Where does self-confidence come from? It's something that we seem to know implicitly
whenever we see it, right? It's a guy that can walk into any room in the entire world,
and no matter who's in there, he feels comfortable, or a woman who can walk up to a total stranger
and start conversation effortlessly. Or, maybe, just someone that you might have met who doesn't
have the hesitation, the self-doubt that plague so many people.
But the question remains, where does this self-confidence come from? The common belief
and the common myth is that it comes from being built up, right? It comes from achievement
and in doing things really well and having people praise and compliment us and that belief
is pervasive. That's why whenever we see someone who is very rich, or very beautiful, we tend
to assume they must have high self-confidence, but a quick cursory reflection on your own
life will probably reveal that that's not the case, right?
I'm sure that you've met someone in your own life that has been built up. Their social
circle talks very highly of them. They're very, very well regarded in work, but they
still feel crappy about themselves. In fact, oftentimes, it's people who receive the
most compliments,
who are the most lacking in self-confidence, and that's not by mistake.
So, if it's not from praise and compliments, where, then, did self-confidence come from?
And the answer is that it comes from raising your self-esteem. Now, self-esteem, like self-confidence,
is one of those words that tends to get thrown around. People don't know what it means, but
basically, it's your sense of worthiness, right? As Nathaniel Branden put it, the guy
who wrote the book on self-esteem, your self-esteem is your reputation with your self. It is what
you think about you, and that is why compliments cannot build your self-esteem. That is what
other people think about you. And the truth of self-esteem is I want to talk about three
very important things.
First one, being this, is that your self-esteem cannot be generated externally. It can't come
from other people. It must come from within you. So no matter what you have going on in
your life. If people think that you are very successful, that you're smart, that you got
the perfect spouse, or the perfect body, it doesn't matter how much praise they pile on you.
If you are not happy with the decisions you've made, maybe you've taken someone else's path,
or you've done everything that you're supposed to do to be successful, and you've achieved
it by other people's standards, but not by your own, you are going to lack self-esteem,
and your self-confidence is going to suffer as a result. That is the first thing. It needs
to come from within you.
The second thing about self-esteem, which is so important to raising your self-confidence
is that self-esteem--high self-esteem, at least--doesn't compare itself to other people,
right? I'm sure you know someone, maybe there's an aspect of your own life, I'm guilty of
this at times, that you feel that you need to be better, that you need to be the best,
right? And, so, maybe, you're going to the gym, and you look around, and you're the strongest
guy in your section of the gym, and you feel really good, or you look to your group of
friends, and you're the funniest, or the smartest, or whatever it is that gives you that sense
of pride, that gives you a very temporary sense of confidence, but that's not true self-esteem,
because all that has to happen is to put you in an environment with someone who pushes
your limits, who is better than you in some way that's important to you, and all of a
sudden, that self-confidence crumbles, right?
So, while you do get a temporary boost from comparing yourself to others, you don't want
to make that the fountain of your self-confidence, and this is the third thing. You need to pick
where your self-esteem comes from. Now, a lot of people, like I said, implicitly take
it from compliments. They implicitly take it from comparisons to other people. That
will not last. That only gives you that temporary boost. If you want something that is going
to be there, that is consistent, the best source of self-esteem is simply to become
the person who does the right thing. And what I mean by this is so many people think that
their confidence hinges upon good performances and so they go on a social situation, they
feel like they need to kill it with every person. Everybody needs to like them. They
need to instantly click in any sort of group that they run into, right?
If they're thrust into a new situation, they expect perfection out of themselves, or, at
least, to do better than the people in the same room. That is a sign of weak self-esteem.
True self-esteem is more concerned with doing the right thing which, in those situations,
is likely going to be expressing yourself, right? Trying to strike up a conversation,
dragging a conversation out for a little bit more than you might feel comfortable with because
you feel like it's going to help you grow. Those sorts of things are going to boost your self-esteem
over time.
So, those are the three things, the basic, basic, basics of self-confidence and self-esteem.
To raise your self-confidence, you need to raise your self-esteem, and self-esteem is
how you feel about you.
It raises only from internal sources. It can't be from compliments.
It doesn't really get benefited by comparing yourself to people around you, but it does
need some sort of yardstick.
And the best yardstick that I can recommend for you is to force yourself to be the guy, to
be the girl who does the right thing, whatever that means to you.
So, in order to keep this as actionable as possible, what I would recommend is something
that I reflected on lately
is to write down or say out loud where you've been tending to get your confidence and self-esteem,
right?
Are you one of the people that tends to build yourself up and feel really high off compliments
that other people give you?
Or, on the flip side, you feel really down when people don't give you compliments.
Are you someone who needs to compare yourself to other people to feel better.
Write down or say out loud where you've tended to get your self-esteem in the past because
it's very helpful to know.
And then, write down where you commit. Define the new source where you can get it in the
future. This is the important part.
And I recommend something very, very simple, which is I'm the type of person who does the
hard thing even when it's not convenient, right?
I do the right thing when it's not convenient. I'm the type of person that strives to be
the best me that I can be even when it's not easy.
Those things are internal. They're comparing only against yourself, and that is going to
be the source of high self-esteem that is consistent,
that carries with you no matter what room you're in, no matter who you're around, and
it doesn't force you to be the kind of person that is jealous of others' success, that tries
to bring other people down, or constantly needs to be weighing who else is in the room
to determine how you feel. That is the very basics of self-esteem and self-confidence,
and that is the core of it.
So, I hope that you have found this helpful. This is just a very general overview of self-confidence.
If you want to know one of the exercises that I often do to build my own confidence, just
in a moment, this stuff is really overarching life stuff, kind of cerebral, but there are
some exercises that you can physically do in a moment to increase your confidence right
there; really helpful if you have a presentation, if there's a group that you want to do well
in. Those kinds of things this exercise can absolutely come in.
So if you're interested, go ahead, click this box that will pop up here. It will take you
to another page, you drop your email, and you'll get to see that video. It takes like
5 minutes to watch and it's really, really helpful. If you enjoyed this video, go ahead,
let me know what other topics you like me to cover down in the comments. I got this
video from someone who wrote in and telling me that they're having trouble with self-confidence,
so this goes out to them. And if you want to get more of these, and this is the first
time you're on the channel, go ahead and subscribe. We got new videos, at least, every Monday
morning and I'm working on fitting into my schedule doing at least two a week.
So, I hope that this has been helpful and I will see you in the next video.