How I REPROGRAM myself for success in love, money & happiness
In this self‑help monologue the speaker explains why many entrepreneurs and individuals struggle to act on the knowledge they have: fear, doubt, anxiety, and other emotions block behavior. Drawing on Albert Ellis’s cognitive‑behavioral ideas, she outlines a practical, repeatable process for reprogramming oneself. The process begins with identifying "must/should/have‑to" irrational demands, examining the evidence for them, and actively disputing those beliefs through internal argument. She then introduces the concept of "safety behaviors"—the avoidance actions people default to—and shows how to deliberately act against them, replacing avoidance with exposure. The speaker illustrates each step with personal stories about moving out alone, public speaking, and dating, emphasizing that repeated exposure (doing the feared action many times, quickly) weakens the fear and builds confidence. She argues that short‑term discomfort is preferable to long‑term pain caused by avoidance, and that rewiring the brain for success requires confronting fear at every opportunity. The talk concludes with a call to apply these concrete steps rather than relying on external coaches or seminars.
Chapters
What is up? In this video today, what I want to talk about is how to change your behavior. And the reason that we are talking about this topic today is it is very top of mind for me because it has been the— I want to say like the circular conversations I've had in the last few weeks have all revolved around how to change behavior. And I think that's unknowingly or knowingly that the conversations have kind of revolved around that. So some people have come to me and said, I have this thing I want to change, I don't know how to change it. And then other people have come to me and explained the problems that they have in their lives, and they don't realize that the problem is not the situation around them, but is in fact their behavior and how they interact with the situation. And so I kind of want to break down what has helped me because I can talk about business and HR and IT and operations and all that crap, but honestly, the thing that's helped me the most is studying psychology and how to change behavior. Because for myself, that has been what has allowed me to become good at business because I think that oftentimes the things that prevent us from getting really good at business and actually achieving what we want to achieve are are fear, doubt, anxiety, anger, those things. It's not really not understanding IT or HR or finance or how to hire people. Like, that is all stuff that you can read in a book. The question is, why are you not doing the things that you know that you should be doing? And it is usually because you don't know how to change a behavior, whether it revolves around fear or anger or anxiety or whatever. It's usually that, right? It's why are you not taking action on the knowledge that you have? And this is the video that I want to explain how I have figured that out for myself. And I'm still figuring it out, so I don't want to make it seem like I've like the end-all be-all, but this is what I use for myself. And so there's multiple situations in which I've used this for myself and where I continuously use it for myself. So I'll give you just some of those examples. The first one is that I was in college, I've been living with friends the entire time, and I felt like it wasn't getting me anywhere. And so I was like, I think I need to live alone, but I was honestly really nervous about living alone for some reason. And so, um, that was the first time I realized like if I feel nervous about something, I should do it. And I'd heard that many places, and so I did. But I freaked out, uh, for a good amount of time because, you know, for some reason, you know, a young woman living in not a great part of town alone, I just didn't feel comfortable. That was the first time that I realized that, uh, eventually what happened is that I didn't feel uncomfortable. I think it probably took like, you know, 3 or 4 weeks. In the first few nights, you know, you're like terrified and scared and all this stuff, and it eventually goes away. The second time that I can think of in more recent futures that this happened was public speaking. So I was terrified of public speaking. I use the word terrified because I would probably have said that back then. I probably wouldn't use that nowadays, but I was absolutely terrified of public speaking. And this is actually when I was a trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. And so I told myself I was going to go do the Toastmasters classes. So I went to Toastmasters, I started doing public speaking, and then once we started Gym Launch, we started doing events and I had to public speak there. And then we had to do client online events, et cetera, et cetera. And so instead of shying away from those things, I just said yes to them. And I remember one event that I said yes to that was not our event, it was someone else's. And we flew in that night and it was like 8:00 PM and I get there. And, you know, the night before I can't sleep, I'm tossing and turning. I wake up, I feel like shit. I think I slept like an hour, maybe not even. And the talk's at like, you know, what is 5:00 AM my time because it's a different time zone. But when I got up there, I absolutely crushed the talk. The funny thing is that if I had let all of my past behaviors and all my fears and anxieties and all those things stop me, then I would have never even seen that I could actually crush a talk. Even if I didn't feel great and even if I didn't sleep well and even if I was anxious, I could still absolutely fucking murder a talk. And then the last situation would be looking at actually how I met Alex, which is dating. I see a lot of people say that they don't want to put themselves out there for one reason or another. I think dating is uncomfortable. I actually looked at it and I was like, it's a complete numbers game. So if I just continue to go on all these dates, I'm going to get better at dating, I'm going to feel more comfortable dating, and then eventually when I meet somebody, I'm not going to be freezing