#474 - The Science of Unstoppable Confidence (Build Indestructible Self-Trust)

And this is a solo episode of the podcast where I'm discussing confidence. I hope this episode serves

as your kind of master class, your go-to episode for everything confidence. Hello, my friend. Before we jump straight into the episode, I would love to share the sponsors of this podcast. And the sponsors of this podcast are all the businesses that I've created that are really part of the ecosystem that run this whole thing. And at the top of that list is Patreon. Patreon is the home of our exclusive community where we do bonus episodes, live streams, Q&A's, and merge

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up to date on everything that we're doing here with all of the businesses that I'm involved in, please go to errandmashbits.com and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Thank you. Now onto the episode, completely uninterrupted and ad free. Here we go. So let's just jump straight in. Confidence, what does that word actually mean? Well, the word confidence comes from the Latin root, con, plus fiendre, and means with intense trust to have intense trust in what in yourself. That

is true confidence having total trust in yourself knowing you can handle whatever life throws at you. Helping you create that kind of indestructible trust in yourself is really what this episode is all about. So remember confidence equals intense trust in yourself. And so the goal isn't just to build confidence, but it's to build anti-fragile confidence. So we want to go from potentially fragile, which is like handle with care to robust, which is pretty strong, but the ultimate thing

is anti-fragile. So we want to go from fragile to robust to anti-fragile. We know that fragile means handle with care when you drop it at breaks. We want to be the opposite of that. When you drop us or punch us or our life knocks us down or something happens to us, yes, we fall down, but we get back up and we get back up stronger. So we do anti-fragile and confidence and we put those two together and that's the kind of person we can become. And so confidence is the belief

“that you have what it takes to overcome any challenge that comes your way. Not that life is going”

to be perfect, but you have what it takes to overcome any challenge that comes your way, right? Intense trust in yourself. Air against on the other hand is the belief that you're so wonderful that nothing will be a challenge for you. We all know those kinds of people. We all know the confident person, the truly confident person, and we all know the fake confident person, the arrogant person, right? Because we know arrogant people get exposed quickly. They truly

back down in the face of adversity while confident people, truly confident people step up in the face of adversity because they know they can't. I hope you see the difference and understand the difference and what we're trying to build throughout this episode. The arrogant person thinks they don't need to work hard anymore. They've made it. They're exonerated from any future challenges. We know we absolutely must know that that person is weak, not strong. The truly confident

person knows they will never be exonerated from pain on certainty, hard work, obstacles, all those

things. But that confident person has the humility to know that today is the day to get

“better so we can have the strength for two. That's what confidence really means. And so”

the kind of sum all of that up, ask yourself this question. Am I giving my best? Am I becoming the best that I can be? And let's return to that question over and over again, right? Because success for me is really about giving our best effort. That's the foundational piece of anything you want in this life. And then we build from there, right? And so ask yourself that question.

is going to be a cornerstone of you becoming that best version of you. And then understanding

right, having that humility that today is the day. We get better so we can have the strength for me, for two, for our family, for our community, for all these types of things. And understanding

“that difference between confidence and arrogance is truly important. So you can recognize it within”

yourself and also within other people. And so then we go to this idea of self-efficacy. Also known as the science of confidence. Self-efficacy is a belief you can achieve what you set out to achieve. In technical terms, right? It's super-fucking important, right? Self-efficacy. A belief you can achieve what you set out to achieve. The science of confidence, super-fucking important. And we're going to talk about four primary ways you can build yourself efficacy.

The first one is mastery experiences. In other words, past success. Small and big wins from the past

are a great way to boost your current confidence. Create those wins, feast on them and build yourself image, write yourself images based on your identity. If you have past wins, past success, previous success, mastery experiences and altars, your identity, which changes yourself image, right? And so you want to build yourself image as someone who succeeds. Success means giving your best effort and bring those past mastery experiences or previous successes to mind when you face current

challenges. And so here's some action items. You can use to sort of jog your memory about mastery experiences and past success so you can face maybe the current challenges you're facing

“or you're walking into an important meeting or an important game or whatever the case may be.”

