The Proven Science Behind Extreme Confidence (Which I Tested For 8 Years)
Leverage a three-step neural process to transform yourself
The geek version of me was a meek teenager, almost like you see in high school movies.
I had long hair and dusty glasses. Hang around with the not-so-cool kids. I didn’t have much to say when girls were around.
I went from a stuttering boy to a guy who can sell premium marketing retainers and pick up girls in bars. And I could do that all week long.
(read all the life lessons I learned in my free ebook here)
I wondered what made this radical change in my personality. I thought, “Maybe there’s a logical explanation for this. If it’s true, then others can replicate that success”.
I think I found something. There’s a three-step “process” which comes into play here:
1. Your experiences shape who you are
Neural science sheds some light on how a person can transform his identity:
“Everything you’ve experienced has altered the structure of your brain — from the expression of genes to the positions of molecules to the architecture of neurons. Your family of origin, your culture, your friends, your work, every movie you’ve watched, and every conversation you’ve had have left their footprints in your nervous system. The indelible, microscopic impressions accumulate to make you who you are, and to constrain who you can become.”
— The Brain: The Story Of You, By David Eagleman
Do you get it? Almost every little thing you absorb becomes you. The bullshit news we watch or tv shows we love. What your boss says to you on the regular. The Chit chat with your buddies on WhatsApp throughout the week.
All affect the neural activity in your brain. The quality of your life experience directly impacts who you are, who you’ll be, and how you see yourself.
2. The key to a quality experience
If experience is the game changer here, then what determines the quality of your experience?
The answer is your environment. Certain environments make you go through different experiences. One study found orphans who live in institutions in Romania had lower IQs- 60–70 vs avg. of 100 in other kids their age.
The children recovered, though, once they changed their environment. Love and care did the trick and contributed to their brain’s development.
It’s not surprising. Epigenetics has suggested the same thing for years: Your environment changes your DNA. Your food, the amount of stress you’re in, and whether you work out or not all have a direct impact on your cells.
Your environment impacts your experience, which impacts your identity. Experience is the link between the two.
If your experience is made of 100% negative things that happened to you, the world will seem hostile and aggressive. It’ll affect your confidence and self-belief for sure.
But there’s a flipside to that coin.
3. Your environment can kill or build you
I didn’t realize it back then, but twelve years ago, when I pushed myself to approach girls in bars, I changed my environment.
Thus I changed my experience. Thus I changed my identity and how I see myself. It was a slow process. Took me about 5–7 years. You can probably do it faster if you don’t make the mistakes I made.
Dumb friends can hold you back in life or even get you killed in some places. Most of my friends hold each other back on the daily. They feed each other’s brains with nonsense.
Shitty food can kill you as it’s a bad environment for your cells. The guy from the old documentary Super Size Me gained 10kgs after eating McDonald’s for 30 days, then detoxed for fourteen months to regain his normal weight.
Low-challenge environment keeps you stuck in a career you don’t want. A dead-end job can take different forms for different people. If you don’t like your job or even hate it, if it makes you nervous, all these directly impact you.
The good news is, you can change all this.
“Because your experiences are unique, so are the vast, detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint”
- David Eageleman.
Change your environment, and your experience will shift. Then your identity will start to change.
Instead of watching TV after work, go to the gym. Instead of wasting time on porn, grab a book. Instead of staying at a job you don’t like, find a different one.
You can also change things inside your home. Replace old furniture with new ones. Removes old clothing from your closet. Get some plants. All these will shift your energy and the way you feel.
Conclusion
We can bitch and whine about life. We can dwell on our shortcomings and do the bare minimum to get by. But all these create an environment that diminishes you. An environment which doesn’t allow growth.
We can’t control how long we’ll be on this earth. But we can control the course of our lives. Choose your experiences wisely, and the change you seek will happen.
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