Transcription
Let me ask you a question: Do you feel insecure? Do you get nervous when someone even mentions the word “insecure”? If this describes you, you are not alone, and you’re about to learn how you can take your insecurities and use basic psychology to make them work for you, rather than against you.
Most people associate the word “insecure” with negative emotions, and the main reason why people do this is because, deep down, we are all a little bit insecure. In fact, there is not a single person on the planet that is perfectly secure. Most people think that insecurities hold no value, when ironically they hold more value than you can even imagine.
If we take a moment to look at the psychology behind our insecurities, we will see that they are really just messages broadcasted from our brain. So if they are messages, what is our brain trying to tell us? As it turns out, there are three potential meanings for these messages. When your brain starts sending these signals, it is trying to say that it’s not sure of its ability to complete a task; it thinks it’s moving in the wrong direction; or it is afraid that it might lose what it already has.
The cool thing about insecurity is that it’s one of the most powerful sources of motivation that you have at your disposal. As humans, our basic psychology causes us to move towards a reward or away from pain. If you were to take a second to stop and think about why you’re doing something, it is either because you’re moving towards a reward or trying to avoid pain.
Once you understand that every feeling of insecurity that you experience is nothing but a message from your brain, you can override the insecurity by giving your mind reassurance. For example, if I feel insecure about being able to defend myself, I can start lifting weights, get strong, and maybe learn some Jiu-Jitsu. By doing these activities, I’m reassuring my mind that I can handle myself in a fight. An even simpler example to grasp is driving. When we first start driving a car, we experience a strong feeling of insecurity because our brain is telling us that it doesn’t feel comfortable driving. To reassure our mind, we can take driving lessons and spend time practicing in a parking lot.
Now, the remarkable benefit of being insecure about certain things is that it gives us something to strive for or achieve. I’ve had people tell me that I’m insecure because I lift weights to build muscle and get stronger. My response to them was, “No, I used to be insecure, but now I’m just confident.” For some people who lift weights, their insecurity is not being good enough at football; for others, like me, it was a case of feeling weak my whole life and wanting to move away from that pain. It was my brain saying, “Oh, I’m not sure if I can do this task,” and the task was many different things, like being able to protect my girlfriend from crazy guys and being able to look in the mirror and feel confident about my appearance.
If we wanted to break it down even further, we can say that feelings of insecurity are nothing more than messages from our brain letting us know that we need to improve something. Many of the world’s most successful people wouldn’t be where they are without the insecurity that drove them forward. Unfortunately, if you don’t understand what insecurities really are, you’ll end up living with them for far too long because you won’t recognize that your brain is telling you that something needs to be changed or improved. Instead of immediately taking action to overcome the insecurity, a lot of people look for quick fixes, which can lead you down a deep rabbit hole that you don’t want to get into.
Another example of how people have used the incredible power of insecurity in amazing ways relates to people who grow up poor. Some of the world’s most well-known billionaires started from nothing and grew their empires to unimaginable heights. In fact, the rapper Jay-Z is a perfect example. He grew up extremely poor in a housing project in Brooklyn, New York. Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, had two options to survive: he could either work at McDonald’s or he could sell drugs, and he ended up choosing to sell drugs. Now, while selling drugs, he was shot at three times, and he could have been killed on any given day. Take a second and imagine what life would have been like if you were living this kind of lifestyle. Imagine all of the problems that stem from not having any money, and then think about all of the stress caused by selling drugs. It should be easy to see how Jay-Z could develop an insecurity from being poor. The neat thing about this guy, who was a billionaire the last time I checked, is that instead of doing nothing about it or ignoring it altogether, he chose to use it as power; he chose to use it as fuel for his music career, which slowly blossomed into a billion-dollar empire and catapulted him to the Hall of Fame as one of the bestselling musicians of all time.
Now, the takeaway here is that you can do the same. You might not make a billion dollars, and you might not become one of the best rappers in the world, but there is no limit to what you can accomplish on your own journey.
So the question is: How do you stop feeling insecure? How do you find out what is causing your brain to send you those messages and make it stop? The first step is recognizing that when you feel insecure about something, your brain is actually telling you that you need to improve something or change direction. Feelings of insecurity can also come from not wanting to lose what you already have. Now, the cool thing about insecurities is that they’re easy to figure out, and with a little bit of self-reflection, you can quickly determine the root cause. Maybe you feel extremely insecure in social settings because you spend way too much time playing World of Warcraft. In this example, you need to reassure your mind that you can handle such situations, and the best way to reassure your mind and eliminate the insecurity is to practice spending time in social situations. Writing things down is very important, and to eliminate the insecurity, you need to write down the root cause. Next, come up with a detailed plan that will help you change whatever it is about yourself that will eliminate the insecurity, and as long as your subconscious mind actually believes the plan will work, you’ll get some instant relief from the insecurity, and even better than that, you’ll have a concrete plan that you can use to immediately tackle the issue.
At the end of the day, positive thinking and shortcuts don’t work. You will need to determine the root cause of the insecurity and take the actions needed to eliminate it, which might be as simple as building muscle or losing weight. Back when I was a skinny kid, I was never picked first for sports, and when I would hang out with my friends, I could never understand why I couldn’t throw the damn football as far as them. In my eyes, I thought I was just as strong, and the funny thing is that I knew nothing about muscle or how it affects things like that. When older guys would tell me I needed to eat a cheeseburger or put some meat on my bones, I got really angry, and it reinforced my insecurity of being skinny and weak. At that time, just hearing the word “skinny” would piss me off. Today, after several years of lifting weights, I can confidently say that I’m not skinny, and I’m definitely not weak. In fact, today, if someone tried to tell me I’m skinny, my subconscious mind would just laugh and brush it off as a joke because, deep down, that insecurity of being weak and inferior is truly gone. And the cool thing about getting rid of your insecurities is that, as I’ve mentioned before, energy is never lost; it is only transferred. So once the insecurity is gone, the negative energy goes away and comes back as pure confidence. Now, I still have insecurities, like everyone else, because nobody is perfect, but after I crossed a threshold, my subconscious mind was finally convinced that I was no longer skinny or weak, and at that exact moment, the insecurity disappeared and it was replaced with confidence.
Imagine what your life could be like if you picked your biggest insecurity, identified the root cause, and immediately started taking action to eliminate it. Imagine what you’ll be able to do with the newfound confidence after the insecurity is erased.
With that said, until next time, thanks for watching. And for those of you who watch this video all the way to the end, you guys are nothing short of amazing, and I can’t thank you enough for the support that you give the channel every single time you watch, share, like, and comment on my videos. You guys are the true heroes, and with that said, I’ll see you in the next video.