The Most Underrated Way To Change Your Life | Ed Mylett

37:05You are not what you look like. And guess what else you're not? You are not your patterns, but your life becomes a combination and a result of your patterns. The great thing about us is that we can change these patterns if we identify them. The pattern has no power over you once you know it's a program and a pattern running. The minute you start you go, I'm doing it again aren't I? I'm doing this thing I do every time I accumulate money. I'm doing the same thing every time me and my spouse get in a disagreement. I'm doing the same thing every time I'm starting to feel loved by somebody and I push them away.

37:39Every time things start to go bad financially I spiral. Every time there's adversity I do the same pattern where I start worrying. every time I get fit I do the same pattern when you begin to see these things you begin to go my gosh this isn't who I am that's not your identity there's a difference between your identity and your pattern and the more you begin to build your identity as I've talked about my other audios and be aware of patterns and then simply ask yourself when this comes up again in the future what pattern would serve me what pattern can I take control of what would be the steps I need to take that will create the bliss I want or the win I want or the production I want?

38:20What would the pattern need to be? The pattern immediately, by the way, stops when you identify it. The pattern only hurts you when it runs unconsciously. The pattern loses all its power over you. Once you see it, it's gone. It can't continue to run once you're aware of it because all of a sudden you're like, I know what I'm doing, here I go, and you can begin to identify it and make a shift. So this is so critical. Start to ask yourself, am I running one of these patterns? What are some of the ones I typically do that serve me, and what are the ones that don't serve me? And what we do in our life is we compare too much.

38:56And so remember this, you're working on your identity, okay? Everybody wears what I would call like a mask, a public mask, or even a social mask. It's the person they present themselves to be. You do it too. I do it as well. It's the person everybody thinks we are. And so it's the person we reveal to the public. It's not whom we really are. It's not our real thoughts, our real behaviors, our real hope. Everybody wears this public mask or this social mask, I call it, where they're, it's who they want everybody to think they are. It's the best put version of themselves. And if you're not careful, you begin to compare your own real identity with other people's public mask.

39:34And this begins to create a pattern for you. Don't compare yourself. Most of the people you see on social media or even in your personal life, or even when you go to lunch with them or see them at work, they're wearing what I would call a public mask. It's the best possible version that they can put out to themselves. And oftentimes what we do in life is we compare our real identity that we're working on and we're growing to their mask. And that's not fair to ourselves at all. Any comparison doesn't serve us. And it's oftentimes this comparison, when you're in a disagreement with somebody. It's the mask they're wearing compared to the identity you have.

40:06And then you begin to run a pattern to respond to it. It happens in fitness, in relationships, in money, and in business. Remember, you're in charge of controlling your own identity and growing your own identity and being aware of the patterns you have that do and do not serve you. Not comparing yourself to someone else's public representative. It's just the representative they're putting out there. It's not who they really are. And it's not something that you need to be aware of because it's not something you can control. The more you can begin to delineate in life between things I can control and I cannot control would be to the extent that you're more productive and you're happier.

40:42You can control your own thoughts, your own emotions, your own identity, and your own patterns, not other people's. So speaking of these payoffs we talked about earlier, how can you begin to get the payoff you want from the new empowering pattern? And so a couple questions I want you to ask yourself today because we do want more bliss since that's my word. I'm assuming you want more bliss after you've heard all the synonyms and I know you want the antithesis to misery So assuming you want more bliss in your life decide to have it and take some actions towards getting it So let me ask you a question.

41:13What are you doing currently to create more bliss in your life? What are the actions you're taking to give yourself more bliss? You are intentionally seeking more bliss because bliss is going to lead to more wealth more abundance more fitness more faith better relationships, more happiness, more peace, more wins, more success, more recognition, more significance. So what are you consciously doing now that you've chosen bliss? What is the consistent action you're taking to create more in your life? What are you doing to give yourself bliss? Is it acknowledging victories you have? Is it giving gifts to other people of your belief and your hope?

41:52Is it lifting other people up? Is it taking a bath, getting a massage, taking a walk, going for a workout, winning, achieving, knocking goals off your list? What are the things you're doing to create bliss in your own life, number one? Number two question I have for you, what are you doing to intentionally create bliss in the lives of the people that you care about? Because this is the pathway to getting more of it ourselves. The more we begin to give other people bliss, the more we begin to consciously make choices that give bliss to other people in their lives, the more we begin to experience in abundance ourselves.

42:26So what are you doing to help other people win? Other people contribute, other people get significance and recognition. Other people have more peace and ecstasy and joy and passion in their lives. Because once you begin to create it for other people, when you're intentional about it, you'll have more of it yourself. These are the patterns that I'd like to see kick in for you. That when they kick in, you begin to run a pattern and a program that leads you to bliss, leads you to a win, leads you to increase, and also leads to it with someone in your life. That if you do have a conflict with somebody, that you run a pattern that eventually leads.

43:00Maybe it's understanding them. Maybe it's confronting them. Maybe it's talking about it. It's not always when you're in a disagreement that you lead to a win, that you must win this, that you must overcome the fact that they think this of you. What if you were consciously choosing every time you got into a disagreement with your spouse? This will eventually lead to more bliss. At least that was your outcome. Now the steps you take, it's probably going to be ugly in the beginning. You're probably going to have to some understanding. You may not even agree on everything, but if your intention is that it leads to bliss rather than you winning, rather than you controlling them, rather than you making it go away, rather than you running a pattern.

43:35If when you're beginning to succeed in business, if your outcome is more bliss, more winning, you'll run a pattern that does more of that. If in your fitness, you're getting fit past where you've ever been before, and you're making a conscious decision, how can I get more bliss out of my fitness rather than running this other pattern of sabotage? See, the circumstances may be the same. There may be some ugly patches, but you're now consciously choosing to run a program and a pattern that leads you to bliss, to victory, to the win, to fulfillment, whatever the emotion is you choose. Just making that choice gets you there, gets you closer to it, makes it an outcome.

