Transcription
Most people think confidence is about getting ready for this big moment or doing daily affirmations, and that is not actually building confidence. Like, you cannot hope you feel ready when you walk onto a stage, when you pitch somebody, when you lead a meeting that you've never run before.
Over the last 10 years of building businesses and leading hundreds of employees, I have learned what building real confidence actually takes. And so, what I want to do today is break down what it actually is, how to build it, and I will tell you, it has nothing to do with faking it.
Number one, choose your words wisely. So, when I was really, really early on in my career, I was still at my 24-hour fitness job, like literally just trying not to get fired. I had a habit that I didn't even know I had. Every time that I was about to say something in a meeting, I would open with, "You know, I'm not sure if this is right, or this might be a really dumb idea." And so, every time I did that, I thought I was being really humble, but what I was actually prefacing or framing everybody in the room to think is, "Don't take her seriously." And that was when I realized, like, "Wow, confident people don't speak like that." Like, if you're sure of yourself, you're just sure of yourself. You just say what you need to say. You don't need to frame it with, like, "Hey, I might suck. I might be an idiot. I might be dumb over here." Because then people are like, "Well, if you don't have confidence in what you're saying, why would I have confidence in what you're saying?"
And so, the moment that I stopped with this disclaimer before everything I said, people responded differently to me. And I noticed that at the same time, I would say the same things, have the same recommendations, the same ideas, but people were actually seeming engaged with what I was saying rather than looking skeptical or just ignoring and moving on to the next thing. And it's really funny because nothing about my actual competence changed. Like, I still had the same ideas in each scenario, but my reaction that I got from the audience I was presenting was completely different. Like, at the time, I had clients that I was trying to make suggestions so they could lose weight, and I would present them, be like, "You know, I mean, maybe it would be good if you like, possibly." It's like, who wants to listen to somebody when somebody really wants to change their life? They want you to be confident. They want you to be certain. They want to listen to somebody who knows their [ __ ]. It was funny testing out the different ways of communicating with them and realizing that I was shooting myself in the foot because I didn't want to come across like I was trying to coerce them into doing something. Like, I didn't want to pressure them too much. But by doing that, I wasn't clear. I wasn't certain, and then they didn't even want to listen to my recommendation.
People who use what we call hedging language. This is what I'm talking about, like the the framing where you say, "I think, maybe, I sort of, I kind of," were rated as significantly less competent and less hirable than people who said the exact same thing without hedging. Okay, so this is a really simple shift that you can make. You are not obligated to narrate every thought you have about what you're about to say. It is okay to feel unsure, and you can still speak confidently. Those things can exist at the same time. You don't need to have one with the other. I used to think that if I felt unsure about something, I should say it. If I wasn't certain about something, I should say it. Now, I realized that's not going to get anything done because people don't listen to people who aren't sure about themselves.
The second mindset shift is body first, mind second. So, for a long time, whenever I walked into a room where there was any sort of stakes, maybe it was like I was hiring somebody and I was really nervous they weren't going to take the job. Maybe it was like I was going in to sell a new client. The tension in my body was like visible to everybody there. I remember knowing it because there was this one time where I was in Hawaii and I was opening up a new gym. And I remember that I was supposed to have like five clients come in at once. I didn't realize this about Hawaii. So, if you're in Hawaii, you probably know this, but like, everyone brings their friends and family when they think something's going to be really good. And so, I'm supposed to have five clients that I'm going to talk to about this new program, and it's like my first day, and I'm nervous pitching this program. Instead, I have 25 that show up at that time slot. And I'm like, "What the hell?" So, I'm in the room grabbing tires for people to sit on, putting rugs on the floor, and then comes the time for me to pitch. And I knew they knew I was nervous because I could literally feel the sweat dripping down my stomach from my chest. I was sweating bullets. And I could feel it, just like my hair going from straight to just frizzy around my face. And I was like, "Fuck, this sucks." That's how I used to show up.
