6 Proven Ways To Build Confidence & Self-Worth

One of the questions that I get asked very, very frequently is, how do I become more confident? And I want you to understand, it's kind of like the chicken or the egg, right? You want to go and do something with your life, and you think that you need more confidence in order to go and do that thing, but you can't do that thing if you don't have confidence. I don't know, that's kind of a weird thing. Which one comes first, achieving or having confidence? Which does confidence come from achieving? Does confidence come before achieving? I want you to understand, you weren't born with confidence. Confidence is something that is earned through the actions that you take throughout your life. And that's why I actually believe that confidence should be called a skill set. It is a skill set. It is not a part of your personality that you were just born with at birth. And one of the things that I've really come to realize is that if you see a confident person, if you're looking at a confident person, you can usually tell by looking at that person in the way that they walk, in the way they talk, the way they hold themselves, the way they walk into a room, there's something a little bit different. You know, you're looking at someone who has taken the action that they need to and has gotten some form of results in something. But what you don't see when you see a confident person is the hundreds and hundreds of small private moments where they were scared, where they were filled with fear, where they procrastinated because they were so afraid, when they finally took action and they ended up failing, when they were sitting there doubting themselves, not thinking that they're good enough. Because confidence is not this flashy thing. You know, that might be someone who's cocky. They're very flashy. Confidence though is this skill set that's cumulative. It's something that grows over time. I can say for myself, like I was not confident in myself, my skill set, my abilities at all when I was younger. And the more that I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, I started doing these things that I'm going to cover today. The more it just kind of grew. And then one day you look back and you're like, wow, I'm not that shy, timid, unconfident person anymore. And so let's dive into it. The first thing that you need to do if you want to be more confident is to take action. You don't need to be confident to take action. You need to take action to give yourself a chance to grow more confident. If you're sitting around thinking that you need to be confident to take action, you're going to be sitting forever. You know, you can't meditate yourself into being more confident. You can't think yourself into being more confident. Confidence a lot of times comes from results. It comes from doing something. A lot of times something that you didn't want to do and seeing results and not always seeing good results, sometimes going and doing something and failing anyways. And it also comes from another thing, which I'll talk about a little bit later, but it comes from doing something and getting some form of result. Maybe you go and you do this thing that you're afraid of doing and you have amazing results. Maybe you go and you do this thing that you're afraid of doing, but the confidence comes from seeing yourself show up and take the action that you needed to, regardless of how you felt about it. Seeing your fear and pushing past your fear anyways and realizing, hey, my fear doesn't control me. It's this idea, this skill set of becoming good at following through, doing what you say you're going to do. A person that I coached with years ago used to always say, I'm trying to make my do to say ratio one, which means when I say I'm going to do something, I do it every single time. A hundred percent. So I'm working on my do to say ratio, doing what you say you're going to do, getting better at prioritizing yourself. Not because you're selfish, but because your future self is going to come in contact with you at some point in time. Your future self exists in the future. Is your future self going to be proud of you for the actions that you're taking today? Or are they going to think, man, I wish I would have done something different. Each time you follow through, you reinforce self-trust. And self-trust is the foundation that confidence has to rely on. You have to have some form of self-trust. And most people don't have self-trust. And the reason why is because, think of how many times you've said you're going to do something and you didn't do it. You know, maybe you'll show up for other people more than you'll show up for yourself. You can't be that way. There's one person who's always watching you every single second of your life, and it's you. And so when you say, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this for myself, you need to get yourself to do it. You need to get your follow through. You need to get your due to say ratio to be one, or as close to one as possible. So that's the first thing, is you need to take action to give yourself a chance at becoming confident. Second thing, you need to learn to start visualizing. This helps a lot. And I've given the example before the first basketball game that I, you know, the first championship basketball game I was ever a part of. I was the best player on my team. My really good friend Eddie was the best player on his team, but he was way better than I was. And we were going into a championship game, and I was really, really nervous. My mom's like, why don't you go visualize the game? And I was like 13 years old. I was like, what does it even mean? She's like, go to your room, lay down, take some deep breaths, and visualize how you want the game to go. And if you do that, you won't be as nervous. You'll be more confident when you walk into the space. I visualized the game. The next day we went into the game, and I remember feeling more confident because