44:13We are not as human beings doing enough conscious choosing of what we want in our lives. So what are you doing to create bliss in your own life? What are you doing to create bliss in other people's lives? And how blissful are you to be around? Just ask yourself that too. How blissful am I to be around? How joyful am I to be around? How much are people winning when they're around me? Whatever the emotion is you choose, how much of that do people experience when they're around me? People are great now because there's all this stuff in personal development about choosing to win, choosing your outcome, choosing your schedule, choosing your habits.

44:47I'm the master of teaching this. Go back through my content. Nobody puts out more specific content in teaching people the tools of how to choose the right habits, the right rituals, the right thinking, programming your brain. I do that at a level far beyond anybody out there. I'm not one of these influencers or just repeats, you know, mindless memes all the time, or I don't repeat the same sayings over and over again. I don't just tell you very basic things you could read in any book or go to any seminar. I go very deep, very tactical, very strategic. But having said all of that, no one's talking about choosing the intentional emotion we want, which is why we do all this stuff in the first place.

45:27So that when the stimulus happens, the win or the loss, the adversity or the success, the disagreement or the tragedy. Consciously choosing in that moment to chase bliss anyway, that it may be a while till I get to it, but this pattern I'm going to run, the choices I will make, the decisions I choose, even though there may be some bumps between there, the end result is going to be more bliss. Choosing that emotion as your outcome. And remember, not choosing it is a choice. You've chosen to let an unconscious pattern run, and you know where that's gotten you. It's gotten to where you are right now listening to this.

46:06Whatever it is, good, bad, or indifferent in your life, your current level of happiness, of joy, of success, of fulfillment is exactly what you think you deserve. It's exactly what you think you're worth. It's a hard thing to accept, but in our lives, we are getting out of our life right now exactly what we believe we're worthy of, exactly what we think we deserve. Our life is a direct reflection of our identity, which is the thoughts, concepts, beliefs, values, and worth we hold true to be about ourselves. And so as hard as it is to accept, we're getting out of life right now what we believe we're worth.

46:42And we believe we're worth it because of these patterns and our identity and our lack of choosing to have what we want, not just the material things, not just the body fat, not just the body weight, not just the amount of money, not just having the relationship, but choosing the emotion we want. The level above all this stuff I discuss and the level way down here where the people just cover the basic stuff, then there's what I've been covering. The highest level is to choose the emotions we want to experience and to begin to run patterns that serve us and eliminate the ones who move us further from them.

47:15The final thing I want you to ask yourself today is we're talking a lot about these choices. I want you to evaluate for a second what these patterns are you're running. And when they begin to rear their head, just identify them and begin to make decisions and choices that create a new pattern. It's as simple as it is. It's not that complicated. You've fallen into these patterns because there's a payoff. And so as long as you begin to identify it when it's happening and you begin to create a new pattern that leads you to the choice you've chosen, which is the emotion you want. See, because these patterns you run that don't get you there, the minute you choose the emotion you want, you're conscious about it and intentional, you can't run this pattern once you identify it.

47:53And the power of choice is critical in our lives. I want you to think about something right now. What are five of the most important choices you've made in your life? Just think about that for a second. Begin to list them off in your head. Five of the most important choices you've made in your life. Maybe it was a decision to get involved in a particular business or to leave a particular business. Maybe it was a decision to get involved with a particular person or to become uninvolved with a particular person. Maybe it was a friend that you chose to walk across the room and meet and it changed your life.

48:28Maybe it was a friend that you had to walk away from in order to improve your life. What are the five most important choices of your life? Just think about them for a second. And if you altered those five choices, good, bad, or indifferent, how different would your life be today because I'm a believer that there's everyday choices we make that when you stack them up, they make a massive difference in our life. But I'm also a believer that there are between five and 10, a handful of moments in everybody's life, that if we make the proper choices in those moments, the complete trajectory of our life changes.

49:05And I think as you just asked yourself that question, you may say there haven't been five, there's been two. What were they and how they alter the direction of your life good bad or indifferent a lady that picked me up a few weeks ago an uber driver wonderful woman and but she was an older lady and i it was late at night when she picked me up and i um i asked her why she was doing what she was doing it wasn't that she was driving for uber because that's a choice and i have friends that do it that love it it's extra money they've done it in retirement but i just had a sense that maybe she hadn't chosen it because she was complaining about her back and that she had had back surgery.

49:41I thought, that's an interesting choice to be driving at 11 o 'clock at night and her back was sore. And she shared with me that she had chosen to leave a spouse earlier in her life that she wished she'd have stayed with and that it was a choice that altered the whole direction of her life. And I said, well, how did it alter the direction of your life? And she says, well, my ex, I moved away from my ex and my son wasn't around his father very much. And she said, I had no idea how that choice would impact him. But she said, the reason that I'm driving here and I moved is I lost my home. And I lost my home because my 18-year-old son one night chose to have a couple drinks.

50:21And he had had three drinks at our house. And I was at work. And my son chose to take the car out of the driveway. And he chose to drive. And two blocks from our house, he hit a family and killed somebody. while drinking and driving. My son was a good boy. He had always got good grades, and he made the choice to do that that night, and he's in prison. He's serving eight years in prison. And I lost my home over the legal expenses, and we've moved to Las Vegas, and now I drive an Uber because that's what I've got to do just to support my family. And it made me think, you know, she said the choice to leave my husband really affected my son.