Now, even when I walk into a room where I am nervous, I ask myself the question before I walk in, "How do I want to show up?" It sounds so silly, but like, you have to take that time to ask yourself this question. How do I want to show up? How do I want people to feel about me when I leave that room? What do I want their impression of me to be? And I tell myself that story ahead of time. Then I think about what it would look like if I was already in that state. How would I sit? How would I stand? Where would my hands be? I mean, even to the degree that when I've had big presentations I've had to make, I've pictured my mannerisms, how much I'm smiling, how happy I seem on stage, because I know that that will portray confidence, even if I don't feel that inside at that time. And then what I do is I say, "Great, I'm going to do that." I put my body in the situation before my brain is caught up. So even though inside my inside thoughts are like, "I'm so scared. I'm so nervous. Like, [ __ ] this shit. Like, I want to get out of here. I'm freaking out." I'm like, "My body will not reflect that." And they don't have to. And I think that there's this fallacy that's like, "If I'm nervous, I I look nervous." But what I realize is that I have control over my actions. I cannot always control my emotions. I can't always control my thoughts, but I can control how I act, how I walk, how I sit, how I use my hands.
The first few times I did this deliberately, it felt like it was a complete performance. I will I will agree to that, and I will say that it will feel a little bit weird. But what I did realize in doing that is that nobody saw through it. It's like nobody saw that I was super nervous and felt uncomfortable acting a different way because they can't compare how you feel on the inside to what they see on the outside. All they have is what they see. And what they see is somebody who walks in, they took a breath, and they looked exactly how they were supposed to look, confident, certain, whatever it is in the moment. Now, there's a lot of research on this that expansive, open posture consistently shows that it doesn't just change how others feel about you and see you. It actually changes how you feel about yourself. I'll give you an example. I remember on one of the biggest podcasts that I was going to get on, and I was looking at what guests looked the most confident on that show. And something I noticed, there was a couple guests that didn't move their arms at all. They just sat like this the whole time, or like this. And I do that when I'm cold. But I saw the comments. It was so interesting that people in the comments were saying, "I feel like they're lying because they're not even moving." And I was like, "That's insane that the audience is saying that." And specifically when I went on that show, I said, "I'm gonna sit like this. I'm gonna open up. I'm gonna show people I'm not tense. I'm not nervous. I have nothing to hide." And I, it's funny because I look at the comments on that podcast, and they are exactly that. "She seems so happy, so open, so free, so confident." Now, why is that? I think a huge piece of it is I decided how I was going to show up. How was I going to sit? What mannerisms were I going to have? It was a decision. It wasn't a reaction to my thoughts and feelings because I was actually very stressed out that day, very nervous, and on a huge time crunch.
The shift that you want to think about is this. Instead of trying to change your mind and trying to change your thoughts, your body is actually the fastest lever you have. If I tell you, "Snap your fingers right now," you can snap your fingers right now. If I tell you, "Pat your arm right now," you can pat your arm right now. So, ask yourself that one question: "How do I want to show up physically in the moment?" and then put your body there first. I promise you, it is like the biggest hack in the world. Your mind will follow along with everybody else who's watching you.
By the way, if you are watching this and you are already liking what you're hearing, I go deeper on a lot of these principles in what I call Leila's letters. I know it sounds super cheesy, but I like it. You can get them every week in your inbox. It's the first link in the description. So, you can go to leylahormozi.com or to the link in the description.
The third shift that I want to give you is the power of silence. I have an uncle on one side of my family who's a billionaire. And I will never forget the first time that I met him because when I met him, billionaire didn't really mean anything to me. I was like, I don't know, 19 years old. And I knew he had a lot of money. And I remember the first time that I met him, and I walked into the room, and it was a room of like a ton of really smart, really capable, accomplished, and very loud people because my family is Persian. And what was super interesting to me was that he spoke less than everybody else in the room. And it wasn't like he was quiet because he had nothing to say. It was like he was quiet because he didn't feel like he had to prove that he needed to say something. He watched people. He listened. He observed. He asked questions. He engaged. And then when he did speak, it was like the whole room would stop in a room of people who never stopped talking. It was like you could hear a pin drop. And it was so interesting for me to watch. Like, I'll never forget. I remember the the first term that came. "Wow, he's so powerful. He's so confident." Like, what what is that? And it was so interesting because it's not like he demanded it. He didn't yell. He didn't condemn. He was not intimidating. But because of the silence before his words and the fact that he was so diligent in choosing them, it's like he had done the work of making the words matter by not saying too many. That's the piece that really hit me was that he was not uncomfortable with not having an answer, with having silence, and with not saying anything.
