How to Break Free from the Prison of Self-Doubt

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1:45This is The Ed Myron Show. Before I get into the show, I just want to say one thing to you. You know that all of my content is free. I put out hundreds and hundreds. It's now thousands of hours of content for free. But every once in a while, I do something where you can participate with me one-on-one or in a group. And so I've only done this one other time in my entire career, and it sold out in about 10 minutes. But this year, if you're watching this before 2025, I'm recording this in 2024, on December 12th, I'm doing an event, a group event in my home, very intimate event, less than 30 people to spend a day with me.

2:22You can go to maxout2025.com to get the information. It's not cheap, but it's a day with me. I'm going to take you through my entire 12-step system I've used for the last decade to plan my life and my year. So if you want to make 2025 the best year of your life, you can come to me and you can be in my home with me with a very small group of people for an entire day. I'll take you through that entire system. I'm also going to go through all the mental programming techniques that I usually only teach my one-on-one clients. So very limited seating. It may even be sold out by the time you see this video or hear this audio, but it's December 12th, 2024 in my home.

2:59MaxOut2025.com. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So, will you please stop being so hard on yourself? So many of you are your own worst enemy, and it's what I want to talk about this week. Let me ask you a question. How's that working out for you? I mean, so far, how's it worked out being your own worst enemy, being so difficult, so hard on yourself, beating yourself up so often, the negative self-talk, the negative self-thoughts? If being hard on yourself worked, it would have already worked by now, right? And one of the things I think we have to ask ourselves is, is what I'm doing working?

3:37You know, how's this working out for me? And so far, not so good when you're really difficult on yourself. You would never talk to other people the way that you speak to yourself. and I have a podcast I just recently did. I don't know what it'll be out or not by the time you see this, but what I talk about in that podcast is that you teach people how to treat you. You teach other people how to treat you with what you're willing to accept, with what you're willing to tolerate, and you teach yourself how to treat you. And for many of us, since some age we were at, and I, you know, you could draw a line for almost all of us.

4:09Some of us have happened much later in life. Some of us started to happen in childhood. We started treating ourselves poorly. And if we treat ourselves poorly, how are we ever going to ask other people to treat us well? And by the way, whatever your belief systems are, you all know that I'm a Christian, but I also believe in inspiration. I believe in vibrational frequency. If you're not treating yourself well, how do you expect the universe to treat you well? How do you expect to have good things come your way when you don't even treat yourself well? You know, it's probably the number one mistake that I see people make.

4:41that's their invisible enemy, is themselves. So they go into things, like I do it when I speak on stage, and ironically, sometimes we're the most difficult on ourselves if the things we're actually the most anointed and best at. If you were to ask me, what's the area of my life that I am probably the most hard on myself, the most abusive to myself, I will tell you that it's my public speaking. That when I get off the stage, I think maybe three times in my life has someone asked me, how did you do? And I said, very well or great. But probably 15 ,000 or 30 ,000 times, depending on how many times I've spoken on stage, I've said, not so good.

5:20I should have done this. I could have done that. Okay. Or terrible. And then I spend a bunch of time lamenting the things I said that I shouldn't have or things I forgot to say or things that didn't go well. You know, the other area that I'm very difficult on myself, if I step back and look at it, is in parenting. yet kind of if I stepped way away from it, I'm a pretty good parent. So it's ironic that sometimes we beat ourselves up in the number one place that we're the best at. And here's what I figured out. You know, as a person of faith, I believe in the adversary or you can call it the devil, whatever you want to be.

5:57If you don't believe in any of that, it could just be negative and positive. And I can tell you that I believe the adversary or the devil attacks us and our thoughts and we'll begin to listen to our thoughts, we're really doing the work of the bad guy, the dude downstairs, or if you don't believe in any of that, negative vibrational frequency. It attacks us in our thoughts. But when God's working on us, he speaks to our hearts. He speaks to our spirits. And I've learned to stop listening to my thoughts because that's where I'm attacked. That's where you get attacked is in your thoughts. But if you can get quiet and listen to your heart, that's God speaking to you.

