How To Become A CONFIDENT & High Value Entrepreneur | Dr. Ivan Joseph EP 320

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:10Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection. I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful, transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jospree Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

0:53socials. So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there.

1:12How do we build that confidence in ourself when all we hear is a negative feedback though? It's going to happen. We can distance ourself, but we keep hearing it. How do we then say, okay, hey, I'm not going to listen to this, but it really affects me and it hurts me. Yes. How do you then say, all right, I'm going to hear it every day or every week. It's going to come my way no matter what I do. But psychologically, internally, what are the tools or the skills we can acquire to develop that belief? First thing I always say is you've got to take yourself back to any time in your past career or even current career and remind yourself of all the things that you're good at, all the accomplishments.

1:45Celebrate your wins. Amen. Man, I'm a tall, handsome, brown man. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm really good in math. I look good in white dress shirts. Whatever those things are. Remember, Ivan, you were the first person to get your PhD before the age of 30. Whatever those things are. And it's not enough just to tell yourself. You got to write it down. When I took that job as an AD, even when I was a job as a vice president, self-doubt comes in. There's enough people tell. I've never done this before. Why should I be in this position? You only got the job because he's black. You only got the job because you're a woman.

2:16Whatever it is, there's all people that are going to be coming at you. And if you're not careful, you'll start to take on those thoughts. And then those thoughts will influence your belief system. And that belief system will then influence your actions. And you'll start messing up. And it's this self-fulfilling prophecy. So stop that thought. Put something down on paper. You'll hear me speak about a self-confidence letter, a letter you write to yourself. Dear Louis, congratulations on building your business. You set a goal and you accomplished it. And it's your personal brag sheet to yourself.

2:48When I became an AD, I had to read that probably, I kid you not, two weeks straight. And this isn't about ego. Wow. This isn't about, oh, you're telling everybody how good you are. No, this is your personal brag sheet. Yeah, self-confidence letter or letter to yourself. We call this rainy day notes from an exercise that I've been through where it's like, write yourself a letter that when you're going through something challenging, you open it up. I love that. You remind yourself of your gift, how much you matter, you know, the contribution you've made in your life, your family, your friends, things like that.

3:17Or you could get a group of friends to write letters to you that you seal and you open up when you need some inspiration or motivation. I love it. And not only just from feeling good and happiness, but the science also then links that to performance. And don't quote me on the numbers, but I think you're 19 % more productive. Analytic problem solving. You're 29 % quicker to solve complex problems. You increase your revenue by 36 % if you use three statements of happiness, personal affirmations. No way. Sonia Lubomirsky, 2006, Harvard study. Three affirmations, three positive statements of gratitude, three expressions of hope, warmth, joy.

3:56That is what showed. Yeah. Wow. What if you're saying something about yourself, but you're really lying? How do you say something like, I'm a great individual, when you're like, actually, I haven't been a great individual. I've been bad, treating people bad. I haven't been showing up on time, whatever it is. It's hard to say because what might be a lie to me may not be a lie to you. I'll tell you a story. I had a guy, his name was Kyle, who made my soccer team. And he believed that he was the greatest guy. I'm like, I'm going to make this team. That guy showed up and he had like a foot like a donkey, right?

4:28And I remember seeing him come onto my team. I had just taken over this team at Ryerson. I was like, oh, he's a black guy from Jamaica. He's going to be fast and so happy. I was never so disappointed. Wow. And that guy was going to be an equipment manager. At best. Yeah, at best. Fast forward four or five years, this guy became the captain of my team, an All-Canadian, and the starter on my first ever team that went to the national championships. He had no business believing that he was good enough to make this team. I mean, I coached at this championship, that world championship, Olympic World Cup qualifier.

4:59So maybe I'm not the one to judge what is a lie. But I will tell you, if you think you're going to fly, I'm going to be a bajillion dollars. I'm going to be a million dollars. I will tell you, it's not the statement that really sets you up. It's the fact that people then start putting into their psychological mindset steps to move them in that direction. Whatever those little steps are, they stop feeling helpless and unable to affect their own destiny and start moving in the right direction. And that's where the impact happens. And you probably had a lot of great athletes as well who you were like, you're amazing.

5:33You're the best. You can be so great. But they didn't believe themselves. themselves and it didn't matter if you and every other player thought they were incredible. If they didn't believe it, they were going to be subpar. The reverse is it doesn't matter if everyone else is against you or doesn't think that you have the skills. If you believe it, you can make it come true, which I think is unbelievable. There's two factors I've always seen that derail a young athlete or a young professional's career. Number one, their self doubt, their inability to believe in themselves. And interestingly enough, number two is the people that they have surrounded themselves with that become distractions that take them away from their goals.

6:07Over and over and over again, they fall into the wrong crowd, they get with the wrong partner. The wrong advice. Yes. We all have that little tiny voice in our head. Whenever I don't listen to that little tiny voice in my head, I falter. Whenever I make a decision purely logically, I always am bitter, right? If I buy the cheap car instead of the one I want, if I do like the practical decision instead of the emotional one, I'm always bitter. And then you got this little heart that's sitting there, that little self-conscious piece that's telling you when you know when you're going south. I don't know if it's your crap detector or your holy smoke detector.

6:41There's no science behind this. But any time I don't listen to that voice, when I fall off my values and my principles, I go south. It's cost me money. It's cost me friendships. It's cost me opportunities. How do you determine what your values and principles are when you're not sure? That's a good question. I'm going to walk you through a little exercise. In the last 18 months, what's the most important decision you've made? In the last 18 months, you know, I've made a decision to take the vice president's job at Dalhousie University. I was the king of my fiefdom. I had all the freedom, all the things I want.

7:19And I made a decision to take that job. A decision I made was to get into a relationship. You got now seven words, only seven, to tell me why you made that decision. and so I could be nice and fluffy. It was time for a new challenge, seven words. I could say I had outgrown the job. I was bored, whatever it is, but seven words. She made me a better version of myself. Ooh, nicely done. I don't know if that's seven, but... Yeah, that's pretty close. Why her? So for me, why this job? People told me I couldn't do it. The one word, and it's got to be a value, the challenge, right? The challenge. One word, why her?

7:59Vision. Five years ago, I had done a guided visualization of the dream person I wanted to be with. Yeah. She was the image of that vision. So now we've just found two values, right? For one of my values is challenge. One of your values is growth, vision, whatever that word is, this, you saw it. When you start asking yourself these questions, what's the most important decision you made in work? What's the most important decision you've made in your family? What's the most important decision you did for yourself, right? What's the most important decision you make when taking on a conflict? That's the exercise I do to help me find my North Stars.

8:37And whenever those things are in alignment, happiness, confidence, success, performance goes up. When they're not, sick days go up, disease goes up, conflict arises. Poor choices. Yeah. Right. And so those are the things you need to think about. Now that's the exercise I use, but I find it very, very helpful.

9:02Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:59Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.