I felt like I had already been in the championship game before. Now, we did not win the game because as I said earlier, my friend Eddie was way better than I was. We lost the championship game, but I remember walking in and not being nervous, but being more confident. And so you have to see the person that you want to be. If you're nervous because you're about to go give a presentation at work, you have to see yourself going in, giving that presentation, and crushing it at work. Because if you don't, your brain is already visualizing the future. The reason why you're nervous is because your brain has already visualized the future. And it's visualized you fumbling your words, looking like an idiot, tripping when you walk on stage, your belt not being tight enough, and your pants falling down in front of the entire company. Whatever it is, your brain's already unconsciously visualized the worst thing happening. So what you need to do is start visualizing the best thing that could possibly happen. You need to see yourself crushing that presentation. You need to see yourself as that confident person. Because most people unintentionally visualize what they don't want. That's why they're nervous. That's why they're not confident. Because we're always mentally rehearsing something, whether we realize it or not. You're always mentally rehearsing. Your brain, the greatest skill set of a human is also, they say, usually your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. The greatest strength that kept our species alive is we could visualize the future and prepare for danger. That's good for danger, but that's not good for going in to try to be more confident. Because what are we visualizing? The negative aspects of life, the things that we're trying to avoid, the things that we're afraid of. So we're always mentally rehearsing something. The question is, are you mentally rehearsing what you're afraid of? Or are you mentally rehearsing being more confident? Visualization is a mental dress rehearsal for your future self. And so that's the second thing. The third thing, and I used to be really against these because I thought they were corny, but I have completely changed my mind in the past five years on them. Affirmations. You need to get better at talking to yourself. I want you to think of the worst person in your life. The person who was the worst to you, the kid that was in high school that used to beat you up, or threw a hot dog across the kitchen inside of school and you got smacked in the face of the hot dog and everybody made fun of you, whatever it is. Think of that worst person, the bully that you hated, all of that. I want you to understand, that person who's the worst person in your life, there's a good chance that over the course of your lifetime, you've been worse to yourself than they were to you. Because of the things that you say to yourself, it's so often that it just makes me so sad how many people have such negative self-talk. You have to change a narrative in your head about yourself. You need to become the type of person who speaks to yourself the way that you want to be spoken to, as if you are your biggest fan. And it's not about... I remember years ago, one of my friends was giving a speech and there were people there, and a lady asked a question. She's like, you seem really full of yourself. And he's like, who the f*** should I be full of? Think about this. He's a very confident guy. He's like, who the f*** should I be full of? Because the rest of the world wants me to be full of everybody else. Because if there's one person I should be full of and I should fully believe in, it should be me. And if I speak that way, it's because I fully believe in myself, which is very opposite of what we see in the world nowadays. You need to change the narrative in your head about yourself. You need to speak and affirm the way that you want to think about yourself and how you want your life to be. You can use incantations. If you live alone, please use incantations. When I lived alone, I used to use them all the time. Then I moved in with my girlfriend. I was like, she's going to think that I'm crazy if I do this. Incantations are affirmations said out loud and with energy. Say it loud. Say it with energy, with repetition. So loud that your nervous system listens to the tone of it, not just the words. Because when you have something that's a very... that is a moment of your life that boom, something happened and it just rewired who you are. Like if somebody gets into a car accident and then they're afraid of getting into a car for the rest of their life, it's because of one moment, one heightened experience in their life where it just changed the way they thought about everything at one moment. So what you're trying to do with incantations is obviously, you're not going to be as drastic as a car accident, but it's trying to get your nervous system to be like, whoa, this is a big experience. This is a heightened event. I need to wire this into myself as soon as possible. So what you have to understand is your inner critic that's been running the show for a long time, it's an outdated voice that's trying to protect you. That's what it's doing. It's trying to protect you. Affirmations rewire that default script. Incantations which are affirmations with power try to actually get into your nervous system faster. They teach your brain that safety can actually come from creating the life that you want, not just actually sitting back and protecting yourself. And so you've got to start to speak to yourself differently. The fourth thing that you need to do to become more confident is fail. Like a lot. For some reason people think I need to become confident in myself because if I'm confident in myself, I won't fail. A lot of people try to avoid failure because so many people are one of the biggest fears is failure. I would say the fear that I hear more than anything else from people is the fear of failure. But it's impossible