Busting Confidence Myths: 8 Truths to Empower Your Life
Most of you don't actually lack confidence. You don't. You just might not understand what real confidence is. So today, I'm gonna break down eight of the biggest myths surrounding confidence. And I'm gonna show you how you can use this knowledge to your own advantage, to grow your confidence and to be more successful in life.
Hey everybody, I'm Art. I'm a former founder. And by all accounts, I'm probably one of the most confident people that you will ever meet. But don't let that fool you. I've seen the other side. I've lived without confidence. I've had my businesses fail, I have seen so many rejections, and I've had to rebuild my confidence a number of times throughout my life. And the way that I've done it each and every time is I've just reminded myself of these eight things. And for me, all of them are effective. Number five tends to work really well for me, but I'm going to go through all of them one by one to make sure that you find the tips that work best for you, the myths that you're believing, and the real truth behind it.
Every single person fails. Failure is not even the right word for it. Failure would be something that's permanent. But 99.9% of the time, the thing that you're actually afraid of isn't a true failure. It's something that may just not go according to plan. And it's true for me too. Anytime that I'm scared, I just ask myself, and you could do the same thing, what's the worst that could possibly happen? And the answer is usually something pretty trivial. They might say, no, I might not get a call back. Maybe I'll be a little embarrassed, but that's not actually a failure. That's just trying something, having it not work out, learning from it, learning what works and what doesn't work. So learn to embrace that. Understand that confidence comes from learning and learning happens when you actually try something. So not only will you build confidence from the new things that you've learned, you'll also grow confidence from knowing that you're someone who is willing to try and willing to experiment. That is something that is rare and special and something that you should be proud of and feel confident about.
Listen, this might work for some people, but personally, I have my doubts. Looking into the mirror and saying, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and dogged on it, people like me. Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. Probably isn't going to instantly give you the confidence that you want. If it does, more power to you. But more than likely, the reason that you're doing it in the first place is because subconsciously you don't actually believe it. That's why you need to think about the stories you tell about yourself in passing. Those are the stories that you actually want to change. You may not realize it immediately, but every single time you recount your childhood experiences or the past work things that you've done or failed at, you're shaping how you see yourself and how others see you. For me, I always tell people about how things just always seem to work out for me or about how luck follows me around no matter where I am. And do you know what? Even if I'm in the midst of a huge losing streak, I still believe those things to be true and I derive confidence from it. You should try it yourself. Just think about the stories you tell, change them, and really quickly you'll realize that you have a new belief in yourself. You get to pick these stories anyway. You get to choose the stories you tell about yourself when someone says, tell me about your childhood, tell me about your last job. So why not pick the good ones and start believing them?
This one couldn't be further from the truth. No one can avoid rejection. It comes for all of us at any time. And confidence isn't about avoiding it. Confidence is about seeking it out and being able to keep moving forward when it actually happens to you. I probably shouldn't tell this story, but we're friends at this point. So here goes. When I was in college, I helped run the orientation for all the incoming freshmen. And to this day, I still remember watching a young guy, a guy that wasn't particularly handsome or didn't seem cool in any discernible way, work his way through a nightclub asking every single woman that he saw if they wanted to dance. He was rejected at least 20 straight times before he got a single yes. Now that is a massive, amazing amount of confidence. And if it's not confidence, then it's just really, really good understanding of math and probability. And the reason that I tell that story, the reason it sticks with me all these years later is because it reminds me that people are going to say no to you. They're going to say no to you for the job you want, no to your advances, no to you asking them to help you move. But that doesn't mean that you should avoid life and trying things because of it. You just have to accept that you're going to get some no's and be confident that eventually you'll get a yes.
Confidence is never about what other people say or think about you. It's about how you feel about yourself. Just think about my guy, the guy that was asking out every single person that he saw. It didn't matter what we were saying about him. It didn't matter what we thought about them. He was confident that eventually he'd get a yes. In fact, for me, I'm less confident when the people around me are saying positive things. When they're saying, you've got this, you're going to do a great job. I get in my head. I start worrying that I'm going to disappoint the people around me. So I try not to do that. I try to focus on my real confidence, the things that I believe about myself. And you could do the same thing. What you should do is set personal goals and measure yourself against those, not against the opinions of others. Just start looking back at the things that you've done well, about your unique quirks and passions, about the things that you've accomplished, the things you care about. And eventually you'll find the things that you're good at, anything, and then lean into that. Let that carry you forward. Let that be the thing that drives you to try new things. And when you do, you'll discover even more things that you're good at and your confidence will grow on top of confidence. It's that easy.
People want to believe that confidence is some innate quality, something that we're born with, but it's not. It's something that is and can be built up over time. Not only that, but it's something that if you want to, you can just decide to have. Honestly, every single one of us has met someone with blind, unfounded confidence. I'm not saying that that's how we should all be, but if there's people, people that you know aren't special or attractive or smart in any way whatsoever if they're walking around thinking that they're the greatest thing the world has ever seen well then clearly confidence can be a choice you just have to forget about what other people think and you have to figure out what it is that makes you special where your confidence comes from and lean into that and you can do that by just understanding all of the myths that i just went through honestly if you need to go back and watch them again because sometimes videos like this come off as trivial the first time but when you listen again you'll identify the myths that you've been believing the ones that you should take an action to replace with the truth and then once you've done that once you're ready to move forward with a little bit more confidence when you're ready to take the next step to try to go for something bigger in your life well then communicating your ideas becomes extremely important so if that's you then i recommend you watch this video now because this video will show you how to frame every single conversation you have in a confident, productive way to make the people around you want to support you better, even follow you, no matter what it is you're trying to accomplish.
