Self-doubt can be absolutely crippling and it doesn't matter whether that doubt is already
in your head because of things in your past, or if it's coming from the outside world today,
in the form of comments and negative feedback from other people. As soon as it gets in there,
and starts doing that awful spin cycle, it can be very, very tough to get out. What's
worse is that oftentimes, we know this.
Self-doubt is not serving us. We know that we shouldn't focus on the negative. We know
that we shouldn't think I can't do that, but we don't feel it.
So in this video, what I want to help you to do is not only know how to get rid of self-doubt,
but how to feel it as well. And these are five things that are actual exercises, because
I know that all the motivational speeches in the entire world have not solved this problem.
So these are five things that I do that you can do to actually eliminate self-doubt in
your own life.
And I want to start with the simplest and then, work our way to the really, really sticky
things that can be tough to get rid of. But this is what I go to first, and at any time,
any negative feeling I have, particularly, self-doubt. The first thing that you want
to go to that I go to is my body and that means I need to change my physical state.
So, when there's been a bother in my life, the first thing I'm going to try to do is
move. It is incredible what exercise, a 20-minute run will do for your state of mind. It can
get rid of all those little things that are bothering you. This is why people do yoga.
This is why people get addicted to the gym, because it does relieve that stress in a very
visceral way.
So I have to say this. First thing first. Move. Exercise. If you're in the office, stretch,
open up, go to the bathroom, splash water on your face. It seems simple. It seems it's
ripped out of a movie, but that affects our subconscious, and, therefore, our feelings,
far more than telling yourself it's gonna be okay, don't worry about it. Because, guess
what? The subconscious does not speak English in the same way that we do. So step 1 - Exercise.
Move your body. Change your state.
Second thing. For those things that linger a little bit more, and these are the ones
that tend to be rituals, like every time you go up to this person, you get a little bit
anxious, or somebody who is consistently criticizing you for the same thing over and over again.
What do you do then? And the lesson here is to find the lesson. What I mean by that is
that when we tend to get these same feedback loops, we can treat them as something to shrink
away from, to avoid. But if, instead, you engage and you go, "You know what? There's
something to be learned here." So every time that I'm about to give a speech for work,
I find myself getting really, really nervous. What if the lesson was that I need to start
going to Toastmasters? That would completely re-frame, and all of a sudden, your brain
would be able to let go of the things that were bothering it.
And in my own life, right? I have this YouTube channel. I get tons and tons of comments and
they're all over the spectrum. I absolutely appreciate them, but between the ones that
are completely wonderful, and telling me everything is great, and the ones that say that
this channel is shit, there are some in the middle that have feedback that is a little
bit harsh but actually helps me. And when I can go in and I can find the lesson, for
instance, the last video that I shot, I was all over the place, right? I filmed it twice.
The first one, deleted, I was pissed. I was trying to get up. So I stood there and I said,
"Okay, get the video up, get the video up." And by the time that I filmed it, I was like
this. I was going like this. Boom, bang, boom, out the door, and then, rightly so, a lot
of you were like, "Dude, you are all over the place in this video."
So, hopefully, what I've done in this one and will try to do in the future ones is slow
it down. Take the lesson, breathe deeper, and do a better job of communicating clearly.
So, when you find the lesson, all of a sudden, your brain can release. That's step two.
The third thing, and again, I experienced this, is once you've taken the lesson, you
might have to filter the negative comments out. You might have to filter or change your
environment if you have a negative friend. So, I see this all the time in my self.
Once I got the lesson and said, "Okay, man, slow it down a bit. Speak slower. Communicate
more clearly. Don't have your hands going all over the place." Once I've gotten that
lesson, I found that I was continuing to read the comments and still getting frustrated
about the same thing, even though I've taken the lesson. So what I had to do was filter
that. I had to stop reading comments for a day, then I can come back to it with a fresh
state of mind.
The truth is I don't care who you are. I don't care how rock solid your confidence is, your
self-esteem is, if you are being barraged by negativity, whether it's from your friends,
your family, the news, social media, whatever it is, if you are in an environment that is
oppressive and weighing you down, it's like having an anchor. So I don't care how happy
you are, it can be very, very difficult to rid yourself of that self-doubt.
Instead, craft your environment. Yes, let feedback in. Yes, take the lessons where they're
available. But if there is non-actionable, negative feedback, that you can do nothing
about in the form of a friend or a Facebook news feed, cut it out. It's got no use to
your life.
This is so tremendously helpful and, honestly, where I would start, is social media, in most
cases. You might want to get rid of your Facebook wall. You might want to stop going in Instagram,
if those are places where you can get a little bit self-conscious and create self-doubt.
So that's the third thing. Control your environment. Filter.
Now we're moving into the big guns, and these are the things that I'm very sure, or likely
sure that you've not experienced before, because I have to search far and wide to kind of find
these tips to get rid of things that were bothering me over and over and over again.
And the fourth one is EMBODIMENT. So before I get into it, I got to kind of tell you how
it works. The subconscious and the conscious mind speak different languages. I alluded
to this earlier. The conscious mind is verbal, right? We talk to our friends, our family.
We can even talk to ourselves in a way that it's English in our head. But the way that
we feel things, right? That you can talk to your self all day, but it's very, very difficult
to talk to yourself and to feeling a certain way.
What you need to do is have an experience even if that experience is imagined. So the
subconscious mind speaks in experiences, while the conscious mind kind of speaks more in
language that we use every single day.