51:00And I thought, yeah, the choice your son made really affected his life. Those were two life choices that both of them made that altered the direction of both of their lives. His choice, that good boy made one choice that altered the direction of his life. And I think if you evaluate, there may not be something that dramatic, but there's been probably five choices if you're my age, if you're in your 40s. There's probably been five major choices of your life. Maybe it's who you decided to marry or not marry, a relationship you got in or out of, a business you started or didn't start, something you left or began, a friend, a house you bought or didn't buy, an investment you did or didn't make, you know, a decision you made in your fitness one way or the other.

51:39Maybe it's stopping using alcohol or using too much alcohol the first time you tried a drug that you're now addicted to. I don't know what those choices are, but those handful of choices alter the direction of your life. And I want you to begin to become conscious of choosing the emotions you want because they will alter the choices you make every single day in the small choices, they will also alter the decisions you make on the five big ones in your life. If you're very clear about the emotions you want to experience, if you're very clear on the person you are as you build your identity, if you have those two things wired, I'm clear about the emotions I want to experience and I'm clear about who I am and my identity and my worth and what I'm worthy of and what I deserve, they will guide you in making the right choices in the small ones and the big ones.

52:27They will guide you towards the right patterns. The answer to changing these patterns, the answer to making the right choices is perfect and specific clarity on the emotions we want to have in our life on a regular basis and on who we are and our identity so that we produce the lives we believe we deserve, that we're worthy of. They will be your compass in making the small and big choices. They will help guide the patterns. If you're somebody who's addicted to being blissful and happy, and you begin to run a pattern and program that you know doesn't lead you there, it sort of blows it up. It's like a virus in the program.

53:05You'll be aware and you can't run it. You begin to choose to create new patterns. If you've got an identity of somebody who's worthy of great relationships and abundance and success and peace and fitness and health and all of the great things, if that's your identity, you won't be able to run patterns that lead you in this place on a regular basis. There is something called cognitive dissonance, which is when we begin to behave in a way that's not consistent with our thoughts. And the antidote to that is both of these things combined. It's the ability to begin to choose consciously the emotions we want combined with our identity.

53:41When you're conscious of choosing the emotions you want to experience, and you're completely conscious of choosing who you are and what you're worthy of deserving, you have to act in congruence with both of those combined. One missing from the other can cause us to make poor choices. Both of them missing is a choice not to choose and will lead us into pain and mediocrity, worry, fear, and all the emotions we don't want. Having one of them in place will guide you to a decent destination. But when you have both combined, the identity and the choosing, the conscious intentions for the emotions you want, you begin to have great choices being made in your life on a very regular basis.

54:20Not every day, not every time, not every moment, but enough of the time where you make progress towards your dreams, progress towards the man or woman you're capable of becoming. And when you have the combination of these two things, these patterns begin to change. We begin to replace them. So I'd ask yourself today, what are the patterns you're running that don't serve you? Begin to be aware of those patterns. Know who your real identity is. Get conscious of choosing bliss over blank. See those patterns when they're happening. Interrupt them. Continue to work on your identity. These two things combined, I think, are the critical components to making the decisions and the choices in our life.

54:58That when we look back, I don't want you to end up in your 80s or 90s and regret the choices you made. I want you to go back. I put it through what I call the rocking chair test. That someday for all of you who I love so much, who I believe in so much, I want that rocking chair test for you, for you to pass it. And that is, I'm proud of the choices I made. My life wasn't perfect. I made some mistakes, but I chose the emotions I wanted. I worked on my identity. I created patterns that empowered me and the people around me. And you know what? By and large, I'm proud of the choices I made in my life.

55:31I'm proud of the man or woman I've become. That's how we know we've had a great life. I don't want you to be in that rocking chair someday and regret the choices you made. regret the patterns you ran and that you just unconsciously went through your life without choosing the direction of it, choosing the decisions, choosing the emotions, choosing to be the man or woman you're worthy of, choosing the life you deserve. The final piece of the puzzle today is what are the three to five choices you must make in order to create the life you want? Right now, what are the choices you must make? The big ones, the people that need to be in your life or out of your life, the patterns you will no longer run again.

56:10The choice perhaps to work on your identity like you never have before. Evaluate what the three to five decisions are you've made so far in your life that have taken you a certain direction or what are the three to five you need to make in order to change your life and take it in the direction you want. These patterns will lose their power over you. Your identity and your conscious choice will begin to take charge and I know you're going to have more happiness and produce more results and have a much better life and that's what I wish for you. So I have a funny feeling that today impacted you on a deep level because we all have these patterns we need to look at.

56:41We all need to consciously choose the emotions we want. And I have a feeling that it made a difference in your life. If I'm right about it, please share the program. It's free.

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57:58See, here's the thing. If you're feeling helpless, one of the antidotes to feeling helpless is to get more helpful. And one of the ways you can be most helpful is to raise your own identity. Our identity is the core part of our lives. We're not gonna outperform our identity. Our identity, best said, is it's the thoughts, concepts, and beliefs we hold to be the most true about ourselves. It's really the invisible force in all of our lives that holds us back or can accelerate our success, our bliss, our achievements to whole new levels. If you look at identity, if you think about it, it's almost like it's a life thermostat.

58:31See, in this room right now, there's a thermostat sitting on that wall right now. And if it's set at 75 degrees, this room is going to be regulated to 75 degrees. No matter what the external conditions are, it could be 100 degrees outside. The external factors do not impact the internal thermostat in this room. It's 75 degrees. Consequently, also, if it was 40 degrees outside, the heater will come on. It'll heat this room to 75 degrees. That's how your identity works. It's the internal thermostat of your life. And that's why very often, let's say that, you know, relationships or financially, you're a 75 degree-er.

