been nothing. But to you now, from an honest starting point, it's a miracle and it is a sign that you're growing and moving and that life is changing and that you, The confidence that comes from that is real. And it's yours. The gains are yours at that point.

Okay. Unbelievable.

All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening to this conversation.

I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to shoot us an email, podcast@matthewhussy.com I'm excited that soon it's gonna be a new year. that we are going to start 2025 together, and I have some really great.

Things in store for you.

So enjoy what's left of your December, and I look forward to speaking with you soon.