How to Change Your Personality and Be More Confident

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1:35Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And I am running a free workshop on March 25th called Identity Upgrade, and here's why you should be there. After 20 years of studying and teaching self-development, I've seen thousands of people try to change their life through habits and routines and actions. And all of that is great, but nothing will stick long term if you don't change your identity. Because your behavior always falls back to who you believe that you are.

2:06So in this workshop, I'm going to show you step by step how to upgrade your identity so you can finally change the course of your life. If you're ready to become the next version of yourself, go to 2026upgrade.com. Once again, 2026upgrade.com, and I'll see you there. Today, I'm gonna be talking about how to actually change your personality to become somebody who is more confident. Because let me ask you a question. What if the biggest lie that you've ever believed about yourself is who you actually think you are? Because most people think that their personality is permanent. Their personality is just who they are.

2:43So they say things like, you know, it's just I'm shy or I'm not confident or I'm not good with people or, you know, it's just who I am. But here's the truth. Your personality is not a prison. It is not set in stone. It is a pattern. And if it's a pattern, patterns can be changed. So today I'm going to walk you through five deep concepts that explain exactly how personality changes and how you can intentionally rewire yourself to become more confident and take the action that you need to. We're not going to be just go in surface level here. We're going to be talking about identity psychology, behavioral science, and neuroscience as well.

3:21And this episode is going to be a little bit deeper and kind of riding on the coattails of what we talked about last episode. So let's dive in. Number one, personality is far more flexible than we have ever thought before. You know, most of psychology's history, personality was believed to be something that was just stable. It's like, oh, she was born that way, he was born that way, and that's how they're always going to be. And so when you look at the dominant model of personality, there's basically five big personality traits. There's openness, there's conscientiousness, there's extroversion, there's agreeableness, and there's neuroticism.

4:00And the interesting thing about all of this that's kind of crazy is for decades, researchers just assumed that those five traits were actually fixed in every single person. And then there was a huge landmark study that changed all of that. In 2017, researchers from the University of Illinois conducted a study where participants intentionally tried to change those personality traits within themselves. So participants were basically coached to behave more extroverted, even if they were introverted, to act more conscientious, to practice emotionally stable behaviors. And after 16 weeks of being coached and working on themselves, there were measurable personality shifts in all five of those.

4:48Not just behavior, but the traits themselves actually change within the person. Which means that your personality is not just purely genetic, it's not just purely who you surrounded yourself with, it is your behaviors that have been reinforced over time. And so if you think about it this way, your personality is just basically the average of your repeated behaviors. That's it. So if you want to change your personality, what do you got to do? You got to change your behaviors. So if you start to change your behavior and you decide, you know what, I'm going to act more confident. Like if I'm not a confident person, how does a confident person act?

5:30And you start taking those actions, doing those behaviors eventually your brain will start to update your identity and this is exactly what self-perception theory describes we don't act based on our identity we infer our identity from our behaviors we figure out who we are based off of what it is that we do and so if you start to act confident your brain will kind of conclude well damn i must be a confident person now that's not the only thing. There's also four more other things that we're going to go through. But if you want to become more confident, it's really smart just to think to yourself, what does a confident person do?

6:10What are those behaviors? I'm just going to start doing those behaviors. And eventually your brain and your identity is going to update of yourself. I must be more confident than I thought I was. So the second thing is your identity trap. This is where, you know, most people never change. Where most people usually get stuck is they confuse history with identity. So they say something like, I've always been shy, or I've never been confident, or I've always struggled socially. And that statement is actually saying something deeper. What it's really saying behind the scenes is that my past determines who I'm allowed to become.

6:47Think about that for a second. Whenever you say, oh, I'm just a shy person, or I've never been confident, or I've always struggled socially, you're really saying my past behavior is basically determining who I'm allowed to become. Which means I'm fixed. I'll never be able to change. I'll never be different. And so psychologists call this narrative identity. Research from Dan McAdams at Northwestern shows that humans construct their identity of, once again, identity is who you think you are through stories. You are constantly telling yourself a story of who you think you are. Who do you tell yourself that you are?

7:25That might be the most important question to really, really ask yourself. Who do I tell myself that I am? Because I will act consistently with that forever unless I start to change it. And once that story forms about ourself, your brain will protect it through a mechanism that's called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to just basically notice and believe and remember information that supports what you already think about yourself or what you think about anything. And then ignore information that challenges it. So it basically means that your brain starts looking for proof that you're right instead of actually looking for the truth.

8:10And so you unconsciously look for evidence that supports the identity to believe that you're not good enough. You know, so if like, if you believe that you're awkward, you will remember the one awkward conversation that you had and you'll ignore the 10 normal ones. If you don't think that you're good enough, you'll remember the one mistake that you made in a meeting and you'll ignore the five things that you did well. And we will be right back. Hey, showing up for yourself day in and day out and doing the hard things is what creates a better life. And noon hydration helps you stay moving with the real deal.