up because of nervousness or anything like that. And that's what happened, that's how I met Alex, because I decided to myself, I said, I'm going to go on a date a weekend, that's my minimum. And I've been doing that for about a year when I met Alex. And so the funny thing is that the first few dates you're super nervous, but by date 20, you don't really give a fuck. And so that's like with most things in life. And so I kind of want to break down what goes behind being able to take action despite how you feel and being able to change your behavior in spite of what we would perceive negative emotions, emotions that we don't like the feeling of, right? We don't like the sensation that runs through our body when we experience these emotions. So the first way that I hit it is with thinking, okay? And this comes from what is Albert Ellis, a lot of his studies. And so this is not me. I'm not like some genius or anything like that. I'm not going to claim I made up some model. Okay. This is 100% from his studies. The first is thinking. So it's identifying your musts, shoulds, and have-tos. Okay. So for me, a lot of mine revolve around performance, right? It's like, I have to crush this talk. I must do well in these meetings. I have to be a great boss. I have a lot of those that I was holding onto. Same with dating. I have to be the perfect woman, right? Like I had a lot of these demands, but the funny thing is that, um, The second piece to breaking down your thinking is saying, what evidence supports that these demands are true? Well, where is there any evidence that I have to be the perfect mate? Where is there any evidence that I have to be the perfect boss? Doesn't fucking exist. And so what you would call that is an irrational belief, right? It's a belief that stems out of what I think an ideal would look like based on what Hollywood, marketing, whatever. Like fabricated reality. And so it doesn't actually match real reality. It doesn't match anyone else's life if you were to look in through their lens and not your own. And so that's the second piece. It's first identifying what are those demands I'm putting on myself? And then is there evidence to support that those demands are true? And in most cases, it's not. It's just you being kind of crazy, which is fine because you're a person, right? We're all fallible. And then the third piece to it, and this is where you actually start changing your own behavior, is you have to dispute your own irrational beliefs. Okay, when I say dispute, I mean I literally argue with myself in my head, right? And so say I have a speech coming up, because I still will get concerned, like if the speech is in front of a group I don't know or someone I really want to impress, I'll still get pretty nervous and think like, I gotta prepare this shit a month out, right? And so I have to then say to myself, because I'll have these defeating beliefs of, you know, you're going to tank this, it's not going to go well, you're going to feel super anxious, you're not going to— they're going to think that you suck. They're all going to think that you're not as smart as you think you are, etc., etc. I have these thoughts come up, and then the other side of me has to come in there and say, "Let's look at all the times that you did crush a talk. You crush talks more often than not, so would it be reasonable to say that you will probably do well? And if you don't do well, what's the worst that's going to happen? You are going to feel uncomfortable." So that's literally what I do in my head. And some of the times, actually a lot of the times, what I do when I'm really trying to fight one of these beliefs is I identify like what are the Crazy demands I'm putting myself that are irrational beliefs that are fabricated out of, you know, ideals that I believe are how the world should be because I, you know, humans tend to think the world should go the way that they want it to, which that's not reality, right? And so I write those down and then I write down what's my argument to prove that wrong. And so a saying that I've told my company multiple times, when you're trying to change your own behavior, you often have to prove yourself wrong. And so it's like you have to be able to lawyer up in your own head and dispute those arguments against yourself. Why should you be good at public speaking? Why should you be good at running a company? Why should you be good at operations? All you do all day, most of the time, is tell yourself why you shouldn't be good at things, why you're bad at things, why you should be nervous about things. This is many entrepreneurs in their heads, right? So we're very performance-driven. Instead, you have to say, why should I be good at these things? For the longest time, I've told you guys in different videos before, like, I didn't think I'd be good at managing people. I was like, no way. I'm— well, I just would say to myself, I'm like, I'm way too selfish, I'm way too self-centered, like, I could never manage people. I just can't see it. You know, it's just, I would be too annoyed all the time. And what do I do? For the last 5 and a half years I've been managing people, and that's what I talk about now, and I love it. Okay, so I think that you have to be able to identify those musts, shoulds, and haves. You have to be able to ask yourself if there's any evidence to support them. If there's not, that's an irrational belief you need to deconstruct. And then you need to be able to argue your point to yourself to deconstruct that belief. So that's the first way I'm going to hit something. When I have like a lot of emotion behind something that I know I need to do to become the person I want to become, to create the business I want to create, I have to do that. That's the first thing, okay? So I hit it from a thinking angle. The second angle I'm going to hit it through is maybe I'm feeling blocked with thinking. Maybe I'm like, I can't, I just can't get out of my head. It's really difficult for me. Then I'm going to hit it from the action angle, okay? Action comes like this, okay? So if you want to identify how to essentially act against your, what I want to call, safety behavior, is you have to first identify what are the behaviors that you take