59:04And if you ever notice in your life, as you start to heat life up a little bit, starts to go pretty well. Maybe your relationship's blissful and loving and incredible, or financially, you've increased your results. You're at 80, 85, 90, 100 degrees of success financially or in business. And then it just seems coincidental, but somehow, some way, the air conditioner kicks on in our lives. You know, a car breaks down, an event happens, we lose an account, something takes place. And all of a sudden we look up and boom, life's back at 75 degrees of relationship, of money, of business. That wasn't by coincidence.

59:36It is the regulator of your life is your identity. And so if you, you can do all the right things, all the activities, all of the thinking, all of the execution part. But if you don't increase what you believe you're worth, if you don't increase that identity, that thermostat of your life. You will find a way to cool your life back down to what you believe you deserve. And so one of the keys for me in my life is not just getting better at the mindset of life and the execution of business or strategy, but raising that identity so that I'm at 85, 90, 100, 120 degrees so that I believe I'm worthy of as my execution and my thinking reaches the same level, that thermostat setting, that life setting will change.

1:00:14It's not the external conditions of our life that dictate the terms. It's that identity. It's that thermostat setting. So we got to get more helpful if we feel helpless. And the way we do that is by increasing our own identity, that thermostat setting. That sounds great, doesn't it? So how do you do that? Well, I call it the holy trilogy of shifting one's identity. And that is faith, intention, and association. That's the three things you must work on in order to increase your thermostat setting. Number one, faith. For me, it's the center part of my life is that I have a God who loves me, that believes in me, that wants to see me successful, wants to see me prosper, wants to have favor in my life, wants me to feel comfort and peace.

1:00:54And so I find oftentimes it's interesting people of faith sometimes, God's in their life Sunday at church when they're worshiping or they're in Bible study or when they're eating a meal, they'll pray over it. But somehow when they walk into a business meeting, a speech, a boardroom, a client environment, they leave God at the door and they think they're on their own. So for me, if you're a person of faith and God is with you all the time and he loves you all the time and he comforts you all the time, that includes business. That includes every area of your life. It includes him wanting to bless you with a great relationship, bless you financially, bless you to the best of your abilities in business.

1:01:28And then whatever the other, if you're an athlete watching this, bless you in that at bat over that pot, catching that football, hitting that shot. And so number one source of shifting your thermostat setting is reconnecting again with your faith and allowing yourself to feel it inside all the other environments that exist. Then there's number two, there's your intentions. See, I don't think enough people give themselves credit for having great intention. There's a power to intention in our lives. And so what most of us think is, I'll feel better about myself or I'll be more confident when, when I get that job, when I get that relationship, when I get this amount of money, when I get that house, when I hit that home run, when I'm hitting a certain average, right?

1:02:06And so you're always chasing your tail. If your identity and your confidence is contingent upon producing a result that has not yet existed, it's pretty difficult to catch it, isn't it? If you have to have it to get it in the first place. Instead of saying, maybe I ought to get credit and I ought to be worthy of more because I intend to do well. As a young man in business, I started to figure out, you know, I may not have all the answers. I may not be the smartest, the best looking, the most articulate. My IQ isn't 250. But I intend to serve. I intend to make a difference. I make mistakes, but overall i'm a good person who wants to do good in the world and I should be favored because of that Not enough of you are giving yourself credit for your intentions You want to shift your identity overnight connect with your faith You want to double shift it connect with your intentions So when I go into a business meeting or I go into a lunch or i'm going into any type of encounter Even in my golf life when my sport I play I remind myself that i've got a god who loves me Who wants me to win who wants me to be blessed who wants me to be favored wants me to feel peace.

1:03:07Number two, I intend to do good. I'm a decent human being. And you know what? Good things ought to happen to good people. And then third is association. You are who you hang around. See, if you're at 85 degree or 75 degree or financially, but you start hanging around someone say like myself, who lives at 140, 150 degrees of finances and wealth and abundance, you will get heated up by proximity to somewhere in between the two of us and a lot closer to where I am than where you are. Same thing in relationships. If you want to have a great loving relationship in your life, but you're living at 75 degrees in your relationships, you start hanging around people who are in loving, beautiful relationships.

1:03:44Your thermostat setting will increase. Same within your faith life. If you want to start walking with more faith in your 75 degrees of faith, if you start hanging around people who walk their faith life at 100, 150 degrees, you'll be heated up through proximity. And so these are the three things we do in order to shift our lives. Our identity is the governor on our life. It is the most powerful force in the world. It's the invisible force that governs everything is that thermostat setting. And then if that's true, the way we shift it is always going to be our faith, our intentions, and our associations.

1:04:15And those associations are so huge. I know you've all heard you're, you know, you're the product of who you hang around the most often, but look at the last 90 days of your life. Okay. And ask yourself this question, other than say your spouse or children, who are the two or three, four people you've spent the most time with. Picture their faces in their lives right now. And then I want you to measure one thing. What's their emotional maturity like? See, what I find with all successful people is they have a degree of emotional maturity that other people are absent of. So I always measure what's their emotional maturity?

1:04:45How do they handle success? How do they handle failure? How do they handle their lives? Then ask yourself this, these three or four people you've been around, can you immediately name two or three things that they have in their life in an area that matters you let's say it's money let's just say it was money that they have that you don't have that you wish you did have or in relationships do you can you name two or three things in their relationships that they have that you wish you had or in business or in their physical body and if you can't immediately go yeah they got two three four things man i would love to have that in my life then i'm not so sure that that's the person you want to spend the most time with the reverse question is also hey can you name two or three things they have that you definitely don't want.

1:05:26When you look at their financial life, if finances are important to you, do they have two or three things going on in their life financially you definitely want no part of? Or in their relationship life, you know, if you want a better relationship, if you look at their relationship, there are two or three things like I wouldn't want that relationship. I don't like the way he or she treats them or they get treated. You can look at that or their physical body. You want to be in really great shape. You look at them. Do they have two or three things about their health or wellness that you don't think are really great?

