Today at Live on Purpose TV, we'll talk about ways to improve self-confidence.
Glad you're here. So, let's start with the discussion about confidence. What is it?
If you have confidence in someone, you trust them.
Okay, let's apply that to self-confidence it means you would trust yourself, right?
So trust yourself about what? I think there's a few key components here. Number
one, if you trust someone, if you have confidence in someone, you know that
they're not going to hurt you. So, in applying that to ourselves, do you
know that you're not going to hurt yourself? Now, I know that we all make
mistakes and that those mistakes end up hurting us. You don't do that
intentionally and it's interesting because I've worked with a lot of people
who do self harm. Honestly, they believe in the moment that
it's in their best interest. So check it out. Everything that you do is what you
feel in the moment, is the right thing to do for you. It's in your best interest at
the time. Now, that's going to sound a little funny to some people because you know
that you hurt yourself sometimes. But when that happens, you're not thinking, "oh
how can I hurt myself?" In fact, usually let's go back to the self harm thing for
example. People that I've worked with who are cutting themselves for example. This
is a good example. Cutting is an example of pain management. Yeah,
they're experiencing such intense emotional pain, that they end up
inflicting physical pain on themselves and what does that do? It kicks in the
natural painkillers that our body generates and creates and it numbs the
pain. The physical pain actually triggers the release of those chemicals and it
numbs the emotional pain. So what are they doing? In the moment, they're doing
what will help them to feel better. Now, it's
maladaptive and I don't want you guys to go out there and say, "oh, Dr. Paul says it's
okay to cut" No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is in the moment,
even people who are hurting themselves believe at some level that it's in their
best interest. Now, as we look into it farther we can see maybe there's some
better ways to do that. So, stay on the channel and we'll share some of those
ways with you. But notice this in terms of self confidence. You can trust
yourself to not hurt yourself, intentionally. The whole thing about
doing it accidentally or finding better ways to handle things. That's a whole
different discussion. You can trust yourself to act in your own best
interest. So that may improve our self confidence as we focus on that.
What's another element of trusting someone? You can trust them to treat you
kindly and with respect Okay, let's apply that to self confidence.
Will you treat yourself a little better if I treated you the way you treat you?
Would we still be friends? That's worth looking at isn't it? How are you treating
yourself. It's funny because we'll go through life treating everyone with
compassion and respect and forgiveness and we're just such great people, right?
Except for one, where we get really demanding and demeaning and judgmental
right here at home. Let's start treating ourselves better. The very first video
that we launched when we started doing daily videos here at Live on Purpose TV,
was about how to stay positive no matter what. You might want to review that as
you think about how you treat yourself. How are you doing? That's a judgment call.
It's an evaluation question. It could always be better. It can always be worse.
Let's be really kind and compassionate and positive with ourselves like we're
willing to do with everyone else. That's going to increase our
self-confidence because then we can trust ourselves to treat ourselves with
compassion and respect and kindness. Now the third element of confidence that
I want to talk about and trust is that we can trust people to do what they say
they will do. If someone does that then you build confidence in them, right? Let's
apply that to ourselves and for that I've brought the white board out here
today to review something that I've shared in some other videos. But it has
to do with what motivates people to do what they do. I hear this all the time in
my office or at least this seems to be a common thought process or lament. Why do
I do what I do when I know what I know? You felt that way before? Yeah, this
will explain that. So that we can start trusting ourselves to keep our own
promises to ourselves. Might that increase our confidence? So the two basic
human motivators up here in the top are pleasure and pain. Now, of the two, which
one do you think is the more powerful in changing our behavior? Yeah I'm Mr.
positivity, okay? I wanted to think, "oh it's pleasure. We'll do things you know
because it increases our joy". Right? Whatever.
No, it's pain! Its pain. Our mind will do more to avoid pain than it will to seek
pleasure. Now that's important to understand because we've only got two
options here. We're either going to do what we say we're going to do which might
represent a change in our regular behavior. Think about it, if you've
promised yourself to start exercising for example. Can you trust yourself to do
that? Well, that involves a change of your
behavior. Now the other option is that we're not going to change. I can't think
of any other options. Can you? So whether you're going to change it or we're not, well
guess what? Whether we change or we don't, we're going to have pleasure and pain
either way. Either way! So let that sink in for just
a minute as you consider what we just talked about. Now, if pain is the more
powerful motivator, then as long as this box, the pain of change, looks greater to
you than the pain of not changing, you won't change. Now, rewind that and listen
to it again. I'll just say it again. As long as the pain of change looks greater
to you than the pain of not changing, you won't change and you get to have
pleasure and pain either away. There's a little psychological hurdle we have to
overcome though because of the temporal arrival of the pleasure or pain. So go
back to the exercise example. What would be the pleasure of making that change?
You get to have greater health, right? Along with a lot of other really awesome
benefits of making that change. Well, what's the pain of change? Well, it's
going to be hard. You're going to have some soreness. There's a cost
involved a lot of times at least of your time and effort. So there's going to be
some pain if you change too. Now, what would be the pleasure of not changing? Oh
that's easy because you don't have to do anything hard and you get to avoid all
of the pain that comes when you do make the change. Well, what would be the pain
of not changing? Oh yeah. You get to have a decrease in your health which comes
along with everything else that that goes into that. Maybe even the early
death, right? So you know that that's coming. Well here is the hurdle. When do
you get to have the pleasure of change, it's later. It's light most of it I mean.
Right? you don't get all the health benefits today because you started
exercising. It might take a while to do that. When do you get to have the pain of
change? Oh that's now. Yeah, right up front. When
do you get to have the pleasure of not changing? Hmm... see it? That's right now. You
get to be lazy now. You get to indulge now. When do you get
to have the pain of not changing? I mean the bulk of it, yeah, later.
You guys this is the psychological hurdle that we have to overcome because
honestly, the most important stuff on this whole diagram, is here. I mean yeah
it's hard to make that change but how hard really? Is it as hard as dying early?
No, but you get to have that pain now and your mind will always see now pain has
greater than later pain. Even though it's not really and this is easy. But really,
it's kind of superficial and phony, "oh I get to avoid you know doing the hard
thing." Oh wow! that's a big benefit to life, right? Well,
wouldn't you really rather have the help? Of course you would. You've got a lot of
great reasons for promising yourself that you're going to do what you said you
would do. To increase self-confidence, we have to see ourselves keeping our
promises to ourselves and hopefully this will help you to see why that is
difficult. Get real about your pain. The really most important stuff to you were
in these two boxes. But these two will distract you because it's now. Don't be
deceived. As we have these interactions here on the channel, you probably think
about other people who would really love this content. I really appreciate that
you share these videos with your friends. Thank you.