I think that everyone wants more confidence and higher self-esteem
and I know that I personally used to think about self-esteem as the pinnacle.
If you had high self-esteem, you're gonna get everything you wanted in your life
and I have since reversed on that position because I've seen that, actually, high self-esteem — when it becomes the focus —
can be detrimental and it absolutely has been to me.
So I want to share with you in this video a mindset that not only incorporates self-esteem but I think
supersedes it and is quite frankly, more important that you can incorporate.
In order to get there, I kind of have to talk about what self-esteem is and how it differs from regular confidence
so in order to do this, think of a scenario where you are approaching someone.
Now, this can be someone that you're interested in romantically, it could simply be that your standing at a party,
there's somebody next to you and you'd like to talk to them but that moment of anxiety kicks in.
The person who lacks confidence, their mindset is — "I will be kind to myself as long as this situation goes well. And I don't think it's going to go well."
So in the scenario where they do finally muster up the courage, their mental track is —
"You don't have anything interesting to say. They're probably not wanting to talk to you. Oh my god, that was dumb.
What will you say next? Don't say that; that's stupid." And of course, because they're thinking that,
they behave that and the interaction goes poorly and the cycle continues.
The person that has confidence actually has the same exact mindset which is — "I will be kind to myself as long as this goes well."
The difference is that they have practiced enough times that they think it's going to go well.
So maybe they've watched the channel, they know what they're going to say to
begin with, they have some things that will revive conversation if it goes stale,
and because of that — they feel good, they walk up with a smile on their face
and typically the interaction goes well, and that cycle continues. But of course,
it doesn't always and when it does, the person who lacks or just has confidence beats themself up
which is where we move to self-esteem and this is what I thought was everything.
Self-esteem isn't concerned with necessarily the outcome; it's concerned with the process.
The person with self-esteem says — "I will be kind to myself simply by living up to my own principles and values."
And if you're like me, your principles are authenticity, honesty, doing your best...
so as soon as they move to approach that individual, they have already won —
they're living up to their values, they're trying their best, and when they arrive
there whether or not they know what to say — they feel great, it radiates from them, and that interaction tends to go well;
that's why self-esteem is so powerful.
Now, it's been amazing. This is a level for me that changed my life.
This took me from in-a-job-that-I-didn't-like to pursuing something that I was truly passionate about.
It had me traveling the world with my best friends. It keeps me involved in activities
that quite frankly, I don't have a ton of natural talent in like music and I do it because I love it.
It's not about being really good; it's about the process and the enjoyment that I get.
But there's an issue with self-esteem and I have encountered it firsthand; it's that
sometimes we do not live up to our values — we don't walk up to that person,
we don't do what we should, we're not honest, we're not authentic, we don't try our best —
and in these situations, what I would do is beat myself up,
"Man, you let yourself down. You diminished your self-esteem there. You're not living up to your own values.
You got to do better next time. You have done better in the past but chop-chop, let's make it happen."
Now, I thought that this was great because this is kind of the stick that motivated me to achieve all of the things that I've achieved in my life.
But I started reading a little bit outside my circle and came across a concept that was very different and that I resisted
and it was this concept of self-love unconditionally.
The difference being that where self-esteem said, "I have to live up to my values,"
self-love was just because for no reason at all, you give yourself this feeling of love.
And I resisted it because I thought, "Wait a second.
All of the things that I've done in my life, I did because I was nervous that if I didn't do it, I was kind of gonna have to beat myself up."
I needed that punishment in order to drive action.
We all know that pain is probably the biggest motivator to change so if I just
keep self-loving myself — maybe I won't approach that person, maybe I won't
move to the next level, maybe I'll just sit and stagnate and heap self-love on myself and feel great but accomplish and do nothing and give nothing back to the world.
I was what I feared but I said, "Okay, I'm gonna experiment with it. If that's where I do wind up, I can always switch back,"
and I have to say it was amazing how things changed.
Far from blocking me from growth, I actually experienced a deeper level
of honesty, of authenticity, of trying my best, and
I want to give you some for-instance examples because it's not exactly intuitive.
So as I started being more self-loving if you will, what I've realized is that
there are certainly scenarios in which I don't do that approach thing that we discussed earlier.
Now, to give myself credit, I do it probably more than 99.9% of people on the planet —
I'm very outgoing, I'm very friendly, and when I see someone that I'm interested in, I oftentimes do that.
But there are certainly times when I don't and what I've realized is that
because I pin my self-esteem and I'd ride on that of doing what I know I should when I don't do it which is inevitable, I sometimes hide the reason for myself.
So for instance, I was in the gym. Sam Harris — who was a guy, if you don't know him, who's an intellectual and I look up to him —
was walking down the stairs and rather than say anything, "Hey, Sam, I like book.
Hey, Sam, I've got this channel. Would you like to participate?" — anything — "Hey," I kept quiet.
And as I did, I kind of just justified it in my head which is — "I'm not a super fan
of his and he is busy. He's got his headphones in or whatever," I didn't want to do it.
