How to Grow Your Confidence

All right, welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. And today I wanna talk to you a little bit about confidence because, you know, look, there's people with incredible talent out there that have never really unleashed their potential. They, they've really never stepped into their potential. And it's not because they lack opportunity. It's not because they lack intelligence or ability. It's because they hesitate. They second-guess themselves. They overanalyze decisions. They wait for certainty before they move. And look, I, I've been [00:01:00] there. I know what it feels like. And, you know, while you're waiting, someone else less talented than you are becoming more confident and taking action because self-doubt is expensive. It delays your decisions. It weakens your opportunities. And, and most people assume confidence is something that you either naturally have or you don't, but that's not true. Confidence is developed. It's built through doing the work and taking action and, and repetition and experience. So today I wanna talk to you a little bit about how you can eliminate the self-doubt and create real solid confidence, the kind that stays steady even when you have some uncertainty. So, you know, over the last few weeks, we've been talking about a lot of different things when I've been able to do some solo episodes with you. You know, we, we talked about building this layer of mental strength, starting with clarifying your direction and then learning how to get focused and disciplined. And also we talked about identity, and, you know, after identity, when we talk about resilience and [00:02:00] adaptability, that's super important. But now we need to move into something that I believe you must have to be a confident leader, and that's confidence. You-- in order to be effective, you have to have confidence. Resilience will teach you how you can survive pressure, but confidence teaches you how to move through the pressure. And so when I talked this last week on resilience, I think that's super important, but confidence is that one difference maker that's really gonna take you through and help you to realize your potential. So, you know, here's what most people struggle with At least in my opinion. They believe confidence comes first, that they've got to somehow get some confidence before they take action. And so they wait. They wait until they feel ready, they wait until they feel qualified, or they wait until, you know, their fear disappears. But confidence rarely ever comes first. Your action has to come first. And it's funny because action, e- even for clarity, you know, clarity, confidence, uh, resilience, all these things come through taking action. [00:03:00] And the longer you hesitate, the stronger your self-doubt will become. What you don't understand is that your self-doubt grows when you, when you hesitate, because inaction creates uncertainty, right? When you, when you're not taking action, you're becoming more uncertain. You're, you're having more doubt. And so constantly, you know, I f- I see people out there measuring their, themselves against someone else's business, someone else's experience, someone else's results. And over time, this whole comparison game, it's what really works against you. People begin questioning their own value and, and, uh, you know, another major problem is this: many people repeatedly break trust with themselves. Do you think... I mean, have you ever thought about that? You've probably heard that before when we talk about it, but when you break promises to yourself You're gonna, you're gonna increase doubt, and you're gonna weaken your self-belief because confidence is really deeply rooted in self-trust.[00:04:00] So let's talk a little bit about, you know, what confidence really is. Um, you know, because confidence is not arrogance. It's not pretending to know everything when you don't know it. It's not being loud or having a big ego. Real confidence, and I want you to hear me when I say this, real confidence is the belief that you can act, adapt, or recover regardless of the outcome. Confidence is the, the thought process and belief that you can make it through and figure it out. It's grounded, it's calm, it's capable. And, you know, confident people do not need to prove themselves constantly because their confidence comes from evidence. When you stack evidence of wins in your life, your confidence will grow, and it won't need external validation. And that's the key, because confidence is built through accumulated proof and evidence, uh, that you create through taking action. Now, your self-doubt grows when you avoid and you abandon your commitments and you don't [00:05:00] do what you say you're gonna do, and it works against you, that self-doubt does, uh, especially against you building confidence. So let me tell you why, other than the obvious, confidence matters. Because confidence is gonna affect every area of your life. It changes the speed you make decisions. It influences how you communicate. It shapes your leadership. It impacts your relationship, your business, your negotiations, your performance. Confident people move differently because they trust themselves differently. And here's something really important. Other people will feel your certainty, 'cause people naturally trust individuals who appear grounded and decisive. And that doesn't mean you always know the answers, it means you trust your ability to figure out the answers. And lack of confidence creates hesitation. And hesitation, it weakens your momentum. It weakens your ability to be a leader. And so just try to remember that lack of confidence comes from built-up self-doubt. So I want to talk to you about three different [00:06:00] sources that are working against you right now. The first is your past experiences. People that carry old failures into the new opportunities are increasing their self-doubt. It's, it's when a setback becomes your identity, a rejection becomes your proof that you try to assign to your confidence. And instead of learning from experience, people emotionally attach to their experience, and that creates fear of repeating the same pain, and that is a problem. That creates self-doubt. Another thing that creates a lot of self-doubt is comparison You know, when was the last time, it probably happens all the time, but especially with scrolling social media and stuff, you compare yourself to others. You compare your current chapter to someone else's highlight reel. You, you know, especially in today's world of social media, right? People forget that you're seeing edited versions of success, not