1:05:50Well, that's an immediate sign. Maybe they're the wrong people. And so taking an evaluation of who your associations are, are they emotionally mature? Do they have the two or three things you would like to have in your life they have in theirs that you'd like to get heated up and get? Or do they have two or three things you want to avoid? These are signs that you should be away from them. So the way we get more helpful is we increase our identity and we increase our identity by working on our faith, our intention, and our associations. If you do those three things, I believe you're going to live happier.

1:06:18You're going to help other people become happier. You're going to make a contribution in people's lives that's deeper and more meaningful than you've ever made before. And by the way, lastly, that's what you were put here to do. You were put here. You were born to do something great with your life in small ways and big ways. You were made to do something awesome with your life. Maybe not all of it's going to get limelight or notoriety, but you were born to make a difference in the world. And the more you realize that, the more you step into your intention, the more you step into the person you're capable of becoming, the more you just decide, I'm raising that thermostat setting.

1:06:50I'm no longer this other character. I was playing at any point you and God are the authors of the life of your life You can grab the pen and start to write a new chapter and say I'm stepping into this new character Their identities higher. They're more faithful. They're focused on their intentions more often. They improve their associations and they help people Well, I hope i'm doing that for you Today, we're going to talk about how to build unlimited self-confidence And the reason i'm covering this topic today is probably more than any other topic I've been getting asked lately about the struggles people are going through with self-doubt Not believing in themselves negative thoughts about themselves And I believe the solution to self-doubt is to build something bigger than that doubt which is to build our self-confidence And one thing to know about the fact that you doubt yourself is one I struggle with it as well One of the reasons I've had to go learn to build all these tools for myself is because in my life My baseball career my academic career my business career my speaking career I've been riddled with self-doubt that creeps up all the time in our lives am I enough am I good enough Do I deserve this?

1:07:54Is this something that's part of my destiny? Should I be doing this? And if you're a religious person, I believe the adversary if you believe in the adversary I believe the adversary's greatest tool that he could use against you to get you to lose in your life is to get you Discouraged and doubting these are two of the most chaotic things that the adversary can do to us or that we do to ourselves in our own minds is to get ourselves doubting to get ourselves discouraged because you can't win when you doubt and you can't win when you're discouraged what I found out though about self-doubt is that you don't overcome it you build something bigger than it which means you build your self-confidence and the greater and greater self-confidence get it minimizes the impact self-doubt house on us now why is that so important it's important because you have to understand one thing about the doubts and the negative thoughts you have about yourself.

1:08:43As hard as this is to accept, these are not your thoughts. You weren't born doubting. You weren't born discouraged. You weren't born thinking negative things about yourself. Those were thoughts that were placed in you and given to you by an external source at some time in your life. It could even be our parents. Don't do that. Be quiet. Sit down. Be a good boy. Be a good girl. Maybe it was criticism you received as a little one that You may not even remember to this day. It could have been a school teacher. It could have been ridicule at school from other children But when you were young in your formative years these negative thoughts about yourself were planted in you by an external source That's so powerful to understand because these things you think you believe about yourself that have become really true to you You don't even really believe they were not your original thoughts But the power of belief is so incredible in our lives It's so insidious because when we have a belief about something, even if it was given to us by somebody else Our mind goes to work on proving to us that this belief is true A belief is almost like this table right here Just the top once we get it and what our mind tries to do is it tries to build legs under the table to reinforce that belief So if somebody told you you weren't enough or you weren't smart enough or pretty enough or fast enough or strong enough Or you don't come from the right place or you're not in the right culture the right race the right religion the right height, the right IQ as a young person, or you were put down and these beliefs were given to you, what happens is your mind tries to prove beliefs true.

1:10:15So it finds references. So once you think it, your mind finds an example of your life where you weren't enough. Another one where you weren't enough. You weren't smart enough. You weren't pretty enough. You weren't handsome enough. You weren't strong enough. And it finds these references and it builds like a leg and multiple legs on her table and pretty soon you can't move it and it's stuck in there as a firm belief that's why we have to guard our beliefs so preciously because our mind goes to work on finding these legs these references which are real experiences in our life to prove to us that that belief is true and so although you may believe it to be true about you these doubts and negative thoughts you have these were not your original thoughts that's a powerful thing to understand because you weren't born this way you weren't born doubting you were born perfect you were born believing you were going to do something great.

1:11:02You were born happy. You were born believing you were going to do something special with your life. As a baby, I promise you, you had no negative self-talk. You had no negative self-doubt. These are external sources. It's so important to know because those thoughts aren't really who you are. They're somebody else's thoughts they gave you because of how they felt about themselves. And so today we're going to talk about how to build self-confidence and how to eliminate self-doubt. So how do we build this self-confidence? The process of building self-confidence is actually very easy, believe it or not.

1:11:34Self-confidence is self-trust. Self-confidence is building a reputation with yourself that you keep your word to you, that you keep the promises you make to you. When I meet somebody who has a ton of self-confidence, I don't look at that as somebody with a big ego. There's a difference. Somebody with self-confidence has a reputation with themselves that I do the things I say I'm going to do. That's where self-confidence comes from. When I meet someone who's not self-confident, I know this is someone who has consistently made promises to themselves they've not kept. They've started a diet and done it for a while, but not kept it.

1:12:07They've made a commitment and goals to go make a certain amount of money in business, and they started down the road, but then they didn't deliver on it long-term to get up at a certain time of the morning, and then they don't do it. And so they have a process and a habit in their life, more often than not, of not keeping the promises they don't make to other people. They don't keep the promises they make to themselves. And so the cool thing is Self-confidence is an internal game. You do not need external accolades external admiration In order to build self-confidence, you don't need any of those external forces.