when you're trying to avoid confronting a fear or feeling. So say that, you know, for a lot of people that they know they need to get better at operations, and they know they need to hire somebody right, or they know that they need— what is the thing that you go to do? Because you've said that you need to do this for years, right? What is the thing that you go and do instead of confronting the fear? Okay, that's what we're going to call a safety behavior. It's your safe zone. You go into it so you don't have to feel the feeling of fear. You don't have to see that fear through. Okay, go into that safe zone. Now you have to say, okay, I'm looking and here's all my little safe zones I've created for myself. Here are my, quote, safety behaviors. And then you have to say, I have to now act against that. I have to take it away from myself. Okay, so you could go to a therapist and you can pay them $500 an hour and they're just going to fucking tell you to do this, which is Find the thing that you do instead of confronting the fear and then deconstruct that. Take it out. It is no longer an option. And you're going to think to yourself, "Oh my God, shit, this is terrifying. I feel scared. I feel nervous," etc., etc. The thing is then you have to go back to number 1, what I was talking about, which is the thinking. And you have to dispute your argument. You have to literally be able to convince yourself to do the thing that you're afraid to do. And that is a skill in its own. Okay? So then you have to argue with yourself. You see the safety behavior. You know that you need to now act against it, which is you take that out and you— the only thing left is that the option is to then confront the fear. And then when the thoughts arise, you have to dispute them. You have to remind yourself. And so a lot of the times I think of little phrases that will help me, right? Which is often, say you're afraid of public speaking. The truth is that how the audience perceives you is outside your control. Now, do you have some control over how people perceive you? You can think that you can, but people are not going to like you just because of who you are regardless. People are going to watch this video of mine whether I think it's good or not, and whether I might think I did a great job, some people are gonna think it was fucking horrible. Okay? And so for public speaking, I would remind myself, I have no control over if anyone likes this talk or not. I would say that's a good one to repeat to yourself in any situation. You have to find that thing that it's— I don't believe in chanting like, oh, I'm the best public speaker of all time, because I don't fucking believe that, because I'm, I'm not, right? But if you can find something that's neutral, which is It's not under my control how these people perceive me. You know, I can believe that, right? Which then takes some pressure off yourself. And so the third piece to that is that you want to repeat that action as many times as possible in the shortest amount of time. Okay, so say that you have a fear of flying. Then you take your first flight, you're like, oh my gosh, I was super nervous, but I took it and now I feel like, okay, it's okay. Okay, you want to go fly the next day, the next day, the next— you wanted to maybe do a weekly trip. You know what I'm saying? And so you want to continue to re— repeat and reinforce that behavior. So what you're doing is you're reinforcing the behavior that is going to overcome the fear rather than reinforcing the fear. Because every time you don't take action against the fear, you reinforce to be scared of something. You reinforce that you are not good at something. You reinforce that you should be mad about something. You reinforce your irrational beliefs. You identify the safety behaviors, you act against the safety behaviors, you dispute the arguments in your head when those thoughts arise that are uncomfortable, and then you repeat that action over and over and over again. I know that that sounds like the hard way to do things, and the reality is, is that short-term gain often leads to long-term pain. And so instead, if you decide to be uncomfortable in the short term, because here's the reality, if you are afraid of public speaking, if you're afraid of flying, if you're afraid of dating, if you're afraid of hiring somebody, if you're afraid of spending money on marketing, If you're afraid of making a big move in business, more often than not, the avoidance of it creates more fear than the thing itself. And so then once you start confronting that fear, you have to do it over and over again to train yourself because you are— we are humans and so we are trainable. We are learning machines to do it over and over and over again to show yourself there's nothing to be scared of. And that's really where you find freedom. And so if you're looking at changing some piece of your behavior, if you're looking at making a big move in business, I want you to ask yourself why you haven't done it yet. And it's usually because you have an irrational belief or an irrational fear about something, and you've been perpetuating it by hiding in these safety behaviors, these little nooks that we create, and you haven't exposed that to yourself, and you haven't been able to take the action against it. And listen, guys, I am not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not anything. All I know is that if I want to get to where I want to get in business, if I want to have a big empire, then I have to be able to confront my fears. Because like I said, the tactics of doing it, anyone can go fucking learn. You can go Google it, you can go to a conference, you can go to a seminar, you can hire a coach, you can do whatever to learn that shit. The reason people don't actually level up is because of this. It's because of our psychology, because our brains are wired for survival, not success. And so if we can rewire them for success by basically confronting fear at all points in time, then we are much more likely to succeed in business. And so I hope you found that valuable. I hope that video is useful for you today. If it was, go ahead, hit subscribe, uh, the button or whatever is below, and I will see you on the next one.
