No Participation Trophies: The Hard Truth About Courage & Confidence

0:00Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. I can go on a rant for 25 minutes, you'll have to shut me up on the decay of society by way of participation. There's nothing that drives me more crazy than the entitlement factor of you're perfect the way you are.

0:42Work is the win. The effort is the win. Where did we get away from that? An unpopular opinion. Sometimes you aren't enough. Here's the key. Yet confidence is something that you earn. We've been at the lowest levels of self-confidence in history because, especially with younger people, we are saying that just because half the battle is showing up, no, it's not. I think this notion of everyone's a winner is just a toxic mindset that prevents growth.

1:20All right, y 'all. I'm here with my boy Juan Bendania. What's up, man? Man, I'm excited to be here. This is awesome. Dude, I'm excited to bring you to the audience so they can hear your story. You have a quite interesting story. You know, start off with a little social anxiety and things like that. And, you know, just like everybody else, I think allow fear to kind of hold them back. So why don't you give the audience a little background on who you are and then we can get into the good stuff. Yeah, I was that kid to give the 30 ,000 foot view of the story. I was that kid that had no confidence and didn't think that they were made to have any.

2:00You know, I was severely socially anxious. And growing up, you know, early on going to school, I couldn't speak much English. Because growing up in Canada, I was often, my parents are from Nicaragua, and we learned Spanish first. And going to school, even though if you're listening to this, maybe you don't know. But if you're watching this, you know, they were like, wait, your name is Juan? And there was this confusion as to I would often be the first Juan people had ever met. And I was.

2:38When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. More like a Brandon than a Hulk, you know? Like, big bright blue eyes. 100%. Nice little haircut. So then I was like, as a kid, that made me feel like I was wrong. So I would make up names and I would pretend to be something that I wasn't.

3:24And throughout school, I grew up not fitting neatly into any friend group. So I became a chameleon and I molded myself to fit into every friend group. so I would hang out literally with the soccer team and then I would turn around and hang out with the drama kids and then turn around and hang out with the break dancers there was literally a group of break dancers that I was like best friends with there was 10 of them I cannot dance I was the only one who couldn't do any that was the next question I could barely even do a hand stand at that time um but I would basically mold myself into what I thought people wanted So then that worked for a time.

4:10And then I, like, as I grew older, I was that person. Maybe you're that kind of person too, that would put things off and just put everything off. And if you're listening to this, if you're anything like me, I put everything off, including the figuring out what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. so then when I got to a certain age and like it was the time to decide to go to school and get a job and all of that sort of stuff I hadn't invested the time or the energy beforehand into that to give myself any real options so I didn't have when it comes to what your family eats and drinks you know your choices matter you're the expert because you know what fits your life and getting it right starts with good information That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at goodtoknowfacts.org.

5:06No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. I have basically any options. So then, naturally, I sought out, you know, a relationship with a blonde American cheerleader. and I was Canadian at the time. So it was new and exciting. And, and to, to say like, Oh, this is, this is the part of my life where I feel like I can have some remote semblance of progress. And I got into that relationship, that relationship after six months ended and I tied up all of my self-worth into that relationship because it was the only thing that was working.

5:50so then when the relationship ended and it fell apart you know so did i and i turned to coping mechanisms to try and hide then the first place i turned was food and it started with overeating that graduated to binge eating disorder and got to a place where i was 75 pounds overweight and food quickly became not enough you know sometimes when you do a toxic behavior enough you become numb to it and then i turned alcohol and started on fridays and then that turned into saturdays and then sundays and then tuesdays and yeah ended with me being taken in an ambulance to the hospital for alcohol poisoning and that was a low point and you know it was one of those moments where i felt like there was no getting any better and i knew something needed to change but I needed to like believe in that change first.

6:43And that was, I would say the demarcation line of like the. So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text. But which you do you listen to? Is it, we could buy a house in Tulum. Get optioning those options. we could lose everything or let's do a little research get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you learn more at finra.org slash trade smart process of me figuring out how to become better i needed to hit that low point to be like enough is enough. This needs to change now. And sometimes we don't have that moment to be able to really reinvent ourselves.