1:12:37It's all done internally You control this and you control this by beginning today to keep the promises you make to yourself And you have to stack the deck in your favor stack the game So you win it's not good enough just to keep the promises you make to yourself You must acknowledge it when you do it to you to give yourself credit to create confidence momentum is what I call it So whether that's setting the deck where you're gonna get up a little bit earlier You're gonna make a certain amount of phone calls you missus a certain amount of appointments You're gonna eat a certain amount of calories in your fitness You're gonna spend a certain amount of time with your children or your parents and you begin to do these things You say you're going to do you say simple things like I'm gonna lay out my clothes the night before I go to bed every night Before I go to sleep so when I wake up that decision's made for me and believe it or not The fact that you just do something that simple that you then deliver on begins to build confidence You say i'm going to stretch in the morning when I get up and you do it all of a sudden I'm, not going to check my phone for 30 minutes all these habits I teach when you just begin to do the things you tell yourself you're going to do You begin to build self-confidence, which is this reputation with yourself.

1:13:43So ask yourself a question right now What is one thing right now one promise I can make to myself that i'm going to begin to keep starting this minute And begin to do it. It could be how often i'm going to pick up a book and read it But you begin to stack things you commit to do and then you deliver on them and you acknowledge them to yourself You're in the process of building self-confidence. Why is that so important of all the athletes? I coach when my athletes are performing at their peak level They're at their highest self-confidence level In fact, I love when I watch some of the athletes I coach get interviewed and they kind of do this aw shucks, humble routine in their post-game interviews.

1:14:20Yeah, you know, just part of the team. You know, I got a lot. I could have done a lot better today. But inside, I know these people are incredibly self-confident people. Any of you athletes listening to this, you know this. The great athletes you know have incredible amounts of self-confidence. You have to believe in you when it's a battle, when you're a hitter against a pitcher. Or when you're a quarterback against a defense. Or you're a defenseman in the NHL against their best offensive player. or you're a golfer and you have to make a nine-foot putt to win a tournament, right? You better have self-confidence.

1:14:47In fact, the separator, more often than not at the highest level in sports, is not they're a better shooter or a better putter or throw the ball a little bit faster because everybody throws hard in the major leagues nowadays, it seems, right? That separators their self-confidence. It's true in being a parent. It's true in being a business person. It's true in every area of our life. The separator at the top levels is self-confidence. So now you have that first thing that you're going to commit to that you're going to deliver on now What I would ask you to do that now that you've done that is if you really want to build self-confidence Can you begin to extend that list of five eight and ten things that you are going to begin to do that you commit to you?

1:15:25That you're going to do every single day to begin to stack that self-confidence. That's gonna change it Now let's go back to the self-doubt for a second self-doubt is the inverse of that. I don't trust me I don't think I'm good enough. These are the thoughts placed from the outside inside your mind the minute you acknowledge that That's not my thought that someone else's that's not you begin to eliminate I call it like scratching the CD when I begin to have negative self-talk negative thoughts I literally picture and I'm old by the way But I picture an old record player or a DVD and I just scratch it I scratch it that thought gets scratched.

1:15:56I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good-looking enough I am I'm not fast enough strong enough. I'm not prepared enough. I once they enter That's not my thought that's something someone gave me when I was a kid and I scratch it and I literally say to myself scratch it scratch it, scratch it. And over time, it's like a, it's like a DVD or a CD or a record player over time. That thought can't be played again in your recorder when you scratch it enough times. So I literally picture scratching and I say, scratch it. I experienced self doubt. I experienced negative thoughts and I scratch them.

1:16:26I scratch them. I scratch them. And over time, it almost becomes funny. It's that thoughts impact on me starts to be minimized over time. Every time I scratch it. I picture scratching it like a DVD or a record or a CD. And I say it to myself, scratch it, scratch it, scratch it. And what it does is it acknowledges the thought. It loses its power over me. The first time it's still got some impact on me. The second time it might, but the fourth, fifth, seventh time, all of a sudden that thought just doesn't have the impact on me anymore because I acknowledge it's not mine. I've scratched it. And over time, my mind just doesn't want to play that song anymore.

1:17:03It doesn't want to play that movie anymore. And so that's how I begin to eliminate those thoughts in my mind. I build up my self-confidence and I scratch my self-doubt There's also this misconception from people that you are certain things Meaning some people have this misconception that I am what I possess In other words, I am my possessions and so they link their self-confidence to their possessions And so they're constantly trying to acquire more and more possessions thinking that's where they get their self-confidence from That's how they're defined as a person. I am my possessions. Couldn't be further from the truth.

1:17:40It's a hollow way to try to gain self-confidence by possessing things. Nothing wrong with going for material possessions. I have all kinds of them. But I don't link my confidence to those possessions, nor am I deluded into thinking if I could just possess more things, then I'll feel better about myself. So this is a mistake. There's a flawed thought. Number one flawed thought, I am my possessions. Second flawed thought I am my accomplishments in other words my self-confidence is only linked to what I accomplish So because I haven't accomplished certain things I don't have that certain title that certain award that certain recognition.

1:18:15I don't believe in myself. I'm riddled with self-doubt I'm defined by my accomplishments. The difficult thing about that is now all your life You're gonna have to accomplish more and more and more in order to feel self-confident eliminate self-doubt You are not your accomplishments. You are not your possessions. You are you. You are perfect. You are beautiful. You were born to do something great with your life. If you're a person of faith like me, you believe God made you in his image and likeness and wants you to do something great with your life, not that you are your possessions, not that you are your accomplishments.

1:18:48And this is the social media insidious influence it has in our lives. People are like, I don't feel good about myself. I've got this self-doubt. The gateway to me feeling more self-confidence is if I could possess more things or if I could accomplish more things. Yes, having nice things will make you feel better about yourself. Yes, accomplishing things certainly is a reinforcement for self-confidence, but it's not the pathway to getting it. The pathway to getting it is doing something great with your life where you keep the promises you make to yourself and acknowledge this self-doubt, this self-thought, this negative talk isn't even mine.

