Transcription
Imagine what your life would be like if you had true confidence. I'm talking about life-changing confidence, the type of self-assurance that allows you to conquer any fear and achieve anything you desire.
In light of this, it's true that there are some ways to fake confidence, and these powerful tools can help you on your way to gaining real confidence. But at the end of the day, they're just tools. Tools won't save you when you fail in a social situation. Tools won't tell you what to say when you're in an interview for your dream job. The only thing that will get you through these situations is true, authentic confidence.
The funny thing is, when you search for how to build confidence, all you get are articles that focus on external confidence. Every person has access to external and internal confidence. External confidence is praise that you get from other people and materialistic things; it's the boost that you get when wearing new shoes or when someone gives you a compliment. This type of confidence is great, but it's fragile and short-lived because, as soon as it fades away, you start to feel the empty void that should be filled with internal confidence.
So you're thinking to yourself, "How do I build true confidence? I've never done this." People, it might seem like a mystery, but it's much easier than you think. William Shed once said, "A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for." True, unshakable confidence is when you ask your brain if you can do something and it replies without a shred of doubt that you can complete the task. It's the feeling of mastering.
You see, life is like one giant video game. If your strength isn't high enough to take on a tough monster, then you'll probably be killed if you start a fight with it. In life, when you take on a monster that's stronger than you, getting killed is just a temporary failure, and you get to learn a valuable lesson so you know what to do next time. Let me ask you this: What happens every time your character fights a monster and fails? You gain experience points. Over time, the experience adds up; you're getting stronger and better. Maybe when you first started, your strength was one, but after a few months of fighting monsters, your strength level is now 50. When you first started, your strength was so weak that you could barely take on the weakest monsters in the game, but after gaining experience, you're taking on tougher opponents, slaying all of these monsters and gaining experience. Starting to send ripple effects across your character. Now that you've developed a high level of strength, you start to move on and master other skills. Before you know it, the confidence grows into this beast that you can hardly control. No monster seems unbeatable, and you begin to feel like you can master any skill. This is real, authentic, unshakable confidence.
When you first start out building your strengths, you might need some help against those tough monsters. Strength potions will temporarily increase your strength level to help you fight the opponents that give you the greatest amount of experience points. This helps you progress faster. External tools that can temporarily boost your confidence are things like new clothes or a haircut. Take advantage of these tools while they're fresh because, like the strength potion in a game, the boost is only temporary. At the end of the day, however, you can't base your entire life on external factors and temporary boosts. No, you need true, authentic confidence that comes from within. This is what allows you to command attention when you walk into a room or an interview. It's what allows you to succeed where everyone else has failed. It's the burning flame inside of you that tells you you can when everyone else says you can't.
Unshakable confidence comes from mastery, but you don't have to completely master something to increase your confidence and enjoy the benefits. There are different levels of mastery. So what is confidence, and how do you build it? Whatever you're thinking about doing something—whether it's going in for the first kiss or speaking to an audience of thousands of people—your brain turns into a computer. It dives deep into your head and considers how many times you've completed the task before. It takes into consideration your experience of the perceived toughness of the task and many other factors. After crunching the data within seconds, it says, "Yes, you can do it," or "No, you can't." True confidence is when you ask your brain this question and it replies without a shred of doubt that you can complete the task. The task could be approaching attractive girls or strangers; it could be performing a certain trick on a skateboard; it might even be slaying that tough monster that you've always dreamed of beating.
Building confidence in real life is almost identical to a game. When you start out, your character is super weak; it has no skills. As you grow older, you start to develop some skills. Some people's characters are great at imagine, and others have great fishing skills. The truth is that you can master any skill in the game, and the same is true for real life. Maybe you want the ability to effortlessly strike up conversations with strangers because you can benefit from new relationships in your life. You might be 25 years old and have an experience level of zero because you've never trained this skill. When you first start, it's like getting killed by a tough monster in the game, but in real life, bailing during a social situation doesn't kill you. Your brain will try to trick you into thinking that you're going to be killed if you fail, but the truth is that nothing bad will happen. In fact, something incredible occurs when you fail at anything because you gain experience; you learned what you did wrong so you can do it better next time. The fears that you had slowly fade away, and it's replaced by confidence. As you continue to fail and gain experience in that skill, you get better at it over time.
The difference between people who build true confidence and those who don't is a matter of facing your fears. Sure, you can stay within your comfort zone and keep your ship in the harbor, but as a human being, your ship was meant to sail; it was meant to challenge and conquer the mighty oceans of fear and doubt. Some people keep their ship parked in the harbor their whole life. Ask yourself, "What kind of life is that? Do I really want to play safe my whole life?" It was a nice man who said, "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Right now, your life and opportunities are shrinking or expanding based on whether or not you're facing your fears.
It's true that confidence is tied to individual skills. For example, maybe you have a high skill level for socializing with people, but your skill level for being an entrepreneur is zero. You want to be your own boss and pave your own way through life, but you don't have the experience. You don't have seven years of experience in failing; you've never lost thousands of dollars on a bad business deal or had a five-figure income disappear overnight. Confidence can be built in any skill; you just have to start gaining experience. Just like a game, once you reach a certain level, nobody can take that away from you, no matter what happens externally; you'll always have it. It was a little wave who said, "Confidence is a stain that they can't bite off. They can grab the Clorox wipes, but they'll never wipe away your confident."
It's great to have confidence in a single skill, but you'd probably like to know how to build all-around confidence. We've all seen it. All-around confidence is that guy who seems sure of himself in anything he does. He could be trying to learn a completely new skill, and even though he's starting at level zero, he carries himself like he's already mastered it. This is the quiet confidence that gets girls; it's the humble self-assurance that attracts others like a magnet. It's like having a key that opens a vault containing everything you've ever wanted in life. All-around confidence is built by starting with your biggest insecurities and mastering those skills. As you gain experience in these skills and begin to master them, something incredible happens. All of a sudden, the confidence you gain from mastering social interactions bleeds over into your video game skills and even into your ability to be a mother or father.
Self-esteem is how much you value yourself. It's like a measuring device for what you have to offer the world, and it's closely linked to confidence. The more experience you gain in individual skills, the more you'll have to offer; self-esteem will explode to new heights. Imagine you have 50 little piles of sticks on a beach, and they're all sitting next to one another. When you start building confidence in any single skill, it's like starting one of these piles of wood on fire. The more skills that you master, the more piles are burning, and the fire from each pile will spill over and catch other piles on fire. And before you know it, you'll have a raging inferno that nobody will ever be able to put out. This is true, authentic, unshakable confidence, and it only comes through facing your fears and gaining valuable experience every single day.
It was Dale Carnegie who said, "Inaction breeds doubt and fear; action breeds confidence and courage." If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it; go out and get busy. True, authentic confidence is like having a key to the vault of life, and the only thing that stands between you and this key is fear. So what are you waiting for? Get out into the world, gain experience, don't be afraid of the monsters, and take what is rightfully yours. And with that, sail until next time. Thanks for watching. [Music]