7:36For me, it was found in that like, I have no aspirations. I have no skillset. I'm 75 pounds overweight, dropped out, living with my parents, girlfriend-less. I got to figure something out. There's no, I feel like there's no other options. So that was sort of the origin story that led to that kind of like rock bottom moment that I was like, yeah, I got it. Something needs to change. I need to do something from here to move forward. And we're going to take a quick break to hear from our Powered By sponsor. We're proud to announce a partnership between White Sands Treatment Centers and the Determined Society.

8:15With multiple locations across Florida, White Sands provides luxury, top rated addiction treatment. from medical detox and inpatient care to outpatient support and long-term aftercare. Their resort-style campuses, expert clinicians, and holistic programs create real, lasting recovery. Together, we're committed to bringing hope, resources, and healing to those who need it most. White Sands Treatment Centers. Thank you for that. You know, because, you know, you said if you're anything like me, which you might be, you could probably already read it on me. Right. And that's the thing. It's like there's so many things there.

8:57It's not just about the procrastination because people look at me and say, well, you have this brand, you're determined society, you're determined and disciplined individual. I go, yeah, because I worked on it. Right. I created that identity and I stuck to it. But the underlying variable was somebody very insecure, zero confidence, always the fat kid, overate, binge ate. And even now, if I'm not careful, I can start to go off the rails and then I snap back really quickly. I'm like, whoa, no, that's the pattern. Cut it right here. you know i never i i you know i always sought comfort and food and i'm not sure why i think growing up you know especially in america my wife's from ecledore so she always kind of teases me a little bit she when we go to ice cream she goes get me to get me a scoop of ice cream but not an american scoop and people look at her in this ice cream shop like what the hell is this chick talking about we're in america but the point is like the one scoop is like this big right And so growing up and going to family reunions and stuff, we'd get there, you know, clearly at California, because I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay and my great grandparents, we always had that family reunion on Labor Day week and right before we went back to school.

10:16and we'd walk in and like on the patio, there was a picnic table full of rice, crispy treats, like Diablo did like bean dip chips, you name the dessert in the, in the snack food. And it was there. Right. And so, you know, it was always that comfort thing, you know, and then the adults would be around the campfire with the gray boom box, bumping Randy Travis and drinking alcohol. And so when you grow up, it's like, okay, well, if I'm going to be at a gathering, then there has to be a ton of food and there has to be a ton of alcohol. Now I'm not slamming my upbringing. Like I, those were some fun times and it was always under control.

10:57And we just, it was just a great core memory running around my cousins and stuff. But my point is like, it was very easy to fall into that comfort aspect of it. Once I got older and I started struggling because I had many failed relationships before I got married, right? Many of them. And a lot of them was because I was so damn insecure and because I didn't think I was enough, right? Failed. I got to college and played baseball at LSU. It's the best baseball school in the country, but I never turned into who I wanted to be there or who I was capable of. So then that chip on the shoulder gets bigger, it turns into a crater.

11:31And then we cope with alcohol. And for me, it was womanizing. I was young. It didn't matter if I wanted, I went and got it. And that's the one thing I've always been very open with. My platform is talking about those moments because there's a college student out there right now, or a young man that's now 30 saying, wait a second, I see the same patterns in me. But what I really had to do is I had to fix my confidence. And you've worked with massive brands like Disney, you've worked in a plethora of more, right? I don't want to take from that, but then also Olympic athletes as the confidence coach.

12:11So if, if, if I were somebody or somebody listening right now that needed to fix their confidence, where does that start, man? Oh, where it starts, where do we begin with where it starts? And it's funny you say about the like family gathering. One point I want to make is that, you know, growing up in Hispanic culture, one of the most common anecdotes that we hear at a family party or in the house. If you don't get seconds, it means you didn't like it. So then as a kid that's craving love and attention and connection with your family and with your older cousins that you think are the coolest people in the world, but they don't think you're cool yet because you're like a seven-year-old and you're like nerdy.

