I Brainwashed Myself Into Being More Confident
But I wasted 7 years of my life to learn this…
What’s up?
Welcome back to another story. Glad to have you here. We are going to talk about how I brainwashed myself into being more confident because nobody’s f*cking confident.
I don’t know how to say this man without sounding mean. But there’s a reason why these videos about confidence have so many views.
It’s a very hot topic because nobody’s f*cking confident. Everyone’s stuck inside and not doing anything with their lives because of this problem.
Because whether they know it or not, whether they are aware of it or not, they are fearful of what will come, if they were just confident enough to go and dive into the unknown aspects of life.
So that’s the problem here, right? You need to have confidence if you want to make progress in this world and become the person that you want to become and achieve the things that you want to achieve. And if you don’t have the confidence, you will not take the necessary risk to get there.
That risk and overthinking of that risk is what is holding you back from actually doing these big things in your life.
And the other thing here is familiarity. Right. We don’t want to take risks or dive into the unknown because it is unfamiliar to us.
So what needs to happen here is,
You need to make the unknown known. You need to make the unfamiliar familiar. You need to make the abnormal normal.
Because when you first start a business, let’s say you’re a freelancer, right? Low risk, low barrier of entry business model. You start a freelancing business. You work for free and you get trapped in this familiar mindset of my work is low value, I’m just charging free.
But until you take that larger risk and charge $5,000 per client because you are unaware that $5,000 is not a lot of money for big businesses, that will never become normal to you and you will not gain that level of confidence. Right?
Confidence comes in levels. You may be confident enough to charge $5,000 for your service because you understand that other business owners think that’s good.
But then when it comes to charging ten, $20,000 even $50,000 for your service, it’s still unknown, it’s still unfamiliar. You aren’t confident in doing that.
Busting through these levels of confidence is not a thing for you. That’s not normal!!
You aren’t confident boosting your confidence.
And that’s really where this problem stems from and we’ll dive into this in a bit, but it’s the same thing with approaching people, approaching women, meeting just new people in general, or talking to high-status individuals.
You don’t see them as a person. You don’t see them as human beings, you just don’t see them as a being. You see them as a concept that you have formed in your head, which has made it unfamiliar to you and that is a problem of perspective, right?
You aren’t attacking your goals full force because you don’t have clarity on what that unknown actually holds. And you will never gain that clarity until you shine the light of awareness onto that unknown dark area of the map and start leaning into it.
Start making the unfamiliar familiar, by diving into the unknown, by getting uncomfortable and marinating yourself in that “uncomfortableness” and making it comfortable to you.
The Confidence Equation
There are two parts to the confidence equation:
- There’s “competence”, being able to match your skill level with the level of confidence that you’re trying to achieve.
- And then there is “perception”, the ability to match your skill level with the level of confidence that you’re trying to achieve.
Overthinking and analysis by paralysis f*cks so many people up and they never pursue their goals or do anything great because they’re too trapped in their heads.
So how do we overcome this problem of thinking?
Well, the first thing is just to become aware of the distractions that you are faced with every single day, the things that are distracting you from actually pursuing your goals and doing the things that you know you’re supposed to be doing.
Avoiding modern distractions like sh*ty social media accounts, Netflix, video games, you know, all of the stuff that the self-help people tell you to avoid.
I’m not going to tell you to avoid them entirely. They have a place. You don’t need to eliminate them unless you truly have a problem with them. And you need to be honest with yourself about that. And that is a growth process within itself.
You need to understand that you were confident as a child, your confidence was at its highest when you were a child. You did not give a sh*t, you weren’t scared of anything. You would go and jump into a ditch with a bunch of rocks in it, get hurt, cry for a bit and you’d be fine.
But that’s the thing. All of these positive traits: “confidence, I don’t know, whatever, happiness and everything positive,” are a byproduct of nature. It’s intuitive, but it was suppressed and kind of clouded over.
You were confident as a child but then the cultural conditioning process took place where you go through the school system, you learn, and you meet new friends.
There were beliefs, opinions, biases, even religious doctrine, and all of this other stuff that is placed on you and your spontaneity, because of the adults that were projecting their fears and insecurities on you, that they later become your fears and insecurities until you become aware of those and realize, “Hey, those aren’t mine!!”
The Conscious Conditioning Practice:
So here is my brainwashing system that I developed and use on myself consistently to remain confident in whatever I’m doing and take action and kind of dissolve these limiting beliefs that are in my head.
It’s opposing the cultural conditioning process i.e. “external stimuli and beliefs, judgments, biases, everything else that is projected on you”.
Conscious conditioning is:
I am choosing what my beliefs are and creating my reality. So then I can operate within that reality with confidence.
Step One
So since this bad stuff is in your head and it may be ingrained deeply to an extent and causing reactions within you, the first thing you need to do when the negative thought arises is pause instead of react.
You’re aware that you need to do this now and it takes practice. This isn’t going to happen overnight because it took many years of cultural conditioning to get you here. So that’s the thing. When one of these thoughts pops into your head, you pause. The next thing, you anchor your attention or focus. Right?
Focus is a way of channelling attention or framing your attention. And an anchor is bringing your focus somewhere positive so your natural energy can follow that.
Okay, so an anchor is, let’s say, the breath. If you’re focused on your breath, like in mindfulness practices, you are bringing your attention to the present moment.
In the present moment where psychological time doesn’t exist, there is only positivity.
That is where confidence and everything else exists. So that alone will raise your baseline energy to a higher level. There are other anchors like nature, there’s music, and there’s journaling to get the thoughts out of your head.
Step Two
You are still feeling okay. You’re calm, you’re collected. The next thing is to objectify that thought and understand that it is a separate entity. It is not you. It is a separate entity that should have zero effect on you. And you need to understand where that came from.
Step Three
So the next step after a pause, anchor objectify is to question.
And this happens in the form of metacognition or thinking about your thinking, which is awareness in general. You’re aware of your thinking, you’re thinking about it, and you’re questioning it. And you let questions trigger questions.
Why am I feeling this way? Why am I thinking this way? What is this thought? What sparked this thought? Am I going to let this affect me even though I’m fully aware that it is an entity and all of these other things?
And journaling through the problem, writing down the questions, and answering them right there helps a lot, and I guarantee you’ll feel f*cking amazing and pretty damn confident after that.
Final Step
The next step after the questions is to reframe.
So let’s say I’m afraid of approaching a girl, right? And some thought pops into my head. “Oh sure, she’ll never want to get with me”. And this goes for all things in life. I know a lot of people just struggle with women, so i chose it as an example.
I would pause, anchor, and bring my attention to the present moment or some other potential reality or something else where positive energy exists and I’d feel better.
And then I would objectify that thought and realize that that is not me, that is a thought, and it should not dictate my actions. I dictate my actions.
After that I’d question them. Is this rational? No, it’s not rational because I don’t even know who this person is. I’ve never met them in my life. I don’t know what they’re thinking.
I’m just insecure and I need to get over this. And so the next thing is reframing, right? And fear can be reframed into interest. And in this case, I could be curious and interested in learning about that person instead.
And this works for more than just women. This works as a communication or networking hack in general. You become interested in what that person has to say rather than assuming something that would make you feel fearful of approaching that person, you become interested in figuring out what it is that makes them right? And that alone will lead to other beautiful and positive things.
So now you have the tools. You can start consciously conditioning your brain to become more confident. I hope you enjoyed this story.
Make sure to be ready when the new stuff drops!
Peace out! 🖐️🎤