And I've been a chatty Kathy much of my life. And so for me, that was a really interesting lesson to learn because most of the time, a lot of us, including how I used to be, when there would be a lull in a conversation or a pause, or somebody wouldn't know what to ask a question, it's like I used to feel this urgency to fill it in. I would talk faster, or like overexplain, or I would say the answer that I was asking somebody because they wouldn't say it yet. It's like I asked them a question, like, "I'm guessing you feel like this?" Because I just didn't want to deal with the silence. I remember that was like such a significant moment for me because I was like, "Wow, I talk way too much." And so in watching him, what I realized was that all that extra talking that I was doing, it was for me. It was not for the audience. I was feeling the silence because the silence made me feel uncomfortable. He's not uncomfortable with silence. And so to the room, when he's sitting there and he's allowing for that silence, I think it's actually very powerful because it draws a lot of attention to the the things that you do have to say that are meaningful.
And so after observing that and spending a lot of time with him, I started practicing it in really small ways. The first way was when I would have a sales conversation, right? So I'm in my 20s. The first thing I would do after I asked for the sale is I would just start filling in the gap because I'd be like, "So, do you want to get started? Here's the package." And then it would be like nothing. I'll never forget. There was the first time I did it. I was like, "All right, I'm not saying anything. Like, I'm going to kill it." Even if it was like, you know, anxiety-provoking or uncomfortable for me, like, "I'm not going to say anything." And I remember I I think it was like seven minutes that I sat in silence the first time I did it with this prospect while I was in the gym trying to, you know, get this person to sign up to do personal training with me. Then they were like, "I'm going to go get my wallet from the car" after like seven minutes. And I was like, "What was going through his mind?" But it worked. And the cool thing was that he did actually end up signing up. And I just sat there in silence, sweating my off underneath my uniform, wondering what was happening the whole time. And so I started taking that and saying, "Okay, I'm gonna apply this to other areas." So, at the same time, I'm going on dates, and I would ask people questions, and sometimes they would just sit there, and then I'd be like, "I'm guessing that it's this." I actually got told that I talked too much during a date one time. So, that was refreshing. And I learned like, "Okay, I need to pause and allow people to fill in the space themselves. And if they don't, I want to be okay with it."
What I think it did was it over time really shifted me into this mindset of like, "Let the things that you say matter, and don't fill in with like filler words." I think a lot of people, because they feel uncomfortable, they feel the need to fill in the silence. But what you're doing is diluting the value of the things that come out of your mouth, which then dilutes the value of all the good things you had to say. Now, there's a reason why this works. When you pause, instead of rushing to fill every single second, you're going to sound more deliberate. You're going to sound more composed. You're going to sound more in control. And then people can actually process what you're saying instead of just watching you try and backpedal and hedge and protect whatever it was you said. And I think that a lot of people know this intuitively because every great leader they have seen speak probably does it to a degree. They don't rush. They allow the silence. They pause. It's just that you haven't built the habit yet.
So here's the shift. Silence is not a bad thing. And once you realize the power of allowing silence in conversations and relationships, you will not be able to unsee it because you will see that it allows more autonomy for the person. It creates more trust and confidence with you, and the impact of what you say is much more impactful because people trust that what comes out of your mouth is good.
Now, the next piece that I want to talk about is what happens when someone pushes back on what you have said. The fourth shift is that we don't want to fold under pressure. Staying silent was one piece of the equation, but staying regulated when somebody challenges you is also another piece of the equation. A lot of people, I would say like, majority of people have the hardest time because if you cannot stand by the things that you say, even when people criticize and attack you for it, people will stop believing anything that you say.
So, I can tell you like, early on in my career, anytime somebody more experienced than me pushed back on me, I would immediately defer to that person. I'd be like, "Oh my god, you probably know better than me. Like, I don't actually know what I'm doing. Like, you have so much experience." And like, I thought I was being respectful. And I I always have prided myself on being open-minded. So, it's like the other part of me is like, "I'm just trying to keep an open mind." You know what I mean? But what I was doing is I was actually teaching everyone around me not to take my ideas seriously and that I wasn't certain of myself. Because if I wasn't going to defend my own thoughts and ideas, why the [ __ ] would anybody else?