First, you can create a top 10 list of your absolute best accomplishments. Write them down,

all of them. Your top 10 best accomplishments. Maybe you feel like you don't have 10, think harder you do, right? And then put those in the forefront of your mind when you're walking into these current challenges or a speaking engagement or a game or whatever the case may be to install these mastery experiences at the forefront of your mind. So you have that top 10 list. And then you could potentially get a little bit deeper and go into a best self diary.

Describe the future you and five years. What do you do? Think, how do you feel? Speak, move, how do you experience life? Because identity, action, feelings. That's the vibe. When you change your identity, you change your actions, which then results in change of feelings. So from this current identity that you sort of described in your best self diary. Again, I've done two previous episodes on identity and self image. You want to go check those out.

There everywhere you can find my podcast. And I'll link them in the description below if I remember. Sometimes I do not. But anyway, okay. So we have this best self diary. Right? We're describing the future you in five years. And that is like the identity that you want to become that identity shifts into actions and those actions result in a change of feelings. So from this identity, you take action and action, you will feel accordingly, right?

Feelings follow behavior. So from this identity, you take action and then more action and your feelings will follow accordingly. Feelings follow behaviors. I know I just said that two times in a

“row, but it's really important to understand that feelings follow behaviors. And the only way to”

act the way you want to act is to change your underlying foundation, which is your identity. Your identity is your repeated beingness. So now you have those two exercises to start thinking about your mastery experiences, right? You have your top ten list and you have your best self diary. Now we jump into number two for self efficacy, which is vicarious learning. In other words, seeing someone else achieve the success you would like to achieve. The basic idea here is if they

can do it, you can do it as well. Know that, please note that, do not get envious of their success celebrated. And say, if they can do it, I can do it too. Obviously, there are some guardrails on this as well. If you are not, you know, maybe you want to be an MBA basketball player and, you know, the sort of average height of an MBA player is six, four, six, five, whatever. I'm kind of making that up. But you get my point. If you're five, seven, it's probably not something that you can do if someone

else does it. Right? Have some guardrails, some parameters, you know, some realistic thinking around this. But the general idea here, the basic idea is that if they can do it, you can do it as well. Know that. That's a vicarious learning. We are seeing someone else achieve the success we would like and the learning from them, not getting envious, but learning and studying them. That's number two, which is vicarious learning. And then three, we have social persuasion.

friend, a support of parent, or even me right now on this podcast. You can also persuade yourself

through positive self-talk. And self-talk is your number one predictor of your confidence. And we will talk about that a little bit more later on in this episode. But just remember, self-talk is wildly important when it comes to your confidence. But number three, when you build yourself, efficacy is social persuasion. Right? In other words, again, someone telling you that you can achieve success. A coach, a friend, a parent, a parent, me on this podcast, or yourself,

persuading yourself through your positive, encouraging, and uplifting self-talk, which is a huge indicator of your confidence. And then the last one of building self-efficacy

“is your physiology. In other words, if you want to succeed, act like a successful person. Walk,”

talk, breathe, and carry yourselves, carry yourself as if you've already achieved that which you aspire to achieve. Strike a power pose and go rock it. With my athletes all the time, we talk about three things that you have total control over all the time, no matter what, your body language, your breath, and your self-talk. If you as a person in this world can dominate, those three things, kind of all the time, or as much as you possibly can, your body language,

your breath, and your self-talk, I guarantee you will feel more confident because you are acting confidently through your body language, your breath, and your self-talk. Because you may not

always feel confident, but you can always behave confidently. Why did we say that feelings

follow behaviors? Because if you want to feel confident, you have to act that way. In other

“words, if you want to succeed, act like a successful person. Walk, talk, breathe, and carry yourself”

as if you've already achieved that which you aspire to achieve. This is not fake it to you make it. This is acting with your body language, your breath, and your self-talk as that person you wish to become, and then doing the actions, the actual actions, habits, and patterns that will actually lead you to becoming that person. Because you may not always feel confident, we can't rely on that feeling, but we can rely on actions that we have full control over, and that's really important

body language, breath, self-talk. That is your physiology, and your self-talk is the foundational

piece of your confidence, but you do have control over your breath, and how you use it, and you certainly do have control over your body language, strike a power pose, and go rock it, be big, be tall, stand big, right? It has a direct link to how you think about yourself. Now, let's continue. So, we have the big four of self-efficacy, master experiences, by carrying, social persuasion, and physiology. Those are the big four of self-efficacy. Let me get a quick drink, and then we will

move on. Drink your water, drink your water, reminder to drink your water. Okay, so we have those big four of self-efficacy. Now, we have five really important questions. We want to ask ourselves to deepen our understanding of ourselves, and our self-efficacy. After we ask these five questions, or in between each question, I would pause, reflect, write them down, and so you can actually learn and apply this information, not just consume, consume, consume, but actually consume, pause,

