Hi everyone.
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
Today I'm going to talk about confidence:
how confidence is built, how it works, and how the more confidence you have,
the more risks you're gonna take and the more likely you're gonna be successful.
This is more a storytime.
I'm going to tell a few short stories about my life,
just to give you examples of how confidence has been built in certain areas of my life
and has not been built in other areas of my life, and the results of that.
Let me start with this poker metaphor I got from this guy named Todd Herman.
Imagine a poker game.
There's one player that has a huge stack of poker chips
in front of him, and there's another player that has a small, baby stack of poker chips.
The person with the bigger stack of poker chips is more likely to take riskier bets
because they have more chips to start with and the riskier bets are usually the ones
that will win more.
So the person with more confidence,
the person who has had more small wins in their life, that person's gonna be more willing
to take big risks and, thus, win more.
And the person with the small,
baby stack of confidence and baby stack of wins is not going to take those big risks.
And I think so much of life is just confidence.
So much of success
is just having the confidence, believing in yourself that you can do something,
and you have to have that faith.
Basically, the way that confidence is built
is through small wins.
The more small wins you have, they stack on top of each other
and build your confidence because it's like little steps of validation.
The more small wins, the more validations you have in your life,
the more confident you're going to be.
If you have no small wins and you just don't even try,
you just let it be, then your confidence is not gonna grow in that area, if you're just
stagnant.
Let me just paint the picture.
I'll give a lot of different examples from my life.
If I look back at who I was as a child, I was super shy, super scared to do anything,
pretty insecure, not a naturally confident person.
I was very soft-spoken,
very malleable when I was young, and just kinda floating there, very passive.
Even though now, a lot of you see me as I am today, as the person behind Lavendaire,
I'm so much, a thousand times more confident today than I was when I started.
I'm naturally a kid that was unsure of myself, very quiet,
just not gonna stand up for myself type of person.
So that's the starting point.
That’s where we’re gonna start at, okay?
Someone who's very insecure,
very unsure of themselves, on a very weak foundation.
Let's put it at that.
Growing up, I've never been good at sports.
One of the most traumatizing memories
I have of my childhood was, I think, when I was in fourth or fifth grade.
And you know you have to do sports as part of school, and we were playing baseball.
Me, at the baseball bat, already naturally I never hit the ball.
But there was this one time
that I finally swung and I actually hit the ball.
It wasn't a good hit,
but I hit the ball.
And I stood there, I froze, because I didn't know what to do.
And then all the kids in the stands were like, "Run!
Run, Aileen!
Run!"
And I was like, "Okay.
Okay, okay, crap."
I ran.
So I ran to first base, okay?
And that was it.
And then, I don't know if you guys know how the game baseball works,
but I obviously didn't really understand the rules.
I was at first base
and then the next kid is up to bat.
So, all of a sudden, this boy in my class–I think he was my crush
which made it hurt more–but this boy in my class was teasing me.
He's like, "Run, run, run!"
Telling me to run while it just wasn't supposed to be
my turn to run.
I didn't know.
I just heard someone yell run, because all the kids
were yelling run earlier.
So he was yelling run and some kids joined in,
and I was like, "Okay, okay, run!
Run, run!"
So I ran to second base
and then the teacher blew her whistle and she's like, "What are you doing?!"
And she made me go back and she got mad at me for cheating.
And I was so hurt because I didn't know what I was doing, and I'm like a goody-goody.
I never tried to break the rules on purpose.
I just felt like I got in trouble
and I looked stupid.
All the kids were laughing at me because the teacher yelled at me,
laughing at me because I was running cluelessly.
I didn't know what I was doing.
Anyway, that was embarrassing and it was traumatizing because I think
it's one of those memories that I go back to, and I connect sports to that event,
and it makes me scared to try again in sports.
That's not the only time I've been embarrassed in sports at school.
There's been countless other times.
I think that same year, or the year after that,
I was playing soccer.
We had to practice kicking the ball around the field.
And me, being clumsy, instead of kicking the ball–here's the ball–
my foot would go on top of the ball and I would fall down because I just rolled off
the ball.
How ridiculous, right?
I just remember being embarrassed and knowing that
my peers were watching me.
And what made it worse is: After PE class,
my friend was like, "I saw you had a little trouble there, Aileen."
You know what I mean?
It's just so embarrassing, especially when you're young and all you want to do
is either not stand out and just blend into the crowd or, I mean, just try to look cool,
not make a scene, not embarrass yourself.
With a whole history of similar stories like that, me being embarrassed in relation to
sports,
it just made me scared to try in sports and so I never really tried.
Any time we were required to play a game or do anything competitive,
I just wouldn't want to try.
I think, in my head, I associated if I try too hard,
I might fall or I might make a fool of myself.
I might look stupid.
And so I was too scared to try that hard and I just believed that I was not good at it
and I left it at that.
