[Music]
sixty years it takes 60 years for the
average person to reach their coffin and
best what it jumped off the page at our
first study at the Institute about five
years ago and I was so depressed because
by the time our whole authentic full
potential self shows up it's time to
retire now we've been taught that
confidence is a result not a requirement
but it's not true it is a requirement it
is it it is the secret law of attraction
and otherwise in fact every decision you
made in your entire life and every
decision you will make here on has to do
with how much confidence you have it is
what gives you motivation persistence
gritch so you can achieve more and if
you're a mom a dad a student a mentor a
manager doesn't matter what role you are
in we all want to have that charisma
that ik presents executive presence and
otherwise we want to have that influence
on other people to have impact in the
world and your confidence dictates that
too but there's good news
confidence not inherited it's not in
your DNA it's not something that you get
from your parents you actually learn it
and you learn when you're really young
if you think about young kids four five
six seven they're fearless they're gonna
say and do whatever they want to do
right they're gonna dress stripes polka
dots - - tiara yes mom I'm ready for
school they're cool with that but age 16
we start to realize that there are some
constraints there's some things that
society doesn't really want us to do and
unfortunately confidence gets crushed
boys lose 30 percent
and girls lose 50 50 years it takes us
on a journey to figure out that we
actually are enough that we do have
purpose and that we met that we matter
but you see we've been fed a diet of
misnomers of myths of things that are
just not true starting with all these
stories Hollywood and otherwise they'd
say if you work hard bang your head
against the wall a little harder you'll
be confident and not so much we've been
told by motivational speakers or
self-help gurus because they've overcome
something you can do it to not so
vicariously and anyone who tells you
that you can fake it till you make it
so the question lingers can we hack the
process can we accelerate it so that we
don't have to wait so long to be
confident well for years and years and
years thousands of years we've had
meditation and mindfulness and the
practices out there that helped us
connect mind and body and subsequently
behavior and if they didn't work I don't
think they'd stick around however in the
last decade what's been really exciting
is that we have technology now things
like functional MRI that lets us see
inside the human brain and we can see
what it's doing while it's in action and
we know conclusively not only do we make
that connection we can actually control
we can control what we think and what we
do and so what we know now is that
confidence is something you choose it's
something that you can consciously
choose neurologically and definitionally
so let me throw a definition at you to
get us kind of level set because what is
confidence I've asked all of you you
probably all give me a different
definition but if you google it up later
you're gonna see something that looks
like this
confidence is when you are certain about
the truth of something so if I asked you
if it's gonna rain later today
immediately start thinking hmm am i
confident it is or am i confident is not
and maybe you think oh my heard the
weather report this morning I drove in
and I saw there wasn't so many clouds if
you're like me you check your hair for
frizz and you take all this information
that you can you make a decision yes
it's gonna rain or no it's not very
simple if we're talking about the
weather and from that we then decide how
we're gonna think and behave thereafter
so maybe you grab an umbrella or not for
example now if we're talking about the
weather or the stock market or the
election we get all these data points we
feel very good we can make a decision
and be confident one way or another
perhaps but the question is then if
we're talking about ourselves
self-confidence
what are we certain about what is the
truth that we seek and the answer is
this when you are certain about your
values your wants and your needs then
you can direct your thoughts your
decisions and your behaviors your values
Newton wants create those bumpers the
boundaries the rules in which you
operate and you know that if you're in
those boundaries it's okay you can be
confident well this is great let's talk
about some brain science shall we
I love brain science forgive me I get
excited brain science is not very scary
here we go in the back of your head is
your brainstem it's connected to your
spinal column your brainstem is
responsible for what we call the
autonomic functions so things you don't
have to think about you're sitting here
and I hope that your breathing your
heart's been pounding the entire time
right so needless to say you have been
thinking about those things but your
brainstem has been and it's been taking
care of it for you your brainstem thinks
about all the things you need to do to
survive and it does it for you
you don't have to think about it how
nice is that now the brainstem is the
oldest part of the human brain it goes
pretty much back to the caveman that's
almost all they had in their brain if
you studied psych fight-or-flight all in
the brain stem is very reactive so far
so good in the middle of your brain is
your limbic system most notoriously
known as the emotional processing center
this is where all the things that you
want to happen that you feel that you
want now feelings come from all
different parts of our brain the
environment and so forth but at the end
of the day one of the most powerful ones
is that we want to feel a sense of
belonging we want to be part of a family
or religion a culture school a company a
TED Group we want that really badly so
much oh that back in 1940 Abraham Maslow