12:55Yeah. It's like if you don't get seconds, he didn't like it. So there's this conditioning that we get when we're younger that carries into when we're older. And many times our confidence is tied to the experiences we went through and the people that were a part of those experiences years ago. which is why there's people i've literally worked with fortune 500 executives that still tell me about their teacher in seventh grade that told them xyz it's so funny because i don't carry i can tell you my no mr dorn hundred percent great teacher everyone has that teacher everyone has that person that parent that friend so i think the first step regardless of whether someone is has zero self-confidence or someone is at the top of their game.

13:50And I want to sort of acknowledge whether it's, you know, the Olympic athlete or the Grammy award-winning artist or the CEO. Here's the thing. The people that perform at the highest level actually experience more self-doubt than those at the very beginning of their journey. They just have a different relationship with doubt because they don't see it as a sign to stop. They see it as a signal to grow, to get better. When they're doubting themselves, when they feel like they're hesitating, when they're shooting threes and they're going three for 10 and they're like, what's going on? That's self-doubt.

14:25They just have a better relationship with it. So the first step, and it's like the first step in anything, the hardest part of a run is tying your shoes. You know, the first step of building confidence is getting into the arena by saying this is an area of my life that I want to build confidence in, whether it's relationships, whether it's health, whether it's finances, whether it's business and career. And here's the thing. Everyone has, of course, different areas of their life, right? We have relationships, we have health, we have finances, we have spirituality, we have career. Everyone has different levels of confidence in each.

15:03So you could be a two in relationships, but a nine in career. So the first step is sort of doing a, you know, audit, confidence audit of like, where are you at in terms of like, what is the area of your life where you feel really confident in? And what area do you need a little help in? And then you can actually borrow from the different areas. So at the beginning, I used to have a level, probably one out of 10 confidence when it came to health and fitness. But I had a probably eight when it came to relationships. So I'm like, what am I doing here? What are the beliefs that I have over here? What are the mindsets that I'm carrying here?

15:47What are the actions I'm taking over here? And is that, can I borrow that over here? For example, if someone has a really high self-confidence when it comes to health and fitness, like what are you doing there? Will I show up every single day? Well, I'm tracking my lifts. Well, I have a meal plan and I'm really sticking to it. Well, I'm eliminating any toxic behavior and their finances are one out of 10. Okay, where are you tracking your finances? Where's the toxic behavior? How consistent are you? What's your plan? So then you just like copy and paste from this area to this area. And because every, I believe everyone has an area of their life they feel really confident in.

16:29Even if it's the show that you love on Netflix, you're very confident in the fact that you know everything about that show. Great. One thousand percent. Great. But borrow that from different areas. But I would say the first step is pour energy into the area of your life you would like to build confidence in. Energy is sort of the spark. It's the catalytic effect of saying, I'm going to give it the thing that you give energy to will grow, even if it's negativity, even if it's stress, even if it's worry, even if it's self-doubt. You know, I love that. Thank you for that. And for the audience listening, I want you to think about this.

17:05And this is a question I have for you. When I back in December, OK, I was well, November ish. I made the decision in November, but started in December, right? To get my health on track. I was 230 pounds. I'm now 185, right? I was 31 % body fat. Now I'm right around 15 to 17 probably. Come on, bro. In that short period of time, what I found is when I cleaned up the shit that I needed to clean up, right? When I said, okay, this is the one thing in my life holding me back. This is my thing. This is it. This is why my show is stagnant at a certain level. This is why my body's stagnant at a certain level.

17:50This is why I'm stagnant as a father at a certain level, right? Or even a husband. And what I started doing is taking massive and extreme accountability in the nutrition aspect with the support of my friend, Jeff Delaney and my friend, Josiah, that did my workouts, all that kind of stuff, right? And I started every single day by doing that one thing. Like I woke up at 4 a.m. then I walked downstairs. I had my protein shake, went to the gym, followed the plan that was created for me, went home, had another protein shake, hour later had the breakfast that I was prescribed to eat. And what I found on was when I took care of that and, and truly stacked all those habits and track them, the workouts, the nutrition, like all that stuff.