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11:24See Mint Mobile for details. And now, back to the show. If you think that you're bad in relationships, you'll focus on that one relationship that ended, and you'll ignore all of the times that you show love and care for somebody. If you think, oh, like, I'm not a disciplined person, you'll remember the one morning where you skipped the gym, and you'll ignore the three weeks where you showed up and did the work and went to the gym in the morning. And so your brain basically will edit reality to maintain the identity that you have of yourself, which means that confidence is really about rewriting the internal story more than it is anything else.

12:00Okay. So that's number two. The third thing is that confidence is a behavioral feedback loop. So something that surprises a lot of people is that confidence doesn't just come from like self-belief and believing in yourself. It comes from behavioral evidence. Okay. So Albert Bandora, who's the father of the self-efficacy theory, discovered something really important. Confidence grows from your experiences of doing something that you said you were going to do. Right. Seeing yourself follow through is what gives you more confidence in the long run. And so basically what this means is that your brain becomes confident only after it sees proof.

12:42And so with the first one, I was obviously saying you need to start acting more confidently and telling yourself more confident and doing what a confident person would do. And that actually means this feedback loop is being interrupted. Your brain will become confident only after it sees proof of you taking action or becoming confident by everything that you're doing. You can't just like sit and what I mean by this is you can't sit and meditate your way to confidence. There is action that is necessary to be able to do this. So the sequence that most people think becoming confident is, because I get asked this question all the time, like how to become more confident is people think I need to become confident and then I will take more action.

13:22I need to become confident in myself and then my life will change. But psychology shows that it is actually action first, you taking a completely different action in the right direction, your brain starting to notice the evidence second, and then third comes confidence. So most people think confidence first, action comes, but it's really action turns into evidence, turns into confidence. And so let me give you like a practical example, right? If someone decides they want to start being more confident, they go, you know what, I'm going to start speaking up in meetings and that's going to be uncomfortable.

13:59At first, they're going to feel extremely uncomfortable. But over time, as they start speaking up more and speaking up more and speaking up more, their brain starts to gather evidence. And that evidence is, hey, I spoke up, nothing bad happened, people listened, and their brain starts to update that belief. And as you start speaking up more and more and more, you develop the skillset of speaking up, of talking, of people listening. Somebody will come to you eventually and say, hey, I really loved your feedback in today's meeting. Your brain is going to update its belief about yourself. And so you're gonna be really nervous and it's gonna be really uncomfortable at first because it's out of your comfort zone, but eventually your behaviors will start to turn into more confidence.

14:44And so confidence isn't like, isn't just a mindset. Sure, there's some mindset stuff that's in there, of course, but it's really like a database of successful experiences. And when I say successful, I don't mean successes in like you've made a million dollars or you hit a home run with whatever it is that you're trying to do. I don't mean like that type of success. I mean, success is you showed up when you said you would. Like just saying, hey, I wanna show up, I wanna speak up in this meeting and speaking up, that is a success. That alone is a success. And this is why one of the most powerful confidence strategies that you can have is something that's called behavioral activation.

15:29It's used really, really heavily in cognitive behavioral therapy. And so what it really means is instead of changing your thoughts first, you change your behaviors first and the thoughts will follow, right? So you change your behaviors first and the thoughts will follow. And so change needs to happen in your behavior, usually before anything else. Confidence will come later on down the road. And so you have to take unconfident action for a little while. And then one day you'll realize, oh my God, I actually believe in myself. And so I want to pause before I go on to number four, number five. But what I want you to see about confidence is there's two separate things here, right?

16:04There's the actions that we're taking and there's the actual thing that we think of ourselves, right? And so there's two things that we want to be working on. The actions that we take externally and the actions that we take internally. Those are the two things that need to work hand in hand in order to make yourself more confident and to actually really change your personality into a confident person. Okay, so the fourth thing is your environment is quietly programming your personality. Here's the concept that kind of a lot of people overlook. Personality is actually socially contagious as well.

16:37So Yale studies did this experiment in massive social networking experiments. And what they discovered was that behaviors spread through social groups like viruses do. So the same way that if someone in your friend or group gets sick and you hang out with everybody, there's a pretty good chance that everyone's going to get sick. Well, they actually found that behaviors spread through social environments as well. And so, you know, examples that they found that spread socially, obesity spread socially, happiness spread socially, smoking and drinking spread socially, depression spread socially, fear spread socially, and confidence spread socially too.

