Transcription
[Music] Creating Unstoppable Self-Confidence.
Self-confidence. It's something people talk about all the time when they say why they're not succeeding. Over and over, I hear people say, "I just don't have enough confidence." Listen, confidence is not something you have. It's something you create. And you can create it at any moment in time.
A sense of confidence is nothing but a sense of power within yourself. A sense of certainty that you can pull something off. And you can create that feeling, literally, in a moment. It's not something that you live with. There is no one that I've ever met that, no matter what situation they're in, is always confident. Everybody gets knocked off kilter at times. The key is, can you turn the confidence on when you need it so you can get the most out of yourself? Does that make sense so far?
So, you've got to remember that feeling confident is nothing but a state of mind. And you can change and create any state you want at any moment in time, no matter what's going on around you. Let me give you some specific examples. There are three primary ways that you can create self-confidence at any moment in time to get the most out of yourself and produce the results you really want.
Approach number one, you're familiar with it. It's called physiology. You've got to remember that any feeling you've ever had in your body, whether it be fear, anxiety, concern, depression, frustration, or ecstasy, power, unstoppability, confidence, success. Those emotions, any emotion you feel, comes from the way you use your physical body. The only way you can feel anything is by the way you move, the way you breathe, your facial expressions.
So, if you're not feeling confident, you don't have to intellectually try and pump yourself up because it doesn't always work. I'm sure you've tried it times to go, "Well, I need to be confident. I know I should be confident," but you're still not there. Well, let me tell you, the quickest way to get confident is to change your physiology radically.
Listen, in our seminars around the country, those "Unleash the Power Within" programs, we take people through a first evening we call "Fear into Power." And it's an experience where we get you to change your conditioning and feel totally confident in an area you'd normally be totally afraid of. So, at the broadcast site, we use a firewalk experience where everyone walks across the fire between 1200 and 2000 degrees burning hot coals. And in the theaters, we have people actually learn how to break through wood karate style. And they do it about 15 minutes. And it requires not only confidence, as you might guess, but competence to do something most people take two or three years to learn how to do in a few minutes.
Now, the purpose of this is to get people in a state of being totally strong and confident, even though they were totally afraid, lacking confidence only moments before. Let me tell you something, to get yourself across a bed of burning hot coals or to smash through some wood, even though you might be tiny and small, the wood is much bigger than you've ever done before. I gotta tell you something, to do that, you gotta make a major change in your state. Major.
Now, let me tell you how we do that. The number one way we do this is we get people to move their bodies with a level of intensity and power that they probably never experienced before. Remember earlier in these tapes I said to you that emotion is created by motion? The way you move your body physically, the way you breathe, your facial expressions, instantly affects your emotional state, the way you feel, and the way you think. So, if you need confidence, you must move in a confident way. You must literally put yourself at level 10 or above. You remember those conversations?
So, what I do with people is literally, I'll take somebody who comes up to the fire and they go, "Oh gosh, I really don't think I could do this." And I say, "And I couldn't do it either if I talked like you right now." Stand up. Breathe strong. Take a huge deep breath in. Blow it out hard. What I want you to say is the word "yes." And then go, "Yes!" I said, "No, no, say 'yes!'" And I have them yell. They go, "Yes!" "Say it again!" "Yes!" And pretty soon, they feel incredibly strong. And I say, "Walk." And they go, "Okay." And it's like, instantly, a moment ago they were totally afraid. Now they have the confidence to do it. The only difference was changing their state of mind and emotion by changing the way they're using their body. But I do it radically. Major, explosive changes. In other words, if I was going to make a gesture, I wouldn't just like reach my hand out towards you. I'd snap it out there. That's the kind of state of confidence I'm talking about. Are you following me?
In other words, you've got to move deliberately, as if you are absolutely totally in control. You know, you can create any result you want. If you meet someone who's confident, you know it before they open their mouth, don't you? Can't you tell by the way they move? By the way they speak?
Listen, what if when you turn these tapes on, I said, "Um, well, I want to thank you for listening. Um, I'm, um, uh, Tony Robbins, and, um, I want to share with you over the next, um, 30 days, um, how you could have, um, well, you know, um, absolute total, um, self-confidence." You can go get rid of this guy. What am I doing? What's going on here? Who is this guy? Is he on drugs? What's the deal? See, the bottom line is, I communicate rapidly because I'm confident. Is that I'm competent? No, confident. That's what I'm talking about. Hopefully, I'm competent too. But the bottom line is, I'm just letting it go out of that state of confidence. Though ideas pop up. This whole set of tapes has been designed to help you get results without limits. I didn't sit here and say, "Okay, no, I'm going to say this, and then I'll say that, and then I'll put it in this order." I want you, and I have a relationship that moves you. This whole set of programs comes from my ability to say, "I'm confident. I know I can reach this person." If I didn't believe that, you and I couldn't have this conversation right now.