to create the life that you want to and not fail. I have a successful business now, but I've had multiple failed businesses where I've lost money. I had to not have them repo my car. I had to have them not repossess it. I had to call up. I was five months behind on my car payment. Because my business was so bad, right? So success as the creator of Honda says is 99% failure. You need to fall on your face over and over and over again. And once you see that failure won't kill you, you won't care as much. And you won't have as much fear. It's one of the reasons why sales is such a skill set that so many people need. And why if you're a salesperson, or if you get the skill set of sales, you'll always have a job. Is because in sales, you just get kicked in the face most of the day. And eventually you get to a point where you're like, I don't really care anymore. No big deal. I'll just keep going. And so you just get past rejection and failure. But it also comes, confidence comes from failing and then picking yourself up after failing and continuing on. That builds confidence. Not just results of succeeding. The feeling of I will not give up on myself. Confidence isn't just like this feeling of I always win. Confidence more than anything else, if I were to just like put it into one sentence or maybe two sentences, is I trust myself and I can handle whatever happens. That's what it is. Confidence isn't I always win. I succeed at everything. It's I trust myself and I can handle whatever happens. So that's number four. Number five. If you want to build more confidence, start saying yes to things that are out of your comfort zone. When you would normally say no, just try saying yes. Do things that are completely out of your comfort zone. Saying yes isn't about forcing yourself. It's about expanding. It's about understanding that confidence expands in this stretch zone. Confidence expands when you're just outside of your comfort zone and you feel really uncomfortable, but you do it anyways and you don't die. You go, God, I'm so glad I showed up for myself. Confidence comes from realizing that you're just a little bit out of your comfort zone over and over and over again. And you're just stretching that comfort zone and not panicking, but you're doing what you need to. And so you need to ask yourself like, what would the next version of me say yes to? That's your cue. What would the best version of me do in this moment? Would the best version of me decide not to do this? Would the best version of me be fearful? Would the best version of me coil away and play small like I have my entire life? Or would the best version be like, me be like, let's run it up. Try it out. Start to say yes to things that you would say no to normally. So that's number five. And number six is to just get better at doing what you don't want to do. Doing what you don't want to do builds confidence. This is one of the reasons why I've loved cold plunging, not loved, loved and hated. I've never enjoyed doing it, but I enjoy the way that I feel and the confidence that I build in myself when I do something that I don't want to do. I've never wanted to do a cold plunge, but I always wanted to feel the way that I feel and the confidence that I build in myself when I do something I don't want to do. I've been doing cold plunging since 2015 because I heard about this crazy guy named Wim Hof that did it. And I was like, I have this, I'm trying to build something amazing in my life. 2015, right? I need to do stuff that scares me. I need to do stuff I don't want to do. I need to conquer this little inner b**** that's inside of my head. I need to learn to hear it and go, screw you, I'm going to do it anyways. So I started doing cold water. And 10 years later, it's like a huge thing everyone else is doing. 12 years later, whatever it is. Years and years and years down the road, it's like this huge thing that people are doing now. Well, you know, that's cool. What if there's days when you, when you want to wake up early, but the alarm goes off and you don't want to get up. You do what you don't want to do. Get up early anyways. There's days when you're going to be tired, you don't want to work out. You don't want to do it. Do it anyways. These little tiny moments in your life are what build confidence. Not from going out and creating a $20 million a year company. It's these little teeny tiny moments, these micro disciplines that create these massive identity shifts over time. They basically compound over and over and over again. So you have these little moments of, you know what? I don't want to wake up. I'm gonna wake up anyways. You know what? I don't want to make this cold call. I'm gonna make this cold call anyways. You know what? I don't want to work out. I don't want to do a cold plunge. I'm gonna do a cold plunge anyways. It's these little tiny moments in your life that you stack hundreds and hundreds of them and thousands and thousands of them. And over time, you fast forward a year, two years, five years, 10 years down the road. You're like, holy crap. I'm way more confident than I have ever been in my entire life. Why? Because of these little teeny tiny decisions. These moments where you did what you didn't want to do, but you knew it would be good for you. These moments where you decided to get yourself out of your comfort zone. These moments where you took action and you failed, you brush yourself off and kept doing it anyways. These moments where you decided to talk to yourself and be your biggest fan and push yourself along. These moments where you visualize the future that you want and what it is you're trying to create. And these moments when you took action when you didn't want to. That's where confidence is made. You can't read a book on confidence and become confident. You have to do these things in order to build confidence within yourself. And if you want to make sure you don't miss any more videos, click this button right here to subscribe and keep watching.