Matthew Hussey explores why self-love is hard when external success feels empty. He introduces a "confidence barometer" showing most people celebrate wins briefly but dwell on mistakes for weeks, draining energy inward. A participant discovers she can see strength and compassion in the mirror after learning to refuel herself with grace instead of self-inflicted damage.
Before this week, I could have opened. Opened my heart and it would have been a kind of. Would still have been red, but it would have been a dull red. And I think if I was to show you my heart right now, it would just be. It would blind you. And I want to give this to, like, the people around me as well. I think everybody, you should just come and experience this. This is like, wild.
There are external goals and internal goals. An external goal is something I want to go and do out there in the world. Something I want to make, something I want to create, something I want to do. So there's a verb aspect to that, right? Then there's the internal goals. I want to be more confident. I want to love myself more. I want to be happier. I want to be more at peace. I want to be free from this constant anxiety I have. I don't, you know, all of these things that we do that we have as internal goals. Now, there's nothing wrong with internal goals. Of course. Internal goals are the most important in the sense that they determine the quality of our lives. Doesn't matter how much is going right in your life. If you're not happy, your life is still shit, regardless of how many things are going well for us. You can have the best job in the world. You could be the most beautiful person in the world. You can have the best boyfriend in the world. You can have everything. But if you don't love yourself, all of that will be hell.
I've got a good job, nice house, great car, great friends. I've been married and divorced, and I've had all of that and a kind of like quite a difficult childhood. Growing up with a lot of kind of rejection and hurt and pain and stuff. And I think I just now want to be immersed in the good stuff. I want to believe that people don't think I'm a fake. You know, I've got a great job. I'm head of HR for a big corporation. And so I help to transform, well, about 1500 people I look after at the minute, and I support them and help them grow. And. And then I can't even look in the mirror and think, she's great, her in there. So that's what I want for myself. I want to be able to look in the mirror and be proud of myself. And I think that's. I'm going to get that from this week. I don't know how I'm going to get it yet, but I'm going to get that. That's what I'm going to get from this week.
If you want both a barometer for your core confidence and a clue as to why it might not be so great. How much time do you spend cheering yourself on and taking the credit when you do something right now? Compare that with how much time you spend berating yourself when you screw up. Compare those time frames, because most of you, it will be 30 seconds to nothing. When you do something well before you move on to the next problem you have. And when you do something wrong, when you do something embarrassing, when you make a fool of yourself, when you say the wrong thing, when you do the wrong thing, when you procrastinate, when you eat the wrong thing, when you take the wrong thing. When that happens, many people will beat themselves up. Hours would be an understatement. Days, Weeks, Months. Years. Decades. Many of you in this room, if not all of you, are still beating yourself up for some. Something that happened in the past that you still carry around today. Move on. No one gives a. No one gives a. Who are you? Who are you doing it for? Where is this play that you're putting on that everyone's coming to about how you up? Is everyone coming to buy tickets to how interesting this show is? Oh, the you fucked up show. Tell me about this thing you did five years ago. Well, we've. The rest of the world has completely moved on and was more concerned with their own lives even five minutes after your mistake. All right? But we. We're still running the show as if it's interesting. It's not interesting. And it's not allowing us to make an impact on the world because you can't make an impact outwardly if the entire damage you're trying to inflict is inward. Right, here's what we have to do. All of this energy, boom, let me put it out there. But all we do is take all of our energy and direct it towards inflicting damage. Today and tomorrow, by the way, is going to be about filling this up with a different kind of fuel, a different kind of love, a different kind of attention, a different kind of effect. Affection, a different kind of grace. And then, boom. You're a canon, right? Impact. You just can blast impact out to the world because you've done something for you. You've filled you up with a different energy.
That was a bit wild. That was a bit wild. I cannot put into words. I thought I knew myself. I thought I knew. Yeah, she's a bit funny and she's a bit. But do you know what I've realized? I Didn't know anything. Even getting ready this morning. I put on my bouncy music. So I'm trying to dry my hair and I'm dancing and I'm looking in the mirror, my new best friend. And I was like, dancing. Dance it. You're a freak. Where did that come from? No idea.
We're told that the key. The key to confidence is to love yourself. Love yourself. No one in this room hasn't heard that advice. I'm not saying anything new, but why is it so hard? What did you think core confidence was before yesterday?
Do you know what I always thought it was? Being able to kind of like, hold yourself in a certain way. And I don't know, there just seemed to be some kind of like black art. So core confidence is this, like. Oh, yeah, well, you just go and love yourself. You're like, well, how do you love yourself when you can't even look at yourself in the mirror? But now it's kind of like I look at that person and I see the strength and the humility and the love and the compassion that that person is looking back at me. It's just. It's like life changing. It's like properly life changing. And it's. I maybe had. I maybe had a thought that can. All this, like, sincerity and self help and that could be genuine. But that was me being a skeptic, you know, and it's coaching and self help. Absolutely. My God, I have never met such genuine people as you guys, you know, and Matt and Matt's family. And it's just so real. It's real. It's so real. It's raw. This is like raw love for people.