But sometimes I don't feel confident. Sometimes I don't feel like I know what I'm going to say next. Have you ever been there? What I do at that time is act as if I know what I'm doing, which is a useful approach. Now, you might say, "Well, you're teaching people to be confident, but not competent." I got news for you. If you're confident enough, you can develop the competence. But if you're competent and you don't have confidence, you'll never succeed. There are many competent people who could accomplish incredible results, but they're missing the confidence. Am I suggesting to you to be foolhardy? No. What I'm suggesting to you is learn how to turn on the confidence rapidly. Use enough of it to learn what you need to know to be competent and effective and produce the results. But you'd be surprised how much more you know then you realize if you really get yourself in the right state of mind. Does that make sense?
Try it. Try moving your body in a confident way. In fact, try it right now. Please stand up again. If you're in the car, it'll be a little bit more difficult. Oh, no, no, no. Don't sit back down. Some of you started to stand up and you sat back down. Don't do that. I'm there. I'm watching. I'm telling you, stand up. And what I want you to do is just try something. Stand the way you'd be standing if you felt unstoppably confident. Breathe the way you'd be breathing if you felt unstoppably confident. Really go for it. Put the kind of expression on your face like you'd have if you were unstoppably confident. And make some gestures. Actually move your hands out with some power, as if you're trying to make a point with real power. And when you know that what you're going to say is going to be effective. And just notice how that feels. Say something. Say, "Yes," and the tone of voice is somebody who is totally confident. Don't go, "Yes." Use "Yes!" with some power. And just feel that. Feel it in your body. Get a sense of it. Turn on more intensity than you would normally use with another person. Just feel it in your body. So you feel what it's like. You want to be able to turn it on just by turning your body on. This is critical. With this is a power you can go from being afraid to strong in a matter of moments.
Now, try something really stupid and silly while you're standing there. I'd like you to walk around your room. And the way I'd like you to do that is I want you to imagine there's a cape shooting off the back of your back. And we'll have this call, we call this a "cape walk." Now, if nothing else has felt stupid up until now, this one is guaranteed to assist you in this process. What I want you to do is stand up. Pretend there's a cape back there. Shoulders are back. And I want you to walk around. Just walk around a circle, but like you got this cape flowing back there with a sense of pride and power. They go, "I'm not gonna do this." Listen, only those who are truly secure can participate in this exercise. Go for it. Try it. Come on. Walk around and just notice what it feels like. Seriously, walk around and know how it feels to have a cape on your back. And from that state, even though it seems humorous, try right now while you're listening to me, walk around and feel what it feels like to have this cape flowing off your back there. And notice what happens in terms of your confidence. Even though you may be laughing, do you feel a little stronger? Are you more upright? You feel more alive? Just know this. You can sit back down now. Don't sit on your cape.
Bottom line is this: If you are making gestures with certainty, if you're moving with certainty, with some acceleration, with some power, if you speak with that kind of tempo, you will feel confident, no matter how you were feeling a few moments ago. If you want to feel like you have a lack of confidence, move not only slowly, because slowly could still be confident, move slowly but move with hesitation. Speak with, uh, uh, hesitation. And within a short period of time, you can cause yourself to not only feel bored with yourself but also to actually feel like you can't accomplish anything. In essence, remember this: Using your physical body effectively can put you in a state of confidence, no matter what was happening around you, no matter how intense the situation, no matter how scary, no matter how difficult. You always have that resource. Don't ever say to yourself again, "What's this?" Don't live in the confidence. Break out of that shell. If you don't feel like you have confidence, create it right now. It's not a thing that somebody gave you years ago. It's not something you missed out on. It's something you create by the way you speak, by the way you move, by the way you gesture. That's one.
Here's number two: Control your mental focus. Remember, what you focus on is going to determine how you feel. So, if you focus constantly on how things might not work out, and you look at in your brain all the possibilities of, "Well, what if this doesn't work?" or "What if that doesn't happen?" If that's your mental focus, of course you're going to lack confidence. Remember, we experience whatever we focus on. So, if you're focusing on how things won't work, you're going to feel the pain that you associate to that. You're going to create a tremendous amount of doubt. And then it usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don't get what you want.