“learn, and then apply, because the application and action is the only way your life is actually”

going to change. So, we have these five important questions to understand ourselves and self-efficacy a little bit better. So, one, what's a past success we can celebrate? Two, who has achieved something you'd like to achieve? Celebrate them. If they can do it, you can do it. Three, who supported you and what supportive words did they share? Four, when you're at your best, how do you walk, talk, breathe, and hold yourself? Now's a good time for that, right? We talked about the best self-diary

as an action item, and then number five, what can you start doing, what can you stop doing, and what can you continue doing? The fastest way to improve your life is to stop doing the things that make you feel like shit. So, pick one thing, and then what could you start doing? That you know could make your life better? What's one thing you could start doing? And then what's what's one thing you want to continue doing? Because the only way you repeat some behavior is

if you reward it. So, what are you doing right now? That's actually really good for you. That's working really well. That's a good habit that you installed and you want to continue doing that. Recognize that? Great. Now, one other thing you want to start doing, and one of what's one other thing you want to stop doing. So, those are five questions you can pause and ask yourself to reflect a little bit deeper on the self-efficacy that we talked about of mastery experiences,

of Icarious learning, social persuasion, and physiology. And then to get a little bit deeper,

actually apply these ideas and the big four of self-efficacy into your life. So, again,

“now's a good time to potentially pause, reflect, and apply, and then come back to this when you have”

that. Alright, let's continue. So, we have Brad Stevens. Brad Stevens said to this, "You build confidence through doing really hard things over and over because that's your focus. You know what you're supposed to do. You do it physically. You do it tough. The game honors that. It means resilience and hard work. I just like that idea. The game honors it. Life, the game honors people who are in the arena doing the work. It means resilience. It means hard work. And those

mastery experiences of you continually showing up and showing up, lead to more anti-fragile confidence

because you have the receipts. Confidence really boils down to preparation, previous success,

and self-talk because confidence isn't about being perfect. It's the feeling that you're capable and going for it anyways. The most confident people in the world are not perfect. Those are the people who think they're who think they're the best, but they're really arrogant and they get exposed quickly like we talked about before. Confident people know they don't have full control over the outcome. Confident people know that things could go awry. Things could go wrong, but they have the ability

and the capacity to overcome any challenge and they're going to go for it fully anyways because

“they know that's the best way to experience life because it is having the courage to try to learn”

and to grow from every experience. That's really what being anti-fragile and being anti-fragile

and confident together are really about. The courage, the courage to try to learn and to grow from every experience. That's the truly confident person. It's the owns mentality that I absolutely love, owns, oh, MMS obstacles make me stronger. That's it. That's the mentality, right? Owns, obstacles make me stronger. That's what a truly anti-fragile, confident person knows. Because you aren't born with confidence. Yes, maybe some people are born a little more confident

than others. Sure, but you aren't born with confidence. You build it and that's so fucking empowering. You build it through actions, thoughts and beliefs that you start to not just feel more confident, but you behave more confident. You will start to feel more confident but that follows the behaviors of a confident person. It's through your actions and how you apply these items that we're talking about in this episode right now. The big four of self-efficacy.

Those action items we talked about answering those questions. Those are the applications of confidence. Your body language. Your breath. Your self-talk. Those are actions. Because you build confidence. You become an anti-fragile, confident person through these actions and beliefs and thoughts and then your feelings follow those behaviors. Because it is, it really is. It truly is a journey of self-discovery and growth through challenges, owns, obstacles make me stronger. Now,

let's talk about six specific ways to build your confidence. Six specific ways to build your confidence. Now you understand the foundation of what it actually means to be a confident person in this world which you are totally capable of becoming. Again, you build it, right? You know that. So six ways to build your confidence. Number one, again, is competence. Competence. Competence leads to confidence acquiring skills and expertise in a particular area provides a solid foundation

and belief in your abilities. It leads you to feel capable and sure of yourself. As you become more skilled and knowledgeable, you naturally believe in your abilities by improving with a growth mindset. You create a deep rooted confidence in your abilities and feel you are capable. You feel you are capable because of the evidence and the receipts you gain from gaining competence or skills. You have receipts. You have credible evidence that you are who you say you are and that