6:37Remember this. God talks to our hearts. The devil talks to our minds. If you don't believe any of that, highest vibrational frequency is in the heart, heart center. Lowest vibrational frequency is actually in the mind. And the thing that vibrates at the lowest possible frequency is a lie. And so when you tell yourself a lie about yourself, you are now reducing your vibrational frequency. Not only is it not true, not only does it beat you up, not only does it program your reticular activating system to find more bad things about you or have you make more mistakes, but you're reducing your vibrational frequency because it's not true, and it's a lie.

7:16And when we lie to ourselves, we reduce our frequency. Truth, on the other hand, vibrates at the highest possible frequency, and that's why it comes from God. And so what I want to challenge you to do this week, now this is good for a Monday, huh? What I want to challenge you to do this week is to begin to listen to your heart, that whisper, that quiet voice that you have to be still or quiet to hear. And drown out the noise, the vast majority of which that noise is being created by you in your mind or the adversary in your mind, and it's a lie. Here's the bottom line. It's not working out so good for you.

7:52and you need to begin to separate your behavior sometimes and your choices and or your performance from who you really are. Here's the truth. Not every singer nails every note every time they sing a song. It doesn't mean they can't sing. It doesn't mean they're not great. I promise you, take your favorite musical artist of all time. I don't care who you're listening to right now. It doesn't matter, right? I can promise you they have off nights. I can promise you some nights are better than others, but I doubt that they beat themselves up to the point where they don't at least open up the opportunity for another great night in the future.

8:25You're probably going to have a bad call, a bad speech, a bad meeting, a bad exchange with somebody that you love. And if you beat yourself up about it, you've opened up the possibility of you doing it again, not less. We think, well, if I beat myself up about this bad sales call I just had, I'm punishing me, then I won't want to do it again because when I was a little boy or a little girl, I would get punished when I behaved poorly. And the truth of the matter is that's not how life works. It's not about punishment. That doesn't mean we don't want to course correct. So, for example, learn to say this.

8:59That's not like me. One of the things I teach my professional golfers when they miss a putt, what do most golfers say do you think when they miss a putt? I suck. Right? I'm terrible. Effing dummy. That's what you say when you miss a putt. And what you're doing is reinforcing the fact that you're more likely to miss another one. But when you separate yourself from your behavior and realize that's not who you are, it was a behavior. It was a motor movement. It was a word you said. It was a moment of weakness. It's not who you are. So what I teach my golfers to say when they miss it is, that's not like me.

9:31Gosh, that's not like me. The greatest athletes in the world, when they make a mistake, they correct it. But that's not like me. Because if you believe that's like you, you will act in accordance with who you believe you are. and we don't want to act in accordance if we believe we can't putt or I suck. So separate from the outcome who you are. That's not like me. If I have a bad speech, that's not like me. Huh, let's get back to me. What is more me? And then I step into the positive me, the higher vibrational frequency me, the true me. And so in any event, I want to remind you to stop beating yourself up and to begin to become your own biggest fan, your own biggest cheerleader, your own biggest support.

10:10Heck, if you could just get to neutral for most of us, that's an upgrade. It's not like you to have a bad sales call. It's not like you to miss a speech. It's not like you to respond in anger. It's not like you to make a mistake with your kids. It's not like you to forget to call a friend back. That's not like you.

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11:51And so and by the way, my wife has proven this now for 30 years, just about every single fight we've ever had, she ends up winning, even when she's wrong, because she's more certain she's right than I am that I'm right. And the most certain person always influences the less certain person. Why is that so important? Because when we're in a sales environment or we're coaching somebody or anything we're doing, speaking from stage, interacting with anybody about trying to make a point, talking about our faith, our politics, whatever it is, the more certain person always has influence over the less one.

12:25So the less certain person. But what we spend most of our time doing is refining the PowerPoint, refining the presentation, the words we're going to say, exactly how we're going to frame things, what it's going to look like. And we don't spend all of the time we need to on increasing our own true certainty level. Now, by the way, you can't transfer to somebody that which you truly aren't experiencing. It's not authentic. So you have to actually be certain. And I don't think enough people work on certainty of themselves and their product or service, both. There's two things that need to come across in an exchange with somebody one is certainty about self That's the hard one.