So, in getting to how do we experience something we want to embody the release of that self-doubt.
So one of the most helpful ways that I'd ever encountered and I do it all the time is when
I have a negative feeling, particularly, self-doubt, I will free write. What that means is I'll
pull up a Word document. You can go to 750words.com. Check it out. There's another French one that
is easy 3pages.fr and it gives you a thing, 750 words is about 3 pages, and it's enough
time to just type and write and account your words for you. Type everything that's bothering
you. I feel this way because this said that and now I'm going back and forth in my head.
Dump it all. Actually feel it, being poured onto the page if you want to free write it.
Some people enjoy this better with hand.
That can give you that feeling of just catharsis, of getting it out. And this is important.
This is not just a metaphor, because once you've gotten it out onto that page, onto
that website, you shut down the browser, close the computer, turn it off, and there is this
feeling of closure.
If you have a word document, you drag it to the trash, you empty the trash, and it's gone.
If there's a piece of paper, you light it on fire. And it's so weird, because why would
this help you, but the subconscious mind speaks and experience. And with that experience was
I dumped all my feelings here, and then I lit it on fire, and it's gone. It is incredible
how effective that is.
If you want to put it on steroids, again, you can kind of trick your subconscious mind.
If there's someone that's bothering you, what you can do is after you've done everything,
like you've gotten it all out there, you go back and you write a letter to yourself from
that person, apologizing for whatever they did, or explaining why they did what they did.
Clearly it's your own voice. Clearly it isn't coming from them, but guess what? Your subconscious
does not care, and that feeling of closure is palpable. So, now, you know that you should
feel good and you actually feel good. And, again, you light that on fire and it's gone.
It feels so much better. That is embodiment. There are tons of different ways, but that
is the simplest and most effective that I found to clear out self-doubt.
So if there's something you got right now, start here. If it's recurring in your life,
write it out, delete it, burn it, get rid of it. But make sure, first, you have that
feeling of pouring it outside of yourself so it doesn't feel stuck.
And the fifth thing is this, when it comes down to it, this is a Tony Robbins thing;
if you have a strong enough "Why," anything is possible. And the truth is, when we have
self-doubt, that is serving us in some way.
When I'm doubting the way that I'm gesticulating, something in my brain is saying, "I want to
be better," you know, I need to be more certain that I'm going to do a great job on this video.
So there's something that's triggering that in there. If you want to combat that, what
you have to do is create, sometimes, a stronger feeling, a stronger why than the one that
is keeping that self-doubt in you.
There's a lot of different ways to do this, and I don't have time, because everybody is
a little bit different, but a very, very common pattern that is strong is to get self righteously
pissed at the fact that you have outsourced the way that you feel about yourself to somebody
else, or to some ridiculous thought pattern.
So, actually, I will go in and think about the reasons why I am, how I am letting a couple
of people on the internet, who I don't know, who I'm trying to make effective videos for,
affect the way that I feel. And I'll sit there and I won't get mad at them, and I won't throw
their feedback out. I'll get pissed at myself, not to punish myself, but to go never ever
do that again.
Never let anyone that you don't know on the internet, who could be trolling, who might
be serious, who gives a shit, never let that happen to the point where it affects how you
feel about yourself, right?
So whether it's coming from inside your own head, do not let those ridiculous thoughts
control you. If it's coming from outside in terms of comments, get self righteously pissed.
Again, you can write that out if you want, if it helps you to type. I'm a typer, that
helps me, but getting this stronger why can go so much farther than all of these combined,
I mean, you put it together with the embodiment.
There are things that I've had in my life that has been stuck in this patterns that
I go over and over again, that I've been able to start to eliminate just by doing that a
handful of times.
So I hope that you guys have found this helpful. Before I wrap this, I want to let you know
what I'm doing next week because it was kind of a surprise to me. I'm going to be doing
a video on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and the way they're running their campaigns.
And the reason is because I am-- I didn't think I would ever do this. I'm not voting
for Donald Trump, but I literally just bet 1,000 US dollars that Donald Trump would be
the next President.
And it's not because I want that to be the case, it's because I think it will be the
case. In fact, based on what I'm seeing, I'm confident that it will be. So, if you're curious
what I'm seeing, and you want to check that video out, I think on Monday, go ahead subscribe to the channel.
If you want to see all the Charisma Breakdowns, anything like this, Q and A, talking head,
make sure to subscribe. It just makes it much easier to see it on your home page.
So that will be there. If you guys have any comments, things that you want to see more
of, you have an issue with my hands, you have some feedback to give me that you think would
actually be helpful, write it in the comments.
Hell, if you want to troll, write it in the comments. I welcome all takers, so go ahead
and do that. And, of course, if you guys are interested, I mentioned embodiment before,
we have another video that covers parts of embodiment. And this is an embodiment thing
that I use to give me confidence before these videos, before I speak, sometimes, before
I just go out and talk to someone who might make me nervous. And it's something that I
do, probably, anywhere between 10 and 60 seconds that really gives a strong feeling of confidence.
So, if you're curious what that exercise is, I'll set up a link here that you can click
to go ahead, check that video out. You just submit your email and it will take you right
to that confidence building video.
In any event, I hope that you guys have enjoyed this. I hope that I slowed down my hand gestures,
and I'm looking forward to seeing you again in the next video.