Why do some people move forward while others stay stuck? This video breaks down confidence, self-confidence, and how to grow through fear.
Introduction
Welcome to this week's You Are Destined for Greatness, brought to you this week by Cowboy Cuffs. Can't see, I had to put my jacket on, I couldn't see my cool cowboy cuff shirt. I got it kind of covered up, but one of my favorites. They're all my favorites. What am I kidding me?
So this week we're talking about confidence versus self-confidence. Big subject, important one, because the opposite of self-confidence is self-doubt, which means you feel fearful and you're not getting everything that's available in this life time.
If you're destined for greatness, and you are, my friend, you're going to want to work on the skill of generating self-confidence.
What Confidence and Self-Confidence Are
Let's talk about what confidence versus self-confidence is. Confidence is being, first of all, they're both a feeling. Okay. They're a feeling. It feels good. It feels capable. I got this. It's a self-assurance. You feel courageous.
We're drawn to self-confidence because it feels empowering. We want our leaders to be confident. We want to be confident. It's attractive in relationships. And we want to be attractive, right?
And so if this is a choice, and it's a feeling that we can generate by what we're thinking, we want to get good at it, okay, because here's the thing.
We both, all of us, okay, have exercised self-confidence to move forward, and make progress in our life times. And all of us have also, um, had self-doubt. We haven't exercised our courage, and we've been kind of overcome with self-doubt and not done the thing because we were afraid to.
At its core, really what self-doubt is, is fear. Okay. It's being afraid to take that thing.
Confidence Is Based on the Past
So confidence is having a feeling about a thing that we're done. It's past. It's based in the past, which means, here's an example.
Let's just say that I can, I know how to shoe a horse, okay, that's my example I used on the podcast today.
So what that means is that when I go to shoe the next horse, I have my past that I can look to and say I've done this thousands of times. And so when I approach this thing, I can do it with, because I have capability in it, I can approach it with a feeling of, “Hey, I got this.” You know, and it shows right through me.
Because I can look to the past for evidence of how to do this thing.
Self-Confidence Is Based on the Future
Self-confidence, opposite. Now we're looking over here to the future, okay?
So how that goes is I got nothing, I have no evidence that I can do this new thing.
Self-confidence is the emotion of progress, the emotion of growth, the emotion of evolution. It's what I can get good at if I so choose to, if I understand this and I'm willing to do it to improve myself, right? To progress in this world, to learn new things.
Because otherwise I'm going to be stuck just doing the same things that I've always done, okay, because that feels uncomfortable.
This part over here, it feels pretty good because I have the capability to do it.
Fear, Emotion, and Willingness
Self-confidence is understanding this, okay? And it is changing.
It's first of all, it's recognizing when you feel fear or self-doubt, how you're feeling. And then one of the best thoughts that, that I've used is that I am willing to feel any emotion. Okay.
I am willing to feel any emotion, because here's the thing.
What's holding this back from doing that new thing is, at the end, if you boil it all down to what's really at the root of it, is how it's going to make me feel. That's why I'm not going to do it. It doesn't feel good. So I'm not going to do it.
But, if I’m willing to feel bad, if I’m willing to fall down, get embarrassed, fail, fail, fail, and have everybody see me fail, and have it be okay with me. If I’m willing to feel that, then I can go ahead and do it and be like, “Hey, I got this. And even if I don’t, I’ll just do it again until I do have it.”
Practicing Self-Confidence
That is self-confidence, okay? That's what's attractive.
And then we can develop our capability, and we can put this in our, in one of the things that we feel confident about because we can look to the past because we've done it if we exercise it over here.
So I'm going to give you the steps again.
Here's the new thing that we want to do in the future, okay? And it's pretty scary because we haven't done it before.
So here's our options.
Feel the self-doubt, okay, and don't do the thing and don't advance in life.
Or, okay, be willing to feel any emotion and then step into the thing with a feeling of capability, with the feeling of self-confidence, okay?
And that feels good. And that's what propels us to take the action to do the new thing.
From Self-Confidence to Confidence
And then if we continue to do that, whether we fell or not, if we continue to go through that process, we build capability in the thing. Now we have confidence over here because we're capable of doing the thing. We can look to the past for evidence of doing the thing and it feels good.
Now the new thing feels good because we've done it so many times. Basically, is what it comes down to.
Self-confidence is a big thing. It is the emotion of progress.
Practice it, use it. Stay with me.