12:59That's the one that takes some digging And that's why I always say link your certainty or your confidence to your intentions Not just your abilities because you're in you know about your intentions You know that's to be true when you connect with your intent You can come across much more certain i'm certain. I want to help i'm certain. I want to serve And that increases your certainty level But the other thing not enough people do is increase their certainty about their product or service. They don't do enough third-party reading. I am constantly reading, I mean all the time, articles that validate the different companies that I own and their products and services or our ideas or our concept or validating that the market's getting bigger or there's a need for us or that we're unique and different.

13:40And I like to validate it with third-party stuff where that's a book, an article, something online, a story I see. And I'm always feeding my certainty. One of the things I've realized about myself over the last, you know, I don't know, 10 or 15 years is this is sort of one of my superpowers. When people ask you why you're successful, sometimes it's very difficult for successful people to answer that question if they're successful in an area. And by the way, I'm unsuccessful in many areas and successful in some. But the ones that I am, oftentimes even on my show when I ask people, they don't know why because they begin to do things habitually and reflexively.

14:13it's become part of their pattern so they they're almost oblivious to the fact that they do it like any other pattern and one of my patterns and habits for a very long time is to just be ferocious with working on my certainty level about myself about my product and service and i do it over and over and i'll share it with people that i work with see look at see so and so said look at this thing here look how much the competitors are doing it wrong look and i'm constantly increasing certainty because as you increase certainty, you increase the propensity to perform. And that's why it's so important, as I discussed, to not beat yourself up.

14:47People who beat themselves up, here's what they lack, certainty. They lack certainty. They've not worked preemptively, proactively on their certainty level about themselves or their product or service. And so this isn't something you can do during a presentation or during an exchange with a friend. It's done before. It's preemptive. It's preparation. Preparation is not just the words or the thoughts or the concept. Preparation is the belief. You transfer belief to people. The more certain person influences the less certain person. And so if that's really true, then we have to work on that more than any other element of our being in terms of persuasion with people is certainty.

15:31And you have to actually believe it. So this week, I want to challenge you. What are you doing externally, outside your business, outside your normal routine to increase your certainty about yourself or your product service or company? And it's got to be a habit. It's got to be daily, in my opinion. At a minimum, weekly, you're reading things. You're sharing things. You're feeding it, feeding it. It's like this, I was going to say monster or beast, but it's really not. It's like this beautiful spirit you're feeding that you can transfer. So, you know, sometimes it's a monster or a beast where you're like, man, we got it.

16:07You know, you got that. But other times it's this beautiful spirit of just confidence. I was watching politically, I don't care where you lie politically, but two of the people that I really studied a lot of are Kennedy and Reagan. Ironically, one from the left and one from the right. But I've studied these two as leaders. And one of the things that both of them uniquely had in common was this really sly smirk under pressure. Literally, they were both known like when the pressure increased, they didn't scowl more. They smirked and smiled more. And it was like this reflexive, habitual thing that both of them did.

16:45Isn't that interesting? Yet very different people, but at different ages when they were president, by a mile. different parties, different philosophies in some cases, yet under pressure, their staff and team and family both commented individually about both of them. They would smirk. You go back and look at Reagan and debates. You can go back and look at Kennedy and debates, videos under pressure, big speeches they made. They had this thing. And the reason that the people around them said that as the pressure increased, their certainty level about their decision-making increased under pressure, that they felt more and more certain about the decisions that they were making.

17:26It's really, really fascinating study of leadership and of human beings that actually most people cower under pressure and shrink. These two leaders knew to increase their certainty level under pressure, and they had done that work preemptively so that when the pressure hit, when the moment hit, they were the best them decisively in those moments, processing information in those moments, persuading their team and staff, persuading other world leaders. I mean, imagine the amount of persuasion that has to happen. And so it requires a gigantic level of certainty. And so no matter what you believe politically, most people think that both of those guys were pretty darn good presidents, depending upon if they believe in the left or the right, depending on their party.

18:08The point is, under pressure, they got lighter, not heavier. And that's because they had worked on their certainty level.