have you studied him said that if we
don't get that we can't be our best self
he was absolutely right even though he
didn't have this technology to tell him
this was true the prefrontal cortex here
in the front of your brain this is where
all your smarts are it's where your
correlate you analyze you make decisions
it's what we call the executive function
of the brain prefrontal cortex right
here this is where all your confidence
lives because you decide on things that
you actually value now one more part of
the brain it's been talked about in a
lot of TED Talks is the amygdala it's
really small but it's really really
important because the amygdala is
responsible as your alarm system it is
looking in the environment to see if you
are gonna be hurt damaged ordained in
danger in any way both physically and
emotionally
so if you're driving along the highway
and all sudden somebody comes and cut
you off immediately you're gonna swerve
out of the way that's because you're
made people it says problem brain stem
do something now fast neural pathway
right to the brainstem react you don't
even think about it you just go but if
the problem is an emotional one not a
physical one and you have time to think
the amygdala has to decide what other
part of the brain does it need to warn
to do something now in our world there's
lots of things that can hurt us
emotionally there's no doubt but I want
to focus today on things that I call the
confidence villains because these are
things that are in everybody's world
that are so present they we don't even
know they exist
and villains as the name says are not so
good because they want to take
confidence from us and the first villain
category you sit
oceans situations so for example if you
went on a job interview where you filled
in an application to go to college
that's a little confident it's
challenging isn't it
how about doing a presentation do you
know more people would rather die than
do this now other people of course take
our confidence as well unfortunately
they take it from us because they want
it for themselves somebody who's cocky
condescending one upper one down
or name droppers I have a very long list
and they're villains because they want
to take confidence from other people on
the playground we call them what bullies
unfortunately sometimes they get
promoted to bosses too and we do it to
ourselves we take confidence from
ourselves we self-sabotage all the time
Facebook right we're looking and we're
going oh man they're doing something so
much cool it's called fear of missing
out FOMO how about impostor syndrome
don't tell them I'm not that good please
don't let them know we don't even apply
for the job half the time because we
can't get over our imposter syndrome
now these villains have something in
common they throw this emotional fear at
us at our amygdalas and there's three
types of fear that really rocked the
amygdala one is the fear of failure two
is fare of regret and the last one is
fear of rejection and so when our
amygdala senses incoming I'm about to be
Oh hurt the amygdala has to make a
decision at that moment is they gonna
send that warning down into the brain
stem or you act a little bit like
caveman aggressive defensive shy
protecting yourself survival mode or can
I send it into the prefrontal cortex
where I can think about it be rational
calm cool confident now villains have
been around forever and you certainly
can either avoid them or learn how to
deal with them to some extent but
there's something new in our environment
that is kicking our confidence like
nothing before and I'm talking about
this kryptonite I call / Troy
/ choice / choice means you have so many
choices that your brain can't process it
now google says 35,000 choices a day the
average person makes the problem isn't
in modern day is not that we make more
choices it's that we have more options
per each choice when I grew up yes it
was after the cavemen 5 salad dressing
that's all we had my husband doesn't let
me go to the supermarket anymore cuz
this is me and the salad dressing aisle
we also only had 5 TV channels on a good
day now there's so many channels I have
five remotes it's not even worth trying
to think about which one to use
yeah but / choice causes something
that's very real it's called decision
fatigue at the end of the day if you
ever got home and you haven't even
worked out you haven't broken a sweat
and you're exhausted it's good your
brains out of cycles you are spent you
are so tired you can't make a decision
and let alone a good one
or a confident one and I do believe this
is a new crisis that we're facing we
have the highest levels of employee
disengagement the highest level of
suicide and depression because our
brains are so tired in fact I think our
brains are going backwards
we are devolving we are regressing we
are changing back into cavemen but I do
know there is something that we can do
because if there's one choice that you
can make that you should make the only
one that really matters is to be
confident and you know what if you do
that on a regular basis you consciously
make that choice you do something that's
amazing it's my favorite word of all
times called neuroplasticity and what it
means is that you can change your brain
when you consciously make the decision
to be confident you build that neural
pathway and you strengthen it and over
time it's just there and it's strong
so how are we gonna do it well I have
lots of tips but my favorite one that I
want to leave with you today is this
because if you want to get more
confidence the quickest and easiest way
to do it is to give it away give it to
somebody else because it flashes right
back at you tell them that they matter
tell them that you appreciate them tell
them they belong because the world needs
more confidence Crusaders desperately
and you all have that superpower
my hope is you'll choose to use yours
thank you
[Applause]