i've always been a creative person and i think being in the creative industries forced you to be
confident as a musician i constantly had to walk on stage and show my abilities
fully aware that i could fail at any moment
then as a young adult who loved solo travel i was always trying to find a way to make friends and
optimize my experience i'm actually an introvert and these things don't come naturally to me but
it's something i've been trying to master my whole life surprisingly enough there really is an art to
becoming more confident as it isn't just about being better at what you do but understanding
that there is always a chance you could fail or make a fool of yourself and doing it anyway
i remember the first time i went solo traveling i'd watched all of these incredible movies about
young people traveling alone and all of these stories about them meeting their soulmates or best
friends and having the best time of their life and i got so excited that i booked a trip to miami by
myself at age 18 forgetting that i had never really been in one of those situations before
how do i actually meet people in the hospital though who says hi first what if they don't
want to hang out with me and then there's this awkward environment like i just remember thinking
that would be so embarrassing if that happened so when i actually entered the hostel i had to
give myself a good pep talk and i said to myself if you want to have a great time and you want to
meet people you can't wait for other people to introduce themselves to you you have to be the
one to do it you know what reminds me back to stoicism when people say that your things are
in your control and things that aren't it was in my control to go and say hi to someone but it
wasn't in my control that they were gonna want to say hi back or have a conversation with me
but worst case scenario they ignored me and i get on with my day it's really not that big a deal
so i did the classic five seconds of confidence where you count in your head one two three
four five and at five you have to go and do it and it's weird it kind of gives you this
rush of energy like i said i had to do it so now i actually have to follow through with it
and i walked up to four people playing pool together and said hey can i join i love po and for
the next week these people were my best friends we shared so many intimate moments together
and i still think about them to this day the first people that i forced myself alone to go
and say hi to no one else is going to make the first step so you have to be the one to do it
i think there's something about being human that makes you feel very vulnerable to the sentiment of
embarrassment and humility it's really something that causes deep anxiety for a lot of people
and we don't want to do embarrassing things we don't want to feel embarrassed i remember when
i was watching squid game that they had that the players had to choose between 1 and 16 and
immediately everyone went into the middle because it's way easier to go into the middle and be shy
than be the bold person at number one or the last guy at 16 and that's the psychology of being a
human we would rather fit in the crowd than stand out but if you want to gain some confidence you
really have to push yourself to not be a middleman like in squid game when i was trying to learn
a lot more about all of this i remember coming across the term the spotlight effect and that
is as human beings we are very self-focused and we tend to always think about ourselves and how
we fit in situations am i talking too much am i not talking enough are people thinking i'm weird
am i driving weird and the truth is we have this huge spotlight on ourselves
and everyone else has their own spotlight so they're not thinking about the way you're driving
or that you're talking too much unless you really are talking too much probably
they're too busy thinking about themselves and so if we remember that the fear of standing out
in a bad way suddenly diminishes you know it's just really not that deep everyone else is so
worried about themselves that you can count on that as a way to think okay yeah if i make it
feel i'm making fun of myself in front of myself they're probably thinking about something else if
you'd like to know a bit more about spotlight effect and a similar video i actually have one
called why you need to stop caring and you should check that out but in essence you
are your biggest critic and no one else cares about you the way that you care about yourself
another huge thing that i learned from trying to become confident is you have to give yourself the
opportunity very often to be out of your comfort zone a way that i've currently been doing it is
as you know i'm a languages student at university and i'm currently in spain
and i have been pushing myself every single day to talk to a spanish person in spanish even if it's
a topic that i'm extremely uncomfortable with and i don't have a lot of vocabulary i'm just
going out there and i'm probably embarrassing myself and probably butchering a lot of words
but i'm learning and i'm giving confidence at the same time another great thing that if you're a
student i know a lot of cities do this and i was lucky that they do in valencia you can have like
language exchange nights especially if you're with an erasmus where you just have to go and sit at
a table with other people who are trying to learn that target language or our natives and just talk
to those strangers for two hours and it's been such a good confidence builder for me sitting down
confidently and saying hi i'm lucy who are you tell me about yourself in my non-native language
okay i've already had so many experiences of making a mistake or doing something that's
embarrassing and what i've learned is that if i don't say to myself that was embarrassing it
just becomes something funny that happened and you know everyone can laugh around the table they're
laughing at me and what we're probably becoming closer as friends it makes you almost develop
a closer connection someone if you become more vulnerable or you make a mistake and say something
stupid just the same as the spotlight effect being stupid is in your own head if you don't want to
classify what you did as stupid or embarrassing then it isn't embarrassing you're stupid these
are emotions that we conjure up ourselves and it is 100 in your power to change our the negative
emotion for a more positive one like that was so funny of me saying that i can't believe i made
that mistake that was hilarious in comparison to that was so embarrassing i think i'm gonna
leave this situation immediately and never come back and i'm gonna go home and cry as
i mentioned earlier stoicism you can you can determine how you want something to come across
if it's your own brain you can train it to say that was not embarrassing that was hilarious
another huge thing that helped me to become confident today as a 21 year old woman
is accepting who i am in every aspect of life now i'm not telling everyone to go out and be
extremely arrogant but you have to have a bit of confidence in yourself if you want to be perceived
as confident you need to realize that you have strengths you have weaknesses and that's all okay
you need to accept who you are because if you try to be confident being someone else you're
ultimately gonna fail i guess it's that time in the video where i say some cheesy stuff but let's
think about rupaul and his classic quote if you can't love yourself how the hell are you gonna
love somebody else or how somebody else gonna love you if you don't love yourself i remember
when i was a teenager and it was a bit of a weirdo because i was in band camp and i really liked math
i just remember being so insecure for so long until i realized like but what you're doing
makes you happy you don't need to be embarrassed about it just because you are living your life
a different way than the person in front of you doesn't mean that one of you is inherently good
or bad you're just different people and that's okay so accept who you are and almost embrace it
so as a little summary and some exercises if you want to try and build your confidence
as i said earlier give yourself one thing a day or one night a week where you're doing something
that is completely pushing your boundaries whether it be socially or academically go to that erasmus
language exchange that you've been drawing to go to you probably meet a good friend from it or
try and use your target language every single day and even if you're saying something completely
off balance and the grammar is all wrong at least you're building your confidence and
you're accepting the humility that comes with it another trick that i mentioned when i was
saying my story in miami is the five-second rule and i think there's actually really good power
in this psychologically with humans if we say in five seconds i must do this okay sorry don't
take why say for word but you're 100 more likely to do it than if you say and think i could do it
but maybe this might be embarrassing or maybe i shouldn't do that or if you just say count
to five and do it when five comes you're gonna have a rush of adrenaline and you're
hopefully going to do it another great exercise if you have any form of social media is maybe putting
a skill you have out there so if you're a musician put up a piece of music that you've composed or
you've been learning and you want to show off but you're too worried that people are going to laugh
at you just do it i'm sure no one actually cares that much about what you're doing and what you're
posting or perhaps if you want to start a youtube channel i know that that built my confidence up
four folds and the last trick i wanted to bring up from earlier is when something does
happen that your immediate thought was ah that was so embarrassing turn it around and
make it a positive emotion that was hilarious that was that was very confident of me to say that
opinion or any other positive emotion that comes to mind when something happens the less you think
something is embarrassing and you want to shy away the less you're going to thanks to stoicism
for teaching me that rule okay thank you very much for watching this video i hope you enjoy if you do
here are two videos i recommend and if not that's okay i hope you have a lovely day and bye bye