“competence builds confidence. That's very important. So number one, in six ways to build your confidence,”

you have confidence. Let me get even more confused about the words competence and confidence, again and again and again and again and again. Anyways, I just grabbed some of my own here. Here we go. Back on track. Stay focused. Stay locked. Stay locked. Everyone. Stay locked. Let's grab a drink. Let's grab a drink and then we'll stay locked back in. Okay. So we're talking about

together. Six times fast. Go. All right. Now we have number two, what I talked about this briefly,

is preparation. Preparation gives you a sense of readiness, ownership and control. Listen to any great athlete talk and preparation is one of their number one traits, Tom Brady, Derek Geter,

“prepared like nobody else. And that's why they perform their very best when the lights”

quote unquote were the brightest. Throw preparation grants you ownership over your endeavors and control over influencing your outcomes. It means you have done the work and dove into the details. The confidence derived from being well prepared allows you to approach challenges with a calm assurance that you've done everything in your power to succeed. Preparation is a key to acting confident. And if you act confident, you will feel confident,

especially in unknown circumstances when challenges come your way because obstacles make me stronger. And if I can prepare to the best of my ability, I will act more confidently, which will help me feel more confident. So we have competence and then number two is preparation. Now we move in a number three is just doing hard things, doing tough things. Again, giving yourself that credible evidence that you are who you say you are. As you successfully overcome challenges

and push beyond your comfort zone, you build resilience and self belief, stepping outside your comfort zone and facing challenges serve as a testament to that. Each time you face adversity head on and bounce back and bounce forward versus you bounce up and bounce back, then you bounce forward. That's anti-fragile. That's being anti-fragile. You build your confidence. You also build resilience and a track record of wins. Again, this is credible evidence that you are

“who you say you are. These are receipts that you need to build the confidence, right? You have”

these receipts. Then you talk about your top 10 list. You have all these accomplishments, all these receipts, boom. Your confidence continues to grow. So the more hard things you do and successfully overcome those challenges, the more confident you get doing hard things. Again, homes, obstacles, bake me stronger, not only bouncing back but bouncing forward, becoming anti-fragile in the process as well. Then we have number four, which is facing your fears. Facing your fears gives you courage,

self assurance and liberation. Gaining the courage to confront your fears is very, very transformed if and only liberates you from self-doubt but also empowers you to take on challenges without hesitation. This mindset makes you ready to embrace new opportunities with unwavering confidence. So again, four is facing your fears. Now, it's recap a little bit because we've done four now of the six ways to build your confidence. You have competence, preparation, doing hard things or doing

tough things. That's number three and then number four is facing your fears. Now, number five

is security and safety. This might sound kind of out of the ordinary but hear me out for a second.

Giving yourself a place that makes you feel safe and comfortable and where you belong, creating a safe and nurturing environment for yourself is like tending to your own garden of confidence. When you feel secure and comfortable in your surroundings, you're more willing to take risks and face challenges head on. This psychological safety provides you with the freedom to kind of explore to explore the courage to confront obstacles and the faith that you will be resilient and

“find regardless of the outcome. So that's why security and safety is important because it”

gives you the psychological safety and provides you the freedom to kind of explore, challenge new things, confront new obstacles. But then in turn, having the faith that you will be resilient and find regardless of the outcome is good or quote unquote bad. And so safety and security is number five in the six ways to build your confidence. Now we go to the last one which is kind of

the most important one which is the just yeah. So number six is self-talk. Everything we've discussed

so far about confidence is very important and if applied to your life, we'll make you a more confident person. But I saved the best for last which is self-talk. Nothing else matters when it comes to our confidence if we don't master our self-talk, our internal dialogue, what we say to ourselves when it matters most because we're always talking to ourselves. We're always talking to ourselves. The foundation of confidence is what you say to yourself. It's our inner dialogue that

truly shapes how we show up. And so according to research conducted by national science foundation

thoughts daily. I think you would agree that we don't want 80% of those thoughts that we're having

to be negative. Now I am a realist in that sense. I accept reality as is and strive to stay away from being a perfectionist because it's not not reality, right? Being perfect doesn't ever exist. So I know there is no way that anyone can make 100% of their thoughts positive because we cannot eliminate negative thoughts that is impossible. I just want to state that clearly. We cannot eliminate negative thoughts. But we can. But if we can intentionally take control of that voice in

“our head and bring that 80% down to at least 50%. I think that would be a great place to start.”

