A speaker argues that true confidence comes from aligning your actions with your beliefs when no one's watching. He traces how chasing pleasure and avoiding pain creates shame, which leads to self-sabotage. Living honestly, even when it hurts, is the only way to regain real authority and freedom.
How are you really operating when nobody is watching you? When you're all alone by yourself in the darkness, how are you really operating? Because as a man, what do we have if our word, if our integrity, and if our character have holes in them? See, the reality is you think that nobody's watching you in the dark, because I know, because I was you. But you're not getting over on anybody, brother. You're only getting over on yourself. Because the reality is, you are watching you. You are observing you. You are watching you sabotage, betray, abuse, neglect, abandon, and treat yourself poorly. You know what the right thing is to do, but the reality is, is most of the time you don't do it because doing the right thing doesn't always feel good. See, we need to stop doing what feels good and we need to do what we know is right. We got to think greater than we feel. We have to get out of the— get out of this hedonistic state where we're constantly pleasure chasing, seeking out what feels good as a way to escape the reality that we have. We need to lean into the pain in our life. There are cycles happening in your life, and I'm speaking from experience. When there were cycles happening in my life and I was only doing these things in secret, and I was only injuring myself in the process, but what happened in the light? The facade had to be greater, the mask had to be thicker, and the skins and hides that I had to wear to protect myself from the reality of who I really was in secret was destroying me, was killing me. The shame that I felt that just became toxic shame eventually taking me out. Why? The shame is a cycle. The shame drives you towards self-destructive behaviors, and the consequences from those self-destructive behaviors only initiates more shame. And the shame induces separation. Look at Adam in the garden. When he ran away, he covered himself with fig leaves. Why? Because he was ashamed. Shame has kept you in a state of isolation. Shame has kept you and prevented you from seeing your own greatness. Shame has kept you and prevented you from being able to connect with the love that people have to freely offer you. And so you sabotage great things inside your life. Your life is pain you have to face the pain in order to actually have the experience that you want. The pain stops when you're finally willing to feel it, not run from it, not lie about it, not suppress it, not bury it, not overcompensate, but when you're actually able to be honest. And let me tell you, there is something liberating in a man's soul about honesty, about when he knows that he's living congruent I was the best feeling ever when I knew. It's like you could come watch me in secret because this is who I really am. And that gives you authority. It gives you your confidence back. You wonder why you don't feel the confidence? Because it evaporates when there's a large division between your core beliefs and your behaviors on a daily basis. When your core beliefs and when your actions are not in alignment, what happens? You feel the cognitive dissonance. And then the only way that you justify it is by right? Going back into your compartmentalization, your intellectualizing, talking yourself like, I'm allowed to do this, so it's not that big of a problem, when in reality you're experiencing a myriad of problems, a myriad of problems inside yourself internally, bro. God didn't design you this way. He didn't design you to run off into the wilderness and cover yourself out of shame? What kind of covering are you using? Is it the mask? Is it your wall of success? Is it your material possessions? Is it that you're trying to buy everybody's love? Just stop. You don't have to do any of that. The easier way is actually the harder way, but it provides you with lasting results. And that's where you finally look at yourself and get honest.