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18:45So I want you to change this. You know, ships don't sink because the water around them. Ships sink because of the water that gets in them. It's not what's going on around you. It's what's going on within you. There's an enemy within you and it's you. You have to remember this. You are not your thoughts. Your thoughts don't come from you. There's nothing wrong with having high standards. In fact, I recommend it. Having high standards for yourself is completely different than being hard on yourself. And because I talk about having high standards all the time, I think people conflate these two things and think, well, if I don't live up to my standards, then I have to beat myself up as if if I beat myself up somehow, that's how I'm going to change.

19:25And where's this really stemmed from in our lives? This enemy within. This enemy within comes from this notion that when we were little kids, when we did something bad, we got punished. And somehow over time, we've decided I'm going to punish myself. And somehow that's going to get me to reach my standards. Nothing could be further from the truth. And so you have to stop doing this. The ship is sinking because you're letting the water within you drown you literally in your thoughts. Remember this, self-talk leads to self-thoughts. And by the way, vice versa, negative self-thoughts lead to negative self-talk.

20:01And human beings, you and I, are designed to live consistently with the story we tell ourselves about us. And so if you're telling yourself this story, you're going to live congruent with it. You're going to find more situations that are negative, more situations to let yourself down, more situations to beat yourself up. You're going to get more and more of what you keep saying and thinking about yourself because that's how the mind works. That's how life works. Thoughts are like magnets. We literally draw to ourselves exactly what we're thinking about. So if you're thinking something negative about yourself, and I know many of you think, no, I know a lot of successful people that are very hard on themselves.

20:39it's different. They're hard on the behavior, not on themselves. So when you watch a great athlete and they miss a bunch of shots, they're thinking, that's not like me. That is not like me. They're not thinking I suck at shooting. And so there's this fine line between living up to our standards and talking to ourselves as if we're our own worst enemy. And what's really sad about that is that you're going to get to the end of your life and you're going to live with no peace because you've had to live with you, your own enemy. Can you imagine the person closest to you, the one person in your life who's gonna spend every second of your life is one of your great antagonists?

21:17Or you may say, well, Ed, I'm not really antagonistic on myself or to myself. Let me ask you this. Are you your own biggest fan? Are you praising yourself regularly? Lifting yourself up regularly? Rooting for yourself regularly? Believing in yourself regularly? So maybe it's not, for some of you, And for a lot of us, it literally is we're our own worst enemy, biggest enemy, right? And some of you listeners go, well, that doesn't really apply to me. Well, let me ask you this. Do you talk to yourself like Jesus would or like your version of God would? Do you talk to yourself like you would hope someone would speak to your children if you have children?

21:53Do you talk to yourself like your best friend is you? Do you? Are you your own biggest fan, your own biggest supporter, your own biggest cheerleader? the person who believes in you on earth the most is you. I'm talking about on earth is you. If you're a person of faith, do you truly believe that you were made in the image and likeness of God? Do you really believe that he's holding you in the palm of his hand? And so you can't love yourself conditionally. Well, I'll love myself when the conditions are right. I'll believe in myself once I'm winning. See, we have to have unconditional love for ourselves, which means the conditions don't dictate how much I love me or how much I believe in me.

22:36Now, I'm not saying self-love is never to be honest with yourself where you're not living up to a standard that you have. That's different than thinking you are your behaviors. There's a fine line. I could tell you that I know, you know, people that perform at a pretty high level. And although they are hard on the behavior, they're not hard on themselves, meaning they don't begin to believe that they are the way they're performing. They actually believe the inverse of that. They believe they're better than they're performing. And so this internal belief causes them to be frustrated with the result, yes, or want to work harder and change it or be honest with themselves about what needs to change.

23:14But there's a difference between not thinking you're good enough and then proving it and thinking you're better than what you're doing and wanting to live up to it. And so what most of us do is we love ourselves conditionally, which means we get very little of it because we have to be doing great in order to feel loved. We have to be doing great in order to believe in ourselves. So this becomes this tale that we end up chasing all of our lives. And so we begin to think it's the water around my boat. It's the haters. It's the circumstances. It's the market. It's my lack of opportunity. It's whatever it is.