17:16The reason why is because your brain has something that's called mirror neurons. and mirror neurons are neurons that cause you to subconsciously mimic behaviors of people around you. If you've ever noticed, I used to love when I would train sales reps when I was younger and I would sit up in front of them and I'd be giving a presentation, I'd be talking and I would itch my nose and just like, you know, lightly itch my nose and like five other people would itch their nose. And then I would be like, hey, did you guys see what you just did? And they're like, no, what did we just do? I was like, when I itched my nose, five of you guys, you, you, you, you, and you just all at your nose.

17:51And they're like, oh my God, I did. It's the same thing when you're talking with somebody and your head is bobbing up and down. For those of you guys that are listening on the podcast and not looking at me on YouTube, my head's bobbing up and down. And when your head bobs up and down, another person will usually look at you and their head will start to move up and down unconsciously. That is us mimicking the other person through our mirror neurons. And so what that means is that we are starting to adopt to the behaviors of the people that are around us as well. So if you spend time around people who are confident and people who take action and people who really do something with their life, your brain will literally start to rehearse their behaviors and do stuff as well.

18:28And over time, your personality will shift. So I want you to think about like the five closest people that you spend your most time with. Think about this for a second. With those five people, do they take risks? Do they speak confidently? Do they pursue opportunities? Are they motivated? Are they driven? or do they play safe? Do they doubt themselves? Do they avoid discomfort? Do they talk trash to themselves? Because your personality slowly over time averages the room that you're in. Believe it or not, environment is involved in personality architecture. You will become who you spend the most time with, okay?

19:06And the number five is acting confidently literally starts to rewire your brain, okay? One of the most fascinating discoveries in psychology, at least in my opinion, is something that's called embodied cognition. Your body affects your mind, not just the other way around. There was a famous study that was done by Amy Cuddy at Harvard that showed that adopting power poses, which is actually like the way that you stand, like you put your hands on your hips and you put your shoulders back, the actual pose that you stand in temporarily increases your testosterone and decrease cortisol. So when people stand their arms back and, you know, hands on their hips and everything, and they kind of stand like Superman would, that power pose increases testosterone and decreases cortisol.

19:51And so the deeper idea here is pretty wild. Your brain reads cues and identity cues from your body. And so your brain like reads body signals as the cues of who you actually are, your posture. Some of you guys are just like, like slimped over like, oh my gosh, I'm just kind of, I got terrible posture. Well, if you want to start being more confident, stand up, put your shoulders back, stand up straight. Your eye contact matters. Your voice tone matters. Your movement speed matters. Like if I were to ask you just in your mind, think of what a confident person looks like. You could probably actually start to think of most people say the exact same thing.

20:31They stand up straight. They maintain eye contact. Their voice sounds like it's like it is just more confident. They probably move a little bit slower and they're more conscious of what they do. If you say, okay, what does an unconfident person look like? They're probably slouched over. They probably don't have eye contact. They probably talk like this instead. Their movements are kind of a little erratic. So these are all signals to your brain, the way your body moves, the way your eye contact is, the way that you speak, the tone, all of that are actually signals to your brain that interpret who you are as a person.

21:08So if you consistently move like a confident person would, your brain updates your self-perception. Another powerful concept around this comes from William Jones, one of the founders in psychology. And in the 1800s, he wrote, if you want equality, act as if you already have it. That was said in the 1800s, which sounds woo woo-woo and all that stuff, but modern neuroscience now supports it. If you want a quality in yourself, act as if you already have it. As I said earlier, behavior rewires identity as well. Act now like a person who is confident and identity will shift over time. So here's the deepest truth of all of it, right?

21:52Identity expands when you repeatedly step outside of your current comfort zone of who you think you are. Initially, your brain is going to resist it. If you're not confident and you start to act confidently, your brain's going to resist it. There's going to feel some tension, right? Your brain feels this tension when your behavior doesn't match your identity. But if you keep pushing that tension and keep pushing the tension, being somebody different than you've always been, if that behavior repeats long enough, your identity will update to remove that tension. And this is exactly how your personality evolves.

22:23So once again, the things that you want to concentrate on to become a more confident person and to update your personality, which once again is not set in stone, is what's going on in your head and what you're actually doing and the actions you're taking in reality. If you do that, you can update your personality to become more confident. So that's all I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, you will absolutely love my free workshop that's coming out on March 25th. It is called Identity Upgrade. I'm going to be live with you and I'm teaching because after 20 years of studying and teaching self-development, I've seen so many people try to change their life and see that nothing sticks because they don't change their identity first.

23:01And so in this workshop, I'm going to show you step-by-step how to upgrade your identity so you can change the entire course of your life. So if you're ready to become the next version of yourself, go to 2026upgrade.com and register for free. Once again, 2026upgrade.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day. Hey, Fidelity. Can I get a second opinion on stocks in the Fidelity app? With Fidelity, it's easy to get an outside opinion from independent experts in a single score.

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