Let me give you a kind of a simple example. I'd like you to try something. Please listen and please do this. What I want you to do is think of something you really want to have happen in your future. Something you'd like to have or do or be. And what I'd like you to do is hope. Hope that you'll get this to happen in your life. Okay? Try it. Think of something you really want in your life. Something you really want to have happen. And hope it'll happen. Notice how it feels when you hope it'll happen. You may even notice what you say to yourself when you hope something will happen.
Now, what I want you to do is get out of that state completely. Get out of state for a second. And now, let's have you think about the same thing you want to have happen in your life. But this time, I want you to expect that it will happen. Absolutely, totally expect it. Know it. Okay? And when you know it's going to happen, I want you to notice what happens to the pictures in your mind as you think about it. What's different? I want you to notice the difference in your body. Absolutely expect it will happen. You expect this will occur. You absolutely know it.
Now, I got a question for you. Is there a difference in how you feel in your body? First of all? And I think you'll find the answer, yes. In addition, is there a difference in even how you visualize these two things in your mind? There are several distinctions that I make usually when I ask people what the difference is between they're hoping and they're expecting. Invariably, on number one in distinction, is people tell me things like, "Well, I noticed that when I was hoping, the picture was dim, or it was dark, or it was gray, or it's black and white, or, or it was two pictures. I saw myself succeeding, but I also saw the possibility of failing." Versus when I expected, I saw just one picture. I saw it happening. Interesting. When you focus on it just happening, you feel confident. When you focus on it might happen or it might not happen, you don't feel so confident. Is that fair to say? Also, when people focus on things that they're expecting, many times they put it in color. The other thing that commonly comes up is people say things like, "When I was hoping, I felt kind of passive. And when I was expecting, I felt active. I felt like I needed to do something." Interesting. Was that true for you?
The reason is, whatever we focus on, we get. So, if you're focusing on two possibilities, your brain is getting different neural associations. It's going, "Could be painful, could be pleasurable." Your brain doesn't know what to do. It doesn't feel confident. But when you expect and focus on one result, and you say, "This is what it is. I'm going to accomplish this. I expect it." Immediately, your level of self-confidence goes up. And you feel active immediately because your brain says, "Hey, if I do this, I can get some pleasure in my life." Does that make sense? That's the process we're talking about. We must control our focus.
And one way to do it, of course, is to control our focus by controlling the questions we ask ourselves. Invariably, people who have a lot of doubt ask questions that create it. They say things like, "Well, could I really get this done? I wonder?" or "God, I wonder if this'll get screwed up too?" Versus coming from the place of saying, "How can I get this done?" or better, "What's the best way I can get this done?" See, when something comes up for me, if I want to be confident, I don't say, "Gosh, do you think I can really pull this off?" I ask myself, "What's the best way to get this done and enjoy the process?" Now, by doing that, listen to the presupposition there. The presupposition is, my mind's going to focus on how to get it done. I'm going to start expecting it's going to get done. I'm going to feel confident. Versus saying, "Will it work or will it not?" in which case I start focusing on two different possibilities and I lose my confidence. Are you following me? Good.
Now, third way that we can control our focus is just to change our core beliefs. And we've already talked about how to do this over and over again. If you walk around in life believing that the only way you can feel confident is if you've already accomplished something, you got a problem. You're limiting yourself to the number of things you can ever feel confident about and succeed in. In other words, some people say, "Well, how can I be confident when I've never done it before?" Listen, I feel confident all kinds of things I've never done before. You say, "Well, that's because you're screwed up." No, that's not why it is. It's because I come from a belief system that says this: That if I can imagine it, I can achieve it. So, if I can even imagine it, I know I can achieve it. And that allows me to be confident. Plus, I have a belief system that says, if I'm committed, there's always a way to make it work. And no matter how tough the situation is, if I don't know how to make it work, somebody else does. I can get their help. So, I come from that place. And that allows me to be confident. I know I can get help. I know if I'm committed, there's a way to do it. And I know that anything in the past I've really been able to imagine accomplishing and finding a role model for, I can accomplish.
Hey, listen, everything you do now, you once weren't good at. Everything you do now, there was a time when you had not done it. Why wait to get confident? Besides that, I know I can be confident about what I'm about to begin because I know, look, if it doesn't work out, I'll learn something. And that makes me feel confident because that learning will allow me to be better in the future. In other words, set yourself up to be able to be confident again. I'm not suggesting be foolhardy. I'm just telling you how to turn confidence on when you need it. And most of the time, you do need it.