And that has followed me through for the rest of my life.
Literally, it held me back.
I don't know what my potential could've been
if I had actually tried in these things.
So my confidence was never built
in the world of sports because I never had those little victories.
I think in my first experiences with sports as a child, I was shot down
and I felt like someone was stepping on me and squashing me,
and so my confidence just ended there.
It never was built up again.
So on the other and, let me talk about how I had small wins and victories
in another area of my life and how that built up my confidence over time.
Alright, so let's go back to where we started.
Remember, I started out,
I was a shy girl, just not so confident in myself just yet.
Basically, my whole life
I have been into things like music.
I loved singing, I loved dancing.
I played piano.
I took piano lessons since I was a baby, literally a child.
I started really early.
So singing and dancing, I would only do it to myself, close the door,
in my room, in secret.
I never told any of my friends at school.
My mom probably knew I liked to sing.
My brother was too young.
I don't think he even noticed.
But piano lessons: I think, I would say
one of the first small wins that I had was piano.
I was good at piano.
I just remember, there was a memory where I overheard my piano teacher
talking to my mom and she said something like, "Yeah, Aileen's really talented.
She's really talented at piano and I want to enter her in competitions."
And just hearing that as a kid, it's kind of like ding!
That's a small win.
That's validation.
Obviously, my confidence bumped up a little bit from that experience.
So boom, I had a little bit of confidence in piano.
And then I joined band when I was in fifth grade all the way through
the first couple years of high school.
So being good at the flute,
I was section leader, I was chosen to play the piccolo.
Things like that,
it's like ding, ding!
Validation, small win, validation.
Obviously, the more wins you have,
the more confident you are.
So since I was in band, you know in band
there's always a color guard which is like the dance team of the band.
It's a group of mostly girls who dance, do the flags, twirl rifles and stuff.
And I remember always, always looking up to those girls, always thinking they're so cool.
Deep down, I really liked to dance too and I really wanted to try it out
but I was so scared to.
I didn't know that I was cool enough or good enough.
All throughout high school, I just watched those girls or those dance groups from afar,
and I just didn't have those small wins in it yet.
But I had small wins in music,
so that kept going.
I was good at piano, good at band, and then when YouTube started …
It was 2007 when I discovered YouTube.
That was a time
when I started to upload YouTube videos of myself singing and playing piano.
And I did it just because I was inspired by Marie Digby.
First of all,
it blew my mind how someone could just upload a video of themselves singing
and it ended up on the radio.
So I just did it.
I uploaded videos and I did it in secret.
I didn't tell any of my friends at school just because I didn't have the confidence
yet,
to admit that this is something that I enjoy.
So eventually, one of my friends in band found one of my singing videos
and she was like, "Aileen, I saw your video on YouTube.
I didn't know that you sing."
And just hearing that she actually liked my singing, it was like ding!
Another small win, a validation.
And then word spread to more friends in school
and obviously people watch my videos.
I never boldly talked about it,
but if people came to me and talked about it and asked me about it, I would shyly be
like,
"Yeah, I do make videos," really, really shy.
But I have to give a lot of credit
to that first YouTube channel that I started because it gave me so much confidence.
If it weren't for putting up videos on the internet, I might never have
showed people this passion.
Literally, I was that shy.
My senior year, my high school put on a production for Grease
and that was a time when I became obsessed with Wicked: The Musical,
and I absolutely loved musicals.
So obviously, I garnered up the confidence that I had
and auditioned for Grease.
Even though I didn't get any lead roles,
I was a chorus member in Grease.
That was like ding!
That was a small validation for me.
Even going to the audition and singing and seeing the smiles on people's faces,
people who have never heard me sing before, that was a small validation.
So you can see all these validations are adding up, all these small wins.
After the production was over, they held a banquet for theater kids
for people who were in the musical to, I guess, celebrate the end of the year.
And I didn't even go to that banquet because I wasn't actually in theater.
I didn't really talk to anyone in there.
I came, I sang, I danced in the background,
and then I went home.
Literally, that random girl.
But the next day at school,
someone came up to me and was like, "Hey Aileen.
Did you know you won an award last night?
You won this award."
And I was like, "What are you talking about?"
So I went to the theater place
and I realized they gave me this award.
It says "Rowland High School
Theater Department for Grease: Outstanding Ensemble Member".
And it just blew my mind.
So ding!
There is another small win,
another little validation because I didn't know I was good at singing
or dancing or performing.
And this was just another one of those things
that built my confidence.
The next year, when I went to college,
my freshman year at USC, I heard of auditions for another musical on campus.
And because I had such a fun time doing this musical and I felt confident now
as a performer onstage, I went to that audition.
And I sang, and turns out:
I was casted as the lead of that music.
It was called "Unforgettable",
and just being the lead of a show is a big deal.
I've never had anything that big in my life.
So that was another, another huge win.