1:19:22It was given to me when it was impossible for me to defend myself as a child. And maybe it even happened in adolescence and probably some of those instances have happened for you as an adult. and these ones as an adult are like that thing I said earlier. Oh, it's another time I reinforced the table. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not prepared enough. I'm not the right race. I'm not the right gender. I don't come from the right kind of family. I don't have the right education. And we find these references as adults to reinforce these self-doubting beliefs we were given by somebody else as a child.

1:19:54Flawed belief is that you are your possessions. You are your accomplishments. Third flawed belief. I am what other people say I am. Wrong. You are not what other people say you are, good or bad. I see too many people that if someone says something negative about them, they believe that's who they are. This is the flawed third belief. I am my possessions. I am my accomplishments. And you know what? Or I am what other people say I am. Let me be clear with you. You are not what other people tell you you are. It wasn't true when you are 18 months old, five years old, or 55 years old, you are not what other people say you are.

1:20:31So stop letting that dictate your self-confidence or fill you with self-doubt. And for the record, you are also not the good things people tell you you are all the time. Don't live for likes. Don't live for comments on your social media. Don't do things in your life just to solicit someone saying something great about you. It's a cheap, shallow, hollow way to try to gain self-esteem and self-confidence. It's fleeting, it's short-term, and it's needy. In fact, the fact that it is a necessity for you to get liked, to get people to say good things, to get comments on your social media, or to do so in your presence, indicates a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, because we know self-confidence is an internal game where we keep the promises we make to ourselves.

1:21:21The fourth type of flawed thinking is I am what I look like. In other words, if I don't look a certain way, like what the magazine says I should, or social media says I should, if I don't look like these people, I shouldn't have self-confidence. And that's ridiculous. I can tell you straightforwardly, you're beautiful as you are, especially the ladies listening to this or watching this. The world is constantly trying to get you to believe you're not enough. You don't look right. You should lose this weight. You should gain this. This should be smaller. That should be bigger, whatever it might be.

1:21:52They're constantly messaging women. You're not enough. You're not enough. You're not enough. You are what you look like. And this is true for men as well. Let me tell you straightforwardly. You are not what you look like. You are your soul. You are your spirit. You are your gifts. You are the contributions you make. You are your intentions. You are perfect as you are. That doesn't mean we don't want to look better. Doesn't mean we don't want to get into shape. But we want to do that to feel better about ourselves, not for the accolades from other people. We want to do that to feel healthier and stronger and be the ultimate version of ourselves.

1:22:22But by no means does that mean you're not perfect as you are. By no means does it mean you are defined by what you look like. You are not defined by what you look like. You are defined by the content of your character, the way you treat other people, and the difference you make in the world. So the four flawed thoughts that I see most right now is, I am my possessions. No, you're not. I am my accomplishments. No, you're not. I am what other people tell me I am and say I am good or bad. No, you are not. And fourth, you are not what you look like. These are flawed beliefs that lead right to self-doubt and away from self-confidence.

1:22:57So the things we need to do to change our self-confidence is A, keep the promises we make to ourself and B, very important, we must begin to give ourselves credit for those things when we deliver on them. I want you to remember this as well. There's a power to the way we use the two B's, our brain and our body. See, self-confidence can also be a state, a physical state. It's very difficult when you're moving your body, sitting up straight, breathing deeply, right? You're in that physical strong state of being, right? Right after a workout, during a workout is when we feel our most confident because our body's at a peak state.

1:23:29One way to generate self-confidence is to move your body into a strong state of being. Move your body. Literally movement creates confidence. If you think about some of the peak times of your life, whether that be the fun time you may be having with your partner physically, intimately, or laughter, or peak performance running, right? Or your great accomplishments. Yes, there's a commonality to the way our body is moving at that time. If you think about the times when you're the least confident, it's usually when you wake up in the morning, isn't it? It's the most down, the most fearful, the most anxiety, or before you go to bed at night.

1:24:03These are two times most people experience the most amount of self-doubt is right before bed and right when they wake up. Isn't that interesting? One of the reasons is because of how we're moving. We're laying down. We're hunched over. Our breathing is shallow. There's no physical movement whatsoever. This creates a state of self-doubt right before we sleep, right when we wake up. Or if you're just kind of depressed or sick, self-doubt starts to kick in, doesn't it? Right? If you ever had an injury and you couldn't move like you'd like to, that stagnation of the body begins to create self-doubt and strips us of our self-confidence.

1:24:36So moving our body is a gateway to self-confidence. And then our brain as well. We have to take control of our thoughts. We have to scratch the negative ones when they come in and replace them with great ones. Now, I don't believe self-talk works all the time, but I believe saying I am strong. I am good. I intend. I'm a good man. My intentions are pure. I'm a good person. I make a difference in the world. I'm kind. I'm gentle. I'm generous. I'm strong. I'm faithful. Beginning to repeat these thoughts to myself and these words do generate self-confidence. I keep the promises I make to myself. I'm a man of my word.

1:25:11Begin to talk to yourself and think these thoughts. When you combine your brain and your body, you scratch the self-doubt. You lose those four stupid beliefs. I am my accomplishments. I am my possessions. I am what other people say I am or I am what I look like. These are completely flawed beliefs. We scratch those. We scratch them. We understand the process of stacking self-confidence in our life. We know we are the content of our character. And lastly, give yourself some credit. Will you please? And I'm going to tell you where to give yourself credit. And that is in the area of your intentions.