So, key question. A lot of people ask me is, "Well, how can I create that level of belief? I understand I can change my body, but how can I create that belief so I wouldn't have to work at it?" Well, there's a simple process that I teach people. I call it my "Success Cycle." And it's for me, is my way of explaining why people who succeed seem to continue to succeed and get even stronger. And people who fail seem to go down a downward spiral. Why do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Not just term in terms of rich or poor financially, but rich meaning mental, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, physiological, and financial. I put a copy of the drawing of my Success Cycle there on your summary. Now, if you take a look at it, you'll see that there are four elements that I think affect the quality of our lives. And I've got them represented there by those four boxes. Up in the top left-hand corner there, you should see the word "Potential." What's the potential of any human being? I personally believe it absolutely is unlimited. None of us even come close to scratching our real potential. The second element that affects human performance is our actions, up there in the box in the right-hand corner. The third element that affects performance are the actual results that we've gotten. In other words, what's the impact of our present actions and potential being utilized? And finally, the fourth element that affects performance is our beliefs. And you'll see that down in the left-hand corner in that box. And you notice that all these boxes have arrows that connect them, and they're all pointing in a particular direction, going clockwise, as if this was a continuous cycle.
How does it work? Well, number one, what's the potential of any human being? Again, unlimited. But do most people's results in life, that bottom right-hand corner box, do most people's results reflect that level of potential? I would say no way. What's the problem? You might say, "I see what it is, Tony. It's that second box at the top. They don't take enough what? Action." I think that's true in many cases, but that's not the only problem. There are a lot of people who go out there and take a lot of action and still get lousy results. Why? Action by itself is great, but it is not enough. Hey, if you're in sales and you go out and make a hundred cold calls because you're doing lousy, but you go out in a state of mind where you don't expect anyone's going to buy, and you turn to people and say things like, "You wouldn't want to buy anything from me, would you?" Maybe you don't say that verbally, but maybe your face says that because you don't expect them to. Is that going to affect your results? You better believe it's going to. You're going to get lousy results.
In other words, success starts with our beliefs. If you look at that bottom left-hand box, that is the core of your performance. Think about it. See, the potential is there. But if, for some reason, you start out with some limiting beliefs like, "Well, I don't have that much self-confidence anyway," or "I don't have the background," or "I've never done this before, so I probably won't succeed anyway." If you have that belief, are you likely to tap a lot of your potential? Highly unlikely. Now, if you don't think you're going to succeed, you're not using much potential. Are you likely to take massive action? Hardly. Now, when you tap a little bit of potential and you only take a little bit of action, what kind of results do you get? A little bit of results, if any. Now, what does that do to your brain and your beliefs? Your brain goes, "See? I told you so." And now you have this reinforcing belief pattern because it points back to that experience. So, what happens? You have even less belief. You tap even less potential. You take even less action, if that's possible. You get even worse results. And now you're truly locked into the downward spiral to the point where now you start looking at how can you do the very least to get by. That's called "death rattle" to personal success.
The opposite is also true too. Sometimes people have an experience in life where, for some reason, they get a result or something happens, and they begin to absolutely believe, not just hope, but know that they can accomplish something. When that happens, whether it's because you changed your body or you had a new experience, you're gonna tap a lot more potential when you know you're gonna succeed, aren't you? And therefore, you're gonna probably take a lot more action. Knowing you're gonna succeed, you're inspired. You're gonna go for it. When you take a lot of action and use a lot of your potential, what kind of results do you get? Usually great results. When you get great results, what does that do to your belief? Your brain goes, "See? I told you you would succeed." And sure enough, now your beliefs are even stronger. So, what do you do? You tap even more potential. You take massive action. And you get even greater results. What happens? Your beliefs even stronger. And now you're in that success cycle. You're in that place where you literally have momentum that drives you to a whole new level. That's how beliefs are formed.