18:37I started implementing automatically those principles and those habit stacking and those action steps in every other area. Because what people don't understand is when they hear us talk, they're like, yeah, but how do I focus on it? No, no, no, no. Your key to victory is the one thing, because that is the hardest thing for you to grow from or to get out of. And when you do everything else in your life automatically works in that circular motion, like, okay, I'm doing this over here to your point, copy and paste a hundred percent. And it's everything changed for me, dude, everything, an unpopular opinion.

19:18And maybe a hot take is that confidence is something that you earn, not something that you just have the toxic cultural environment of participation ribbons that we have fallen into is literally, and you can see it in the research and in the trends of self-confidence. We've been at the lowest levels of self-confidence in history because especially with younger people, we are saying that just because half the battle is showing up. No, it's not. If you show up, you still need to run the race, by the way, To wit, like you can't just, if you acknowledge you participated, then it shows I didn't need to earn anything, which means I didn't need to work hard.

20:06And here's the unpopular opinion, maybe hot take. Sometimes you aren't enough. If you get under the squat rack and you put on an extra 10 pounds and you go down and you have to bail out, that means you're not enough for that lift. here's the key yet yet it is not a determination of who you are just because that relationship ended doesn't mean you're not enough it means that maybe you're not enough for this relationship yet just because that business idea failed it doesn't mean that you're not enough it means that maybe you need to reskill you need to retool so i i think this notion of of everyone's a winner is just a toxic mindset that prevents, doesn't even move us away from, it prevents growth.

20:56It prevents us from actually getting better because how do we grow? We do things that we're uncomfortable with. We fail. We maybe get judged. We fall short. And then you go back to the drawing board and then do it again and do it again. So I think if you're a parent listening, please allow your kids to earn things to earn the win like have the win and their relation because it's like their relationship with failure it's like i want like my wife and i we have a dog which is basically a child uh but when we have kids we like i want them to lose a soccer game you know i want them to deal with adversity i want i want to take them to to dinner after go get some burgers and say, how do you, how do you feel?

21:46How do you feel about that? Cause that's real life. You know, gosh, you're speaking so much of my language in so many areas, man. The thing, my background is baseball. You know, I was a teacher and a baseball coach first and foremost. And then I, you know, eventually transformed into this by way of sales, et cetera. There's nothing that drives me more crazy than the entitlement factor of you're perfect the way you are or Johnny, you should be playing every inning or you should be in the starting five because you're my son and this is little league or this is rec ball. No, no, no. Confidence and playing time is earned.

22:24And I, you know, it's so funny because my son, he's 11 and great athlete. I mean, so many gifts, right? Especially on the soccer field. And he's a baseball, he's from a baseball family. And, and don't get me wrong. His baseball skills are phenomenal. It's a harder game in a sense of where to be, when to be there, different plays and choices to make in a very quick split second. And he's working through that. But I remember during soccer season last year in the fall, because I encouraged him to play both, right? Season was over and there was no playoff or anything like that. Zero playoff. and at the very last game, they took a team picture and they had trophies and he looked at it.

23:12He goes, he looked at me like, just meet him one-on-one and my wife overheard it and was a little bit, why did he say that? He's just like, what the hell is this for? I was like, I love you, son. Don't ever lose that. You did nothing to earn that. I said, now don't get me wrong. You had an amazing season. Scored a goal every game. I'm very proud of you and how hard you work. I will never praise effort. I mean, I'll never praise skill. I praise effort. Like your effort was tremendous. You grew. You as an athlete got better. And I'm super proud of you. But that trophy, your team did nothing to earn that.