So through those experiences I gained so much confidence as a singer and performer.
But at the same time, remember, I still wanted to be a dancer.
But that same year,
I went to the audition, the part where you learn how to do the choreography
for the dance team at school but I chickened out.
I was too scared
and I just didn't show up at auditions.
So that was a womp-womp.
But my next year, the second year of college, I made myself do the auditions
and then I made the hip hop team at USC.
So boom, boom, another small win.
And then, throughout college, I was randomly posting on my music YouTube channel.
And I think it was my senior year where I made a cover of a Dash Berlin song
that Dash Berlin actually reposted on his Facebook.
So ding!
That was another win because it was like, "Whoa, the actual artist recognized my music,
and he actually liked it?
What the heck?"
And then I made a cover for Nicky Romero
and he tweeted that.
It was like ding, ding, ding!
All this confidence built
from small wins in music.
That's how I had the confidence to pursue music
when I graduated.
I decided not to get a job.
You guys know this story.
I didn't get a job, pursued music, made an album.
All of that confidence
is thanks to all the small wins that I've had in my life, back to the beginning point
of that piano teacher believing in me.
Literally, that's where it probably started.
It probably started with my mom and dad who made me go take piano lessons.
That's where all this confidence in music and performing probably started.
But let's move on.
So I pursued my music career, but I also had the confidence as a performer
to pursue acting and I also got a job as a spokesperson and producing videos
for a food festival, and I got that confidence because I've been doing YouTube
for so many years for fun, through my music.
So, after a few years of performing
and also producing videos for work, I had enough confidence to start another channel
which is my current channel, Lavendaire, because I already had
so much background knowledge on how to make videos, how to shoot,
how to edit, how to do audio, how to edit audio because I learned
how to produce music and stuff.
So boom, boom, boom, all of these experiences,
all of these small wins and confidence has just built up one after the other.
Even as I started Lavendaire, in the beginning, no one was watching.
I was unsure that it was even interesting.
I was like, "I can't find anyone else
my age talking about personal growth on YouTube.
Maybe no one wants to watch it.
Maybe that's why no one's making these videos."
But I had this inkling within that I'm like, "You know what?
No.
I think it's only gonna grow.
I think there's only gonna be more and more people
who are going to be aware of this stuff."
So I believed in myself and I kept it going.
I was consistent.
And hitting my first thousand subscribers, first five thousand,
ten thousand, all of those are small wins and little victories
that have really contributed to my confidence.
And now I feel like
I'm so confident as a person.
I've grown so much, thanks to all of these
little experiences within the realm of performing, music, creating, all of that stuff.
But don't forget about the sports and active side of me.
The confidence has not been built up.
Literally, it's like this.
I'm like up at the stars in my confidence as a performer
and all of that stuff, but down here I don't believe in myself
playing basketball, you know?
But who's to say I couldn't have been good at it
if I started early and had those small moments in that area.
Think about your life.
Think about the small wins you've had in your life
that have built up whatever confidence you have in your life.
And if you feel like you're not very confident at all, then maybe it's because
you didn't get a chance to build up those small wins.
Maybe, like me in sports,
you were squashed.
You had some negative experiences back then
that made you not want to try anymore.
Honestly, all of these wins,
it comes from trying, from putting effort.
And even if the first time you try, you might fail.
When I first auditioned–almost auditioned–I chickened out.
I didn't do it,
but I had to come back the second time and make that win happen.
Basically, what I'm saying is: Your story is not over yet.
Your story is yet to be written.
It's up to you to make those efforts, to make those small wins.
And just know that the more you try, the more effort you put in,
the more you practice at something, the better you're gonna get at it,
and the more confident you're going to be in your ability to do that thing
because you've done it so consistently.
You've put in the time.
You put in the effort.
So confidence comes from effort.
It comes from trying.
So keep trying,
keep practicing, because the more you do that, the more confidence
you're going to build in yourself.
And the more confidence you have,
the more risks you're going to be willing to take.
And we all know,
the more risk you're willing to take, the more results you're gonna get in return,
the more success you're gonna find in your life.
Honestly, this is advice I would give to everyone at any stage of their life.
Build your confidence by making those small wins.
If you fail at something,
don't let yourself feel defeated and stop trying.
Not trying is the worst thing you can do
because, when you've stopped trying, that's it.
You've stopped.
You're not making progress.
If you want to make progress at something,
you actually have to put in the effort.
You have to try.
And once you see
a little bit of progress, you're gonna believe in yourself more.
And honestly, the number one thing about success is you have to believe in yourself.
Confidence comes from believing in yourself.
It's all one big thing, it's all interconnected.
So I hope that my story can shine some light on your life and your story.
So let me know what you think in the comments.
Let me know if you can relate to my story.
And just find those areas of your life that you can build confidence in.
Alright, have a beautiful day.
I love you so, so much.
See you next time.
Bye!