And how we do that though, well, I believe the number one way is to listen to ourselves less and talk to ourselves more. So that really means instead of trying to eliminate negative thoughts or simply challenging them or challenging them, negative thoughts are going to come into our brain. Again, the research says 80% of the time. Well, if we start to challenge those negative thoughts, what if we can bring that down to 50%. And I think that's a great place to start. And so

the number one way again is to listen to ourselves less and talk to ourselves more and that really means challenging those negative thoughts. And so don't listen to yourself. Talk to yourself. As Shad Hellmeister says in his great book, what to say when you talk to yourself, the brain simply believes

“what you tell it most and what you tell it and what you tell it, excuse me. And what you tell it about”

you will create. It has no choice. Hard reading quotes from a book. I guess, you know, we're four hundred and almost four hundred eighty episodes deep and podcasting is still hard, even though it's my job. Anyways, all right. So again, Shad Hellmeister wrote writes wrote a great book. It's called what to say when you talk to yourself. And he says in that book, the brain simply believes what you tell a most and what you tell it about you, it will create. It has no choice. There we go. Now you understand.

The inner dialogue that's going on all the time in our head is the most important thing we have

going on. Having positive self talk as a tool in your toolbox will help you manage the adversity that we all experience. Negative thoughts really do constrict and limit your potential

“while positive thoughts create space for you to thrive. So you have to train yourself to catch”

those limiting thoughts and reframe them. Over time, this practice will become second nature if you're consistent with it. That's the idea right there of challenging those negative thoughts. You train yourself to catch those limiting thoughts and reframe them over time this practice will become second nature if you're consistent with it. Nothing in there says eliminate negative thoughts. But it does say challenge, catch them, reframe them. When you're mentally aware and attuned to

your inner dialogue, you are able to choose your thoughts which turn into thought patterns, which turn into habits, which really do shape your identity, which shape your self image and your self image, really determines how you show up when it matters most. And so what we think we become.

This is why it's critical for all of us to take control and feed our mind as many positive thoughts

as we can through our own self talk. So I gave you a lot of information. So we're going to wrap everything up. I will leave you with an action item because building confidence and becoming anti-fragile takes work. It's a skill that can be trained and learned as heavily discussed throughout this episode. The action item is called rehearse, let it rip, reload to truly embody a win or learn attitude. Rehearse, let it rip, reload to embody this win or learn attitude

to start building this confidence and anti-fragile mindset in real time. So you have rehearse or kind of imaginary. This is your training mindset. Transfer your past positive experiences to today using everything as fuel for growth to enhance that trust in yourself because we know confidence equals intense trust in oneself. So you can let it rip, which is your trusting mindset. Whatever you brought is what you've got do the absolute best you can and see what happens. That's

all you really have control over. So you have rehearse, training mindset, let it rip, trusting mindset. That's all you really have control over just to let it rip and then you reload, which is your

and just repeat that cycle over and over and over again into every environment that you go to

“and eventually you'll adopt this own mentality of obstacles make me stronger and you will continue”

to increase your confidence and increase your anti-fragility. And again, you'll just combine

the two to become a person who is anti-fragile and confident at the same time all the time.

“And I will leave you with this. Some people want it to happen. Some wish it would happen.”

Others make it happen. Go fucking make it happen. Go make it happen. I truly, truly believe

and your ability to become the best version of you in greatest service to the world. And part of doing that is becoming the most confident person you can become based on the factors, tools, mindsets and action items we discussed in this episode. So if you found this episode valuable

“at all, please share it with a friend that's the only way the podcast grows. It's people”

like you sharing it with people like you. I appreciate you very much for tuning in. Drop a comment wherever you're watching or listening to let me know you made it all the way to the end. And I appreciate you very much. Thank you very much. And I'll see you guys next time. Lots of love. Cheers.