As I came back to a place of self-love, what I first realized was —
one, in that moment of course if I was in a self-loving place, I would've just said,
"Hey, man, totally random — I know you're busy. I love your book; it's amazing," and let him go on with his day
or maybe I would have said, "By the way, I have this channel; we're doing a breakdown. Would you like to participate?" Who knows?
But I would have been more authentic and more honest.
And that happens in many other situations.
Another thing that I noticed about myself as I started this self-love
that didn't occur to me when I was just on this level of self-esteem is that I have
pervasive validation-seeking behaviors and they're subtle but they're there.
So for instance, I noticed I was out in a public place, I was talking, cracking jokes,
and I'll perhaps crack a joke with a dark sense of humor and some of the people
will laugh but they'll be one person who doesn't and what I've noticed as I come from a place of self-love and self-acceptance is that
I have a tendency to focus on that person rather than the other people who are laughing; meaning that I will spend more time almost trying to win that person over,
to show them that I'm a good guy rather than just hanging out with the people that I click with and I enjoy with that like my sense of humor
and I'm not saying this person is necessarily a killjoy but I will just be subtly
drawn to them so that the people in the room can have a high opinion of me.
And this didn't occur to me — this is important — at the level of self-esteem.
And I think the reason is because I pinned my self-esteem on authenticity and honesty and when there was little breaches of that, I could correct them.
But this is a pervasive big breach that invades and creeps into so many of my interactions in tiny little ways.
And to accept that, that on a fundamental level there's an inauthenticity, would crush my self-esteem — that is not living up to my value.
But when I come from a place of self-love and self-acceptance instead,
I'm able to see that and now I can adjust and I see it again, I've been dating more,
and one of the things that I noticed is I have a tendency to feel guilty when the date doesn't go well
and I feel this tendency to force a second date so that that other person... I don't know... feels good or whatever rather than simply saying,
"Not a match. Nothing wrong with them. Nothing wrong with me. Let's move on and not waste any more of either of our time."
There's this sense of guilt in there and again that's not authentic so I didn't, I think, address it from a level of self-esteem.
I tell you these examples to say that I thought that coming from a place of self-love was going to lead to stultify growth and it couldn't be more the opposite.
I have felt myself more honest, more authentic, and more like I'm trying my honest
best from this place of self-love then from this place of as-long-as-I-live-up-to-my-values. Now let me be clear, self-esteem is awesome.
Absolutely have values and principles and things that are important to you.
I needed that phase in order to drive to those things so I could clarify that,
"Yes, authenticity does matter to me." Confidence. Know your strategies.
It's cool to have domain-level confidence. What I'm suggesting is that you implement at the base of all of this —
this level of bedrock self-love which is unconditional — for no reason at all.
I don't care how badly you fail; I don't care if you don't try.
That level of self-love will not only make you just feel nice, it will actually push you
to be your best self in ways that are truly and, have been for me, mind-boggling.
Now, this video is already getting long. I want to give you things that you can do
to begin to implement this so I have two recommendations and one announcement.
The first is to say that there are two audiobooks I want to recommend — courtesy of our sponsor Audible who sponsored this video.
Those are Love Yourself like Your Life Depends on it by Kamal Ravikant
and Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden.
And if you've not read either of them, I will tell you a bit about them in just a second
but you can access them via Audible if you sign up with our link below which is audible.com/charisma.
With that, you get a free 30-day trial and you can choose to listen to one of those audiobooks for free if this is your first time signing up.
Audible also has an unbeatable selection of audiobooks and it makes it super easy to
have more books in your life which I think is incredibly important.
It's especially nice because if you have to commute to work where you're driving and
you're in public transportation, you can still feed your brain with these really good gems.
So, Kamal Ravikant's book — excellent primer for self-love.
Nathaniel Branden's Six Pillars of Self-Esteem — even though it has self-esteem in the title,
I think it borders on self-love especially the parts about self-acceptance and self-consciousness
and those have fantastic exercises for cultivating this and developing it inside of you.
So if you want to sign up for Audible, you'll get access to a huge, huge library of audiobooks
and you get that free one with a 30-day trial so I highly, highly recommend checking out one of those two.
In addition, this is the announcement — I've been working probably for the last year, nearly, and a half on a course called Emotional Mastery.
I am super excited for it and I'm going to launch it next week
and it really does deal in part with this concept of self-love.
It's a tough course to describe because, really, in the same way that I didn't see these issues prior to doing these exercises, that's kind of what the course is about.
There's things in our life that we don't necessarily recognize our holding us back
and when we do see them, it's shocking that they've been there all along but they surprise us
and when we remove them, there's a level of happy and joy and freedom and achievement that flows from that
that's just tough to conceive of beforehand so that's really as difficult as I describe what the course is about.
If you're interested in it and want to know more, you can sign up for our email list
where we'll be releasing that course next week so I hope that you have found this video interesting.
Let me know. This is the kind of stuff that I've been thinking a lot about lately.
And of course, if you like this video, subscribe to the channel.
We're going to have a new breakdown coming out on Thursday and then
some more in this vein probably next Monday so I hope you like this and I'll see you in the next one.