23:52Nothing. Don't ever lose the idea that you must win in order to get a trophy. Now, if you're in the Olympics and there's multiple medals getting out and you get a bronze, absolutely you earned it. but there's, I mean, come on, man. Like that to me drives me crazy. I can go on a rant for 25 minutes. You'll have to shut me up on the decay of society by way of participation. Well, it's, it's the thought that we see the trophy is the win. When the work is the win, the effort is the win. Where do we get away from that? I mean, that to me is, I think it it's in part. due to the fact that when we fail or when we don't get an outcome that we want, it can feel like that is a determination of character.

24:50It can feel like that means that is who we are. So if we fail, then thus we are a failure. That's sort of what we deduce. If we fall short or if we don't do well, that means that I'm a bad person or I'm a failure. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Let's separate the fact that the result was a failure versus you are a failure because one is rooted in outcome. The other is rooted in identity. That's what I think the biggest problem is, is people think that the failures that they have are because of them. It's like, no, no, no. It's not like, let's not get it twisted. It's not because of you, but like, let's focus on instead of the outcome, let's focus on the output.

25:29because if you give something your all at the end of it, you're okay with any outcome because you know you did everything you could to make this thing happen. And if it doesn't work out, that's totally okay. You retool, you reskill and you go for the next time. But I think people are so focused on the massive win at the end that they don't understand that the prize is the journey along the way. It's like the actual win is the path. Like the prize is the path. It's not the, cause then here's what happens. You get to a destination, you get to an outcome, you achieve a certain goal and then the yardstick moves.

26:14And you're like, I remember early on in business when it's like, okay, to be a success, you have to do six figures and that's what you have to do. And that is success. And then once you get there, it's crazy. The yardstick, you're just like, yeah, but real success is actually this. And then it just moves. And it's like, oh, you realize that you have already achieved the goals that you said would make you happy. You already achieved the things that you said would make you happy, but you've just moved your definition of happiness to a new outcome that seemingly never, you know, yeah. And it's so funny because like what I've discovered, right.

26:58In my own journey and the people that I've worked with is you're right. It, the, the gift is the journey, the person you become in pursuit of that one thing is the thing. But so many people are focused on this way big mountain. I need to get on top of that mountain and they're forgetting everything in between. that's where you become, this is a by-product. That's the macro result. Like cool, neat, cool. But the micro movements in between is what makes you who you are and what makes you special. And so what I like to do is every time we hit a milestone with the show, I clap for it. Okay. Now what do I need to do now?

27:36Right? Because for me, once I hit that goal, like the first time we hit a million downloads in a year. I was like, oh my God, that's huge. And I'm like, wait a second, there's people doing that in a month. And then I go, well, wait a second. Now I hit the goal, but I'm not happy. I was the happiest when I was preparing and doing the thing like with you and every other guest and, and the work that I had to do become, to become a better speaker, to become a better host and conversationalist, that was the gift. And so I'm like, oh, well, then I'll just dive back into that. This stuff here, we'll let that worry about that.

28:14But this is where I focus. This is my yardstick. And if I can get better every single step of the way, right? It's like the atomic habits, right? The 1 % better every single day. But if we really focus on that, that is where we become absolutely someone that cannot be stopped. A hundred percent. And it's like, it's so, here's what I think really challenges people. It's hard to enjoy hard things. Meaning it's easy to enjoy the accolade, the win, the celebration, the milestone, because you hit it and you feel that sense of dopamine, that feeling of accomplishment. Great. It's harder to enjoy the hard things, the monotony of going through the day to day.

29:00But then you realize like, no, this is actually the part I really enjoyed because it is what is facilitating the growth. And I believe growth is where we find happiness, not the outcome, not the result. And they did, I forget, I forget the specific study. I can, I can send it to you afterwards, but they did a study. She was recent where, you know, have you heard of the studies on like the amount of money where money doesn't buy you happiness, but they found the amount and it was like 70 grand, something like that a year. They did a new study, follow-up study. You can Google this, probably put it into chat GPT and you can, you can find the specific study that found that it actually wasn't the number.