1:25:44A lot of my confidence comes from the fact that I keep the promises I make to myself. I know my self-doubt or thoughts that were given to me when I couldn't even defend myself as a young little boy. I know that I'm not my accomplishments. I know I'm not my possessions. I know I'm not what I look like. And I know I'm not what other people say I am. I understand the process of building self-confidence. I scratch the negative thoughts in my life. But I can tell you this, the last place I get my confidence from is my faith and my intentions. See, I know I intend to do good. Not enough of you are giving yourself credit for your inherent goodness.

1:26:20And I mean this. You're special in that regard. You're perfect in that regard. Just ask yourself. What are your intentions? As an individual as a man or a woman, do you intend to do good in the world? Do you intend to want to help people? Do you intend to be a light in people's lives? Do you intend to make a difference? Do you want to live a good life where you've helped change the world and change other people's lives? Do you ever just ask yourself that? Do you because if the answer that is you know I don't spend enough time thinking about how good my intentions are. I don't want to hurt people.

1:26:54I don't want to do bad things. I don't want to take advantage of others. I really intend to do good. You know what? You need to give yourself more credit for the power of your intentions. There's a power in life of giving ourself credit just for the intentions we have. Just ask yourself that. There's two types of people in life. there's the people who intend to do harm to take advantage of people to cheat to cut corners to cause hurt to others for what they think will be their own game then there's people who want to be a light they want to make a difference they want to help they want to contribute they want to be somebody they want to honor their God they want to make a difference in the world and their intentions are good too often in life people with great intentions don't give themselves credit for how beautiful and wonderful those intentions are and so today just take this inventory of all the things that are wonderful about your intentions and then just take an inventory of your faith as a person of faith I know that I'm favored I know that God wants me to do good in the world I know that I was made as image and likeness there's a power to that there's a comfort to that there's a confidence that comes from that kind of a swagger see people aren't smirking at me anymore I'm smirking at them see I know I'm not what I look like I know I'm not my possessions I know I'm not my accomplishments I'm not what other people say I am I understand the keys of keeping the promises I make to myself I understand scratching those limiting beliefs I know I intend to do good I don't always do good I make mistakes all the time I'm not a deity I'm not a god I'm a man but I intend to do good and my guess is so do you start to give yourself a little credit just for your intentions know you're perfect as you are and then to begin to take these massive action steps the final piece of the puzzle is this is that you have to believe you deserve to win and sometimes it's not just that we think we're good but that we've done so much we must be worthy of winning see there's this adage in life good people in life won't take more from the table of life and they think they're worthy of and they deserve.

1:29:03See, in business sometimes, short term, we've all seen this, someone with bad intentions can get ahead short term. But you always reap what you sow. Karma is always a real thing. And eventually the people that take shortcuts, that cheat, that hurt other people, that have ill intent, the world, the universe, God sort of finds a way eventually to get them where they're supposed to be. But good people will never take more than they think their worth which is why the mandatory requirement for good people to win is they believe they deserve it they believe they're worth winning and sometimes it's not just who we are that we need to believe in but what we've done in this sense that sometimes you've got to outwork everybody and you've got to be willing to do the things nobody else is willing to do so you begin to convince yourself man I'm doing all the things everybody else is unwilling to do So I deserve to get the results other people aren't going to get I'm doing the things other people aren't willing to do I'm paying a price that's so much greater than other people That I'm worth it that I deserve to get results They don't deserve to get because I've been willing to do the things they've been unwilling to do So the last piece is often self-confidence can just frankly come from out working everybody and Convincing ourself man.

1:30:19I've been doing the things nobody else is willing to do I deserve to get the results nobody else deserves to get. And that's a shift in building self-confidence. Today's going to be just tremendous. This is somebody that I wanted to get to know for a long time and pick his brain. We've got a bunch of mutual friends. By the way, he's also an Academy Award winner, best actor. And so if you don't know who he is, you've been living under a rock for a long time. And today we'll unlift that rock and you'll get to know him a lot better than you probably ever have before. So Matthew McConaughey, welcome to the show, brother.

1:30:51Ed Milak. Good to be here with you, Ed. So I think one of the cool things about personal development and the journey of self-awareness and whatnot is figuring out your identity. And so in preparing for this, I'm like, some of the things you say I've not heard ever said this way in self-help, personal development, self-improvement. And you said finding your identity, I'd like you to elaborate on this, is more like a process of elimination than it is discovery. I've never heard that before. Well, we all want to figure out who we are. As Bob Dylan says, hey, everyone's their own creation. Just create it.

1:31:25We all want to know what that is. The affirmative. Way to go forward. How to play offense. But I found that. That's hard, man. That's hard. What's much easier? And I think the reasonable first step to figure out who we are is let's define who we're not. Let's pick out those people, places, things we do, habits we have that don't pay us back, that don't feed us tomorrow, that don't give us green lights in the future, those investments that don't have ROI, those ones that we keep waking up tomorrow and a little bit of a debit. Damn it, I got a hangover. I had the same amount of drinks at that bar as I have somewhere else, but I got a worse hangover.

1:32:07Well, maybe it was the conversation people were hanging out with. eliminate those. And by process of elimination, sheer mathematics, you'd end up with more room for the things that do feed you. So it's a much easier thing to start pointing out, ah, you know what? I keep doing that and it doesn't pay me back. I'm not getting my compounding asset on that decision or those people placing it. Eliminate those. And by sheer mathematics, we end up with more of what does feed us and pay us back who we are. Yeah. It's amazing you say that. I got interviewed yesterday. That's incredible. I got interview yesterday, guys, what are the steps to success?

1:32:39And I said to him, in my life, it's been more eliminating the things that were harming my progress. And it was like uncovering, this is the key. You know, it was more like that hurt me. This took my energy away. This depleted me. That didn't serve me. Exactly what you just said. This is the Ed Myron Show.