full reality, and comparison will shift your attention away from growth a- and just feed your insecurity. [00:07:00] So it's really important that you don't play that comparison game. The other thing, and this one's one that I, I, I think a lot of people don't give enough credit to, you will increase your self-doubt when you have lack of integrity with yourself. This one matters probably more than you realize because when you repeatedly fail to follow through on commitments that you have made and you stop believing in your own word, your confidence can't grow. It's where, you know, your self-trust gets broken. And so breaking the integrity with yourself, what you say and how you do it, 'cause how you do anything is how you do everything, and if you're breaking that integrity, it's hurting you. So these are things that build your self-doubt, but how do you build real confidence? Well, it starts, believe it or not, with just keeping small promises. Confidence begins with trust, and trust is built through consistency. So do what you say you're gonna do, even the small things. Wake up when you said you're gonna wake up, complete your workout, finish your task, um, follow through on the assignment you have, [00:08:00] make a call. You know, every completed commitment will stack up evidence, and sometimes when you're struggling, stacking evidence is the best way to be able to create some confidence. The other thing is that you've gotta take action, and hear me when I say this, you've gotta take action before you're prepared. This is critical. This is critical because most confidence is developed after action, not before it. You know, fear, you know, keeps you held back, but the more experiences you survive, the more capable you feel. And waiting for certainty is the biggest mistake you can make because movement is what creates momentum. Movement creates momentum. And, and here's the thing, you've gotta change your relationship you have with failure because failure is information. It's not your identity. Every successful person you admire has failed repeatedly. The difference is they interpret failure differently. They use it as feedback instead of proof that they didn't know what they were doing.[00:09:00] And confidence grows when you realize that setbacks are survivable and you can make them through it. That's when you build confidence. So making it through bad experiences and failure is actually the way to build confidence. Now, it's very important that you monitor your internal language or dialogue you have with yourself because most people speak to themselves, I know I have, right, more harshly than you would ever speak to someone else. Your constant, you, you know, your constant negative talk with yourself reinforces insecurity. So pay attention to the language that you keep saying to yourself in your head because repeating that language is gonna shape your belief. It's gonna destroy and erode your confidence and build a whole bunch of self-doubt. You've gotta learn to just Replace that destructive language with thoughts that are, uh, uh, even if you have a hard time with, you know, positivity, just possibility. Possibility. And then the other thing you can do to build confidence is just build your competence. [00:10:00] In other words, when you increase your skills, you learn more, you prepare more, repetition, practice, you're gonna be more confident. Now, let me point out a few things that I think are gonna, you know, destroy your confidence while you're building it, is if you wait until you have no fear or absence of fear, or you wanna be, you know, prepared, or you wanna be certain, these are all things that are gonna really destroy your confidence. And the, the idea that you wanna be perfect is, is impossible. Growth is the goal, not perfection. And so when you, you know, start to focus on growth, you won't worry so much about having everything figured out. So the goal for you here, you know, the mental shift you have to make, is that confidence is not something that you discover, it's something that you build Every difficult conversation, every promise kept, every challenge faced, every risk taken, all of it is going to be stacking up evidence for you that's going to build your belief. And you, and you [00:11:00] don't need to be certain to move on. You simply need to be willing and courageous because when you, when you have courage, confident you're going to, gonna push through the o- the obstacles, push through the situations, then your confidence is gonna come. It's not the other way around. So this week, what I'd love for you to do is I'd love for you to do as much as you can to choose some commitments that you're making to yourself and start building that trust again. Take those actions, um, follow through on the small things. Ask yourself this question: What would I do right now if I trusted myself completely? W- How would I act? What would I do differently? And remind yourself of situations that you have made it through. When you do that, you are gonna reinforce the belief that you can handle anything. You can handle uncertainty. You can handle things that come up. Because remember, you know, just one more time before I take off here, confidence is built through action, and action is gonna stack up all that evidence [00:12:00] you need to build self-trust and to build, m- almost craft certainty in your life when you feel uncertain. But you've got to take action, and even when you're not ready, because being ready is, is always gonna make you hesitate. So confidence is something that I think you really need to stack up in your arsenal of being a leader and taking your life to the next level because I believe it will, it will affect every area of your life. So I hope some of this message is something you can carry through the week that's made you think about in your life what you can do to do differently and not hesitate, not wait for certainty, not wait for the fear to go away, and, and if you'll take action, your confidence will grow. I promise you that. So anyway, that's my message for today. I hope you have an amazing week. I'm really looking forward to talking with you throughout the week, so hit me up on the Daily Mastermind and, um, let me know what you're working on. Let me know what you're dealing with. Share this episode, please. Um, it'd mean the world to me to be able to grow our audience, and, uh, we're doing amazing right now. I'm [00:13:00] super excited that we're in the top 100 Apple podcasts, and so do me a favor and share this episode. Reach out to me. Let me know I can do to help, and I look forward to talking with you soon. Have a great day.