I'll tell you guys, it was so to the point that I remember that one of my friends told me that he had did this activity with his therapist where he said, "My therapist asked me to ask eight people, what is my biggest blind spot that if I were to change would make me the most powerful version of myself?" And I was like, "Wow, that's a really powerful question." So, I asked eight people that question, and every single person came back with the same thing. So much to the degree that it was frightening. And this is when like the biggest shift happened for me. Every single person said some degree of, "You are so smart and so talented. You work so hard, but you're so unsure of yourself, and you present ideas, but then immediately defer to other people. You always say other people are smarter than you, they probably know better than you, etc. If you were just more certain in yourself, you would be unstoppable." And that was like, I don't know, like I think hearing it like two days, it was two days that I asked eight people, and I was like, "What the [ __ ]? Why has nobody told me this?" Like, they're using the same words when they're telling me this feedback. I'm like, "Did they all conspire?" And I was like, "No, it's just like that bad. It's that obvious to everybody." And that is when I realized I was like, "Wow, that's insane that anytime somebody doesn't agree with my opinion, anytime somebody challenges me, and I fold, I'm just communicating that uncertainty to everybody else."
What I realized through that was that when you don't advocate for yourself, you're not being humble. It actually is like very much bordering insecurity. You are telling people that your perspective doesn't matter and that you're not secure enough to advocate for yourself in this world. And until I realized that, I was not able to become the leader that I am today because nobody wants to follow somebody who's unsure of themselves. Now, I will say confident people also are not going to like dig their heels in the sand on like every single thing that they have. They are genuinely open, but when they're really sure about a position, like their values, or the direction of your company, or the way you want to live your life, they're not going to allow outside influences to come in and tear it down and be like, "Oh, you're probably right. I actually don't have these values. I don't value honesty. You're right. That's a terrible value." Right? So, if you think about the things that you want to be uh steadfast on versus where you want to say, "Hey, I'll be open-minded." I think there's like a really big difference between being rigid and being flexible. I think being rigid is like, "I'm right, you're wrong, no matter what." Being flexible is, "You know, I've thought about this, and here's my reasoning, and I hear you, and I respect your opinion, but I'm not going to change my opinion just because you have a different one."
People who clearly articulate and hold their positions while staying open to dialogue are consistently perceived as more competent, more trustworthy, and more leader-like than those who immediately concede. The shift is not that you need to be an arrogant [ __ ] in defending everything that you think. If you've done the thinking though, and you're very confident in your position, it's saying, "Stand behind that." If you're not going to defend yourself, who the [ __ ] is? And that comes from a place of trusting yourself.
Now, the last mindset shift is own your opening. A lot of people, whether people challenge you or trust you or follow you, a lot of what they think about you gets decided before the conversation even gets started. So, for example, I learned this when I was making my first few videos. I remember the first ones that nobody has seen because they were so terrible. I would open with, "Hey guys, um, so I'm going to, I'm going to talk about, um, uh, I'm going to try and explain." And it was so bad. Like, I remember looking at my language, and it was like, "I'm going to try, I'm going to try to explain." It's like, why the [ __ ] would you watch this video? Like, I was literally undermining my own authority before I made a single point in the video. I remember Alex, my husband, cuz he'd been making content for years. He was like, "La, got to change the intros." And I was like, "Why?" He's like, "Well, you would lose most people in the first 10 seconds." It was so funny because it was like a click for me. I was like, "Oh, man." It's like everything else in life. It's like your first initial impression is everything. It's like, "Am I going to watch this video or not? Am I confirming the thumbnail or not? Like, is this worth my time?" Psychologists call this the primacy effect. Okay. The well-documented finding that first impressions are disproportionately how people see the person and everything else that follows. Initial impressions form in just a few seconds, and they are so hard to get rid of. Like, it is so hard to unsee whatever that initial impression is. And the funny thing is, like, people don't update their first impression easily. If you open up and you're very uncertain, and then later you backpedal and you're something else, you're still fighting an uphill battle for the rest of the relationship, the interaction, whatever it might be. And I actually feel like in my first company, I went from being uncertain to very certain. And I still feel like until I started a different company and sold that one, people still treated me a little differently because they knew where I had come from. I had been uncertain that one time.