You might say, "Well, how can I get results though? What do I do if I'm on the downward spiral?" Well, you don't change your potential. That's always there. You don't just take action, although that's a great first step. You've got to change your beliefs. And one of the easiest ways to do that is change your results in advance. You might say, "What do you mean?" Well, let me give you an example. Would you please stop what you're doing right now and do this exercise with me? Change your focus and pay 100% attention. You're going to like this. Here's what I want you to do. Please stand up. Just for a moment. Come on, stand up there. Come on. And what I'd like you to do is put your feet together so they're pointing straight ahead. Then what I want you to do is just take your right arm and bring it straight out in front of you and point your right index finger directly in front of you, so you're pointing straight ahead. When I say "now," what I'd like you to do is turn clockwise as far as you can comfortably, without stretching yourself or pushing yourself or really hurting yourself. Okay? Ready? Go ahead and turn clockwise now as far as you can and just notice where you end up. Good. Now, come back again. Okay. Drop your right arm. Close your eyes. And what I want to do is something really simple, some simple neuro-associative conditioning. Now, it's going to be simpler than anything we've done so far. All I want you to do is imagine that you're bringing your right arm back up again. And I want you to imagine it so vividly that you actually feel as if and see your hand coming up in front of you, straight out, pointing in front of you again. In other words, don't actually do it, but make it so real that it feels as if it's happening and you can see it occurring. Then, in your mind's eye, see and feel yourself turning clockwise again, only this time going twice as far. And make it effortless. And expect to enjoy it. Good. And then come back around in your mind. And again, in your mind, see and feel your arm coming up in front of you with your finger pointing straight ahead. And when I say "now," turn clockwise and see and feel. Don't actually do it, but make it so real it feels like it's happening. See and feel yourself again turning. And this time going three times as far as you did the first time. Excellent. And now do it a third time. Do it very rapidly and feel and expect yourself to go almost four times as far when you turn, almost all the way around. Very good. Now, open your eyes. Bring your right arm back up physically this time, with your finger pointing straight ahead. And when I say "now," turn clockwise and go as far as you can without hurting yourself. And watch how much further you go this time. Go for it.
If you're like most people, you've gone much further. In fact, the average person goes at least a third further than they did before. So, I got a question for you. Go ahead and have a seat. My question is this: What happened here? Did your potential change? No. You always had the potential to turn that far. Did you like make major changes in your actions? No way. You didn't make major changes in your actions, but your results did change. Why? Because by rehearsing in your mind over and over again, you conditioned your mind to believe, to feel certain that it could go much further. You created an association in your nervous system that said, "This will feel good, and I can go further." And now you've gone much further. In fact, if you did it again, you could go even further again. So, this is a perfect metaphor for what has to happen in life if you want to succeed. You need to rehearse over and over succeeding until it's so real for you, your brain begins to believe it. Now, you'll tap more potential. You'll take better action in real life. You'll get better results. Then it'll reinforce your belief. And now you're off and running. Does this make sense?
This is the way to create lifelong, unstoppable self-confidence. This is what I did for myself because I was on the downward spiral. All I did was create the results in my head so vividly, I began to believe them. When I believed them, I tapped more potential. I took more action. I started to get those real results in my life, emotionally, economically, and my relationships, in virtually every area of my life.
And let me leave you with two more things on confidence. One, if you really want to be confident, know what causes people to lack in it. Focusing too much on yourself and not enough on other people will guarantee that you'll lack confidence. What do I mean? I mean, some people lack confidence because they pick themselves apart. They spend all day every day analyzing themselves. "Why did I do this? Why don't I do that? How come I never accomplish these things?" They ask lousy questions, they get lousy answers, and they create a tremendous amount of self-doubt. Do you want to have more confidence? Stop analyzing yourself so much and focus on other people. How you can contribute to them. And as you start giving to other people, you'll feel more confident about what you can even do for yourself. Does that make sense?
And finally, this. You can feel confident if all you do is remember some of the things you've accomplished in your life. You are a successful, competent person. You've done a lot of things in your life extremely well. No matter who you are, what your background is, there are things in this world that you are really good at. Things you've really accomplished in your life that you've got to be proud of. Every human being I meet, I know is my superior because I know all of us in life have focused our attention on various things. And whatever you focus on a lot, you're good at. And every human being I meet in my life, I know that I'm superior to in some way as well. And that makes me feel confident as well, knowing I can learn from other people and that I can give too. So, in order to help yourself really have reasons to feel confident, not just put yourself in state, but to feel like you got reasons, all you've got to do is manage your memories better. Pull out some of your memories of tough situations in your life where you didn't think you could pull it off, but you turned it around. You have some of those, don't you? Situations where you thought, "I could never figure a way to pull this off," and yet you did. You need to remember more of those and less of the times when you felt overwhelmed.
What I want you to do is take out your success journal. And your assignment for day is simple. I want you to come up with five of your greatest successes in life. Things where you've really turned it on. Maybe some situations where it looked really dark, looked really difficult, and you didn't know how you were going to pull it off, but you did. And all I want you to do is write down a paragraph or so about each one of those. In other words, pull out of your memory files some of the references that can show you that you deserve to be confident, that you're competent and confident, that you can make things happen, even in the toughest of times. And use those examples to remind yourself in the future that whatever's going on, you can find a way. Do that today and have some fun filtering through your memories and picking five of your favorites. Till tomorrow, live with passion.
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