It's a really simple shift, but it is hard for people to do because I think a lot of people want to apologize for inserting themselves. They want to apologize or preface or hedge because people don't like to speak in absolutes. But you want to start with the frame that you want people to see you through, because they are going to, no matter what.
Before you try and apply any of this, I want to talk about just like a few areas where people consistently mess up so that you can just avoid these things. The first one is mistake number one, which is overcorrecting into arrogance. Like, some people hear, "Hey, I want to be more confident. I'm trying to be more confident." And they think it means you have to dominate every room. You have to never admit that you're wrong. You have to talk really loud and over people. And I actually think that's really insecure because real confidence does not need to be loud, and it doesn't need to talk over people and demand things because the best leaders and the most confident people that I know ask the most questions, listen the most, probably do more listening and less talking in meetings.
The second mistake is thinking that this is about being fake. I hate being fake. This is not about being fake. This is about influencing your own psychology with your body. Okay, that's being intentional. When you stop hedging your words and you stop giving in to your emotions with your body and allowing your emotions to dictate how your body shows up, you're not lying. You're just influencing in a smart way. So, it's like you can either succumb to those emotions and make them worse by acting in accordance with them, or you can balance them out by showing up differently than how you feel, which is a really empowering thing to do because what it trains you is that you can have any emotion, and you can still show up how you want to show up in a way that makes you proud. And that does build confidence.
The third mistake is trying to implement everything at once. Like, you've watched this video, pick the one that you were like, "That resonated with me the most," and just just work on that. Master that one, and then you can move on to the next one. You do not need to do all these things at once. Like, please do not, because it's not how it works. You got to do little things at a time. Baby steps.
The fourth mistake is practicing only when the stakes are high. If you have some giant presentation that you're really nervous about, practice on your town hall Zoom meeting that nobody gives a [ __ ] about. Like, practice in a conversation that's like only got an audience of one. I would say when you're trying to deploy these shifts and integrate these habits, do not focus on going big or going home. Like, small baby steps get you there so much faster than just trying to like, I would say, send it and go for it.
So, how can you apply this in real life? A lot of times, how it goes, you watch a video, you're feeling really inspired, and then nothing changes. And it's mental masturbation for you. And I hate that. And I don't want to be that for you guys. I don't want you to watch my videos and then do nothing. In fact, this is the opposite of my life goal. That would just be me being an entertainer, not me being a teacher. And I would rather teach than entertain.
So, what do you do when you watch this video? One, pick the one shift that hit the hardest for you. What's the one that was the hardest for you that you were like, "I [ __ ] suck at this and need to change it"? Cool. Let's start with that. The second step is create a trigger. Decide exactly where you're going to practice it each day. Is it the same meeting you have with your team every day? Is it when you grab lunch with your co-workers every day? Is it when you're at family dinner every day? What is it? There's something you do every day where you can practice one of these things. Be very specific, like what time, what is it exactly? When is that going to happen? It is situational. You do not build habits in the abstract. You build them in the specific.
And the next piece is you track it. You can literally, I mean, when I'm trying to implement, you know, a new habit for myself, I just literally ask myself. I have a little note in my phone. It's like, "Did I do X, Y, and Z today?" Yes or no. I'm not perfect, but I get, I mean, most of the time, I would say 90% of the time, I'm adhering to it. And I think a lot of what you get from that is that you're going to feel more confident when you see that you're putting in the reps, and your brain is going to want that evidence that it wants to keep going. That's going to keep fueling you.
And then the last step is the feedback loop. You're going to notice something's going to shift. Maybe it's somebody reacts to you differently. Somebody you know acknowledges your point that wouldn't normally. They pay attention to you. Normally, they would just ignore you. That is good. That's external validation. Responding to the change that you have put in place. And it's good to keep track of those feedback loops to say, "Hey, look at the outcome that has now occurred." Now, you cannot control this piece. You can only control the inputs. That's why we track inputs. But it's good to recognize when we're getting the output that we desire.
So, in my last video that I did on confidence, I told you I wanted you to put fear in your purse and take it with you. And that has not changed. You are still going to be scared. You're going to be nervous. You're going to feel anxious about it. Like, that is the price of admission. But what you can change starting today is whether your fear is going to run you, or you're going to run your fear. So, you want to pick one shift, practice this week, and then watch what happens when you stop letting your doubt speak louder than your actual ability.